"The torso was mutilated in an apparent attempt to ensure that decomposition gases passed out of the body, and there was also metal attached to it to make it sink, he added."
I have a hard time believing anyone would commit a murder on a submarine in Denmark. I feel like it's almost impossible to cover that up. But if it was an accident... who mutilates the body like that? If I wanted to cover it up, mutilating the body would be too much for me.
The case is pretty bizarre, although I'm pretty sure law enforcement has it mostly cracked already.
> I have a hard time believing anyone would commit a murder on a submarine in Denmark. I feel like it's almost impossible to cover that up.
The 'perfect crime' doesn't have to leave you above suspicion; but it has to deny sufficient evidence to convict you. You might believe your plan avoided incriminating you to the point that you can plausibly claim that you didn't commit the murder or tried to conceal the evidence.
Basically, a psychopath would think they could cover it up.
>I have a hard time believing anyone would commit a murder on a submarine in Denmark. I feel like it's almost impossible to cover that up.
You mean "premeditated murder". Because it's too easy to commit a murder or manslaughter anywhere on the heat of the moment (e.g. makes a pass, she refuses, argument, pushes him, pushes her, she falls and dies, etc).
Basically I can't see Madsen straight up stabbing her with the clear intention of murdering her. Unless he is crazy or did something else before that, like rape her.
The mutilating part is just what throws me off. If he didn't kill her intentionally, how could he go that far? I can see him dumping her body in fear or shock or whatever, but he took his sweet time on the body before doing that.
> Basically I can't see Madsen straight up stabbing her with the clear intention of murdering her.
Given that he had no compunction about cutting her up into pieces I have zero trouble seeing him stabbing her. At this point in time 'all bets are off', he's been more than just a little bit erratic and has been doing a pretty good job of appearing quite normal after having just dismembered a body and sinking a submarine. You have to be more than a little bit strange to be able to stand there and pretend to be the victim of an accident while talking to the police knowing all that.
> Although I'm pretty sure his right to a fair trial won't be affected by HN comments…
You'd hope not.
The one thing that so far has negatively influenced Madsen's chances at any kind of leniency in his future trial (I'm going on the assumption here that there will be such a trial, though I can see some ways in which he might get out of that) is Madsen's own behavior.
Not sure where they're from but it may be a language thing.
For example in Germany "Mord" ("murder") always requires intent. Unintentional killing is called "Totschlag" (manslaughter), if it was an accident it would be called "fahrlässige Tötung" (reckless killing).
Culturally and legally the US aggressively separates murder out from something that is only an accident. All deaths by accident definitely do not get referred to as murder or grouped under murder.
If you accidentally hit someone with a car for example (while not drunk etc), few would call it murder when referring to the event. It would be referred to as: he killed the person, or the person died by accident, or legally involuntary manslaughter if you're responsible for the death.
Speaking culturally, typically for people in the US to call something murder, it almost always requires intent or high negligence.
Weird. So why did the comment single out premeditated murder?
Getting into a fight and unintentionally/recklessly causing lethal injuries, or unintentionally/recklessly causing a lethal accident to happen wouldn't then normally be called "murder" making the distinction unnecessary?
EDIT: To clarify, I'm not picking on coldtea. This isn't the first time I've seen people be corrected when using "murder" to refer to "first-degree murder".
For starters, there's such a thing as justified homicide, i.e. Self-defense. Voluntary manslaughter covers the situation you describe, in which a suspect kills someone during a fight but can argue that he did not intend for the fight to become lethal. Such as punching someone who then falls and suffers a fatal head injury.
I think the distinction is that if you plan to kill someone for months, then you wouldn't plan to do so on a submarine, as that would be a hard place to cover up the act.
If however, you're on a submarine and then decide to kill someone in a rage, then it's still murder, but it's not planned far in advance.
I guess "intentionally killing someone in a rage" didn't come to my mind. I can imagine planning to kill someone and then doing it or unintentionally killing someone in a fight/assault. But knowingly killing someone out of the blue never crossed my mind. Not sure what that says about me, if anything.
The distinction I presume germany makes (because so do the Netherlands) is whether an intentional killing was premeditated (i.e. poisoning a spouse, or lying in ambush with a knife) or was conceived of in the heat of the moment (i.e. you insult my mother, I get so angry I grab a knife and stab you).
I think in America, this is the difference between murder in the first and second degree.
Germany has another (unique and different to the neighbours) distinction between "Mord" and "Totschlag" (both are translated to "murder" in my English version of the law). The former requires one additional criterion from a list to be fulfilled. These are dark motives (killing for killing's sake, sexual satisfaction, greed, hate, honour killings, or similar), reprehensible manner (treacherous, cruel, or with means dangerous to the public), and to facilitate or cover up another crime.
This distinction is pretty out of place in German criminal law but plans to change them move very slow.
No, murder requires premeditation under United States law. Even a heat-of-the-moment killing (e.g., someone pisses you off in a bar, you beat them, they die) may be prosecuted as manslaughter depending on circumstances; if the prosecution can establish that you intended your victim to die, it becomes a murder.
Below manslaughter, we have negligent homicide, which is when you cause an accident through negligence that kills someone. If you are driving recklessly and kill someone, this warrants the stiffer charge of "vehicular manslaughter" in some juristictions.
Yeah, I think that was what I was getting at. There's a difference between "I hate you so much, I'm going to kill you right now" and "I'm going to kill you dead, like, permanently". I'd think most people killing someone in the heat of the moment didn't really intend a permanent outcome even if the injuries were obviously life-altering/lethal.
Manslaughter/"Totschlag" also requires intention (because anything without intention is, by definition, accidental or reckless).
Murder/"Mord" additionally requires one of several distinct characteristics. Among them are the attempt to conceal some other crime, a sexual motive, exploiting a victim's particularly weak ability to defend themselves, seeking financial gain, and maybe one or two more I forgot.
Yeah, that list is all over the place, and rather inconsistent. It will be changed any decade now.
Thanks for pointing that out. I always thought "Totschlag" also referred to violence that escalated into a killing but uninentionally so (i.e. when it should have been clear the injuries are fatal but they weren't meant to be).
There's a fair chance he raped her and then murdered her. Much more common and less glamorous than Russian mobsters taking out someone about to break the big story.
He was apparently very contentious about the submarine and his history with others involved in it as well.
I could see an escalating scenario where she, as a reporter would, started questioning around that topic. She hits the right buttons, and he loses it and injures her badly enough that he now has to make a decision.
Fortunately glamour or statistics are not relevant in justice, only truth and proven facts. At the current moment there is zero data available supporting the mobster hypothesis... but also zero data (unless policemen know something more) supporting the hypothesis of a sexual crime or a rape.
Is a murder, pretty obviously, but the reason of the murder is unclosed still. All possibilities are open.
What is it with Madsen that gets people to come up with conspiracy theories about the woman involved?
Really, this is getting annoying. Just the other day someone came up with the absolutely brilliant theory that she must have been stealing submarine secrets for the Chinese or something to that effect and now this.
Did you notice that (1) he lied about having dropped her off, (2) he sank his sub on purpose claiming it was accidental and (3) he said she died in an accident and (4) he claimed he buried her at sea?
So far only (4) seems to be somewhat truthful, he forgot to mention he butchered her first.
Early on in the Reiser case there was at least some room for doubt because there were a lot of unknowns, however once the facts that came out pointed fairly uniformly at Reiser having killed his wife most of that evaporated.
Here there is very little room for such creativity, the amount of contorting one would have to do in order not to conclude that Madsen killed Kim Wall is speaking volumes about those attempting it.
Top comment on slashdot for the article "Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder":
US jury system does it again
by QuantumG ( 50515 ) * <qg@biodome.org> on Monday April 28, 2008 @07:34PM (#23231238)
No evidence? No body? No murder weapon? Who cares! The
prosecutor used Power Point in his closing.. The
defendant is "weird".
Oh well, maybe Hans will confess and reveal where he
stashed the body now."
Edit: even sorted by "insightful", this thread is a nightmare:
by garcia ( 6573 )
While I could definitely see why he would kill that
thieving bitch of a ex-wife of his, I don't think they
proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he definitely
killed her.
by dgatwood ( 11270 )
typical jury is a group of 12 people hand-picked by the
lawyers to be the most easily emotionally manipulated
people possible. You were expecting them to come to a
conclusion based on logic?
Let's throw in some completely random racism:
by OMNIpotusCOM
I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous.
Last I knew you had to prove that he planned to kill
someone with a first degree murder charge. If you can't
prove she's dead, and nobody saw her die, and there's no
evidence that she's anywhere other than where he says,
you can't convict a person of first degree murder.
Can you imagine what would happen if this guy was black?
by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com>:
No kidding. I would really like to see a poll of the
jury members, and if they would change their votes if
they had been told that Hans's ex-friend (the wife's new
dude) had confessed to killing 8 people.
Some facts are prejudicial.
Some facts are prejudicial for a very good reason.
I'd like to see numbers on how that would have changed things.
If she was murdered investigating Russian Mafia, how does it suggest that the investigator is the real problem? That would suggest that Russian Mafia is the problem, wouldn't it?
Let me feed your curiosity. The anwer is: Nothing. This is a interesting problem to eval from a purely intellectual point of view.
In a early phase of the analysis ALL ideas are important. This is similar in many aspects to trying to catch a bug in a program that starts to do unusual things. You could work serially just picking the simpler explanation and stop here, or you could instead make a list of all possibilities and check it against the facts, discarding some and keeping other until the real cause is revealed. There is nothing wrong with it.
The difference is that when debugging a program nobody things "this variable is ugly and evil, so the other variables linked with it must be passing good values". You need to check it. The problem can be (and often is) in the interaction between two functions.
Updating the case, we have a obvious murder. We have a dismembered corpse that explain the "need to sink the submarine", we know were, and probably who. We have a fair good picture of the problem, but we don't know still why. We need to understand the interaction.
Of course there must be a reason and I bet that will be very obvious when revealed... most lose ends are now in the post-murder phase. How the corpse arrived to that beach for example.
You only sink your submarine (!) for a pretty serious reason. The only serious reason that comes to mind in this case (besides maybe insurance fraught) is murder.
The key problem with a conspiracy theory is that it doesn't hold against Occam's Razor. Everything points to a story by PM which doesn't hold up.
The police have, rightly so, only given somewhat sparse information through the press. PM is currently, to my knowledge, allowed to read newspapers, and there is little reason to give a suspect a chance at information. It is highly likely they have way more information than what they are divulging.
The information they do give is to de-mystify a case which is already so crazy bonkers that even a good novelist couldn't have cooked it up. It is simply too implausible.
Everything points to murder. And I don't think there will be less stuff pointing to murder over the next couple of days or weeks.
> Just the other day someone came up with the absolutely brilliant theory that she must have been stealing submarine secrets for the Chinese
It was me in fact. Please notice that you are wrong. I never said 'must have been', I said 'may have been' or 'could have been'. There is a planetary distance among both statements.
"The man loves with passion other thing; His work. Maybe she did something that was seen as a menace against the other love of his life, his submarine. Maybe she poke around and tried to sneak/photograph/open/discover some parts of the engine with the purpose to earn some bucks selling the submarine secrets when returning to China. I'm speculating of course, but unless he was drunk or drugged (unprobable while driving a sub), or both where flirting for months by e-mail and he feels cheated, there should be a solid reason for she being 'punished' with death. This is not a random act IMAO."[1]
> Please notice that you are wrong. I never said 'must have been', I said 'may have been' or 'could have been'.
You can hide behind weasel words all you want but the fact of the matter is that you were positing all kinds of ridiculous explanations for a situation where a simple one would suffice. That's about as clear an example of conspiracy nuttiness as I've seen since the Reiser trial referenced elsewhere in this thread.
What 'may have been' or 'could have been' still has to be remotely plausible to be considered and it really wasn't.
So if you feel that your use of the word 'maybe' gives you license to throw up all kinds of flak feel free, in the meantime realize that it does nothing to establish credibility and in fact probably achieves the opposite.
A proposition, or set of propositions, set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena, can be asserted merely as a provisional conjecture to guide investigation (working hypothesis)
Speculation:
The contemplation or consideration of some subject. Conjectural consideration of a matter; conjecture or surmise
That was not what I told at all. I am clearly saying maybe she was onto something and that could be the reason she is dead. (If the murder is related to her job)
> I am clearly saying maybe she was onto something and that could be the reason she is dead.
Yes, that is the bit that I object to. She is most likely dead because something Madsen did or tried to do to her before she got done in entirely, and it has nothing to do with the last story she worked on. So forget about bringing the Mafia, the Russians and Cartels into it.
The article doesn't mention it, but the suspect Peter Madsen is the cofounder of Copenhagen Suborbitals. This is an absolutely crazy story which just gets more insane by the day. Starting with a missing journalist and seemingly accidental sinking of a private submarine, getting more and more weird and inconsistent until now a decapitated, limbless corpse shows up.
With the corpse cut in pieces, it's hard to reach any other conclusion than that this was a murder. Or just almost in the region of the semi-plausably concievable, an accident followed by a gruesome attempt to cover it up. The repeated change of stories certainly doesn't help his credibility, and the explanation doesn't stand to reason in any way.
> Or just almost in the region of the semi-plausably concievable, an accident followed by a gruesome attempt to cover it up.
The accident theory is being stretched beyond the breaking point by now, I find it hard to come up with even a remotely plausible theory of what kind of accident it would have to be to justify the subsequent events. Such an accident would have to look so suspiciously close to murder that he responded just as if it actually was a murder.
My comment came out a little more ambiguously than intended, so just for the sake of clarity: I was pointing out that there is not much room for doubt here. There is certainly no reasonable probability that he's innocent with the evidence that's shown up by now.
That makes absolutely zero sense, he was seen going on board with her by many people and there are pictures in the media of it. Besides that, the guy was according to many accounts in an open relationship, on top of that the trip with the sub was going to be published.
One theory I've seen was that PM is a highly eccentric person, that's always had problems fitting in and dealing with other people - when working on co-projects. The submarine project was his own, and he was his own boss. If in fact it was an accident that happened down there, it could be hypothesised that PM was afraid that he would loose everything he cared about if the police did not believe it was an accident. Imagine that everything you hold dear is in risk of being taken away from you - that everything you've worked on for so many years may disappear due to something that wasn't your fault? If you have a derailed mindset and think your odds of not loosing everything will improve if you dispose of the body instead of contacting the police immediately? If you have no faith in other people and their judgements?
I am not defending PM, as I think his reasoning and action in any case were completely psychotic in itself, but I can imagine a scenario that - with everything we know up until now - has not been disproven ... although I'm of the firm belief that he did kill that poor girl.
I'm sure that Madsen will do everything he can to make this sort of explanation for the facts (that is: until some new bit of evidence pops up).
Being eccentric is fine, Howard Hughes was an eccentric and so are many writers and film makers. But butchering bodies (the result of an accident or a murder) goes substantially beyond merely being eccentric, it points to having a complete lack of empathy.
I agree. So far we just haven't heard anything from PM's past that would indicate the lack of empathy ... until now. It's going to be interesting once the police starts talking more about the accident that should've happened. PM must have given a version of what happened, and to some extent a plausible one, since the prosecutor is still sticking to involuntary manslaughter (and most likely also improper interference with a corpse after today's identification and facts).
It still wasn't premeditated murder either. Which is an important distinction.
Best case scenario was his desperation to protect his reputation given this was the first journalist to visit his submarine who proceeded to die within his care would destroy his reputation. He probably freaked out and made a series of bad choices.
Worst case this was a crime of passion.
A 10yr manslaughter sentence seems like an appropriate punishment here.
Robert Durst got away with killing and dismembering his victim because his defense claimed self-defense while shifting the jury's attention and anger toward the prosecutor for being an ambitious woman. If you haven't seen HBO's The Jinx it's well worth the time and absolutely terrifying to see how easily manipulated a jury can be.
The way the "jury of your peers" is selected in the american justice system means that sometimes if a person actually has any knowledge in the field the case is about (say a computer scientist in a software patent infringement case) they will be filtered out in the jury selection process. On top of that, jury duty is seen as something to be avoided, so there's also the adage that juries only consist of people not smart enough to get out of jury duty.
In contrast to Denmark, where in a lot of cases the jury is the three judges preceding over the case, or in cases where there's a real jury, they jurors have some form of law degree
I'm wrong about the jurors usually having a law degree. Maybe.
Apparently each jurisdiction has a committee that creates a short list every 4 years of people suited for jury duty. I can find no further info on what "Suited for jury duty" means, so the "has a law degree" thing might be untrue
According to Wikipedia they can overrule a guilty verdict, but not a non-guilty verdict. I think that's actually very similar to America, where judges can set aside a jury guilty verdict if they deem "no reasonable jury" could convict based on the presented evidence.
Nævninge are not professionals in any way. They are selected from the general population. The judge can only overrule a guilty verdict, not a not guilty verdict.
There is a jury duty in the sense that if you are asked to serve as lay judge you can not refuse. However, in practice the system is set up so that only volunteers get asked.
Every 4 years, each municipal council (kommune) provides a list (grundlisten) of candidates for lay judges (nævning). The list must be representative of general demographics. To be eligible for the list, you must be "suitable" for the role (which seems to mean you should not have a criminal background), and you must not be a lawyer, prosecutor, judge, or police officer. The cities can use their own procedures to compile the list, but in practice the way it works is you write to the selection committee giving your name, age, job title, and motivation for why you want to be a lay judge.
The lists are combined, and about 10,000 people are randomly selected from them. If you are selected you have a duty to serve. You serve for a period of 4 years, and will typically sit on 4 to 5 cases per year.
Thank you for this comment, that's more than I could find about it, even with Google translate it can be quite hard to understand what is written on a page in a language you do not understand.
So, now we know why the sub was sunk. I'm curious what implausible rabbit of an explanation Madsen will pull out of his hat to explain this away, and I hope that instead he will now simply confess to what actually happened. What an idiot. Poor family and spouse.
Yes I expect this to play out as it usually does, as more evidence is gathered, the story he is telling changes accordingly while he is trying to paint himself as good as possible given the proven circumstances, with a full confession once there is no more room for anything but the actual truth.
Yeah I don't think the evidence leaves much to the imagination. It sounds like he probably raped her, killed her and then disposed of the body to protect his reputation.
It must be be extremely painful for the partner of the victim who was probably feeling paranoid before she even stepped on the submarine.
My heart goes out to the family and friends of Kim Wall, I cannot begin to imagine what they're going through. I hope the truth of what happened comes to light and the family at least have some answers. Given Mr Madsen's evasiveness and his unwillingness to answer questions honestly I wonder if we'll ever know for sure?
What evasiveness and unwillingness are you referring to? He changed his statement once, and that was within 24 hours of his arrested. Ever since he has remained silent, most likely by order of the court.
I actually believe that he told them "everything" at the first hearing (like the admission that she died on board the vessel and was "buried at sea") and as we've seen up until now, the court only releases a part of it once that part no longer has influence on the ongoing investigation. For instance, I think he also admitted to dismembering the body but that part hasn't been disclosed as the police would risk people sailing up and down the coast looking for body parts, and thus risk ruining evidence. The reason why I put 'everything' in quotation earlier, is that I don't personally believe the accident-story until I see evidence that proves it.
However, it puzzles me that the prosecutor is still going for the indictment with involuntary manslaughter. I think they know something that the public doesn't - perhaps something that in fact supports the accident-story.
First saying he dropped her off which was a flat out lie, then saying she was buried at sea. On a technicality you could argue the second was true but I think that is stretching things more than just a bit. Getting rid of the evidence would be a better description.
Now we are in full fledged crazy butcher and/or killer territory. I think that pretty much covers evasiveness and unwillingness.
The "buried at sea" is most likely the phrasing from his lawyer and not his own words. Also, "getting rid of the evidence" would only be used if he did commit the murder.
And I agree, regardless of what actually happened he has turned out to be a psychopath. Dismembering a body, puncturing potential air/gas pockets then "wrapping" it in chains and finally throwing it overboard.
> Also, "getting rid of the evidence" would only be used if he did commit the murder.
No, if it is an accident getting rid of the body and sinking the sub is also getting rid of evidence and would have been material in determining whether or not it really was an accident in the first place.
Technically, you're right. It's just that he would never phrase it as getting rid of evidence nor would his lawyer, as it implies that he was guilty of whatever led up to the point of having evidence.
The key thing here is that he claims to dropped her off at this location[1] at 22:30.
The article mentions cameras around but no info about is she was seen there or not. At that time, the area is probably busy with people wants to chill, so there could be eye witnesses seeing her.
It's still not proof that he's innocent, but that would raise lots of doubts.
Thanks, I forgot that by skimming the article. This makes it rather simple. A flat out lie and an unreasonable way to treat an "accident" leaves not much room for the defense.
He was just getting rid of evidence. Note the GP has 'buried' in quotes. This will definitely be held against him and will aggravate any crime he will be charged with.
So exceedingly strange for me to be commenting on this. I was once a member of the support group around Copenhagen Suborbitals, Peter Madsen's first space rocket venture, which also had the submarine in hand, and from which he was later ejected for erratic behaviour, vile explosions of temper, and general pain-in-the-ass-ness.
Around Christmas 2010, in the rocket assembly hangar - inevitable known as the HAB - I had a long talk with a leading support group member. Two things I very clearly remember from tat conversation: I was directed towards Hacker News as a serious forum (have been here ever since), and much more to the present point was told "With all his energy and dynamics and creativity, Peter must have a dark side that we know nothing about".
We were not to know that the dark side was a terrifying psychopathic personality, now exposed in all its gore. Danish police is now reopening various old macabre murder cases. I shall be unsurprised if the charming, charismatic Peter Madsen I have met on several occasions turn out to be the craziest serial killer in Danish history.
My rage is barely containable.
[Written on phone in noisy, unconducive environment. Please excuse typos, clumsiness, and errors]
"With all his energy and dynamics and creativity, Peter must have a dark side that we know nothing about" - no idea what else the person who said that knew. However if I read this as a conclusion, it appears unsubstantial.
Wait! No! I never made the connection to Copenhagen Suborbitals! I read now that Madsen left it a few years ago. Does that mean that the work will go on? I hope so!
Goes without saying that he is a despicable human being.
But what a poor engineer he also turned out to be.
Not because he flunked college or because his rockets never reached space or because his submarine sunk.
But working with submarines for decades, and then utterly failing to submerge a body at sea. Not understanding that police would find her DNA in the submarine. His misdeeds were uncovered by regular police work in just a few days. Does he even have a grasp of physics?
>But what a poor engineer he also turned out to be ... and then utterly failing to submerge a body at sea. Not understanding that police would find her DNA in the submarine.
I'm an engineer and knowing that kind of forensic tools are available now to police, there is no way I'd ever think to commit such a crime (and also because WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!). Unless the police are very incompetent or you are able to conceal it very well, you will be caught. [0]
I can tell you I never had a class during my B.Eng about how to kill someone and destroy DNA evidence. I'm not sure what being an engineer has to do with sinking a dead body and removing DNA evidence, since these are not at all related to Engineering...
There are quite a lot of unsolved murders. Thirty percent in the US. Perhaps lower in Europe, but I assume still substantial.
Of course, high profile crimes get disproportionate resources. In this case, they turned around a DNA test in a few days or less. The people involved, plus the submarine, assured this one gets attention.
Haha yes, it sounds so obvious when you put it like that. It's hard to believe that he went through this in his head and thought it was a good idea. How stupid does he think other people are?
If he was smart he would have driven his submarine to Russia and never come back.
And lack of clearance does not mean lack of guilt, more likely if there is no clearance it means that there is no case and most likely not murder.
You can use this as a proxy for the police 'solving' crimes but it would be much better to use the actual rate at which murderers are convicted because the police do not always get it right and do not always manage to establish guilt of the defendant beyond reasonable doubt.
Yes. There are many differences, depending on culture, police set up etc. The high conviction rate of nearly 100% in Japan due to the way police/justice works there comes to mind. Only could find conviction rate for all crimes (not only murder and manslaughter) which is around 80% in Germany.
> Goes without saying that he is a despicable human being.
Assuming the allegations against him are true. (I freely acknowledge that I can't even come up with an explanation that absolves him at this point - but I'd rather not convict based on news articles and a couple of police statements)
As you suggest, it's all speculation, but the police are saying it does look like deliberate mutilation. Trying to imagine the scenario where all 4 limbs and a head get cut off by a prop, and it's quite a stretch. There's also blood in the submarine, and the accused's statement that he "buried her" at sea.
132 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 205 ms ] threadI have a hard time believing anyone would commit a murder on a submarine in Denmark. I feel like it's almost impossible to cover that up. But if it was an accident... who mutilates the body like that? If I wanted to cover it up, mutilating the body would be too much for me.
The case is pretty bizarre, although I'm pretty sure law enforcement has it mostly cracked already.
The 'perfect crime' doesn't have to leave you above suspicion; but it has to deny sufficient evidence to convict you. You might believe your plan avoided incriminating you to the point that you can plausibly claim that you didn't commit the murder or tried to conceal the evidence.
Basically, a psychopath would think they could cover it up.
You mean "premeditated murder". Because it's too easy to commit a murder or manslaughter anywhere on the heat of the moment (e.g. makes a pass, she refuses, argument, pushes him, pushes her, she falls and dies, etc).
Basically I can't see Madsen straight up stabbing her with the clear intention of murdering her. Unless he is crazy or did something else before that, like rape her.
The mutilating part is just what throws me off. If he didn't kill her intentionally, how could he go that far? I can see him dumping her body in fear or shock or whatever, but he took his sweet time on the body before doing that.
Given that he had no compunction about cutting her up into pieces I have zero trouble seeing him stabbing her. At this point in time 'all bets are off', he's been more than just a little bit erratic and has been doing a pretty good job of appearing quite normal after having just dismembered a body and sinking a submarine. You have to be more than a little bit strange to be able to stand there and pretend to be the victim of an accident while talking to the police knowing all that.
Allegedly doing those things. Although I'm pretty sure his right to a fair trial won't be affected by HN comments…
Fair enough.
> Although I'm pretty sure his right to a fair trial won't be affected by HN comments…
You'd hope not.
The one thing that so far has negatively influenced Madsen's chances at any kind of leniency in his future trial (I'm going on the assumption here that there will be such a trial, though I can see some ways in which he might get out of that) is Madsen's own behavior.
After the deed has been done, even if it was an accident, one can panic and try everything to get away with it.
For example in Germany "Mord" ("murder") always requires intent. Unintentional killing is called "Totschlag" (manslaughter), if it was an accident it would be called "fahrlässige Tötung" (reckless killing).
US law seems to make similar distinctions but groups all of them as "murder": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_(United_States_law)
So I'm guessing the strong implication of intent present in e.g. German "Mord" is not present in the English word for most native speakers?
If you accidentally hit someone with a car for example (while not drunk etc), few would call it murder when referring to the event. It would be referred to as: he killed the person, or the person died by accident, or legally involuntary manslaughter if you're responsible for the death.
Speaking culturally, typically for people in the US to call something murder, it almost always requires intent or high negligence.
Getting into a fight and unintentionally/recklessly causing lethal injuries, or unintentionally/recklessly causing a lethal accident to happen wouldn't then normally be called "murder" making the distinction unnecessary?
EDIT: To clarify, I'm not picking on coldtea. This isn't the first time I've seen people be corrected when using "murder" to refer to "first-degree murder".
If however, you're on a submarine and then decide to kill someone in a rage, then it's still murder, but it's not planned far in advance.
I think in America, this is the difference between murder in the first and second degree.
This distinction is pretty out of place in German criminal law but plans to change them move very slow.
Below manslaughter, we have negligent homicide, which is when you cause an accident through negligence that kills someone. If you are driving recklessly and kill someone, this warrants the stiffer charge of "vehicular manslaughter" in some juristictions.
Note: IANAL, IANYL.
Take a look at:
http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/second-degree-m...
Manslaughter/"Totschlag" also requires intention (because anything without intention is, by definition, accidental or reckless).
Murder/"Mord" additionally requires one of several distinct characteristics. Among them are the attempt to conceal some other crime, a sexual motive, exploiting a victim's particularly weak ability to defend themselves, seeking financial gain, and maybe one or two more I forgot.
Yeah, that list is all over the place, and rather inconsistent. It will be changed any decade now.
I could see an escalating scenario where she, as a reporter would, started questioning around that topic. She hits the right buttons, and he loses it and injures her badly enough that he now has to make a decision.
Is a murder, pretty obviously, but the reason of the murder is unclosed still. All possibilities are open.
Really, this is getting annoying. Just the other day someone came up with the absolutely brilliant theory that she must have been stealing submarine secrets for the Chinese or something to that effect and now this.
Did you notice that (1) he lied about having dropped her off, (2) he sank his sub on purpose claiming it was accidental and (3) he said she died in an accident and (4) he claimed he buried her at sea?
So far only (4) seems to be somewhat truthful, he forgot to mention he butchered her first.
Oh, come on, you know what it is. Nerds looking for reasons why the woman is the real problem. Just like in the Reiser case.
Here there is very little room for such creativity, the amount of contorting one would have to do in order not to conclude that Madsen killed Kim Wall is speaking volumes about those attempting it.
Edit: even sorted by "insightful", this thread is a nightmare:
by garcia ( 6573 )
by dgatwood ( 11270 ) Let's throw in some completely random racism:by OMNIpotusCOM
by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com>:He eventually did. It would have saved a lot of time and grief if he had done it earlier.
Way too many parallels with this case.
Let me feed your curiosity. The anwer is: Nothing. This is a interesting problem to eval from a purely intellectual point of view.
In a early phase of the analysis ALL ideas are important. This is similar in many aspects to trying to catch a bug in a program that starts to do unusual things. You could work serially just picking the simpler explanation and stop here, or you could instead make a list of all possibilities and check it against the facts, discarding some and keeping other until the real cause is revealed. There is nothing wrong with it.
The difference is that when debugging a program nobody things "this variable is ugly and evil, so the other variables linked with it must be passing good values". You need to check it. The problem can be (and often is) in the interaction between two functions.
Updating the case, we have a obvious murder. We have a dismembered corpse that explain the "need to sink the submarine", we know were, and probably who. We have a fair good picture of the problem, but we don't know still why. We need to understand the interaction.
Of course there must be a reason and I bet that will be very obvious when revealed... most lose ends are now in the post-murder phase. How the corpse arrived to that beach for example.
You meant to write 'fraud'. Fraught is a synonym for 'to be full of' or 'distressed'.
The police have, rightly so, only given somewhat sparse information through the press. PM is currently, to my knowledge, allowed to read newspapers, and there is little reason to give a suspect a chance at information. It is highly likely they have way more information than what they are divulging.
The information they do give is to de-mystify a case which is already so crazy bonkers that even a good novelist couldn't have cooked it up. It is simply too implausible.
Everything points to murder. And I don't think there will be less stuff pointing to murder over the next couple of days or weeks.
It was me in fact. Please notice that you are wrong. I never said 'must have been', I said 'may have been' or 'could have been'. There is a planetary distance among both statements.
"The man loves with passion other thing; His work. Maybe she did something that was seen as a menace against the other love of his life, his submarine. Maybe she poke around and tried to sneak/photograph/open/discover some parts of the engine with the purpose to earn some bucks selling the submarine secrets when returning to China. I'm speculating of course, but unless he was drunk or drugged (unprobable while driving a sub), or both where flirting for months by e-mail and he feels cheated, there should be a solid reason for she being 'punished' with death. This is not a random act IMAO."[1]
> Please notice that you are wrong. I never said 'must have been', I said 'may have been' or 'could have been'.
You can hide behind weasel words all you want but the fact of the matter is that you were positing all kinds of ridiculous explanations for a situation where a simple one would suffice. That's about as clear an example of conspiracy nuttiness as I've seen since the Reiser trial referenced elsewhere in this thread.
What 'may have been' or 'could have been' still has to be remotely plausible to be considered and it really wasn't.
So if you feel that your use of the word 'maybe' gives you license to throw up all kinds of flak feel free, in the meantime realize that it does nothing to establish credibility and in fact probably achieves the opposite.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15068088
A proposition, or set of propositions, set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena, can be asserted merely as a provisional conjecture to guide investigation (working hypothesis)
Speculation:
The contemplation or consideration of some subject. Conjectural consideration of a matter; conjecture or surmise
That was not what I told at all. I am clearly saying maybe she was onto something and that could be the reason she is dead. (If the murder is related to her job)
It was one line.
> I am clearly saying maybe she was onto something and that could be the reason she is dead.
Yes, that is the bit that I object to. She is most likely dead because something Madsen did or tried to do to her before she got done in entirely, and it has nothing to do with the last story she worked on. So forget about bringing the Mafia, the Russians and Cartels into it.
With the corpse cut in pieces, it's hard to reach any other conclusion than that this was a murder. Or just almost in the region of the semi-plausably concievable, an accident followed by a gruesome attempt to cover it up. The repeated change of stories certainly doesn't help his credibility, and the explanation doesn't stand to reason in any way.
The accident theory is being stretched beyond the breaking point by now, I find it hard to come up with even a remotely plausible theory of what kind of accident it would have to be to justify the subsequent events. Such an accident would have to look so suspiciously close to murder that he responded just as if it actually was a murder.
I am not defending PM, as I think his reasoning and action in any case were completely psychotic in itself, but I can imagine a scenario that - with everything we know up until now - has not been disproven ... although I'm of the firm belief that he did kill that poor girl.
Being eccentric is fine, Howard Hughes was an eccentric and so are many writers and film makers. But butchering bodies (the result of an accident or a murder) goes substantially beyond merely being eccentric, it points to having a complete lack of empathy.
Best case scenario was his desperation to protect his reputation given this was the first journalist to visit his submarine who proceeded to die within his care would destroy his reputation. He probably freaked out and made a series of bad choices.
Worst case this was a crime of passion.
A 10yr manslaughter sentence seems like an appropriate punishment here.
I just want to point out that the Danish jury system have very little incommon with the American jury system
Professional jury vs a jury system basically designed to ensure the least qualified people are in the jury
In contrast to Denmark, where in a lot of cases the jury is the three judges preceding over the case, or in cases where there's a real jury, they jurors have some form of law degree
I'm wrong about the jurors usually having a law degree. Maybe. Apparently each jurisdiction has a committee that creates a short list every 4 years of people suited for jury duty. I can find no further info on what "Suited for jury duty" means, so the "has a law degree" thing might be untrue
This is to ensure the facts matter more than how they are represented.
Smaller but serious trials have a limited jury (domsmænd) if the accused claim they are not guilty.
Hm, apologies. I was under the impression they are not laypeople.
Thank you for correcting me. Question: does this imply that Denmark also has a jury duty?
Edit: this later comment makes me doubt again...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15081350
There is a jury duty in the sense that if you are asked to serve as lay judge you can not refuse. However, in practice the system is set up so that only volunteers get asked.
Every 4 years, each municipal council (kommune) provides a list (grundlisten) of candidates for lay judges (nævning). The list must be representative of general demographics. To be eligible for the list, you must be "suitable" for the role (which seems to mean you should not have a criminal background), and you must not be a lawyer, prosecutor, judge, or police officer. The cities can use their own procedures to compile the list, but in practice the way it works is you write to the selection committee giving your name, age, job title, and motivation for why you want to be a lay judge.
The lists are combined, and about 10,000 people are randomly selected from them. If you are selected you have a duty to serve. You serve for a period of 4 years, and will typically sit on 4 to 5 cases per year.
https://www.frederiksberg.dk/politik/kommunalbestyrelsen-og-... http://www.domstol.dk/saadangoerdu/tildigderer/naeavningdoms...
It must be be extremely painful for the partner of the victim who was probably feeling paranoid before she even stepped on the submarine.
I actually believe that he told them "everything" at the first hearing (like the admission that she died on board the vessel and was "buried at sea") and as we've seen up until now, the court only releases a part of it once that part no longer has influence on the ongoing investigation. For instance, I think he also admitted to dismembering the body but that part hasn't been disclosed as the police would risk people sailing up and down the coast looking for body parts, and thus risk ruining evidence. The reason why I put 'everything' in quotation earlier, is that I don't personally believe the accident-story until I see evidence that proves it.
However, it puzzles me that the prosecutor is still going for the indictment with involuntary manslaughter. I think they know something that the public doesn't - perhaps something that in fact supports the accident-story.
Now we are in full fledged crazy butcher and/or killer territory. I think that pretty much covers evasiveness and unwillingness.
And I agree, regardless of what actually happened he has turned out to be a psychopath. Dismembering a body, puncturing potential air/gas pockets then "wrapping" it in chains and finally throwing it overboard.
No, if it is an accident getting rid of the body and sinking the sub is also getting rid of evidence and would have been material in determining whether or not it really was an accident in the first place.
So either way it is destruction of evidence.
https://translate.google.se/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&u=https%3A... (google translate)
It's still not proof that he's innocent, but that would raise lots of doubts.
https://www.google.hu/maps/@55.6958462,12.609141,3a,75y,197....
"He initially said he had dropped her off safely near Copenhagen, but has since said she died in an accident and that he had "buried" her at sea."
Around Christmas 2010, in the rocket assembly hangar - inevitable known as the HAB - I had a long talk with a leading support group member. Two things I very clearly remember from tat conversation: I was directed towards Hacker News as a serious forum (have been here ever since), and much more to the present point was told "With all his energy and dynamics and creativity, Peter must have a dark side that we know nothing about".
We were not to know that the dark side was a terrifying psychopathic personality, now exposed in all its gore. Danish police is now reopening various old macabre murder cases. I shall be unsurprised if the charming, charismatic Peter Madsen I have met on several occasions turn out to be the craziest serial killer in Danish history.
My rage is barely containable.
[Written on phone in noisy, unconducive environment. Please excuse typos, clumsiness, and errors]
Until about two weeks ago it probably was.
But what a poor engineer he also turned out to be.
Not because he flunked college or because his rockets never reached space or because his submarine sunk.
But working with submarines for decades, and then utterly failing to submerge a body at sea. Not understanding that police would find her DNA in the submarine. His misdeeds were uncovered by regular police work in just a few days. Does he even have a grasp of physics?
I'm an engineer and knowing that kind of forensic tools are available now to police, there is no way I'd ever think to commit such a crime (and also because WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!). Unless the police are very incompetent or you are able to conceal it very well, you will be caught. [0]
I can tell you I never had a class during my B.Eng about how to kill someone and destroy DNA evidence. I'm not sure what being an engineer has to do with sinking a dead body and removing DNA evidence, since these are not at all related to Engineering...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pickton
Of course, high profile crimes get disproportionate resources. In this case, they turned around a DNA test in a few days or less. The people involved, plus the submarine, assured this one gets attention.
As murders go this one has a lot of circumstances that facilitate solution in spite of all the attempts at muddying the waters.
I was more addressing the idea that you can't away with murder. Perhaps not in this case, but it obviously happens, and quite often.
If he was smart he would have driven his submarine to Russia and never come back.
I believe the UK is higher.
And lack of clearance does not mean lack of guilt, more likely if there is no clearance it means that there is no case and most likely not murder.
You can use this as a proxy for the police 'solving' crimes but it would be much better to use the actual rate at which murderers are convicted because the police do not always get it right and do not always manage to establish guilt of the defendant beyond reasonable doubt.
Assuming the allegations against him are true. (I freely acknowledge that I can't even come up with an explanation that absolves him at this point - but I'd rather not convict based on news articles and a couple of police statements)
Expect the Hollywood version in 2024.
It is just another possible explanation.
Worst marine accidents happen when person falls aboard and gets sucked into propulsion system.
Not guilty until proven....
As you suggest, it's all speculation, but the police are saying it does look like deliberate mutilation. Trying to imagine the scenario where all 4 limbs and a head get cut off by a prop, and it's quite a stretch. There's also blood in the submarine, and the accused's statement that he "buried her" at sea.