Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

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Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast 8 min 2 speakers 1 chapter transcribed

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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Narrator 0:00

So this journalist takes a ride in a submarine, because she's doing a story for a magazine. But then, all of a sudden, boom! She disappears. And she's never seen alive again. Where did she go? Now the guy who built the submarine she was in, his name's Peter. And Peter's an inventor, he lives in Denmark, and he's kind of a semi-celebrity there. He's like a Diet Tony Stark. He's always building things with his own hands, submarines and rockets.

Commentator 0:27

Originally educated a little bit as an engineer, a little bit as a naval engineer.

Narrator 0:32

In fact, he ends up building what is during this time period the largest privately built submarine in the world called the UC-3 Nautilus. It's pretty impressive. But as gifted as Peter is, he also has a dark side.

Commentator 0:46

You're aware that psychopaths exist amongst us, human predators that walks around and grabs people and use them and throw them out.

Narrator 0:56

So one day, this Swedish freelance journalist, her name's Kim Wall. Kim Wall hears about all the interesting stuff Peter is doing, and she thinks it'd be really cool to interview him and write up an article for Wired Magazine. So Kim reaches out to Peter a couple of times, but he never gets back to her. And she really wants this story, but it looks like it's just never going to happen. But then Peter finally responds. He sends her a text and he says, yes, he can do an interview later that same day. And Kim Wall's like, nope. So then they meet up at his workshop for tea. And during that meeting, Peter offers to take her out in his submarine that he built, the UC3 Nautilus. And she's like, yeah, I want to ride in your submarine.

Narrator 1:38

I mean, this is like a once in a lifetime chance to ride in a submarine. How are you going to say no? So then she goes to her partner, this guy, Ole. And she tells Olay that Peter agreed to do the interview with her and he wants to do it in his submarine. So she's going to go with him and she'll be back in a few hours. And soon enough, she's boarding the homemade submarine with Peter. And they're cruising around in the water and there's a photo of it. You can zoom in and you can see the two of them riding along, having a good time. And she texts Olay a few times, a few pics, and then Peter wants to take the sub underwater to show her that it goes underwater. So they take the submarine underwater and she's about to get her interview and she really seems to be having a good time.

Narrator 2:20

Until... Several hours pass, and Kim Wall and Peter haven't come back yet. And Olay, he's starting to get worried. He hasn't heard anything from her. And he tries to go to bed, but he can't sleep. So he grabs his bike and he rides around the area, looking for Kim Wall or for the submarine being docked. But there's still no sign of her. And at this point, it's late. It's 1.45 a.m. So he calls the police and the Navy to report her missing. And within a few hours, boats and helicopters are all over the area looking for any trace of this missing submarine. But they got nothing. But then, a few hours after that, they finally spot something. It's the submarine, but it looks like it's sinking. And Peter is there, and he's swimming away from it. He's trying to swim to safety.

Narrator 3:10

So they rescue him. And they question him, and Peter tells them that a mechanical defect caused his submarine to sink. And that's why he was swimming away to safety. But then, of course, police are like, uh, where's Kim Wall? And Peter tells them that hours before the interview, he had dropped her off along the shore, before the submarine started to sink. Now, I don't know what's up with police in Denmark, but pretty quickly they're like, that story's bullshit, and bam, they arrest him. And they charge him with involuntary manslaughter for unaliving Kim Wall. The next day, he appears in court. And in court, he changes his story. He tells the court that he didn't actually drop Kim Wall off along the shore.

Narrator 3:52

Instead, he says she actually died inside the submarine. but that her death was a total accident. He claims that she was climbing up the hatch and that he accidentally dropped that hatch on her and it struck her in the head and from that she died.