Danish police have recovered a saw that may have been used to dismember Swedish journalist Kim Wall, whose body parts were found after she interviewed an inventor aboard his homemade submarine.
The saw was found in Koge Bay, south of Copenhagen, the same place where Miss Wall’s headless torso was found 11 days after her August 10 disappearance, and where divers recovered her head and legs in plastic bags on October 6.
Peter Madsen, 46, charged with Miss Wall’s murder, has ceased to co-operate with police after it was revealed that the 30-year-old had been stabbed 15 times in her ribcage and genitals ‘around or shortly after her death’.
Victim: The headless torso of Kim Wall, a 30-year-old freelance journalist who was researching a story on inventor Peter Madsen, washed up in August
‘The saw is now being examined by our forensic technicians to determine whether it is the saw police have been looking for in connection with the submarine case,’ Copenhagen police inspector Jens Moller Jensen said in a statement.
Wall was last seen on board the submarine on the evening of August 10 as she and Madsen, a self-taught engineer and inventor, sailed in waters off Copenhagen.
In custody since August 11, Madsen early on told police that Wall died when a 154lbs hatch door fell on her head, and in a panic, he threw her body overboard.
He insisted her body was intact at the time.
But the recovery of her head contradicts his version of events, as police said an autopsy showed ‘no sign of fracture on the skull and there isn’t any sign of other blunt violence to the skull.’
Accused: Peter Madsen, 46, pictured moments after he was rescued from his sinking submarine, faces preliminary charges of manslaughter and indecent handling of a corpse
Jens Møller Jensen (left), Deputy Police Officer at Copenhagen Police, said at a press conference: ‘We found a leg and shortly after a head’
Locating Wall’s head has been crucial to investigators, as the final autopsy on the torso was unable to establish the cause of death.
Jens Møller Jensen, Deputy Police Officer at Copenhagen Police, said at a press conference last week: ‘We found a leg. An hour after, another leg. And shortly after a head also lay in a bag that was weighed down by several pieces of metal.’
Speaking this week, Møller Jensen told The Associated Press that Madsen ‘doesn’t want to talk now.’
Police also found some of Miss Wall’s clothes and a knife in one of the bags. Her underwear was found on the submarine.
Prosecutors believe Madsen killed Wall as part of a sexual fantasy, then dismembered and mutilated her body.
Wall, a 30-year-old freelance journalist who was researching a story on Madsen, went missing after he took her out to sea in the 17-metre (56-foot) craft in August
Earlier, prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen told a court custody hearing that a hard disk found in Madsen’s workshop contained fetish films in which real women were tortured, decapitated and burned.
‘This hard drive doesn’t belong to me,’ Madsen insisted, saying numerous people had access to his workshop.
Madsen has insisted there was no sexual relationship between him and Wall, and their that contacts had been purely professional.
Madsen has also denied amputating her limbs, saying he tried to bury her whole body at sea.
The pair went to sea on August 10 in Madsen’s 40-tonne submarine, UC3 Nautilus.
Miss Wall’s torso was found in Koge Bay on August 21 – ten days after Madsen was arrested. Madsen will be detained for another four months while police continue to investigate.