Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - Murder On a Submarine - The Peter Madsen story

Episode Date: February 2, 2025

This is the story of Peter Madsen and the murder of Kim Wall in a submarine.

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My whole world is falling apart right now. It's chaos. Watch the Hulu original series. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for Bumno subscribers. Terms apply. 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.

Originally educated a little bit as an engineer, a little bit as a naval engineer. In fact, he ends up building what is during this time period the largest privately built submarine in the world, called the UC3 Nautilus. It's pretty impressive. But as gifted as Peter is, he also has a dark side. You're aware that psychopath exists amongst us, human predators that walks around and grabs people and use them and throw them out. 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, dope. 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, fuck yeah, I want to ride in your submarine. 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, Olae. And she tells Olae 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 as 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 Olai a few times, a few picks, 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. Until several hours pass. And Kim Wall and Peter haven't come back yet. And Olae, 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 mission. 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, 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 submarines 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. 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. Then he says he then panicked and that he didn't call the police because he didn't want to get in trouble,

but instead he dragged her out of the submarine and he tossed her body in the ocean. So basically he says the whole thing was an accident and he was just worried about getting in trouble. But then, 10 days later, a man is riding a bike around on a small island out near where the submarine sank. When suddenly, boom, he spots something. Something washed up on the shore. And when he goes to check it out, it's a human torso. Kim Wall's torso. And this torso had been stabbed 15 times, including.

stab wounds around the vagina area. So much for that story about the hatch accidentally hitting her in the head. Yeah, but anyway, not only did they find her torso, about a month later, divers are searching around the area and they find more of her body parts. Her head, her legs, some of her clothes, a saw, a knife. So Peter's story is not looking good. It's looking like he brutally unalived her. But then it gets worse for him, because police also search all of people. Peter's things, including his computer. And on that computer, they find some pretty extreme

videos. Like violent videos. Videos of women being unalived, women being tortured and decapitated, really gruesome stuff. Not videos that he himself made, like videos that you'd find on a gore website on the internet. Now, that being said, someone having interest in violent content doesn't necessarily make them a murderer. But in this case, it does feed into the narrative that he brutally unalived Kim Wall. Okay, so then Peter changes his story again. Now he says she actually died of carbon monoxide poisoning and that he panicked and tried to get rid of the body, but that he didn't actually unalive her himself. And of course, this is like the third story he's given, so no one is buying it. Bro is full of shit. So then that leaves the question. What really happened

to Kim Wall. Well, using all the forensic evidence and piecing it all together, prosecution are able to give an account of what they believe happened to her. So, Peter and Kim Wall, they meet up that day and they go out on the submarine and they have a good time. Then Peter decides to take the submarine under. And once they're submerged and there's no way for her to escape and no one can hear her scream, suddenly, bam, he attacks her and he overpowers her. And then he ties her up where she can't move. And then he tortures her and he assays her. Then he gets his knife and he stabs her.

And then he either strangles her or he cuts her throat and unalives her. Then he cuts her into pieces with a saw he had brought aboard and he dumps those pieces in the ocean. And then he intentionally sabotages his own submarine and tries to sink it to hide any sign that a murder took place on it. That's why his submarine was sinking when they found him. So then you have to ask, why did he do it? Why did he suddenly unalive this journalist he had just met a few hours before?

Well, prosecutors argue that based on the collection of gruesome videos they found on his computer, he did it to fulfill some kind of weird sexual fantasy. Other than that, we don't really know. Maybe he's just a plain old psychopath. You're aware that psychopaths exist amongst us. So anyway, Peter's manslaughter charged, is changed to a murder charge and he's found guilty and he's sentenced to life in prison. And here's what he looks like in real life.

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