Kim Wall: when an intrepid reporter becomes the bigger story

Swedish journalist Kim Wall, who had been stabbed 15 times and her body dismembered.

Journalism can be dangerous. Not for everyone and not everyday, but in the course of their career a journalist may be asked to cover a war or a natural disaster, a siege or an unfolding terrorist attack, or they may work under daily pressure in one of those countries where journalists routinely are murdered.

The risk to journalists who set out to interview people for human interest stories often isn’t considered, which perhaps explains why the death of talented Swedish freelancer Kim Wall, who died aboard a submarine off the coast of Denmark in August, is at once so sur­real and so devastating.

Christian Jensen, editor-in-chief of one of Denmark’s leading newspapers, Politiken, has called it “the most spectacular murder case in Danish history”, although murder is denied. Some commentators, mainly from abroad, have tried to make the point that the case reads like a Nordic film script or a bestselling Scandi crime novel, but these comparisons have been swiftly rejected by the Danes.

This is real life. Wall was a real person, just 30 at the time of her death and at the peak of her craft.

Wall grew up in the Swedish port town of Trelleborg, just across the water from Denmark, and she studied at Columbia University’s school of journalism in Manhattan and at the London School of Economics. She always wanted to be a journalist and was not tied to one publication but pitched ideas to prestigious journals such as The Guardian and The New York Times.

Last August, she set her interview sights on one of Denmark’s local celebrities, a man called Peter Madsen, who has been a little bit famous for his inventions since he was 15.

Madsen, 46, grew up as one of four sons in a small town on Zealand, which is Denmark’s largest island. He started building rockets when he was still in school and even invented his own space agency — the Danish Space Agency — to drop into conversations with potential investors.

Local newspapers say he wanted to make space tourism a reality, and he was occasionally compared in ambition to British billionaire Richard Branson.

He recently was the subject of a book called Rocket Madsen: Denmark’s Do-It-Yourself Astronaut.

Peter Madsen has been charged with manslaughter.

Madsen launched his first submarine — he was as intrigued by moving underwater as he was with moving through the sky — in 2002. The largest and latest vessel in his fleet is called the UC3 Nautilus.

Wall told her boyfriend that she was going to Denmark — it’s only across the water from where she lives in Sweden — to interview Madsen, because who does that? Who makes their own giant submarine?

Wall set out on August 10 and it seems clear that she got on board, since she was photographed by a passing boat standing in the submarine tower, next to a flag that was fluttering in the breeze. When she did not return from the journey as planned, her boyfriend called the police.

A search-and-rescue operation soon found the disabled submarine floating in Koge Bay, south of Copenhagen. As the boat approached, the submarine sank, but only Madsen swam to rescuers. Wall was not to be found anywhere, despite Madsen saying he had dropped her off near the port of Copenhagen.

Madsen’s story has since changed. He now says Wall was knocked on the head by the 70kg escape hatch and, in a panic, he used a rope to pull her from the floor of the submarine before dumping her body at sea. Certain he would be accused of murder, he became suicidal and tried to sink his vessel.

Police say Wall was murdered, and the evidence is troubling: when her body was found, it was only the torso, missing arms, legs and head. Metal had been attached to weigh it down and Wall’s limbs had been removed with a saw. An autopsy has since revealed that the body had 15 stab wounds, including 14 around the genital region.

Police also have found video footage of slain women on a hard drive taken from an office at Madsen’s space agency, although Madsen denies they are his, saying: “Those items confiscated from the space laboratory are not my belongings. An intern used to live in the office. More people have had access. Those files are not necessarily mine.”

A judge in Copenhagen District Court, Anette Burko, has described Madsen’s account of Wall’s death as “unreasonable” and he has been charged with manslaughter, which in Danish law is the legal equivalent of an intentional homicide.

His next trial date is scheduled for October 31.

The questions are many. Is he guilty? If so, is 16 years — the usual maximum for murder in Denmark — a just punishment? If he is guilty, why did he do it?

Not awaiting an answer is the question as to why Wall went to see the submarine. We know why she went: to get the story. Wall was always out there, getting the story, in Sweden, and Denmark, and New York, and China.

Her archive, now her legacy, includes dazzling stories about “furries” — that’s people who like to dress up as human-sized animals and interact with each other — and carnival workers in Florida; about pole dancers and the topless women of New York’s Times Square. She had a knack for the quirky. And you could tell she loved life.