Nearly six weeks after the headless torso of journalist Kim Wall was found in waters off Copenhagen, authorities said they found video footage of women being tortured and decapitated on a computer hard drive reportedly belonging to the suspect in the case, according to BBC News.
That suspect, prominent Danish inventor Peter Madsen, has changed his story many times since Wall boarded his personal submarineto interview him on Aug. 10. Wall was never seen alive again. Her headless, mutilated torso turned up nearly two weeks later. Authorities said the torso was bound to heavy metal to make it sink.
In a court hearing on Tuesday, prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen said that officers found images on Madsen’s computer - “which we presume to be real” - of women being strangled, decapitated and burned, Reuters reported. The videos were found in a laboratory run by Madsen.
While the cause of Wall’s death hasn’t been established, Bush-Jepsen said an autopsy showed knife wounds to Wall’s genitals and rib cage were caused “around or shortly after her death,” BBC News reported.
Madsen, who has denied charges of killing Wall and mutilating her body, said the computer hard drive wasn’t his. “They are the space laboratory’s tools which have been used by everyone in the laboratory,” the 46-year-old inventor said during the pretrial session, according to Reuters.
Wall, 30, a freelance journalist from Sweden, was researching a story on Madsen and the UC3 submarine he built at the time of her death. She was an award-winning reporter who wrote stories across the globe, from Sri Lanka to North Korea.
When Wall didn’t return from her interview with Madsen, her boyfriend reported her missing. At about the same time, Madsen’s prized submarine reportedly sank. He initially told police that he had dropped Wall at the Copenhagen harbor and later barely escaped his sinking vessel.
But a witness contradicted his story and police accused Madsen of deliberately sinking the vessel, which he later admittedto doing. After the submarine was retrieved, Wall’s blood was found inside, authorities said.
Madsen soon changed his story and told authorities Wall died after hitting her head on a submarine hatch cover and that he buried her at sea.
After her headless torso was found, he denied dismembering her body. Police matched DNA from the torso to Wall’s toothbrush and hairbrush as well as the blood in the submarine.
Madsen was initially charged with involuntarily manslaughter, but the charges were later changed to murder.
In a court hearing last month, the prosecutor summed up his case this way: “Two people are on a boat. Her legs and heads and arms were cut off, and we can prove that. You can draw your own conclusions.”