RedHanded - Episode 47 - Snuff Films & Submarines: The Murder of Kim Wall

Episode Date: May 24, 2018

In 2017 intrepid super-journalist Kim Wall scored an underwater submarine interview with eccentric Danish 'inventrepreneur' Peter Madsen. 17 hours later Madsen was rescued from the sinking vessel, but Kim was no where to be seen.  Exactly what happened during those 17 hours is hard to tell, but as Kim's dismembered body began to surface, alongside the library of torture porn Madsen had on his computer, it was clear this twisted man had lived out his sordid sexual fantasy 20,000 leagues under the sea... Audio mastered by Conrad Hughes.    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed, where today we're covering the murder of Kim Val. On the 11th of August 2017, Peter Madsen, a Danish semi-celebrity and self-titled inventrepreneur. Ugh, fuck off. I know it's so early in the episode, but I'm giving that a fuck off right off the bat. Well, he was an inventing entrepreneur and he invented himself this submarine. But unfortunately, on that day, he had to be rescued from this submarine because it was sinking off the coast of Copenhagen. And 17 hours before this rescue, he had gone out to sea with 30-year-old Swedish journalist Kim Val.

But when he was rescued, Kim wasn't with him. And the story that began to come to light of what happened on that submarine during those 17 hours is some serious nightmare fuel. But before we get into what Peter Madsen did that night, I want to talk first about Kim. Because Kim, she was a seriously cool lady. She was smart and bold, adventurous and driven. At just 30, she had two master's degrees from the London School of Economics and Columbia University. And after just four years working professionally as a full-time journalist, she had already won awards and she had already had her work published in the New York Times, The Guardian, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, Time, Slate and Vice. She traveled all over the world from China, Sri Lanka, Haiti, Uganda, North Korea, India and

the Marshall Islands. She'd gone all over to cover everything from stories of feminism in China to how the female Tamil tiger combatants are being lied to about the dream of a feminist utopia. So compared to all of the incredibly dangerous places Kim had traveled to, this story of a local Danish inventor who basically lived just next door to her seemed pretty easy. Peter Madsen is a self-taught engineer who was obsessed with space and sea exploration. He had devoted his life in Denmark to building audacious vehicles or extreme machines, as he called them, which is just as ridiculous as an entrepreneur. He designed and built his first such extreme machine, the submarine UC-3 Nautilus. Yes. Named after the fictional one in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Absolutely zero points for originality. That is the first thing I would think of naming a submarine. Absolutely. And I think we see this again and again with Peter Madsen that he's so

derivative. Nothing about him is original. The day Peter Madsen launched his homemade submarine, he christened it in front of a wild crowd and the international media. After this endeavour, he had to step it up, so he started another venture. He and his ex-NASA contractor, Kristen von Bengsten, started a business called Copenhagen Suborbitals. The Nautilus was the world's largest privately built submarine, but after that was a success, he had wanted to turn his attention to the skies. And the plan was to build and launch the first privately built from scratch rocket that would carry a person into space. In their Copenhagen Suborbitals blog, they called it the ultimate DIY project. And these projects made Madsen a kind of anti-establishment celebrity in

Denmark. I can think of absolutely nothing more terrifying than a homemade submarine. I think it's just because I'm not a huge fan of small spaces anyway. submarines are so enclosed and under the sea and under the sea and I can't remember which film it was but do you remember when we were like seven or eight they used to just be really old films on on Saturdays and Sundays and they were always something to do with either big boats or submarines breaking down I've just had a lot of that like I have such a clear image of my head of the rivets popping off the side of a submarine. Cartoonesque. Yeah. Filling with all that lung-killing water. Yeah, exactly. That's terrifying.

I couldn't do it. And in 2009, a filmmaker named Robert Fox even made a documentary about Madsen called My Private Submarine. And it was all about what was happening in that hangar on the harbour in Copenhagen. Fox said, You had a sense that he was doing something different. It was something bigger. It was something worth being part of. But soon, however, cracks started to appear in the friendship between Madsen and Kristen. Madsen was a demanding,

obsessive man who had no time for or interest in anything apart from his projects. And he accused Kristen, the ex-NASA contractor, of putting his family before their rocket. How dare you? This really paints a picture of the kind of person Madsen was. And in June 2014, Madsen left Copenhagen suborbitals and started his own workshop, literally across from the original suborbital's workshop. Like he just buys the plot opposite on the same harbour and starts his own workshop called Rocket Madsen Space Lab. For God's sake. And the DIY space race was now on. Given that Kim was a journalist described as being drawn to stories with an undercurrent of rebellion, she had found out about Madsen in 2017 and began immediately pursuing the story. It was the perfect

case for her to cover because at the time she was living in Copenhagen with her boyfriend Ollie Stobe. She had tried reaching out to Madsen repeatedly but he was so elusive. But editors at Wired were keen on the story she was planning but time was running out for Kim because her and Ollie, her boyfriend, had decided to move to Beijing together and so she only had a few days left in Copenhagen to secure the interview with And finally, on the 10th of August, the day of Kim and Olly's leaving party, Madsen text Kim and invited her to his workshop. And of course, she went. During their conversation at his hangar,

Madsen invited Kim to join him on his submarine, where he promised he'd give her the interview she wanted. For a woman who had gone to Haiti on her own to understand and write about voodoo practitioners, she probably couldn't have felt more safe. This was a harbour just a few miles from where she now lived, and it was 40 miles from her childhood home of Trellenborg in Sweden. So at 7pm on August 10th, Kim boarded the UC3 Nautilus. She sent her boyfriend one last message saying, I'm still alive by the way, but I'm going down now. I love you. He, talking about Madsen,

bought coffee and cookies. She was only meant to be gone for a few hours, but Kim would not return to shore alive. It's hard to know exactly what happened on board the vessel that night, but we'll come back to it when we look at Madsen's stories. But what we do know is that about 90 minutes after they set off a passing ship took a picture of the submarine with Kim and Madsen hanging out on the deck together looking pretty chill. The submarine was then again spotted by a merchant ship at around midnight very far south almost halfway between Denmark and Sweden. By this time, Ollie had called the police and reported Kim missing because he was meant to pick Kim up from the harbour at around 10, but she wasn't there and she wasn't replying to his texts. The police found

out about the sighting near Sweden, but the submarine didn't have satellite tracking, so they weren't able to make contact with Madsen until the next day. So the next day, the sub was again spotted at about 10.30am from a lighthouse, still very far down south. A rescue helicopter tried radioing Madsen, and at the same time this is happening, a group of people out fishing saw the vessel. The people who spotted the sub said that it then suddenly started to sink, and Madsen emerged from the sinking submarine submarine and the people in the boat dragged him to safety. He blamed the sinking on a malfunction with the submarine but it would later become clear that he had deliberately sunk the vessel. After his rescue there's a Danish TV news crew there to capture the police bringing him home and in the video footage they're yelling at him, Peter are you okay? And he just gives them a thumbs up. He just kind of looks a bit awkward and embarrassed like oh god I sunk my submarine but, I'm good. And he seems super chipper,

but the police are suspicious. Where was Kim Val? Madsen had said that he dropped Kim off at around 10.30 the night before by a restaurant near the area where Kim lived, and that after that, he hadn't seen her again. But the area he told police he had dropped Kim off was incredibly well CCTV'd by the man who owned the restaurant and there was no sign of Kim on those tapes. The police clearly did not believe him and they arrest him and charge him with involuntary manslaughter for having killed in an unknown way and in an unknown place Kim Isabel Frederike Wahl of Sweden sometime after, 5pm. That's incredible that they can make an arrest on a hunch, basically. Well, it's not a hunch, like he very obviously did it. And I think that's what's really interesting about this case is the differences between the

Danish justice system and the one that we're used to in the UK, because they really don't have much to go on here in terms of hard evidence.'s just obvious it's like it's conjecture absolutely they can use the circumstantial evidence they have that she went out with him he says i dropped her off no you didn't because there's no video footage she was last seen with you the jump they make though to saying he killed her because i guess where else could she be that submarine has gone down but they don't know but yeah you're right they're immediately just able to arrest him using that information. It's remarkable.

Madsen now told the police that on the 11th of August, the first of his three versions of what had happened that night, he stuck to his story that he had dropped Kim off for a while until after a judicial hearing on August 12th, Madsen gave the police a new story. He now told them that there had been a terrible accident on board the submarine and that Kim had accidentally been hit in the head by the vessel's 70 kilo hatch. He said after that he realised she was dead and he panicked and then

he actually said she was already dead so I buried her at sea. A very natural logical progression of thought. He told the police that he dumped her body somewhere about 30 miles south of Copenhagen. If it was an accident you are keeping that body and you are showing them. There's no way if it was an accident you just throw her overboard. How outrageous. But this lie didn't last long as 11 days later on the 21st of August on Amaga Island, not far from where the submarine had sunk, Kim's mutilated torso was found on the beach by a cyclist. It appeared that the body had been dismembered purposefully, but Madsen totally denied this. But now that they had Kim's remains, on September the 5th, the charge against Madsen, regardless of what his story was now saying.

Madsen was charged with manslaughter. And an autopsy later revealed that Kim had been stabbed 15 times in and around her vagina. And it's reported that these wounds could have been inflicted shortly before Kim's death, but they were most likely post-mortem injuries. Okay, so before we discuss that. Firstly, I was confused as to why he was still only being charged with manslaughter. If Kim was so obviously murdered in a clearly sexually motivated crime, why was it manslaughter? I looked into this and apparently in Denmark, manslaughter is the term used to describe the act of intentionally killing another person

and apparently no distinction exists between manslaughter and murder. Danes use the term negligent homicide when someone accidentally kills another person. I was confused because in this country, manslaughter can either mean voluntary or involuntary, depending on the intention of the accused. But manslaughter in the UK is definitely treated in the courts as a less serious offence than murder. That's really interesting. I'd never even considered that there might be no difference

in a justice system between manslaughter and murder. They basically use the term interchangeably. It's only negligent homicide in Denmark, as we understand manslaughter in this country. So in Denmark, as far as I can understand, manslaughter and murder are, there's no distinction between them. Negligent homicide equals manslaughter as we understand it. Any of our Danes out there. Am I right? Get in touch and let us know.

Yeah. Madsen was kept in police custody the entire time from the day he was rescued from his sub. And he was sticking to his story. But then about six weeks later, on the 6th of October, that's my birthday, police divers found Kim's head, clothing and a knife in plastic bags in the waters, not far from where her torso had been found. They also found her legs tied to pieces of metal in an attempt to weigh them down. But Madsen still denied it.

You would think that it would be reasonably easy to get rid of a body if you've killed someone in a submarine, but apparently not. But then actually, when we were doing the how to fake your death research, they all said don't do it at sea because they always wash up in the end. Even after the police divers found a saw he likely used to dismember Kim, he still denies it. But the finding of Kim's head immediately disproved Madsen's story. There was no sign of any fracture to her head. And how are you getting smacked in the head with a 70 kilo or 150 pound metal hatch door and not getting a fracture to your skull?

The police seize Madsen's hard drive and what they found is some serious shit. Madsen has searched for the terms beheading, girl and agony the night before he took Kim out on his boat. Tracing what he found with those searches, the police tracked his online activity to a video of a living woman having her throat slit. The police found other searches and movies and photos on his computer of women being beheaded, hanged, impaled and burned alive. An entire archive of torture, snuff and execution videos. Even after the police found all of this and confronted him with it, Madsen stuck to his story that Kim had died accidentally and told them that the hard drive did not belong to him and everyone in the laboratory where he worked had

access to it. But then on October 30th, he changed his mind, at least about the way Kim had died, and he told police that Kim had died on board of carbon monoxide poisoning while he was up on deck. He also now admitted dismembering her body, which he had previously denied. Then finally, on January 16th, the police released a statement announcing that Madsen had been indicted for homicide that took place with prior planning and preparation. They also charged him with sexual relations other than intercourse of a particularly dangerous nature, as well as for dismemberment. The full indictment, which was released a week later, provided more grisly details. Madsen had taken very unusual and very

unnecessary items for submarining on board that night. A saw, a knife, sharpened screwdrivers, straps, zip ties and pipes. The indictment said that Madsen had bound, beaten and stabbed Kim before killing her and that he'd killed her by either choking her or cutting her throat. Madsen's trial for Kim's murder began seven weeks later, on the 8th of March 2017, and he maintained his story that he hadn't killed Kim, that it had been a tragic accident and that he had dismembered her and thrown her overboard to spare her family the pain.

How in any way does not giving a family a body to bury make their lives easier? That's such a weird conclusion to come to. The prosecution, however, argued that this was a premeditated, cold-blooded murder and that Madsen was fulfilling his violent sexual fantasies. During the trial as the prosecutor made his case it is repeatedly noted how odd Madsen's behavior was. At times he'd seem totally bored and then at times he would be

laser focused. It then got even weirder when it came time for Madsen to testify. He stood in the dock telling his story and he was excited, almost reveling in it. He seemed to love the attention that he was getting because we cannot overstate how much global media attention this case got. And actually, this case more than any other people have been like, you should do this for the show. Madsen would have been every defence attorney's worst fucking nightmare. Don't stand up to defend yourself in a murder trial and look excited about it. During his whole round of testimony, he switched between naive and know-nothing to totally indifferent. He even admitted having lied to investigators on multiple occasions.

But he stuck firmly in court to his third story. Kim Val had suffocated after inhaling fumes from a malfunctioning engine while he, Madsen, was locked out on the deck. He said that the air pressure on board the submarine had suddenly plummeted while he was on deck and that Kim Val was in the engine room. He said the submarine had filled with exhaust fumes and that he had been unable to get back in. He gave such a detailed story, saying, when I finally managed to open the hatch, a warm cloud hit my face. I find her lifeless body on the floor. I squat next to her

and I try to wake her, slapping her cheeks. Then, in a truly troublingly casual way, right there in the courtroom, he said, after trying for almost an hour to push her body out of the submarine, I cut her up. I have a question. Please correct me, any submariners out there, but on a submarine, there is the central hatch where you can get in and out. And I assume if he's on deck, that means they're not submerged.

He's standing in air not in sea obviously because then he would be drowning so then he opens the hatch from the outside world finds her dead why can't he just push her up out of the hatch that doesn't make sense if it's big enough for him to get in it's big enough for her to get out, it's big enough for her to get out. I don't know. Push her body out of the submarine? Was he saying he couldn't pull her up the ladder to get her onto the top deck? Well, perhaps. I mean, it doesn't really matter because this obviously isn't what happened. It's not true.

Yeah. It seems like a weird... I just find it difficult to believe that if he can get in and out, he'd be able to pull her in and out. But he explains that his lies so his previous versions of the story were a form of protection and not for himself but for Val's parents he wanted to spare them the gruesome tale of what actually happened I think being suffocated by fumes is slightly less gruesome than being cut up by a maniac. But he says, I was only thinking about Kim Vile's relatives.

It was a very, very horrible story. I knew she was dead and she would not come back. I only had one purpose and it was to spare the relatives as much as possible. And clearly he's lying. But again, it just shows what sort of person he is, what sort of psychopath he is. Because it's like saying, well, she was dead anyway. I just thought it'd be easier if I just got rid of her body. Spare them the trouble.

That's not how it works. He's completely deluded. That's exactly it. We see this thread of him as a person. What kind of person is like, you're not playing the game I want to play, so I'm going to build a rocket instead. And I'm going to do it exactly opposite you so I can jeer at you the whole time. Like what an obscene man. Oh, he truly, truly is. And honestly, it seems hard to adequately explain just how surreal his behavior became in court. Madsen kept switching between the past and the present tense. He'd refer to himself in both the first person, like a normal person, and then also switch to the third person randomly.

He genuinely said things like quote kim was having the time of her life and peter is talking a lot he is happily sharing his dreams with kim he's peter that's so weird why is he telling the story with himself in the third person and seriously the judge judge annette burko kept having to interrupt his testimony and his bizarre account telling him stick to the essentials. If you were his defense attorney you would be like shut the fuck up. He just stands up there and says all these bizarre things that's so unnecessary. It's like he thinks he can just tell this story and that everyone will believe it and be so like caught up in the waffle that he's giving that no one will get to the truth of the caught up in the waffle that he's giving that

no one will get to the truth of the matter. Well I think that's what's truly stunning in this case is that he genuinely thought he was going to get away with it. He thought he was going to be in a confined space underwater, murder someone and get away with it. Madsen though I think is a man who spent his entire life thinking he's more intelligent than everyone else in the room. Oh he's a total Patrick Bateman. And as if this wasn't enough, Madsen's shaky grasp of the difference between reality and fantasy started to become clear. He started to explain how he dismembered Kim's body.

But before he did, he apologised that his account might sound like a bad movie. This is the man who had fucking snuff films on his laptop. Just shut up. The prosecution obviously confront him with this and suggest that the snuff videos on his computer showed his dark sexual fantasies and that they had inspired him to mutilate Kim's body. But oh no, Madsen had the perfect explanation. He claimed that in fact watching women suffer in those videos had brought out his empathy and watching those movies had been cathartic. He argued that snuff movies were no different from movies like Kill Bill or Seven. How can you even argue that? They're

obviously different because it's real. That is so bonkers. So either he can't tell the difference between real women being murdered and fictional representations ofkers. So either he can't tell the difference between real women being murdered and fictional representations of this, or he thinks he can manipulate everyone into thinking what he's saying is true. And I think it's absolutely the second one. I think this is a classic bad, not mad. Like, I think he's just a shit. But I also do think that he can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality. And I think he doesn't care either. But regardless of the motivations for the dismemberment that he claimed, he did stick to his story.

But the gas suffocation story was easily debunked in court by the prosecution's expert witness, Ditter Dyborg, a lieutenant commander in the Danish Navy, who told the court that they weren't able to detect any carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide in the submarine. So okay, even if we ignore the expert testimony that this wasn't carbon monoxide poisoning, and even if we give Madsen the benefit of the doubt that he had just panicked and cut up Kim's body and threw her overboard to spare her family the pain of hearing

that she died in a tragic accident. Kim's torso was found with more than 38 stab wounds and lesions. So even if we can explain away the dismemberment as just a way to dispose of Kim's body after an accidental death, why had she been stabbed at least 38 times? But again, Madsen has an answer for this. He claimed that he had slashed Kim's body to prevent the buildup of gases that occur when a person dies. Ah, well then that makes sense then. But, oh wait, there's more pesky expert testimony from the medical examiner who said that the stab wounds were superficial and as a result would serve no purpose in letting gases leave the body. Also, she went out on that submarine and died within hours. And then he spent the night dumping her body.

At what point are you releasing the buildup of gases? At what point is she so bloated and filled with gas that you need to stab her 38 times? Well, exactly, because you're just putting her straight in the water where she's going to do the most bloating. This all happens within the space of 17 hours between Kim Val getting on that submarine and Peter Madsen being, quote, rescued. So that's such bollocks. He was stabbing her 38 times superficially because he was torturing her. Oh yeah.

He's such a piece of shit. And the prosecution used this evidence and the videos they found on Madsen's hard drive to paint a convincing picture of Madsen as a sexual sadist who was obsessed with beheadings and murdered Kim Vahl as part of a sexual fantasy. The prosecution also dug into Madsen's early life. Madsen was born in 1971 and grew up just south of Copenhagen. His mother left him with his abusive father, taking her other sons with her. That's going to fuck you up, isn't it?

Jesus Christ, being the one that she didn't want. Apparently the reason she did that was because Madsen's father was really abusive to the other boys, but not to him. So maybe she thought, I can look after these guys if I run off with them, but you're okay? Still, fucking hell, being abandoned by your mother, being left with your alcoholic, abusive father is not the one. Having said that though, Madsen's father was a huge inspiration to him. He was the one who introduced his son to rockets and engineering, but also, for extra special bonus points, the Nazis. Karl, Madsen's dad, used to hero worship Wernher von Braun, the Nazi aerospace engineer who later came to the US and helped develop the Apollo missions. Is that Operation Paperclip? I think that's what it's called.

When they got all of the Nazi scientists over to the States. What an innocuous name. What a great naming system they had for that. Operation Paperclip. We're definitely not taking all the Nazi scientists who we need and just going to pretend that nothing happened over there because we need to build a rocket to get us into space. Did you ever watch The Man in the High Castle? I started it and I didn't get into it. I think like what's really interesting about the world they create is what would have happened if all of the scientific developments that happened under the Third Reich had been able to continue and it's really interesting. That is interesting. Maybe I'll dip back in. It's worth a watch watch season one is like shot really beautifully i think okay well i've got a long flight tomorrow on not a very good airline so are you flying norwegian i am flying but hey chicago i'm gonna be in you soon but via

norwegian it'll be all right they don't even give you a blanket it's bargain basement it is bargain basement it's okay i'm staying in a very nice hotel. Swings and roundabouts. Back to Peter Madsen and his abusive father. Carl died when Madsen was 18. And for the next few years, Madsen job hopped, starting several degrees and apprenticeships, but dropping out of each one. Which is very classic psychopath. Get bored really easily. I'm too good for this. This is not what I should be doing. It's not enough of a kick or a thrill for someone like Madsen. As a teenager, Madsen discovered the Danish amateur Rocket Club, but was eventually kicked out because he wanted to use fuels that others in the group felt weren't safe. That really reminds me of

Sheldon Cooper trying to build a death ray in his back garden like that's exactly what this is I fucking hate that show I know you do and that's why I said it's awful I find the big bang theory so misogynistic oh it is big time so misogynistic and rapey and stalkery and creepy as fuck and just rife with toxic masculinity I'm 100% with you on that. And not funny. That's the main thing. That is the major blow to that show is that it's not funny. But it is the most watched TV show of all time. That is tragic. That is the worst thing.

So our classic psychopath continues to get easily bored and engage in highly risky behaviour. Madsen then spent his 20s and 30s forging a life around the building of his submarines and rockets. He often even slept at the workshop where he built things and the prosecution painted a picture of an obsessive man. He was obsessed with his submarines and rockets. It was all-consuming but not to the exclusion of sex. Friends came forward and said that Madsen had become a regular at sexual fetish parties. Madsen was married, but apparently in an open marriage because he had at least two mistresses who came forward. One of the mistresses even testified that Madsen wanted to make a snuff movie and it was something they had talked about. How do you bring that up? At a sexual fetish party?

Well, I suppose so. I suppose if you're going to do it anywhere, it's going to be at a fetish party. But she thinks this is just a joke. He couldn't possibly be serious. She thought that he meant he just wanted to role play. And also remember the documentary maker Fox, who has spent a hundred days with Madsen and his crew

while making the documentary My Private Submarine? He said that, quote, women found Madsen and his crew while making the documentary My Private Submarine, he said that, quote, women found Madsen fascinating and that the Nautilus definitely played a role in his seduction strategies. Fox said that the usual line would be, hey, this is my submarine. You want to see my submarine? Do you want to see my dick? That's exactly, I mean, what a line what a line DIY self-built submarine I can't think of a stronger phallic symbol apart from the rocket if it had been successful I'm sure that it was obviously like very expensive and very well built but I literally have this picture in my head of it bashed together with some wooden and there's nails like hanging out at right angles he He was an engineer and it was well put together but come on this is

my submarine you want to see my submarine. No. That wouldn't do it for me. No man I've just met do I want to come in a confined space with you that I have absolutely no escape from no I don't think I want to do that thank you. And there were other women who agreed with us Hannah because it was backed up by two other witnesses that the prosecution brought in, who just days before he took Kim out, Madsen had invited these two women to join him on the submarine, but thankfully they had turned him down. And this made up an important part of the prosecution's case, as it shows, Madsen had been actively trying to lure a female victim to his boat, and it cements the prosecution's theory of premeditation. And remember, this guy was a minor celebrity. Kim wasn't even the only journalist he met with that day. Australian

director Emma Sullivan interviewed Madsen for a documentary earlier in the afternoon of Kim's visit. She described Madsen as having a, quote, strange energy and said that during the interview, Madsen suggested that he might be psychopathic. And he was right, because this self-diagnosis would later be backed up by his court-ordered psychiatric evaluations. But they added in a couple of things, like narcissistic tendencies and a severely aberrant sexuality. I had to look up what aberrant means, and it means very far away from the norm. You know when you learn a new word and then you hear about it everywhere? I think that's going to be one of those things. And in this official psychiatric report they added that Madsen showed a severe lack of empathy and remorse and was extremely untrustworthy and to to top it all off, a pathological liar. But importantly,

they found him not insane. And if anyone was in doubt about these evaluations before the trial started, Madsen confirmed things pretty quickly. He told the court, when talking about dismembering Kim's body, what do you do when you have a big problem? You divide it into something smaller. A dead body does not deserve any special respect. Who is this man? But this is why I find it, yes, he is psychopathic because he has absolutely no remorse. But what I find bizarre with him is that apart from the sort of lies that he does tell,

he just starts admitting things that surely another psychopath would know is incorrect to tell people because it gives you away he's just telling everybody he chopped her up that's very true that's a really good point it could it be not me personally but i believe that when people are at sea for long periods of time there are things that you do to like make life on board more bearable so for example if someone dies you get them out as quickly as possible is it possible that even though he's not a professional submariner he's not going out for extended period of time he's just buying into that mentality of i'm at sea this is a problem i have to solve it very quickly they were out for a few

hours yeah no i know but like this is him like putting his submariner hat on. And if I was an actual submariner, what would I do? Maybe, maybe. I mean, I think it does come down to him knowing, well, fuck, I'm caught. They have found the body pieces. They know I dismembered her. I just need to give an explanation. I think maybe he just thinks that psychopathic trait of being glib and very grandiose. He thinks that he can just talk his way out of this, maybe.

But it's very bizarre. And psychiatrists told the court the way he described the dismemberment of Kim Val's body was especially troubling. Let's get down to it. What is his deal? Why did Madsen kill Kim Val? He won't confess.

He still says that she died by accident and he simply disposed of her body. But his obsession with torture porn tells a different story. Was he bored with his submarine and with his rocket? Was he planning his own snuff film? Because let's make this clear, the violent graphic torture porn, snuff film, murder, rape fantasy videos that Madsen had been watching are inextricably linked to what he did. And I genuinely spent a really long time thinking that snuff films didn't exist, that they were just like urban legends, or at least the kind of thing you could only get hold of if you went to like Bilderberg. But they most certainly do exist.

And let's define first exactly what we mean by snuff film. A snuff film is not just a murder that has been filmed. A snuff film is a film that has been specifically commissioned by a paying client and the content depicts an actual unsimulated on-screen murder. And firstly, there's no denying that all too often mainstream porn is misogynistic, violent and sadistic. But there's a story I read of a journalist who wanted to find out if snuff films were real and if they were accessible by normal people. And it was a story written before the Internet. So if this was the case back then, imagine what's out there now. And we'll post this story on our social media accounts.

But here's basically what happened. This journalist worked alongside a group of anti-porn activists who went into a porn shop in England and asked for something, quote, extreme. The video they got from this porn shop owner, they aired to a group of crime reporters. The film was also verified by experts to be 100% real. Who's a porn expert? I think they mean film expert. Okay. There were no camera tricks involved. It showed a woman in South America being raped, tortured and murdered. It also showed her having her hand sawn off while she was still alive. The journalists noticed even the hardened crime reporters had to leave the room to throw up.

But the activists stayed. They were campaigning against the torture and murder of women for men's sexual pleasure. And that's exactly what Madsen had done, and what many others do. He had killed Kim for his sexual pleasure. And we talk about this so much that sometimes it loses all meaning,

even for us. So just really think about that for a moment. He killed her. And sorry to be crude, but he killed her so he could come. He killed her for sexual pleasure. Kim Val was an intelligent, accomplished woman with so much potential and energy. And she died, lost her life, so Peter Madsensen could come it can't be understated how terrifying that is it really is what's that margaret atwood quote oh men are scared women will laugh at them

and women are scared men will kill them yeah i think what's so key to female experience is walking around feeling like prey all the time and kim knew that she knew that her job was often dangerous a journalist friend of Kim's recalls in an article she wrote to honour her late friend that during a reporting trip to Cuba in 2016, Kim had texted her to say that as a strategy against unrelenting harassment, she had invented a fictional New York City fiancé. Every woman has experienced this. The idea of having to create a fictional boyfriend to ward off unwanted advances from men is so deeply gross and it's so pervasive.

It's everywhere. I can't count the amount of times I've done that. And I feel like such a shitty feminist every time I do it. But we have all done it. It's so telling when you ignore their catcalls and say, no, thank you. But men just find it totally fine to pursue you because well why not and think of almost every movie ever in the narrative is always she may be saying no but

if you pursue her enough she'll fall in love with you it's the classic rom-com trope we are told in all of our pop culture that it's fine if a woman keeps telling you know that she's not interested that it's funny you should stalk her you should pursue her you should follow through and that's why and this is not all men of course not but why some men think it's okay to continuously harass you even after you say no they respect you being another man's property more than they respect your own agency to say no definitely the minute a fake boyfriend shows up, many of them will back off. Have you heard of the Bechdel test? No. It's a test for movies. And in order to pass the Bechdel test, it needs to have at least two female characters. And they need to have a conversation that is not

about a man. And you would be amazed at how many movies that knocks right off the list. Very few mainstream Hollywood films pass this test. So often women find themselves in a situation, not in movies, in real life, that men have more respect for a made up, non-existent man than they do for you, a real life woman standing there telling them you aren't interested. And Kim's friend also noted a series of texts that Kim had sent her the spring before she was murdered. On March 14th, 2017, Kim texted her saying, quote, I only have questions about agency as a woman and if we will ever be free, no matter what we do and then in brackets I'm leaning towards no sad face and seriously this made me so livid because there are people on the internet commenting about this story

about the murder of Kim Val saying shit like how could she have gone on that submarine with a man she didn't know shut the fuck up she was doing job. How about we stop blaming Kim and women like Kim for daring to be out by themselves, for daring to be walking around trying to live their lives, for trying to have jobs and ambitions and hopes and dreams. And how about we blame the scumbags who abuse and kill them? It's absolutely vile that anyone would even contemplate that Kim was in any way to blame for this.

Like it's her fault for going on the submarine no it's fucking not and I think that's a huge problem with our society I think whenever there's a rape case or a stalker or anything like that in the public eye there are a huge amount of people who'll say well what was she wearing absolutely men and women and it's the idea of in society we're constantly telling women don't get raped don't get murdered instead of telling the people who do this stop raping people and stop murdering people exactly i saw it in a really good satirical campaign i cannot remember for the life of me what it was called but i'll find it and i'll put it on the instagram did you have those posters in your school that were like oh don't wear a short skirt and don't get too drunk probably and there's this poster saying don't wear a short skirt don't walk home on your own don't get too

drunk make sure it's not you it's someone else and i thought that was really powerful because these people who are going around raping women it's not always specific to one woman so telling girls to dress modestly and never walk through the park at night and all of that. All you're doing is saying, make sure it's not you. It's going to happen. There's nothing we can do about it. Because it's inevitable. Rape and murder are inevitable rather than what they really are, which is aberrations,

which are violent acts that we see in our society. Instead of trying to curb those, we've decided that that's too difficult. That's a conversation that we don't want to have. But telling women to cover themselves up and not have a life why don't we just add another tagline onto that don't leave your house oh but wait these things happen in your house lock yourself in a room by yourself and don't look outside the window because someone will rape you or someone will murder you isn't it time we change the conversation absolutely but that's where our story ends today you can carry on the conversation? Absolutely. But that's where our story ends today.

You can carry on the conversation with us on social media at the usual places at Red Handed The Pod on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And if you would like to, you could also help support the show on patreon.com slash redhanded. And we have quite a few new patrons this week.

Yeah, big thank you to people who have already given us some money we have jodie peterson beth thomas anita claire humphries riannon pike sorry at you petra clingbeil solvig i'm so sorry solvig thank you so much but i cannot pronounce your surname champagne champagne champagne champagne yes go with that vicky o'neill katie greavesland christina harmeyer and katrina vbb who's upgraded her donation to us thank you so much guys i cannot tell you how much of a difference it makes we'd like to tell you guys actually with the pledges you've been making for us on patreon we have recently very excitingly bought new what are

they called task cams digital recorders what are they task cams i'm so pumped about it it's going to be really exciting from next week's episode we will be using digital recorders to record our episode so this is very very exciting and it's all down to you guys so thank you for making it happen genuinely couldn't have done it without you so thank you very much and we will see you next week. Bye. Bye. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years.

I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up.

But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace,

from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus.