FILE - In this April 30, 2008 file photo, submarine owner Peter Madsen stands inside the vessel. One of the most talked-about and macabre court cases in recent Danish history is set to conclude Wednesday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this April 30, 2008 file photo, submarine owner Peter Madsen stands inside the vessel. One of the most talked-about and macabre court cases in recent Danish history is set to conclude Wednesday, April 25, 2018 when the verdict is handed down on whether Peter Madsen tortured and murdered a... (Associated Press) 
 
 COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — The Latest on the murder trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen (all times local): 
 
 1 p.m. 
 
 Danish inventor Peter Madsen has been sentenced to life in prison for torturing and murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall on his private submarine. 
 
 Judge Anette Burkoe at the Copenhagen City Court said she and the two jurors agreed Wall's death was a murder, saying Madsen didn't given "a trustworthy" explanation. 
 
 Madsen stood quietly listening as the judge read out the verdict Wednesday. 
 
 Madsen, 47, had denied murder and said Wall died accidentally inside the submarine, but he has confessed to cutting up her body and throwing the body parts into the sea. 
 
 ___ 
 
 9:20 a.m. 
 
 A verdict is expected at the Copenhagen City Court Wednesday on whether Danish inventor Peter Madsen tortured and murdered a Swedish journalist during a private submarine trip. 
 
 Madsen, 47, is charged with murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse over the death of Kim Wall. 
 
 Madsen has denied murder and said Wall died accidentally inside the submarine, but has confessed to throwing her body parts into the sea. 
 
 Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen has claimed Wall's murder was sexually motivated and premeditated because Madsen brought along tools he normally didn't take when sailing. He has sought a life sentence for Madsen. 
 
 Madsen's defense lawyer has said he should only be sentenced for cutting Wall into pieces. 
 
 The cause of death has never been established. ||||| Defense attorney Betina Hald Engmark arrives at the courthouse, where the trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, charged with murdering and dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his homemade... (Associated Press) 
 
 Defense attorney Betina Hald Engmark arrives at the courthouse, where the trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, charged with murdering and dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his homemade submarine begins, in Copenhagen, Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau via AP) (Associated Press) 
 
 COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — The Danish inventor accused of torturing and killing Swedish journalist Kim Wall during a private submarine trip before dismembering her body is an intelligent man "with psychopathic tendencies," a prosecutor said as the murder trial opened Thursday. 
 
 Peter Madsen, 47, was standing trial at Copenhagen City Court accused of torturing Wall, 30, before he either cut her throat or strangled her on his submarine in August. 
 
 The inventor is charged with murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse for the way he disposed of Wall's body. He denies murder, but has admitted to dismembering her body before he "buried her at sea." 
 
 Wall, a freelance journalist who wrote for The New York Times, The Guardian and other publications, embarked on Madsen's submarine on Aug. 10 to interview him. Her remains were found in plastic bags on the Baltic Sea bed weeks later, and her torso was found stabbed multiple times. 
 
 Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen started the 12-day trial by reading out the charges, describing in detail how Wall's body parts were found on the ocean bed. He said a psychiatric report has concluded that Madsen has "no empathy or feelings of guilt." 
 
 Madsen, wearing glasses, a dark shirt and jeans, listened quietly with his fists closed. Wall's parents were also present Thursday at the trial. 
 
 Testifying, Madsen repeated his claim that Wall died accidentally inside the UC3 Nautilus while he was on deck. He said Wall "had a wonderful evening until it ended in an accident," but denied that any sexual activity had taken place between them. 
 
 Madsen had offered shifting explanations for Wall's death prior to the trial. He initially told authorities he had dropped Wall off on an Copenhagen island several hours into their submarine trip. Then he said that Wall died accidentally inside the submarine when a hatch fell and hit her on the head. 
 
 On Thursday, he described how he found Wall lifeless after a sudden pressure problem in the submarine. 
 
 "I could not open the hatches. I heard Kim, it was not good," he said. He added that he tried to give her first aid when he finally reached her, but stopped because it was impossible to stay inside. "There was a risk of having a submarine with two deaths," he told the court. 
 
 The prosecution claims Wall's murder was premeditated because Madsen brought along tools he normally didn't take when sailing. 
 
 Buch-Jepsen said the cause of Wall's death has yet not been established. But he said Wall's blood was found on Madsen's nose and his bodysuit, and he also said that detectives found violent videos and texts about killing women on Madsen's laptop and an external hard drive. 
 
 Members of the court were shown a drawing of the multiple stabs to Wall's torso. An audio file of a radio exchange between Madsen and maritime officials from Aug. 11 — the day after Madsen and Wall embarked on their submarine trip— was also played. In the recording, Madsen said he had let Wall off on an island, and that there were no injured persons aboard but only technical problems. 
 
 The 33-ton, nearly 18-meter-long submarine sank south of Copenhagen shortly after being spotted afloat. Madsen reported "man overboard" over the radio and was then picked up alone. 
 
 Wall, who had previously reported on topics including tourism in post-earthquake Haiti, studied at Paris' Sorbonne university, the London School of Economics and Columbia University in New York. 
 
 Caterina Clerici, a friend from Columbia, said Wall had "a soft spot for misfits, for places and people that did not conform." 
 
 Madsen was a co-founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals, a private aerospace consortium to develop and construct manned spacecraft. In 2011, it launched a homemade nine-meter (30-foot) rocket eight kilometers (five miles) into the sky over the Baltic Sea, a step toward its unrealized goal of launching a person into space. 
 
 In an interview with Danish weekly Soendagsavisen in 2014, Madsen said he one day "hoped to have a criminal career," adding he didn't want to rob a bank because "no one must be hurt." 
 
 Police believe Madsen sank the submarine on purpose, and later found videos of women being tortured and killed on his personal computer in his hangar. He did not make the videos himself, investigators said. 
 
 The trial at Copenhagen's City Court ends April. 25. 
 
 ____ 
 
 On the net: 
 
 https://www.rememberingkimwall.com/ 
 
 www.facebook.com/kimwallmemorialfund/ ||||| Swedish journalist’s dismembered remains found at sea after she failed to return from trip on Madsen’s submarine 
 
 A Danish inventor has been sentenced to life in prison for the premeditated murder and sexual assault of the Swedish journalist Kim Wall on his submarine in August last year. 
 
 The judge, Anette Burkø, and two jurors found Peter Madsen, 47, guilty of all three of the main charges of premeditated murder, aggravated sexual assault and desecrating a corpse. 
 
 “This is a cynical and pre-planned sexual assault of a particularly brutal nature on a random woman who, in connection with her journalistic work, accepted an invitation for a sailing trip on the accused’s submarine,” Burkø said, explaining the rare decision to hand down Denmark’s most severe sentence. 
 
 Wall’s parents, Ingrid and Joachim Wall, who had followed much of the trial from the courtroom, were not present for the verdict, although the seven family seats were taken by other friends and relatives. 
 
 Wall was 30 when she died. The journalist had reported from all over the world for Time magazine, the New York Times and the Guardian, among others. Her boyfriend told the court she was “incredibly ambitious” and “amazingly curious”. 
 
 Madsen looked crushed as he heard the verdict, sitting motionless for close to a minute with his eyes closed and his head bowed, in contrast to his behaviour during the trial, when he had looked frequently around the courtroom. He then left to confer with his defence lawyer, Betina Hald Engmark, who announced on their return that he would appeal. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Peter Madsen in front of his homemade submarine in Copenhagen, Denmark. Photograph: Mikko Suominen/Getty Images 
 
 The case has gripped Denmark ever since Wall failed to return from a trip on Madsen’s self-built Nautilus submarine on 10 August. Madsen was a semi-celebrity at the time of his arrest, having made a name for himself with three self-built submarines and two crowdfunded manned space projects. 
 
 
 
 Burkø said his version of events – that Wall died when an accident filled the vessel with toxic exhaust fumes – was “not credible and not consistent with the following decision to dismember the body”. Madsen had changed his explanation for Wall’s death several times, Burkø noted. 
 
 She said the court instead believed the prosecution’s theory that he had sexually tortured Wall to fulfil a violent sexual fantasy. 
 
 It is very unusual for a life sentence to be handed down for the murder of a single person in Denmark, where prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment serve an average of 16 years. 
 
 Madsen admitted to just one of the four charges, mistreatment of a corpse. He confessed in October to dismembering Wall’s body after divers found her head, legs and clothing in Køge Bay, claiming it had been necessary to cut it up in order to remove it from the submarine. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen gives a media briefing after the verdict. Photograph: Scanpix Denmark/Reuters 
 
 Over the course of the 11-day trial, spread over seven weeks, prosecutors presented their case in often horrific detail. But Madsen himself refused to go into detail in court, calling Wall’s death “a very, very traumatic event which I do not want to describe”. 
 
 When he was arrested in August, Madsen initially claimed to have dropped Wall off on land, but he almost immediately admitted that she had died onboard and that he had then “buried her at sea”. 
 
 At first, he said her skull had been crushed by a heavy latch, but after the discovery of Wall’s head, he said she had been asphyxiated, claiming to have come up with his first story to spare Wall’s parents. 
 
 
 
 During the trial, the court heard from a woman to whom Madsen had confessed that he was “a psychopath, but a loving one”, a judgment backed up by a forensic psychiatric report that described Madsen as a “perverse polymorph” with “psychopathic traits”. 
 
 Such was the interest in the trial that the Copenhagen district court opened up a special room with a video link on some days to accommodate as many as 115 journalists from 15 countries. Wall’s parents attended the trial most days and quietly took notes from specially reserved seats beside the media section. 
 
 Madsen expressed his regret when asked to make a closing statement at the end of the trial. “The only thing I want to say is that I’m very, very sorry for what has happened,” he said. 
 
 Madsen was also ordered to pay damages to Wall’s boyfriend. 
 
 • This article was amended on 26 April 2018. An earlier version said Peter Madsen was found guilty of reckless sailing and ordered to pay damages to Wall’s parents.
– Life sentences are unusual in Denmark, even when the crime is murder, but that's what Danish inventor Peter Madsen was handed on Wednesday. Judge Anette Burkoe at the Copenhagen City Court said she and the two jurors—whose opinions all held equal weight in the case—found Swedish journalist Kim Wall was murdered, telling Madsen he hadn't given "a trustworthy" explanation for her death and that "there is clear evidence that the accused has shown an interest in killing and dismembering people." The 47-year-old stood quietly listening as the verdict was read, reports the AP, with the Guardian describing him as "visibly nervous." The paper notes life sentences in Denmark typically average 16 years; Madsen has two weeks to decide whether he will appeal. Madsen had maintained that he did not murder Wall, but did admit to cutting up her body and disposing of it in the sea after what he said was an accidental death. The New York Times reports prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen had argued Madsen was fixated on murdering a woman after a rocket launch was scrapped on Aug. 8, two days before Wall died. Buch-Jepsen said Madsen texted three women an invitation to meet him on the sub but was turned down. Wall boarded the sub on Aug. 10 for an interview that she had tried to secure for months; Madsen had texted her that day with the invite. "It was random chance that it turned out to be Kim Wall," Buch-Jepsen said. Wall skipped her own going away party to head to the interview. More on that here.