Danish police find decapitated head of Swedish journalist

COPENHAGEN: Danish police said on Saturday that divers had recovered the decapitated head and the legs of Swedish journalist Kim Wall, who vanished in August while interviewing a Danish inventor aboard his homemade submarine.

In a grisly case worthy of a Nordic noir thriller, Copenhagen police inspector Jens Moller Jensen told reporters that divers had found bags containing her missing clothes, her head and legs in Koge Bay, south of the Danish capital.

“Last night our forensic dentist confirmed that it was Kim Wall’s head,” he said.

Her headless torso was found floating in waters off Copenhagen on August 21, 11 days after she went missing.

Self-taught engineer and inventor Peter Madsen, 46, has been accused of Wall’s death, with prosecutors saying he dismembered her body before throwing it overboard.

Madsen, who is married and has been in custody since August 11, claims Wall died when a 70-kilo hatch door fell on her head, and in a panic, he threw her body overboard. He has insisted her body was intact at the time.

But Jensen said the decapitated head contradicted Madsen’s version of events.

There is “no sign of fracture on the skull and there isn’t any sign of other blunt violence to the skull,” he said, citing an autopsy carried out overnight.

Locating Wall’s head has been a priority for investigators, as the final autopsy on the torso was not able to establish the cause of death. However, it did show multiple mutilation wounds to Wall’s genitals.

Prosecutors believe Madsen killed 30-year-old Wall as part of a sexual fantasy, then dismembered and mutilated her body. Earlier this week, 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.