The Gruesome, Last Voyage of the ‘Nautilus’ Private Submarine

Wall was killed while reporting on inventor Peter Madsen.

kim wall
Allegedly Swedish journalist Kim Wall stands next to a man in the tower of the private submarine "UC3 Nautilus" on August 10, 2017 in Copenhagen Harbor. (PETER THOMPSON/AFP/Getty Images)
AFP/Getty Images

In March 2017, Kim Wall, a freelance journalist who had reported from around the world including Haiti, Sri Lanka, Cuba, and New York, heard about the Nautilus, a submarine built by inventor Peter Madsen in Copenhagen. The submarine weighed 40 tons, was 58-feet long, and had been built by volunteers at minimal cost from donated iron and other parts. Wall, whose reporting focused on “the undercurrents of rebellion,” was visiting her partner Ole Stobbe in Copenhagen when she discovered Madsen’s sub. She reached out to several publications about doing a story, and on August 10, she got a text from Madsen that he would be willing to do an interview. Wall and Stobbe were hours away from their own goodbye party — they were planning to move to Beijing together — but she decided to forgo it and do the interview. When Stobbe hadn’t heard from Wall by 1:45 a.m., he alerted the police and then the navy. Madsen was found in the ocean, and was pulled out and returned to land. The submarine was sunk. He claimed he had dropped Wall off on land, but the police did not believe him. They arrested and charged him with involuntary manslaughter. On Aug. 21, a cyclist found a torso washed ashore. Forensics identified it as belonging to Wall. An autopsy revealed she had been stabbed 15 times in and around her vagina. Divers found her head, clothing, and a knife in plastic bags in the water near where her torso was found. Later, they would find her legs and arms attached to metal pipes. Madsen changed his story multiple times, saying that Wall had been hit in the head by a door on the ship and he’d buried her at sea, and then saying she got carbon monoxide poisoning. The police later found videos that appeared to show women being strangled, decapitated and tortured on Madsen’s computer.

Journalist May Jeong was friends with Wall, and when Wall died, Jeong did the only thing she knew to do: interview everyone she could in order to find out what happened to Wall. In a new piece for Wired, Jeong talks to people connected to Madsen — including a former sexual companion who says Madsen one time texted her about a scenario where he kills someone on his submarine. Jeong calls the article “her tribute.”

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