A Danish inventor accused of murdering a journalist on his submarine searched the internet for ‘beheaded girl agony’ just hours before they met.
These searches lead Peter Madsen, 47, to a video of a girl having her throat slit.
He has admitted sleeping next to the woman’s corpse before dismembering her and burying her at sea.
Madsen told Copenhagen City Court that Kim Wall, 30, died after a sudden air pressure fall.
The inventor said that he was on deck and Miss Wall was inside the vessel when a vacuum effect meant that he was unable to open the hatch door to get to her as exhaust fumes filled the craft.
Last message: Miss Wall sent her boyfriend several text messages during her interview with Madsen, which took place on the submarine
He admitted that he had lied to investigators and changed his account of what actually happened to Wall several times, but said that he had done so to spare her family.
He said: ‘I wanted to spare her family and the world the details … about what actually happened when she died, because it is gruesome.’
Miss Wall disappeared after meeting Madsen for an interview on his submarine Nautilus and her body-parts were later found in plastic bags in the water off the coast of Copenhagen.
Madsen told the court he already knew how to amputate limbs ‘to save lives’.
‘I do not see how that mattered at that time, as she was dead,’ he added.
The defendant told the court that Miss Wall had a ‘very, very lovely night’ until the moment she died.
A psychiatric report of the 47-year-old Dane has concluded that he is an intelligent man ‘with psychopathic tendencies’ who has ‘no empathy or feelings of guilt’.
Madsen said in his testimony that he had tried to use a rope to hoist Wall’s body out of the submarine, but that she was too heavy.
Although he admitted cutting her body up to perform what he described as a sea burial, he told the court he took no sexual gratification from it, as was put to him by the prosecution.
Miss Wall, 30, disappeared after meeting Madsen for an interview on his submarine Nautilus and her body-parts were later found in plastic bags off the coast of Copenhagen
Trial: Peter Madsen is accused of the murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall in August last year, and has admitted to mutilating her body and ‘burying her at sea’
He denied any sexual activity with the journalist.
Earlier today, the prosecutor showed the court the heartbreaking final texts Miss Wall sent to her partner.
‘I’m still alive btw (by the way),’ she wrote, adding ‘But going down now!’ and ‘I love you!!!!!!’
A minute later, she added: ‘He brought coffee and cookies tho.’
Madsen, 47, is charged with murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse for the way he disposed of Miss Wall’s body.
Madsen denies killing the 30-year-old but admits to cutting her body up before he ‘buried her at sea’.
Madsen’s lawyer Betina Hald Engmark said he denied the murder charge and maintained his position that the reporter died accidentally on board his submarine.
Evidence: Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen, pictured today arriving in Copenhagen, showed the court the heartbreaking final texts Miss Wall sent to her partner before she died
The press and hearers line up in front of the courthouse where the trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, charged with murdering and dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his homemade submarine, opens in Copenhagen, Denmark
Wearing a black t-shirt, jeans and black eyeglasses, Madsen appeared calm in court, his gaze often looking downwards.
Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen says Madsen’s submarine was submerged for several hours on the night when Miss Wall disappeared, was invisible to radar and didn’t immediately respond to attempts to make radio contact.
When reached over radio – the audio file was played to the Copenhagen City Court Thursday – Madsen said he had let Wall off on Refshale island several hours into the trip.
Madsen also said over the radio that there were no injured persons on board but only technical problems. Shortly after, Madsen reported ‘man overboard’ over the radio. He was picked up alone.
After he was arrested on land, forensic experts found dried blood on Madsen’s nose, ‘blood that eventually was proven to belong to Kim Wall,’ said Buch-Jepsen.
Buch-Jepsen said Wall’s blood was found on the military-style bodysuit that Madsen wore when he was arrested, and he also said that detectives found videos and texts about killing women on Madsen’s laptop and an external hard drive.
Buch-Jepsen also showed the court underpants and pantyhoses – both damaged – and pieces of hair.
On August 10, Miss Wall and her Danish boyfriend, Ole Stobbe Nielsen, threw a goodbye party before moving to China.
That evening, she received a text message from Madsen saying an interview was possible. For months, she had been trying to speak with him and she left the party to join the now 47-year-old Dane.
After Wall left to meet Madsen, her boyfriend received several text messages from her.
Police technicians board Peter Madsen’s submarine UC3 Nautilus on a pier in Copenhagen three days after Kim Wall’s disappearance
He started worrying when the messages stopped coming and eventually alerted authorities, who launched a search for the submarine, which didn’t have a satellite tracking system.
The 33-ton, nearly 18-meter-long submarine sank south of Copenhagen shortly after being spotted afloat. Madsen was picked up unharmed. Initially, he told police he had let Wall off on Refshale island several hours into the trip.
Investigators found dried blood inside the submarine, and divers eventually found Wall’s body parts in plastic bags held down on the Baltic Sea bed by metal pieces. Her torso had been stabbed multiple times.
Police believe Madsen sank the submarine on purpose, and found videos of women being tortured and killed on his personal computer in his hangar. He did not make the videos himself, investigators said.
Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen claims Madsen tied up and tortured Walls before killing her, either by cutting her throat or strangling her. The murder has been called premeditated because he had brought along tools he normally wouldn’t take with him on the submarine.
A psychiatric assessment described him as a ‘perverted polymorph, and highly sexual deviant’.
‘He has narcissistic and psychopathic traits, and is manipulative, with a severe lack of empathy and remorse,’ said Butch-Jepsen.
This is one of the last images of Kim Wall, as she and Madsen prepared to set off from Copenhagen harbour aboard Nautilus on August 11, 2017
Kim Wall grew up in southern Sweden, just across a narrow waterway from Copenhagen. She studied at Paris’ Sorbonne university, the London School of Economics and Columbia University in New York, from where she graduated with a master’s degree in journalism in 2013.
She wrote for The New York Times, The Guardian and other publications, reporting on topics such as tourism in post-earthquake Haiti and nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands.
Shortly after her death, the Columbia Journalism School graduate’s family and friends set up a fund in her name to help women journalists reporting on similar issues.
‘This will be a way for everyone to focus on the future instead of it all ending that night on the submarine,’ her mother Ingrid Wall told Swedish TT news agency ahead of the trial.
‘This means her legacy will live on.’