Who was Peter Madsen?

Peter Langkjær Madsen was born on 12 January 1971 in Albertslund, west of Copenhagen. He grew up as the youngest child in a family where his father was considerably older than his mother, and by Madsen's own account his relationship with his father was fraught with conflict. From an early age he showed a pronounced fascination with rockets, engines and mechanics — an interest that would later come to define his public image.

Without any formal engineering qualifications, Madsen managed to build a reputation as a self-taught inventor. He designed and constructed three privately built submarines, of which [UC3 Nautilus](/tags/uc3-nautilus), completed in 2008, was the largest. He was a co-founder of [Copenhagen Suborbitals](/tags/copenhagen-suborbitals), a volunteer organisation with ambitions to launch a crewed vehicle into space. Internally, however, he quickly became known as a charismatic but controlling and conflict-prone leader, and he broke with the organisation in 2014, going on to establish Rocket Madsen Space Lab.

To the outside world Madsen appeared eccentric and media-hungry. Behind that facade, the subsequent investigation and trial painted a picture of a man with extreme sexual fantasies, deep isolation and a controlling personality structure.

The crimes

On 10 August 2017, 30-year-old Swedish journalist Kim Wall boarded UC3 Nautilus at Refshaleøen harbour in Copenhagen. She was there to interview Madsen for a feature on his life as an inventor. It would be her final assignment.

The following morning, on 11 August, Nautilus was spotted in Køge Bugt, where it sank shortly afterwards. Madsen was rescued and brought ashore, and initially claimed he had dropped Wall off at Refshaleøen the previous night. When her dismembered torso washed ashore at ten days later, Madsen changed his account: Wall had died in an accident on board, he now claimed, after a heavy hatch struck her on the head.