COPENHAGEN (AFP) - Danish prosecutors on Monday (April 23) called for a life sentence for submarine builder Peter Madsen, who is on trial for the gruesome murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his vessel last year, mutilating her corpse and throwing her body parts in the sea. Peter Madsen, 47 — who is accused of premeditated murder, aggravated sexual assault and desecrating a corpse — has repeatedly changed his version of events since his arrest last August, a day after Swedish freelance journalist Kim Wall boarded his submarine to interview the eccentric self-taught engineer and semi-celebrity. Wall, 30, who wrote for The New York Times, The Guardian and other publications, set out on the submarine on a sunny August evening last year to interview Madsen, the co-founder of a company that develops and builds manned spacecraft. In the presence of Wall’s family, prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen’s final arguments, followed by defence lawyer Betina Hald Engmark’s pleading, conclude 11 days of hearings at the Copenhagen district court that unveiled Madsen’s macabre fantasies about violent sex and tortured, decapitated women. When an autopsy report later revealed there was no blunt trauma to Wall’s skull, he said she died after a sudden drop in pressure caused toxic fumes to fill the vessel while he was up on deck. Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for Madsen, who has confessed to cutting up Wall's body up into pieces after he was unable to lift her corpse through the submarine tower so he could bury her at sea. The verdict is expected at 11 GMT on Wednesday in the "bestial" case, which stunned the nation with a submarine as the crime scene and a well-known eccentric figure in Denmark in the dock for the murder of a 30-year-old freelance journalist who wanted to interview him for a story.
Danish prosecutors seek a life sentence for Peter Madsen, accused of murdering a Swedish journalist on board his self-built submarine. Psychiatric evidence describes Madsen as presenting "psychopathic traits" and a "high risk" of offending further.