Peter Madsen says account of journalist’s death changed because he wanted to spare her relatives ‘grim’ details 
 
 A Danish inventor has denied murdering the Swedish journalist Kim Wall on his homemade submarine, claiming that he had lied previously about how she died only to spare her relatives. 
 
 “I deny that I am guilty of the murder of Kim Wall,” Peter Madsen told the court in Copenhagen on the first day of his trial, after prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen had presented a barrage of new detail. 
 
 Madsen said he had claimed up until October that Wall had been killed by a heavy latch falling on her head to avoid making public the “grim” reality of her death. 
 
 “I was only thinking about Kim Wall’s relatives,” he said. “It’s a very, very horrible story. I knew she was dead and she would not come back. I had only one purpose and it was to spare the relatives as much as possible.” 
 
 About 120 journalists from 15 different countries crowded into the court and a media room at Copenhagen district court, reflecting the huge international interest in the case. 
 
 
 
 Wall, an award-winning journalist, joined Madsen on the afternoon of 10 August, hoping to interview him about his nine-year push to send himself into suborbital space. Her torso was spotted 11 days later off the coast of Copenhagen, and her head, arms and legs were found by police divers over the following months. 
 
 During his questioning in court, Madsen said a technical fault had led to exhaust gases being pumped into the submarine’s “mess”, poisoning Wall while he was trapped outside, the negative pressure preventing him from opening the hatch. 
 
 “I tried to shout to Kim that she should try to turn off the engines,” he said. “I do not know if Kim succeeded, but the engines stopped.” 
 
 That released the pressure, allowing him to open the hatch, he said, whereupon he found her lifeless body. 
 
 
 
 Buch-Jepsen thoroughly discounted Madsen’s story during his morning overview, when he said such an accident would have led to rapid heating, for which there was no evidence. A technical report will be presented later in the trial. 
 
 The trial opened with new forensic evidence, as the prosecution began presenting its case that Madsen killed Wall, 30, to fulfil his violent sexual fantasies, in an act planned days or even months beforehand. 
 
 Buch-Jepsen told the court that no traces of Madsen’s DNA had been found on the body of the Swedish journalist. “But traces of semen have been found in the underpants which were secured from Peter Madsen after the arrest,” he said. Under questioning, Madsen denied ejaculating while he was with Wall. 
 
 
 
 Madsen, 47, dressed in a black T-shirt, spent the morning calmly leafing through the prosecution’s papers, as Buch-Jepsen ran through evidence including photographs and diagrams of the stab wounds on Wall’s body. 
 
 Madsen’s denial of guilt on Thursday afternoon were his first words in court since police divers found Wall’s head in October, disproving his earlier claim that a heavy latch had smashed her skull. 
 
 In a detailed presentation that lasted about two and a half hours, Buch-Jepsen said flecks of Kim Wall’s blood had been found on Madsen’s nostrils, and fresh scratches on his underarms. 
 
 He said Madsen had, in the months leading up to Wall’s death, searched the internet for videos of women being beheaded. Police, he said, had managed to recreate Madsen’s iPhone from backups right up until the day of the submarine trip on 10 August. 
 
 Madsen had used it to carry out mobile searches for “throats”, “haircut”, “girl” and “pain”, with the last search made in the early morning before Wall joined him on his submarine. 
 
 Buch-Jepsen also showed the court pictures of Wall’s arms, saying a strap with a ratchet buckle found on the submarine matched marks on her wrists. 
 
 
 
 He showed pictures of Madsen’s workshop months before the event, pointing out a saw that he said police divers later found in Køge Bay, south of Copenhagen, close to the plastic bag holding Wall’s head. 
 
 An investigation by forensic psychiatrists had determined, he continued, that Madsen had “narcissistic and psychopathic traits” showing a “severe lack of empathy, remorse and guilt”, despite a “superficial charm”. 
 
 The trial will be held over 12 days in March and April, with the verdict expected on 25 April, but may be delayed if days are postponed due to a planned strike by public sector workers. 
 
 

 Defense attorney Betina Hald Engmark arrives at the courthouse, where the trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, charged with murdering and dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his homemade... (Associated Press) 
 
 Defense attorney Betina Hald Engmark arrives at the courthouse, where the trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, charged with murdering and dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his homemade submarine begins, in Copenhagen, Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau via AP) (Associated Press) 
 
 COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — The Danish inventor accused of torturing and killing Swedish journalist Kim Wall during a private submarine trip before dismembering her body is an intelligent man "with psychopathic tendencies," a prosecutor said as the murder trial opened Thursday. 
 
 Peter Madsen, 47, was standing trial at Copenhagen City Court accused of torturing Wall, 30, before he either cut her throat or strangled her on his submarine in August. 
 
 The inventor is charged with murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse for the way he disposed of Wall's body. He denies murder, but has admitted to dismembering her body before he "buried her at sea." 
 
 Wall, a freelance journalist who wrote for The New York Times, The Guardian and other publications, embarked on Madsen's submarine on Aug. 10 to interview him. Her remains were found in plastic bags on the Baltic Sea bed weeks later, and her torso was found stabbed multiple times. 
 
 Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen started the 12-day trial by reading out the charges, describing in detail how Wall's body parts were found on the ocean bed. He said a psychiatric report has concluded that Madsen has "no empathy or feelings of guilt." 
 
 Madsen, wearing glasses, a dark shirt and jeans, listened quietly with his fists closed. Wall's parents were also present Thursday at the trial. 
 
 Testifying, Madsen repeated his claim that Wall died accidentally inside the UC3 Nautilus while he was on deck. He said Wall "had a wonderful evening until it ended in an accident," but denied that any sexual activity had taken place between them. 
 
 Madsen had offered shifting explanations for Wall's death prior to the trial. He initially told authorities he had dropped Wall off on an Copenhagen island several hours into their submarine trip. Then he said that Wall died accidentally inside the submarine when a hatch fell and hit her on the head. 
 
 On Thursday, he described how he found Wall lifeless after a sudden pressure problem in the submarine. 
 
 "I could not open the hatches. I heard Kim, it was not good," he said. He added that he tried to give her first aid when he finally reached her, but stopped because it was impossible to stay inside. "There was a risk of having a submarine with two deaths," he told the court. 
 
 The prosecution claims Wall's murder was premeditated because Madsen brought along tools he normally didn't take when sailing. 
 
 Buch-Jepsen said the cause of Wall's death has yet not been established. But he said Wall's blood was found on Madsen's nose and his bodysuit, and he also said that detectives found violent videos and texts about killing women on Madsen's laptop and an external hard drive. 
 
 Members of the court were shown a drawing of the multiple stabs to Wall's torso. An audio file of a radio exchange between Madsen and maritime officials from Aug. 11 — the day after Madsen and Wall embarked on their submarine trip— was also played. In the recording, Madsen said he had let Wall off on an island, and that there were no injured persons aboard but only technical problems. 
 
 The 33-ton, nearly 18-meter-long submarine sank south of Copenhagen shortly after being spotted afloat. Madsen reported "man overboard" over the radio and was then picked up alone. 
 
 Wall, who had previously reported on topics including tourism in post-earthquake Haiti, studied at Paris' Sorbonne university, the London School of Economics and Columbia University in New York. 
 
 Caterina Clerici, a friend from Columbia, said Wall had "a soft spot for misfits, for places and people that did not conform." 
 
 Madsen was a co-founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals, a private aerospace consortium to develop and construct manned spacecraft. In 2011, it launched a homemade nine-meter (30-foot) rocket eight kilometers (five miles) into the sky over the Baltic Sea, a step toward its unrealized goal of launching a person into space. 
 
 In an interview with Danish weekly Soendagsavisen in 2014, Madsen said he one day "hoped to have a criminal career," adding he didn't want to rob a bank because "no one must be hurt." 
 
 Police believe Madsen sank the submarine on purpose, and later found videos of women being tortured and killed on his personal computer in his hangar. He did not make the videos himself, investigators said. 
 
 The trial at Copenhagen's City Court ends April. 25. 
 
 ____ 
 
 On the net: 
 
 https://www.rememberingkimwall.com/ 
 
 www.facebook.com/kimwallmemorialfund/
– Prosecutors say all the evidence shows that Danish inventor and submarine owner Peter Madsen tortured, murdered, and dismembered Swedish journalist Kim Wall last summer, but Madsen could not have been any clearer as his trial started in Denmark on Thursday: "I deny that I am guilty of the murder of Kim Wall," he said, per the Guardian. Madsen then laid out his version of events, saying that Wall died inside the submarine because of a sudden pressure problem while he was on deck, reports the AP. "I could not open the hatches," he said. "I heard Kim, it was not good." Madsen says that when he finally reached Wall, he tried to resuscitate her but couldn't stay for long because of the pressure problem. "There was a risk of having a submarine with two deaths," he said. At that point, Madsen says he dismembered Wall's body and disposed of it at sea. He would later give authorities ever-shifting accounts of what happened, saying first that he had dropped off Wall safely. On Thursday, he said he lied for Wall's family's sake. "I was only thinking about Kim Wall’s relatives," he said. "I wanted to spare the world and her family from the terrible thing that had happened," he added, per the Cut. The lead prosecutor on Thursday detailed Madsen's apparent obsession with torture videos and his searches for terms such as "girl" and "pain" just ahead of Wall's visit. He also said bits of Wall's blood were found in Madsen's nostrils, and semen was found in his underwear after his arrest. In a photo shown to the court, marks on Wall's arms match a strap with a ratchet buckle found on the sub. (One of Wall's friends spent months investigating her death.)