00:00:00
Speaker 1: In early August seventeen, a home built submarine descends under water with two people aboard. One is rescued after the sub stincs. The other is considered lost at sea, that is, until a mutilated torso washes up on shore. I'mm William Phelps, an investigative journalist and author of more than forty two crime books. I've dedicated the past twenty years of my life to helping families of the missing and murdered. Joined me. We're crossing the line. It's August tenth, two thousand seventeen, and thirty year old journalist Kim Waugh is making final preparations for a move to Beijing, China, with a fiancee, Ole, a Native Dane. As a freelancer, Kim has built an award winning career on the ground, in the Moment, in the Element, and she's reported stories from the US, Cuba, North Korea, Kenya, Uganda all over the world. Her writing and short films appear in Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic Times, Slate, Vice, and The Guardian. I mean, we're talking about a world renowned investigative journalist here. Born and raised in Sweden, Kim is a chestnut hair natural beauty described by friends and family as an EmPATH an incredibly caring, loving soul. She comes from a devoted family and as as close to her parents, both journalists themselves, as any child could be. Before leaving for China, Kim hoped to do a story on forty seven year old Peter Madison, a self described and entrepreneur. So Pete is eccentric. He's a bit of a local celebrity in Copenhagen, known for his eccentricity and often come haired to Elon Musk. Kim was primarily interested in speaking to Madison about his obsession with building a rocket to send civilians into space. I remember, as a child, kids wanted to be astronauts. I mean, you made a space helmet out of cardboard and you took a box and that was your spaceship. But a few of us have grown up with the obsession of building a rocket to send people into space. Apparently Pete Madison tried to fulfill that dream. Kim tried to chase down Madison v email for weeks, but he wasn't being responsive. Finally, Madison gets back to her. This guy has managed to weld and shape forty tons of steel into a massive fifty nine ft submarine that actually works. And so he asked him if she'd be interested in conducting the interview during a ride on the submarine. You know, he figures it will make an interesting story. She agrees. I mean, who wouldn't want to go on a homemade submarine to the bottom of the ocean. Uh? Not me. Kim Wall is a bit of his celebrity herself for all the right reasons. Her integrity as a person and in her reporting, her honesty and her reporting, her self disciplined, self awareness and above all, her compassion that she brings to the table when she's reporting on her subjects. She graduated from Columbia School of Journalism and the London School of Economics. When Kim went after a story, nothing held her back. She was gutsy, disciplined, and extremely perseverance, chasing stories many others were too afraid to go near. She called reporting on the subcultures of human life. She chose quote the undercurrence of rebellion. You know, she had this passion for exposing human atrocities and fought to tell stories focused on women's rights. And this is at a time when news isn't really news anymore, and we all know this, and journalism is something we're forced to really search for, right Kim, is that that hard nosed reporter giving us the hard truth and the facts, no matter the fallout. So it's like I can remember back in the day when you know, news was on for thirty minutes a day and you turned it on and there was some guy with his hair blowing and bullets going by him, and you know, people fighting in the background, and he's reporting on what happened, nothing more, nothing less, just what happened. I just wish others in the field would take on journalism the way that Kim Wall has. Her parents said the world needs more quote brave female journalists who give voice to the people that normally never hit the front pages. End quote. You know, that's a great way to describe what does So now, getting back to August seventeen, two thousand seventeen, it's near seven pm. Kim steps aboard Pete Madison's you See three Nautilus submarine and the waters between Denmark and Sweden, just outside Copenhagen. She and Madison planned to take a brief trip underwater. Remember now, Kim has been waiting for weeks to report on this guy in his rocket, But here she is aboard his submarine because she's chasing the story. This is no small undertaking. The first submarine successfully used in warfare to sink another vessel was technically a success, although every member of that crew drowned as it became water logged and sank. In fact, the same faith befell every submarine crew for years before the kinks were worked out. Kim had to have an enormous amount of faith that the person who built this homemade submarine has the technical and engineering know how to not only submerged the machine, but to get it to resurface right. Some of this information comes from Dead Wake The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, which is by Eric Larson who Dead Devil in the White City and stuff like that. And I mean, if you ever want to learn about how insane it is to be in a submarine, this book has it all. Get talks about the first few decades of submarine use. No crew came back alive. They were basically dredged up. Later, as in the case of this the first successful quote unquote submarine, the entire crew died and it was more people than on the ship that they actually sank. This stuff is no mean feat. It's like it's no joke now. I mean, look at how many soldiers died in the Civil War with all those makeshift homemade submarines that were made then. So that's Catherine Law, my executive producer, and you're you're going to hear her from time to time chime in with her great information like she did today. Although I would never promote Eric Larson, she did and I and I and I'm just kidding. Um, he's a great he's a great writer, and he's a great researcher, and he writes great books. I mean, you know, I have nothing against the guy. Their page turners. What can we say? You know, so that you know, there's a throng of people along the docks and they're waving to Kim as she and Madison board the vessel. There's photographs of this. A passing ship cruising the harbor snaps a photo of Kim standing wearing an orange life fest with an obvious smile washed over her face, and she's atop the tower of the craft and the vessel name you see three is etched in large white letters. Just below on her right, Pete Madison is standing very close to her. So not long after Madison and Kim Wall retreat into the craft and the submarine takes its plunge into the depths of the ocean. And this moment here in the story I think shows the bottomless courage of Kim Wall, who has reported on the front lines of dangerous situations all over the globe. You know, here she is taking the plunge literally underwater in a submarine made in a private workshop by a guy who never graduated engineering school. I mean, a man who refers to himself as Rocket Madison, under the promise he is going to be the first private citizen shot into space in a rocket ship he built himself. So you know this is the mad Professor, really right, I mean I would go with the submarine first before I blew myself up in a rocket ship I made myself. Yeah, yeah, I would do neither. But give Kim Wall props for having the courage to really I mean, she again going back to her character, she wanted this story and she was going to do what it took to get the story. So as ocean water covers the surface of the submerging U S three, Kim texts her fiance Oh to say, quote, I love you. I'm still alive, by the way, but I am going down now. She also mentions that Madison has brought cookies and coffee for the two of them. It seems like a nice little trip happening here. So who was this man who Kim Wall trusted with her life? Right Inventor Pete Madson grew up in a small village, Sabe, about four d and seventy kilometers northwest of Copenhagen. Madison was such a prodigy he started his own company in nineteen eighty six at the age of fifteen, and he called it the Danish Space Academy. His dream then was to collect enough parts to build a rocket. As an adult, he abandoned engineering school after getting all the information he thought he needed and pursued his second obsession, building his own submarine. So he went to school, got what he needed, got the hell out, and started building. Having come from a broken home, motherless since the age of six, with a father he described as authoritative and violent. You know, here's Pete Madson having these successes and it it kind of proved that he'd beat in the odds. Maybe you know, he'd come out of a broken home and here he was doing his own thing and rising really in success, becoming kind of this celebrity engineer and very well liked. It seemed like people really enjoyed being around him and followed his adventures, and people liked listening to the guy. People were wondering what he was going to come up with next, right. Madison lived in reft Saloon, a busy port town in the harbor region of Copenhagen, where he had a small apartment with his wife. Twenty two years after starting d s A. In two thousand and eight, Pete Madison launched the large, just privately made submarine, the U C three Nautilus, from the shores of Copenhagen Bay. But here's the thing about the U C three. Madison had not yet figured out a way for it to be maneuvered underwater, so he basically sunk it and it drifted with the current below the water line. A safe bet was that he had about twelve hours of oxygen for two people and no more inside the submarine, which is you know something you need when you're underwater, You need you need to breathe, unless you're a fish, I would argue you do still need to breathe of your fits. You just breathe water. That's a fine. Where Kim Wall is concerned because she needed only a few hours of reporting at the most to write her story, So twelve hours of air two hours she's with him. Fine. If Madison wants to turn this thing into a pr stunt by launching the vessel in front of a bunch of people, so be it. Kim gets her or he gets a little publicity. Everybody's happy. So Kim Wall, inventor Pete Madison are the only two people aboard the craft as it slips under the depths of the Baltic in Copenhagen Harbor. By all accounts, Madison cannot go too far because he has no way to navigate the thing right. The submarine is not a small craft by any means. This isn't like you know the size of a car or something like that. I want you to picture the image of the sub that you probably have in your head right now, Like I think, maybe like Red October, just not as large and minus all the technology. But this thing was huge that he built. So Kim settles into work mode and the journey begins, but as the night progresses, there is no word from her or Pete Madison. Hours go by and Kim's fiance Oh is growing deeply concerned Kim and said it shouldn't take long, but it's after midnight and all has yet to hear anything from her. After texting Kim repeatedly not getting any response, all sphere turns to dread. So let's put it into perspective. You know, there's big to do in front of all these people, Kim and Pete Madsen. They go under water, you know, and this is like, I don't know, seven o'clock or so, but now it's after midnight, and the fiance is, what the hell is going on? I haven't heard from her. They haven't come up. So he begins to think the home built sub ran into a problem and sank or maybe ran out of oxygen. But the bottom line here for all is he's listening to his gut. He's in panic mode. Something is wrong, and Kim is in trouble. Madison's vessel has no satellite tracking system, you know, so it's not like it can be easily picked up underwater when all cannot get hold of Kim after such a long period of time. He phones Ingrid and Yoa Kim Wall, Kim's parents in Sweden, who are preparing to take off on an extended vacation. Okay, you know this is this is an unbelievably rough night for all and Kim's parents as they await word that the submarine has been located and everything is okay. I mean, put yourself in this position. Yeah, someone you love goes underwater at seven pm. It's now after midnight. You haven't heard anything from anybody, and the submarine hasn't come back up, and you know what, it's a home built submarine. So a report comes in from a merchant ship that the sub has been spotted close to the Orizon Bridge, that infamous eight kilometer rail and vehicle bridge linking Dead Mark with Sweden. Now this is the same bridge from the popular crime series The Bridge, which opens with the discovery of two horribly mutilated bodies, cut in half, joined together at the waist and left on the bridge, one body part in Sweden, the other body part in Denmark. So the top half of the torso is that of a high powered Swedish political person and the lower half is that of a Danish sex worker. Yeah, they did an American one where I believe it was in the US and Mexico. So just like right over the border, right, which involves multiple police departments and jurisdictions, and it gets really complicated. It's like in wires right that area. Yeah, yeah, I believe so. So Kim's parents receive a call that the Danish police were alerted to an accident at sea near four am, and they're checking it out. From that, the coast Guard, using helicopters and boats, now engage in a search at sea for the submarine. Now it's ten thirty the next morning, Kim's parents and Ohl are told the sub is in Koge Bay, Copenhagen. Radio contact has been made with Peter Madison, who says, quote everyone on board is line end quote no sooner are they literally jumping for joy at word that Kim has been located when Old and Kim's dad received a message from the coast Guard in Denmark that the sub has actually sunk near the port of Dreger, just south of the bridge. But here's the thing, there's only one survivor. Meanwhile, as Kim's family makes the short trip from Sweden to Denmark over the bridge. It's now past noon. This next day, a subsequent event is occurring close to the shore in Copenhagen Harbor, on the southwest side of the peninsula. A small floating object is moving closer to the shoreline. It's hard to tell it first, but it appears to be a body. In fact, it's a mutilated human torso no arms, no legs and no head, and there are stab wounds all all over it. Let's take a short break here and come right back as Oll and Kim's parents come upon the docks near Coach Bay, where the coast guard reports the sub is now at the bottom of the bay. Their hearts sink with immediate terror when they look in the back of a police cruiser to see Rocket Madison wrapped in a foil blanket, shivering, his shortly cropped, reddish brown spiked hair dry. The vessels builder is apparently the sole survivor of what was a rescue from his sinking submarine by passing fishermen. Kim Wall's parents roll upon the scene. They don't seek him. They only see this inventurepreneur guy. Where is him? By late afternoon, police send divers down into the sub expecting to find signs of mechanical error, but what they discover instead is a large amount of blood. They take DNA from Madison, and by six pm an announcement is made by Danish police. Peter Madison is now a murder suspect. Madison, on the other hand, says he dropped him off the sub near ten thirty pm the night before at ref Shale Island docks, close to the bridge. Ol and Kim's parents are given details. Madison had been rescued by a small fishing boat after making contact with naval authorities alerting them that his submarine was sinking. He had been pulled from the water and boated to shore in the hours before they saw him in that police car arriving on shore. Madison had given everyone on the docks a thumbs up as he walked up to them. Madison had dress reporters at the docks, joking how upset he was about the sub sinking, saying, but she's insured, isn't that great? Yeah? This is such an interesting moment because since people were already looking for the submarine because it had been you know, lost, and police are out looking for it and they're calling submarine experts to come out and look for it. There are people there when this thing goes on, people who know what's going on. And one of the investigators on this case, who was one of the submarine experts, literally says that she saw this. You know, he comes up, he gets off of the boat, he's taken onto this fisherman ship. And she said that the way that the sub went down, it didn't look like it was thinking like. It looks like he told it to dive and was getting off the boat when that happened. So the fact that he did this with like an audience, He set off with an audience, ostensibly the boat sunk or he sunk it with an audience. So that's all fits into the psychological part of this. The narcissist. I mean, here's a guy who's putting on a show for everybody, basically right, you know, and what does he do. He comes rolling up, walks off the dock, he's soaking wet. He gives the thumbs up, and then people are saying, you know, you should be upset because it went down. Your life's work. But he's saying, no, she's insured. That's eric, you know, where's Kim. So later that night, Madison is held on negligence charges or quote causing the death of another, not murder charges. Meanwhile, police, coast Guard, and naval are searching for Kim. By now, a hair brush of Kim's has been given to police to test for DNA related to blood found in the sunken sub But now let's go back to the other side of the peninsula, not far away, and you have a cyclist cruising along the shoreline, and this cyclist discovers a orso washed up on shore in close proximity to where the submarine actually sank, about a half a mile. So, with the discovery of the torso, police believe Madison murdered and then dismembered Kim aboard the sub and they begin to work under this evidence. Okay, so that's the picture they have. The evidence seems to purport that, but they need to find her body parts because right now it's going to take a while to prove that the torso is Kim. The lead Danish investigator on the case, Jens Jensen, is determined to bring Kim home to her parents. This guy just gets a drive in him. He's going to finish this there's nine thousand gallons of water that were removed from the sub after it was dragged ashore and towed to North Haven and placed in a secured law enforcement facility so crime scene text could go in and investigate in more detail. Three days after Kim first went missing, police announced that no body parts have been found on board the ship, but Jensen says evidence proves the ship was sunk intentionally. Mattson now claims it was faulty ballast tanks that sank the ship. So every time some evidence is presented to Madison, he comes up with some sort of story. This becomes very common in this case with him. The underscore here is that Madison keeps changing his story as Danish investigators recover evidence and begin to question him about what happened on board the sub. A weekend to the investigation with a search party growing daily. I'm talking dozens and dozens of police and navy and Danish citizens here. This is a huge search party. Police are waiting in the water with sticks. They're poking around the shoreline. They're looking for Kim's body parts. If her torso washed ashore, They're thinking the body parts might have in the same thing. Madison meanwhile changes his story yet again. He now says Kim did die on the submarine, but she died accidentally when a hatch swung open and hit her on the head. He claims he panicked and ultimately did what you're supposed to do when someone dies on a vessel out on the ocean, bury the person at sea. This is just like the most ridiculous thing I think I've ever heard. You don't bury someone at sea when you're coming back in two hours. Now, you bury someone at sea when you're a fucking pirate. Yeah, when you're in the middle of the ocean in six exactly, not in two thousand seventeen. I mean, this is just more of Madson going, oh, that's right, she did die. She did die. Yeah, she did die on the sub which gives reason for the blood. I took care of the guys, never mind her family or her loved ones meaning to have closure. Yeah, she doesn't need us headstone, or she doesn't need a place for a family to visit. I took care of it. They can come to the side of the ocean. Maddening So now, near the end of August, Danish police post on social media that the torso found in Copenhagen Bay is confirmed to be that of Kim Wall. This is when the story breaks and goes viral. Every new source in Scandinavia leads with it, and it's now gaining traction all around the world, and within you know days, there will be fifty seven thousand news stories online about this case. I might say here I am particularly interested in true crime stories that tell us something about the victims involved, and it's one of the reasons I chose this case because of Kim Wall. You know, a life is cut short far too early by some psychopath who believes he is superior, you know, the guy who plays the god role in the lives of people around him, but knows exactly what he is doing. I I think we owe it to the victim to tell the story of their life, not just their death. Kim Wall was a brilliant journalist and rare human being who cared about people, communities, and her families. So the reason I bring that upright here is because you know, of the fifty seven thousand news stories online about this torso that had kind of washed ashore, you know, I want to point out that it shouldn't be about the torso it should be about Kim's life. But back to the investigation. More traces of blood found in the sub match Kim Wall's DNA, so it's clear to lead investigator Jens Jensen that Madison premeditatively dismembered Kim Wall inside his submarine. You know, Jensen, he's taking on the weight of how violent the case is and how greatly affected Kim's parents are, and he's determined to bring her entire body home and put Madson away. This guy, I can't stress enough how the ensign digs his heels in here and nothing is going to stop this guy from bringing Kim Wall's body home complete and putting this monster where he belongs. He deploys a team of Swedish human remains dogs, specially trained precisely to locate remains. The dogs sit at the stern of a boat and literally sniff the water as the boat motors slowly along the sea. Incredibly, the dogs are able to smell remains at the bottom of the ocean. The search area Yen sketches out takes the exact route he believes Madsen somehow navigated in a submarine with Kim. Divers are on board. When the dogs indicate human remains, the divers go overboard. During a court herring as the canine search is happening, mad Sense sticks to a story that after Kim slipped on the floor in the tower of the sub, the hundred and fifty pound hatch fell and smashed Kim on her head. He was in another section of the boat and soon found her lying in a large pool of her own blood. That's his story to the court. But at this point investigators were well aware of the demons in Peter Madison's life. They did a little bit of background on him and what they come back with is devastating. One of the movies Pete Madsen obsessed over is the movie Seven, the brad Pitt Morgan Freeman film, in which two detectives hunt a vicious serial killer working under the motive of the seven. Deadly sense. Now looking deeper into his life, Madsen was into dark pornography, the type in which women were beheaded and murdered. I remember them as a kid being called snuff films, and not that I saw them, but that's what they were called. So as the investigation continues to move forth, a forensic exam of his computer produces many, many disturbing, graphic, violent videos of torture and murder of women in the most brutal ways imaginable in a sexual nature. This clear picture of who this guy is is really coming to the surface. So on October seven, as the dogs and divers search, a canine remember on the tip of the boat sniffing the water, hits on something in Koj Bay, not far from where the sub went down. Human remains divers flop over the sides of the rubber raft boat and go down. Later that same day, Jensen says he has a major announcement to make. He says that there's no sign of the sub hatch malfunctioning. That's big. Kim Wall did not die accidentally, he says, that is for sure, But there's more. Divers have made a gruesome discovery. So let's take another quick break and come back find out what happens next. So we have this brutal murder of renowned journalist Kim Wall coming together for Danish investigators, and at the same time we have a suspect in court demanding to be heard. All right, this is important. He demands to be heard. But what comes out of his mouth is a different version of what happened each time. Jensen, who has by now become as close to Kim's parents and fiance as his own family, is nearby. When Danish police address reporters on October seven, two thousand seventeen, and here's what they have to say. In several separate plastic bags, divers find Kim's decapitated head, her clothes, and the knife, along with Kim's two legs. The body parts were weighed down with metal objects so they would not rise to the surface. Police also note that no fractures to the cranium of Kim's head have been found. Kim did not hit her head on the hatch, That's impossible. The way in which the body parts are so patiently configured to sink tells Jensen that Kim's murder was planned, really down to the tiniest detail. This is not an afterthought. None of this is an afterthought. Right. If you've been a fan of true crime for any length of time, you know that people like this escalator. I mean, this is not the mark of somebody who's like, this is my first time. People don't just start by murdering and mutilating a body and disposing of it in this extremely public setting. Its pathological and it's methodical, and Jensen is very much aware of that. He is really tuned into who Pete Madison really is, which I think helps solve this case because Jensen gets so far into Madison's mind. It really helps solve this case. So Rocket Madson says he's done talking now and will not appear in court any longer. He still insists he did not murder Kim Wall, so he wants to talk. Her body parts are found, and then he says, I'm done talking. The ensign is determined to find the rest of Kim's body and pushes everyone to continue searching the bay. Remember he wants her body intact. Then a saw is located underwater along the route Madison sub had taken. As winter approaches, the continued search for the rest of Kim's remains becomes almost impossible against the elements. Remember Scandinavia here, the winters there are winter and very dark. By Monday, October thirty, Jensen and Danish police get a confession from Madison that he did cut Kim's body up and tossed her body parts into Koch Bay. Once again. In typical psychopathic fashion. Madison minimizes his role. He claims Kim died of carbon monoxide poisoning while he was up on deck, and he somehow panicked and he got rid of her body. So this guy panics and decides to methodically cut her up, chain her body parts to weights, and put them in plastic bags and dump them over the side of a submarine. It just happened. It just happened. He panicked. The prosecution ups the charges on Madison as he continues to spew his narcissistic nonsense. He now faces a sexual crime. And I want to just say this next information. It's extremely graphic, but it's factual, which is why I am sharing it. The new charges stem from a more deep tailed post mortem of Kim's torso. Aggravating conditions are applied to the charges after a large number of stab wounds are discovered in the vaginal and groin area of Kim's torso. And I want to just stop for a moment and just connect that back to the pornography that was found. Okay, there's the connection. By November twenty nine, both of Kim's arms are found in Kach Bay. This after heroic efforts by Jensen as he refused to give up the search. Remember, everyone's telling him, no, it's too cold, it's too dark, We're not going to find anything. He keeps pushing, push, push, push. We have to find all of her. If we only had more investigators like Ensen, I wonder what kind of world it would be. This guy is very rare. Yeah. On January, Pete Matson is charged with murder, sexual crimes, desecration of a gray ave, and crimes against maritime law. By April, after a trial, Madison has found guilty of all the charges and given life in prison, which I might say is a very rare sentence in Denmark. Looking at a case like this, I mean, based on my knowledge of these guys, I would bet a man like Madison doesn't just one day begin dismembering women. It is a behavior he would have built up to, you know, as we touched on earlier. But so far, to this day, Madison's DNA and or fingerprints have not been connected to any other homicides in Scandinavia. And boy did they look, they did search look. Pete Madison is a self serving, extremely violent, narcissistic psychopath who lies, lies, lies. We you know, we all know this about the guy. The question we go to in these gruesome cases that defy understanding, though, is why, you know, why does some one do this? Why does someone chop up a body like that? How can someone do that? What was Madison's thought process behind his brutality. I think that's what our minds go to in a case like this, we try to understand how someone could do that. I can say from my experience interviewing men just like Madison, sitting in front of them, looking at them, getting that dark energy from them, looking into the shallowness behind their eyes, that's legitimately there. These men show a different level of psychopathy and anti social personality disorders. They really do. It takes a mind with an inability to express any emotion in any way to commit these types of crimes. Dismembering a human being to these people, I have come to understand, in a literal sense, feels no different to them than taking out the trash. It's it's a mindless act for them. They have zero feeling when they're doing it. They're just cleaning up part of the crime that they committed. It's all part of the murder, it's all part of that fantasy in their head. Matson developed aspects of his fantasies about dismemberment and brutalizing women from the videos found on his computer. There's no doubt about that. He's living out what he watched on his computer for years. What made him take the next step from fantasy to reality and live out those illusions is where the gray area lies. This is the area that I would like to study more. What is going on when I decide the fantasy is not enough, I have to act it out. What's the in between? What's that gray area? In letters written to journalists Thomas jeers Ng from prison, Madison emphasizes that there are always reasons for things, and there were reasons for the murder that stemmed back to his childhood. Reasons is an intresting word there. Quote. Imagine that you have a little boy. What do you have to do to such a boy to make him commit a crime like the one committed on August tent end quote. He also claims that he was feeling a loss of control at his company, which caused him to turn to murder. Give me you know what, I'm not even gonna comment on that. Stork Yeah, stress at work. It's almost as good as the Twinkie defense. I had to watch drunk food and I killed somebody now that I can see, But you know, a problem at work, I can't. What is most chilling is that Madison had been planning the murder for a while, searching for a potential victim everywhere he looked. Madison had an open marriage, and several women he had relationships with came forward with text messages from Madison asking them to ride in his submarine. In the months leading up to the murder. He would always insist they come alone. For one reason or another. They all turned him down, and kim Waugh was the first to say yes. She was simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time with a psychopath. Incredibly, in October, Madson manages to escape from the Danish prison where he is serving his sentence, armed with a faked pistol, donning a phony belt of explosives that he engineered. That's the inventor in him coming out as he's in prison, mind you. He approaches prison personnel and threatens to shoot and blow them up if he is not allowed to walk out the door. He gets about a half mile away on foot, his capture is piped live on TV, which I love. I just love that part of this. He gets an additional twenty one months to his life sentence, which is important. This is important because a life sentence in Denmark comes with the possibility and eligibility of probation. Yes, probation after her Okay, put your enraged code on just twelve years. You can get probation after twelve years after getting a life sentence. It's really I mean, it reminds me of that the shooter in Norway who killed eighty some kids in that summer camp students. Yeah, and he he got a life sentence, which I believe in Norway is about twenty years. But you think about somebody this unhinged and this methodical and this much of a hunter I got any escaped from prison. I mean, this guy is obviously going to do whatever he wants to do whenever he wants to do it. But then another part of me says, if Pete Madison was released in prison in twelve years and he somehow disappeared, I don't think anybody's going to be looking for him. And I think there's a lot of people out there who want Pete Madsine to disappear from the earth. So um, not that I'm encouraging anybody, but you know, I don't think you'll see him again if he gets out. In a true crime documentary that aired in Madison, finally admits he murdered Kim Wall. He gives an interview and bang, yep, I killed her And finally done with all the other stories. Huh, yep, I can now because I've been charged, I've been given a sentence, and I'm going to get out so I can say whatever I want. Now. That's basically what that is, you know. And I don't normally like promoting TV shows, but in early HBO premiered a Danish limited dramatic series titled Quote the Investigation End Quote, And I put that in quotes because it's important to me. And it's focused on Kim Wall's murder and it's based mostly on the book by her parents, A Silenced Voice, The Life of Journalists Kim Wall. I've read the book and it's it's gut wrenching, this book. But this book really immortalizes Kim and honors her entire life. And who better to do that than her parents? But to me, I want to talk about the investigation and HBO for a minute, it should be a tutorial from which all crime dramas take a master class. In the series focuses specifically on the investigation. And here's the thing. You never see those Tachi interrogation scenes with the gruffy purp and the clean cops singing across from each other like on you know, law and every episode of Law and Order, you know, there's a table, dark room and there's a light dangling in the center, and the second cop is always leaning against the wall, right with that, with that eyebrow up, sizing up the suspect. This series has none of that. Okay, this series is entirely from lead detective Yensienstens point of view, and what I love, really love is how it truly depicts the relationship between the lead detective and the victims family and what they both go through as an investigation gets underway. I mean, it's heartbreaking to watch this, okay, And what's more, it portrays exactly how investigations unfold in the real world of police work. And I want to just underline that this series really shows what an investigation is truly like the bumps walls that you run into and then the one percent wins. So that is the story of the murder of Kim wall an extraordinary woman whose life was taken far too soon. The only small mercy here is that Madison committed such a blatantly obvious crime that he was put away before they were more victims. I think about if he did this kind of in a vacuum and he didn't, you know, have that big press, or how many other people he would have murdered. Yeah, tell me what you think about this, two phelps. This particular crime seems like something that comes at the end of a serial killers run. This seems like Gacy who had invited police into his house to use the restroom and they smelled the bodies and brazen right, the narcissism takes control because they believe they're smarter than police. You know, we saw this in one of the episodes earlier this season with Israel Keys, where he makes a mistake and grabs someone right from his backyard. Basically. So you make a great point, Catherine, because when you look at a crime like what Madson committed, you think there must be a whole slow of crimes before this. But I will say this when you take into consideration the pornography that was found on his computer. Here's a guy that maybe was leading up to this through the pornography. Okay, however, there could be other victims of his and all throughout Scandinavia, right, because remember we're talking here the States FBI. We have the FBI that communicates with each other and maybe pieces together serial killer cases of body parts, you know, and bang, we have a serial killer that they're looking for hunting. But over there these are countries, So Norway could have some body part cases, Sweden, Finland, I mean, and he could have done them all. And this one specifically was so close to the border that you know there are multiple jury restrictions involved and all that. Right, I want to leave everyone with this quote. In two thousand eleven, Kim Wall wrote, I want to know how the world works, and I hope that I, maybe one day can learn enough to make a difference. I'd say that Kim Wall did make a difference. Thank you for listening, and please subscribe to the show. I'll have more true crime stories next week. Be safe and be on the lookout for nonsense from narcissists. It's all out there. Sources for today's episode come from Peter Madison. Killer of Kim Wall is sentenced for jailbreak by Isabella Quay, The New York Times, The Kim Wall Memorial Fund website, Kim Wall, Danish inventor confesses murder and new documentary BBC News September Submarine Murder by Sophia pet Car and w White The Sun Kim Wall What We Know about Danish submarine death BBC News, September. A Silenced Voice The Life of Journalist Kim Wall, a book by Ingrid and Joakim Wall. Crossing the Line is production of I Heart Radio. It's executive produced by me and William Phelps and iHeart executive producer Catherine Law. Special thanks to producer Rose Bacci and EP Christina Everett. Audio engineering, original music and sound design by Matt Russell. Additional thanks to Will Pearson at I Heart Radio. The series theme number four four four is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and Tom Mooney. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: In early August seventeen, a home built submarine descends under water with two people aboard. One is rescued after the sub stincs. The other is considered lost at sea, that is, until a mutilated torso washes up on shore. I'mm William Phelps, an investigative journalist and author of more than forty two crime books. I've dedicated the past twenty years of my life to helping families of the missing and murdered. Joined me. We're crossing the line. It's August tenth, two thousand seventeen, and thirty year old journalist Kim Waugh is making final preparations for a move to Beijing, China, with a fiancee, Ole, a Native Dane. As a freelancer, Kim has built an award winning career on the ground, in the Moment, in the Element, and she's reported stories from the US, Cuba, North Korea, Kenya, Uganda all over the world. Her writing and short films appear in Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic Times, Slate, Vice, and The Guardian. I mean, we're talking about a world renowned investigative journalist here. Born and raised in Sweden, Kim is a chestnut hair natural beauty described by friends and family as an EmPATH an incredibly caring, loving soul. She comes from a devoted family and as as close to her parents, both journalists themselves, as any child could be. Before leaving for China, Kim hoped to do a story on forty seven year old Peter Madison, a self described and entrepreneur. So Pete is eccentric. He's a bit of a local celebrity in Copenhagen, known for his eccentricity and often come haired to Elon Musk. Kim was primarily interested in speaking to Madison about his obsession with building a rocket to send civilians into space. I remember, as a child, kids wanted to be astronauts. I mean, you made a space helmet out of cardboard and you took a box and that was your spaceship. But a few of us have grown up with the obsession of building a rocket to send people into space. Apparently Pete Madison tried to fulfill that dream. Kim tried to chase down Madison v email for weeks, but he wasn't being responsive. Finally, Madison gets back to her. This guy has managed to weld and shape forty tons of steel into a massive fifty nine ft submarine that actually works. And so he asked him if she'd be interested in conducting the interview during a ride on the submarine. You know, he figures it will make an interesting story. She agrees. I mean, who wouldn't want to go on a homemade submarine to the bottom of the ocean. Uh? Not me. Kim Wall is a bit of his celebrity herself for all the right reasons. Her integrity as a person and in her reporting, her honesty and her reporting, her self disciplined, self awareness and above all, her compassion that she brings to the table when she's reporting on her subjects. She graduated from Columbia School of Journalism and the London School of Economics. When Kim went after a story, nothing held her back. She was gutsy, disciplined, and extremely perseverance, chasing stories many others were too afraid to go near. She called reporting on the subcultures of human life. She chose quote the undercurrence of rebellion. You know, she had this passion for exposing human atrocities and fought to tell stories focused on women's rights. And this is at a time when news isn't really news anymore, and we all know this, and journalism is something we're forced to really search for, right Kim, is that that hard nosed reporter giving us the hard truth and the facts, no matter the fallout. So it's like I can remember back in the day when you know, news was on for thirty minutes a day and you turned it on and there was some guy with his hair blowing and bullets going by him, and you know, people fighting in the background, and he's reporting on what happened, nothing more, nothing less, just what happened. I just wish others in the field would take on journalism the way that Kim Wall has. Her parents said the world needs more quote brave female journalists who give voice to the people that normally never hit the front pages. End quote. You know, that's a great way to describe what does So now, getting back to August seventeen, two thousand seventeen, it's near seven pm. Kim steps aboard Pete Madison's you See three Nautilus submarine and the waters between Denmark and Sweden, just outside Copenhagen. She and Madison planned to take a brief trip underwater. Remember now, Kim has been waiting for weeks to report on this guy in his rocket, But here she is aboard his submarine because she's chasing the story. This is no small undertaking. The first submarine successfully used in warfare to sink another vessel was technically a success, although every member of that crew drowned as it became water logged and sank. In fact, the same faith befell every submarine crew for years before the kinks were worked out. Kim had to have an enormous amount of faith that the person who built this homemade submarine has the technical and engineering know how to not only submerged the machine, but to get it to resurface right. Some of this information comes from Dead Wake The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, which is by Eric Larson who Dead Devil in the White City and stuff like that. And I mean, if you ever want to learn about how insane it is to be in a submarine, this book has it all. Get talks about the first few decades of submarine use. No crew came back alive. They were basically dredged up. Later, as in the case of this the first successful quote unquote submarine, the entire crew died and it was more people than on the ship that they actually sank. This stuff is no mean feat. It's like it's no joke now. I mean, look at how many soldiers died in the Civil War with all those makeshift homemade submarines that were made then. So that's Catherine Law, my executive producer, and you're you're going to hear her from time to time chime in with her great information like she did today. Although I would never promote Eric Larson, she did and I and I and I'm just kidding. Um, he's a great he's a great writer, and he's a great researcher, and he writes great books. I mean, you know, I have nothing against the guy. Their page turners. What can we say? You know, so that you know, there's a throng of people along the docks and they're waving to Kim as she and Madison board the vessel. There's photographs of this. A passing ship cruising the harbor snaps a photo of Kim standing wearing an orange life fest with an obvious smile washed over her face, and she's atop the tower of the craft and the vessel name you see three is etched in large white letters. Just below on her right, Pete Madison is standing very close to her. So not long after Madison and Kim Wall retreat into the craft and the submarine takes its plunge into the depths of the ocean. And this moment here in the story I think shows the bottomless courage of Kim Wall, who has reported on the front lines of dangerous situations all over the globe. You know, here she is taking the plunge literally underwater in a submarine made in a private workshop by a guy who never graduated engineering school. I mean, a man who refers to himself as Rocket Madison, under the promise he is going to be the first private citizen shot into space in a rocket ship he built himself. So you know this is the mad Professor, really right, I mean I would go with the submarine first before I blew myself up in a rocket ship I made myself. Yeah, yeah, I would do neither. But give Kim Wall props for having the courage to really I mean, she again going back to her character, she wanted this story and she was going to do what it took to get the story. So as ocean water covers the surface of the submerging U S three, Kim texts her fiance Oh to say, quote, I love you. I'm still alive, by the way, but I am going down now. She also mentions that Madison has brought cookies and coffee for the two of them. It seems like a nice little trip happening here. So who was this man who Kim Wall trusted with her life? Right Inventor Pete Madson grew up in a small village, Sabe, about four d and seventy kilometers northwest of Copenhagen. Madison was such a prodigy he started his own company in nineteen eighty six at the age of fifteen, and he called it the Danish Space Academy. His dream then was to collect enough parts to build a rocket. As an adult, he abandoned engineering school after getting all the information he thought he needed and pursued his second obsession, building his own submarine. So he went to school, got what he needed, got the hell out, and started building. Having come from a broken home, motherless since the age of six, with a father he described as authoritative and violent. You know, here's Pete Madson having these successes and it it kind of proved that he'd beat in the odds. Maybe you know, he'd come out of a broken home and here he was doing his own thing and rising really in success, becoming kind of this celebrity engineer and very well liked. It seemed like people really enjoyed being around him and followed his adventures, and people liked listening to the guy. People were wondering what he was going to come up with next, right. Madison lived in reft Saloon, a busy port town in the harbor region of Copenhagen, where he had a small apartment with his wife. Twenty two years after starting d s A. In two thousand and eight, Pete Madison launched the large, just privately made submarine, the U C three Nautilus, from the shores of Copenhagen Bay. But here's the thing about the U C three. Madison had not yet figured out a way for it to be maneuvered underwater, so he basically sunk it and it drifted with the current below the water line. A safe bet was that he had about twelve hours of oxygen for two people and no more inside the submarine, which is you know something you need when you're underwater, You need you need to breathe, unless you're a fish, I would argue you do still need to breathe of your fits. You just breathe water. That's a fine. Where Kim Wall is concerned because she needed only a few hours of reporting at the most to write her story, So twelve hours of air two hours she's with him. Fine. If Madison wants to turn this thing into a pr stunt by launching the vessel in front of a bunch of people, so be it. Kim gets her or he gets a little publicity. Everybody's happy. So Kim Wall, inventor Pete Madison are the only two people aboard the craft as it slips under the depths of the Baltic in Copenhagen Harbor. By all accounts, Madison cannot go too far because he has no way to navigate the thing right. The submarine is not a small craft by any means. This isn't like you know the size of a car or something like that. I want you to picture the image of the sub that you probably have in your head right now, Like I think, maybe like Red October, just not as large and minus all the technology. But this thing was huge that he built. So Kim settles into work mode and the journey begins, but as the night progresses, there is no word from her or Pete Madison. Hours go by and Kim's fiance Oh is growing deeply concerned Kim and said it shouldn't take long, but it's after midnight and all has yet to hear anything from her. After texting Kim repeatedly not getting any response, all sphere turns to dread. So let's put it into perspective. You know, there's big to do in front of all these people, Kim and Pete Madsen. They go under water, you know, and this is like, I don't know, seven o'clock or so, but now it's after midnight, and the fiance is, what the hell is going on? I haven't heard from her. They haven't come up. So he begins to think the home built sub ran into a problem and sank or maybe ran out of oxygen. But the bottom line here for all is he's listening to his gut. He's in panic mode. Something is wrong, and Kim is in trouble. Madison's vessel has no satellite tracking system, you know, so it's not like it can be easily picked up underwater when all cannot get hold of Kim after such a long period of time. He phones Ingrid and Yoa Kim Wall, Kim's parents in Sweden, who are preparing to take off on an extended vacation. Okay, you know this is this is an unbelievably rough night for all and Kim's parents as they await word that the submarine has been located and everything is okay. I mean, put yourself in this position. Yeah, someone you love goes underwater at seven pm. It's now after midnight. You haven't heard anything from anybody, and the submarine hasn't come back up, and you know what, it's a home built submarine. So a report comes in from a merchant ship that the sub has been spotted close to the Orizon Bridge, that infamous eight kilometer rail and vehicle bridge linking Dead Mark with Sweden. Now this is the same bridge from the popular crime series The Bridge, which opens with the discovery of two horribly mutilated bodies, cut in half, joined together at the waist and left on the bridge, one body part in Sweden, the other body part in Denmark. So the top half of the torso is that of a high powered Swedish political person and the lower half is that of a Danish sex worker. Yeah, they did an American one where I believe it was in the US and Mexico. So just like right over the border, right, which involves multiple police departments and jurisdictions, and it gets really complicated. It's like in wires right that area. Yeah, yeah, I believe so. So Kim's parents receive a call that the Danish police were alerted to an accident at sea near four am, and they're checking it out. From that, the coast Guard, using helicopters and boats, now engage in a search at sea for the submarine. Now it's ten thirty the next morning, Kim's parents and Ohl are told the sub is in Koge Bay, Copenhagen. Radio contact has been made with Peter Madison, who says, quote everyone on board is line end quote no sooner are they literally jumping for joy at word that Kim has been located when Old and Kim's dad received a message from the coast Guard in Denmark that the sub has actually sunk near the port of Dreger, just south of the bridge. But here's the thing, there's only one survivor. Meanwhile, as Kim's family makes the short trip from Sweden to Denmark over the bridge. It's now past noon. This next day, a subsequent event is occurring close to the shore in Copenhagen Harbor, on the southwest side of the peninsula. A small floating object is moving closer to the shoreline. It's hard to tell it first, but it appears to be a body. In fact, it's a mutilated human torso no arms, no legs and no head, and there are stab wounds all all over it. Let's take a short break here and come right back as Oll and Kim's parents come upon the docks near Coach Bay, where the coast guard reports the sub is now at the bottom of the bay. Their hearts sink with immediate terror when they look in the back of a police cruiser to see Rocket Madison wrapped in a foil blanket, shivering, his shortly cropped, reddish brown spiked hair dry. The vessels builder is apparently the sole survivor of what was a rescue from his sinking submarine by passing fishermen. Kim Wall's parents roll upon the scene. They don't seek him. They only see this inventurepreneur guy. Where is him? By late afternoon, police send divers down into the sub expecting to find signs of mechanical error, but what they discover instead is a large amount of blood. They take DNA from Madison, and by six pm an announcement is made by Danish police. Peter Madison is now a murder suspect. Madison, on the other hand, says he dropped him off the sub near ten thirty pm the night before at ref Shale Island docks, close to the bridge. Ol and Kim's parents are given details. Madison had been rescued by a small fishing boat after making contact with naval authorities alerting them that his submarine was sinking. He had been pulled from the water and boated to shore in the hours before they saw him in that police car arriving on shore. Madison had given everyone on the docks a thumbs up as he walked up to them. Madison had dress reporters at the docks, joking how upset he was about the sub sinking, saying, but she's insured, isn't that great? Yeah? This is such an interesting moment because since people were already looking for the submarine because it had been you know, lost, and police are out looking for it and they're calling submarine experts to come out and look for it. There are people there when this thing goes on, people who know what's going on. And one of the investigators on this case, who was one of the submarine experts, literally says that she saw this. You know, he comes up, he gets off of the boat, he's taken onto this fisherman ship. And she said that the way that the sub went down, it didn't look like it was thinking like. It looks like he told it to dive and was getting off the boat when that happened. So the fact that he did this with like an audience, He set off with an audience, ostensibly the boat sunk or he sunk it with an audience. So that's all fits into the psychological part of this. The narcissist. I mean, here's a guy who's putting on a show for everybody, basically right, you know, and what does he do. He comes rolling up, walks off the dock, he's soaking wet. He gives the thumbs up, and then people are saying, you know, you should be upset because it went down. Your life's work. But he's saying, no, she's insured. That's eric, you know, where's Kim. So later that night, Madison is held on negligence charges or quote causing the death of another, not murder charges. Meanwhile, police, coast Guard, and naval are searching for Kim. By now, a hair brush of Kim's has been given to police to test for DNA related to blood found in the sunken sub But now let's go back to the other side of the peninsula, not far away, and you have a cyclist cruising along the shoreline, and this cyclist discovers a orso washed up on shore in close proximity to where the submarine actually sank, about a half a mile. So, with the discovery of the torso, police believe Madison murdered and then dismembered Kim aboard the sub and they begin to work under this evidence. Okay, so that's the picture they have. The evidence seems to purport that, but they need to find her body parts because right now it's going to take a while to prove that the torso is Kim. The lead Danish investigator on the case, Jens Jensen, is determined to bring Kim home to her parents. This guy just gets a drive in him. He's going to finish this there's nine thousand gallons of water that were removed from the sub after it was dragged ashore and towed to North Haven and placed in a secured law enforcement facility so crime scene text could go in and investigate in more detail. Three days after Kim first went missing, police announced that no body parts have been found on board the ship, but Jensen says evidence proves the ship was sunk intentionally. Mattson now claims it was faulty ballast tanks that sank the ship. So every time some evidence is presented to Madison, he comes up with some sort of story. This becomes very common in this case with him. The underscore here is that Madison keeps changing his story as Danish investigators recover evidence and begin to question him about what happened on board the sub. A weekend to the investigation with a search party growing daily. I'm talking dozens and dozens of police and navy and Danish citizens here. This is a huge search party. Police are waiting in the water with sticks. They're poking around the shoreline. They're looking for Kim's body parts. If her torso washed ashore, They're thinking the body parts might have in the same thing. Madison meanwhile changes his story yet again. He now says Kim did die on the submarine, but she died accidentally when a hatch swung open and hit her on the head. He claims he panicked and ultimately did what you're supposed to do when someone dies on a vessel out on the ocean, bury the person at sea. This is just like the most ridiculous thing I think I've ever heard. You don't bury someone at sea when you're coming back in two hours. Now, you bury someone at sea when you're a fucking pirate. Yeah, when you're in the middle of the ocean in six exactly, not in two thousand seventeen. I mean, this is just more of Madson going, oh, that's right, she did die. She did die. Yeah, she did die on the sub which gives reason for the blood. I took care of the guys, never mind her family or her loved ones meaning to have closure. Yeah, she doesn't need us headstone, or she doesn't need a place for a family to visit. I took care of it. They can come to the side of the ocean. Maddening So now, near the end of August, Danish police post on social media that the torso found in Copenhagen Bay is confirmed to be that of Kim Wall. This is when the story breaks and goes viral. Every new source in Scandinavia leads with it, and it's now gaining traction all around the world, and within you know days, there will be fifty seven thousand news stories online about this case. I might say here I am particularly interested in true crime stories that tell us something about the victims involved, and it's one of the reasons I chose this case because of Kim Wall. You know, a life is cut short far too early by some psychopath who believes he is superior, you know, the guy who plays the god role in the lives of people around him, but knows exactly what he is doing. I I think we owe it to the victim to tell the story of their life, not just their death. Kim Wall was a brilliant journalist and rare human being who cared about people, communities, and her families. So the reason I bring that upright here is because you know, of the fifty seven thousand news stories online about this torso that had kind of washed ashore, you know, I want to point out that it shouldn't be about the torso it should be about Kim's life. But back to the investigation. More traces of blood found in the sub match Kim Wall's DNA, so it's clear to lead investigator Jens Jensen that Madison premeditatively dismembered Kim Wall inside his submarine. You know, Jensen, he's taking on the weight of how violent the case is and how greatly affected Kim's parents are, and he's determined to bring her entire body home and put Madson away. This guy, I can't stress enough how the ensign digs his heels in here and nothing is going to stop this guy from bringing Kim Wall's body home complete and putting this monster where he belongs. He deploys a team of Swedish human remains dogs, specially trained precisely to locate remains. The dogs sit at the stern of a boat and literally sniff the water as the boat motors slowly along the sea. Incredibly, the dogs are able to smell remains at the bottom of the ocean. The search area Yen sketches out takes the exact route he believes Madsen somehow navigated in a submarine with Kim. Divers are on board. When the dogs indicate human remains, the divers go overboard. During a court herring as the canine search is happening, mad Sense sticks to a story that after Kim slipped on the floor in the tower of the sub, the hundred and fifty pound hatch fell and smashed Kim on her head. He was in another section of the boat and soon found her lying in a large pool of her own blood. That's his story to the court. But at this point investigators were well aware of the demons in Peter Madison's life. They did a little bit of background on him and what they come back with is devastating. One of the movies Pete Madsen obsessed over is the movie Seven, the brad Pitt Morgan Freeman film, in which two detectives hunt a vicious serial killer working under the motive of the seven. Deadly sense. Now looking deeper into his life, Madsen was into dark pornography, the type in which women were beheaded and murdered. I remember them as a kid being called snuff films, and not that I saw them, but that's what they were called. So as the investigation continues to move forth, a forensic exam of his computer produces many, many disturbing, graphic, violent videos of torture and murder of women in the most brutal ways imaginable in a sexual nature. This clear picture of who this guy is is really coming to the surface. So on October seven, as the dogs and divers search, a canine remember on the tip of the boat sniffing the water, hits on something in Koj Bay, not far from where the sub went down. Human remains divers flop over the sides of the rubber raft boat and go down. Later that same day, Jensen says he has a major announcement to make. He says that there's no sign of the sub hatch malfunctioning. That's big. Kim Wall did not die accidentally, he says, that is for sure, But there's more. Divers have made a gruesome discovery. So let's take another quick break and come back find out what happens next. So we have this brutal murder of renowned journalist Kim Wall coming together for Danish investigators, and at the same time we have a suspect in court demanding to be heard. All right, this is important. He demands to be heard. But what comes out of his mouth is a different version of what happened each time. Jensen, who has by now become as close to Kim's parents and fiance as his own family, is nearby. When Danish police address reporters on October seven, two thousand seventeen, and here's what they have to say. In several separate plastic bags, divers find Kim's decapitated head, her clothes, and the knife, along with Kim's two legs. The body parts were weighed down with metal objects so they would not rise to the surface. Police also note that no fractures to the cranium of Kim's head have been found. Kim did not hit her head on the hatch, That's impossible. The way in which the body parts are so patiently configured to sink tells Jensen that Kim's murder was planned, really down to the tiniest detail. This is not an afterthought. None of this is an afterthought. Right. If you've been a fan of true crime for any length of time, you know that people like this escalator. I mean, this is not the mark of somebody who's like, this is my first time. People don't just start by murdering and mutilating a body and disposing of it in this extremely public setting. Its pathological and it's methodical, and Jensen is very much aware of that. He is really tuned into who Pete Madison really is, which I think helps solve this case because Jensen gets so far into Madison's mind. It really helps solve this case. So Rocket Madson says he's done talking now and will not appear in court any longer. He still insists he did not murder Kim Wall, so he wants to talk. Her body parts are found, and then he says, I'm done talking. The ensign is determined to find the rest of Kim's body and pushes everyone to continue searching the bay. Remember he wants her body intact. Then a saw is located underwater along the route Madison sub had taken. As winter approaches, the continued search for the rest of Kim's remains becomes almost impossible against the elements. Remember Scandinavia here, the winters there are winter and very dark. By Monday, October thirty, Jensen and Danish police get a confession from Madison that he did cut Kim's body up and tossed her body parts into Koch Bay. Once again. In typical psychopathic fashion. Madison minimizes his role. He claims Kim died of carbon monoxide poisoning while he was up on deck, and he somehow panicked and he got rid of her body. So this guy panics and decides to methodically cut her up, chain her body parts to weights, and put them in plastic bags and dump them over the side of a submarine. It just happened. It just happened. He panicked. The prosecution ups the charges on Madison as he continues to spew his narcissistic nonsense. He now faces a sexual crime. And I want to just say this next information. It's extremely graphic, but it's factual, which is why I am sharing it. The new charges stem from a more deep tailed post mortem of Kim's torso. Aggravating conditions are applied to the charges after a large number of stab wounds are discovered in the vaginal and groin area of Kim's torso. And I want to just stop for a moment and just connect that back to the pornography that was found. Okay, there's the connection. By November twenty nine, both of Kim's arms are found in Kach Bay. This after heroic efforts by Jensen as he refused to give up the search. Remember, everyone's telling him, no, it's too cold, it's too dark, We're not going to find anything. He keeps pushing, push, push, push. We have to find all of her. If we only had more investigators like Ensen, I wonder what kind of world it would be. This guy is very rare. Yeah. On January, Pete Matson is charged with murder, sexual crimes, desecration of a gray ave, and crimes against maritime law. By April, after a trial, Madison has found guilty of all the charges and given life in prison, which I might say is a very rare sentence in Denmark. Looking at a case like this, I mean, based on my knowledge of these guys, I would bet a man like Madison doesn't just one day begin dismembering women. It is a behavior he would have built up to, you know, as we touched on earlier. But so far, to this day, Madison's DNA and or fingerprints have not been connected to any other homicides in Scandinavia. And boy did they look, they did search look. Pete Madison is a self serving, extremely violent, narcissistic psychopath who lies, lies, lies. We you know, we all know this about the guy. The question we go to in these gruesome cases that defy understanding, though, is why, you know, why does some one do this? Why does someone chop up a body like that? How can someone do that? What was Madison's thought process behind his brutality. I think that's what our minds go to in a case like this, we try to understand how someone could do that. I can say from my experience interviewing men just like Madison, sitting in front of them, looking at them, getting that dark energy from them, looking into the shallowness behind their eyes, that's legitimately there. These men show a different level of psychopathy and anti social personality disorders. They really do. It takes a mind with an inability to express any emotion in any way to commit these types of crimes. Dismembering a human being to these people, I have come to understand, in a literal sense, feels no different to them than taking out the trash. It's it's a mindless act for them. They have zero feeling when they're doing it. They're just cleaning up part of the crime that they committed. It's all part of the murder, it's all part of that fantasy in their head. Matson developed aspects of his fantasies about dismemberment and brutalizing women from the videos found on his computer. There's no doubt about that. He's living out what he watched on his computer for years. What made him take the next step from fantasy to reality and live out those illusions is where the gray area lies. This is the area that I would like to study more. What is going on when I decide the fantasy is not enough, I have to act it out. What's the in between? What's that gray area? In letters written to journalists Thomas jeers Ng from prison, Madison emphasizes that there are always reasons for things, and there were reasons for the murder that stemmed back to his childhood. Reasons is an intresting word there. Quote. Imagine that you have a little boy. What do you have to do to such a boy to make him commit a crime like the one committed on August tent end quote. He also claims that he was feeling a loss of control at his company, which caused him to turn to murder. Give me you know what, I'm not even gonna comment on that. Stork Yeah, stress at work. It's almost as good as the Twinkie defense. I had to watch drunk food and I killed somebody now that I can see, But you know, a problem at work, I can't. What is most chilling is that Madison had been planning the murder for a while, searching for a potential victim everywhere he looked. Madison had an open marriage, and several women he had relationships with came forward with text messages from Madison asking them to ride in his submarine. In the months leading up to the murder. He would always insist they come alone. For one reason or another. They all turned him down, and kim Waugh was the first to say yes. She was simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time with a psychopath. Incredibly, in October, Madson manages to escape from the Danish prison where he is serving his sentence, armed with a faked pistol, donning a phony belt of explosives that he engineered. That's the inventor in him coming out as he's in prison, mind you. He approaches prison personnel and threatens to shoot and blow them up if he is not allowed to walk out the door. He gets about a half mile away on foot, his capture is piped live on TV, which I love. I just love that part of this. He gets an additional twenty one months to his life sentence, which is important. This is important because a life sentence in Denmark comes with the possibility and eligibility of probation. Yes, probation after her Okay, put your enraged code on just twelve years. You can get probation after twelve years after getting a life sentence. It's really I mean, it reminds me of that the shooter in Norway who killed eighty some kids in that summer camp students. Yeah, and he he got a life sentence, which I believe in Norway is about twenty years. But you think about somebody this unhinged and this methodical and this much of a hunter I got any escaped from prison. I mean, this guy is obviously going to do whatever he wants to do whenever he wants to do it. But then another part of me says, if Pete Madison was released in prison in twelve years and he somehow disappeared, I don't think anybody's going to be looking for him. And I think there's a lot of people out there who want Pete Madsine to disappear from the earth. So um, not that I'm encouraging anybody, but you know, I don't think you'll see him again if he gets out. In a true crime documentary that aired in Madison, finally admits he murdered Kim Wall. He gives an interview and bang, yep, I killed her And finally done with all the other stories. Huh, yep, I can now because I've been charged, I've been given a sentence, and I'm going to get out so I can say whatever I want. Now. That's basically what that is, you know. And I don't normally like promoting TV shows, but in early HBO premiered a Danish limited dramatic series titled Quote the Investigation End Quote, And I put that in quotes because it's important to me. And it's focused on Kim Wall's murder and it's based mostly on the book by her parents, A Silenced Voice, The Life of Journalists Kim Wall. I've read the book and it's it's gut wrenching, this book. But this book really immortalizes Kim and honors her entire life. And who better to do that than her parents? But to me, I want to talk about the investigation and HBO for a minute, it should be a tutorial from which all crime dramas take a master class. In the series focuses specifically on the investigation. And here's the thing. You never see those Tachi interrogation scenes with the gruffy purp and the clean cops singing across from each other like on you know, law and every episode of Law and Order, you know, there's a table, dark room and there's a light dangling in the center, and the second cop is always leaning against the wall, right with that, with that eyebrow up, sizing up the suspect. This series has none of that. Okay, this series is entirely from lead detective Yensienstens point of view, and what I love, really love is how it truly depicts the relationship between the lead detective and the victims family and what they both go through as an investigation gets underway. I mean, it's heartbreaking to watch this, okay, And what's more, it portrays exactly how investigations unfold in the real world of police work. And I want to just underline that this series really shows what an investigation is truly like the bumps walls that you run into and then the one percent wins. So that is the story of the murder of Kim wall an extraordinary woman whose life was taken far too soon. The only small mercy here is that Madison committed such a blatantly obvious crime that he was put away before they were more victims. I think about if he did this kind of in a vacuum and he didn't, you know, have that big press, or how many other people he would have murdered. Yeah, tell me what you think about this, two phelps. This particular crime seems like something that comes at the end of a serial killers run. This seems like Gacy who had invited police into his house to use the restroom and they smelled the bodies and brazen right, the narcissism takes control because they believe they're smarter than police. You know, we saw this in one of the episodes earlier this season with Israel Keys, where he makes a mistake and grabs someone right from his backyard. Basically. So you make a great point, Catherine, because when you look at a crime like what Madson committed, you think there must be a whole slow of crimes before this. But I will say this when you take into consideration the pornography that was found on his computer. Here's a guy that maybe was leading up to this through the pornography. Okay, however, there could be other victims of his and all throughout Scandinavia, right, because remember we're talking here the States FBI. We have the FBI that communicates with each other and maybe pieces together serial killer cases of body parts, you know, and bang, we have a serial killer that they're looking for hunting. But over there these are countries, So Norway could have some body part cases, Sweden, Finland, I mean, and he could have done them all. And this one specifically was so close to the border that you know there are multiple jury restrictions involved and all that. Right, I want to leave everyone with this quote. In two thousand eleven, Kim Wall wrote, I want to know how the world works, and I hope that I, maybe one day can learn enough to make a difference. I'd say that Kim Wall did make a difference. Thank you for listening, and please subscribe to the show. I'll have more true crime stories next week. Be safe and be on the lookout for nonsense from narcissists. It's all out there. Sources for today's episode come from Peter Madison. Killer of Kim Wall is sentenced for jailbreak by Isabella Quay, The New York Times, The Kim Wall Memorial Fund website, Kim Wall, Danish inventor confesses murder and new documentary BBC News September Submarine Murder by Sophia pet Car and w White The Sun Kim Wall What We Know about Danish submarine death BBC News, September. A Silenced Voice The Life of Journalist Kim Wall, a book by Ingrid and Joakim Wall. Crossing the Line is production of I Heart Radio. It's executive produced by me and William Phelps and iHeart executive producer Catherine Law. Special thanks to producer Rose Bacci and EP Christina Everett. Audio engineering, original music and sound design by Matt Russell. Additional thanks to Will Pearson at I Heart Radio. The series theme number four four four is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and Tom Mooney. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
