In August 2017, Swedish journalist Kim Wall boarded a submarine off the coast of Copenhagen on an assignment to interview its owner, the Danish inventor Peter Madsen. She was never seen again and nearly two years later, Madsen was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Now, a dramatization of the homicide investigation that followed the grisly crime will hit U.S. shores after a highly successful run in Denmark. The Investigation, a six-episode mini-series that premieres tonight on HBO (and on HBO Max), tells the story of how the authorities in Denmark were able to successfully prove that Madsen killed Wall aboard his submarine.
The drama, which will focus entirely on the police case, was directed by Tobias Lindholm (Mindhunter) and stars Søren Malling (A Hijacking) as Jens Møller, the real-life head of homicide at Copenhagen Police who closely collaborated with Lindholm for accuracy, and Pilou Asbæk (Game of Thrones) as real-life prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen. Madsen's name is never mentioned in the series. "I wanted to make a story about heroes, so I didn’t have room for him," Lindholm told the New York Times.
Here is what we know about the gruesome events behind what would become one of Denmark's most notorious cases.
Kim Wall was on an assignment for Wired magazine.
"I want to know how the world works, and I hope that I maybe one day can learn enough to make a difference," Kim Wall had once wrote in a newspaper. By 2017, the Swedish journalist, who had a bachelor's degree from the London School of Economics and a master's from Columbia, had amassed an impressive portfolio of work, with bylines in The Guardian, The New York Times, and Slate. Her personal life was thriving, too. She was just about to move to Beijing with her Danish boyfriend Ole Stobbe.
On August 10, 2017, Wall received a text message from the Danish inventor Peter Madsen inviting her on his homemade submarine, the UC3 Nautilus—she had been trying for months to contact him to interview him for a Wired magazine assignment and he had finally come through. That same day, Wall and Stobbe were hosting their goodbye party. Wall decided to skip it to meet Madsen and asked her boyfriend if he wanted to come along. He later told Wired that he was "insanely close to saying yes," but had to stay behind for their party guests. When Wall hadn't called or checked in all night and into the early hours the next morning, Stobbe called the police.
Who is Peter Madsen?
Madsen was obsessed with rockets and submarines since childhood. The UC3 Nautilus was his third homemade submarine. In 2014, he created the Rocket Madsen Space Lab with the goal of developing a crewed spacecraft. Not much else is known about his personal life, except that he was married in November 2011 to an unidentified woman and that she left him after his arrest. In January 2020, it was reported that he, while still in prison, had gotten married to Jenny Curpen, a Russian artist who has had political asylum in Finland since 2013. "My husband committed a horrible crime and he is punished for that. However, knowing him for real give me an exclusive right to say that I am lucky to be with the most beautiful, smart, talented, devoted and empathetic person and man ever," she wrote in a post.
Madsen lied multiple times about Wall's whereabouts.
On the morning of August 11, 2017, the day after Wall boarded the UC3 Nautilus and a few hours after police began searching the waters around Copenhagen, the submarine was spotted off the coast of Køge, about 30 miles south. Then it sank. When Madsen was rescued and brought to shore, he blamed the sinking on a defect on the ballast tank and told the police that he had dropped Wall off at the tip of the island. Police, not believing him, charged him with involuntary manslaughter.
The next day at his court hearing, Madsen changed his story again: a hatch had accidentally fallen and hit Wall's head, killing her, and he had buried her at sea. Then on August 21, Wall's torso washed up on a beach. An autopsy revealed that she had been stabbed 15 times. Prosecutors subsequently increased his charge to manslaughter (the equivalent of murder). Two months later, divers found her head, legs, and clothes. There was no damage on her cranium to indicate that a hatch had fallen on her. On October 30, his story changed yet again: Wall died of carbon monoxide poisoning but he did admit to dismembering her body. In April 2018 he was sentenced to life in prison—a court-ordered psychiatrist diagnosed him as a narcissistic psychopath.
He tried to escape prison in 2020.
Madsen made headlines again in October 2020 when he briefly attempted to escape prison. He allegedly threatened the prison psychologist with a pistol-like object and claimed to have a bomb strapped around his waist (both turned out to be fake). He made it 500 yards from the jail before getting caught—it was a prison break that lasted all but five minutes.
Kim's parents have started a memorial fund in their daughter's honor.
The Kim Wall Memorial Fund, created in partnership with the International Women's Media Foundation, awards $5,000 grants each year to female journalists. “We can never get Kim back, but we can see to it that her spirit and will live on, and inspire other young journalists to go out in the world and find the stories. More than ever, we need brave female journalists who give voice to the people that normally never hit the front pages," her parents, Ingrid and Joachim Wall, wrote in a statement on the site.
Leena Kim is an editor at Town & Country, where she covers travel, jewelry, education, weddings, and culture.
