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Danish police find decapitated head of Swedish journalist

Danish police said on Saturday that divers had recovered the decapitated head and the legs of Swedish journalist Kim Wall, who vanished in August while interviewing a Danish inventor aboard his homemade submarine.

Published: 7 October 2017 10:29 CEST
Updated: 7 October 2017 17:03 CEST
Danish police find decapitated head of Swedish journalist
Kim Wall. Photo: Tom Wall/Scanpix Denmark/Helsingborgs Dagblad

Copenhagen police inspector Jens Moller Jensen told reporters that divers had found bags containing her missing clothes, her head and legs in Koge Bay, south of the Danish capital.

“Last night our forensic dentist confirmed that it was Kim Wall's head,” he said.

Her headless torso was found floating in waters off Copenhagen on August 21st, 11 days after she went missing.

Self-taught engineer and inventor Peter Madsen, 46, has been accused of Wall's death, with prosecutors saying he dismembered her body before throwing it overboard.

Madsen, who is married and has been in custody since August 11th, claims Wall died when a 70-kilo (154-pound) hatch door fell on her head, and in a panic, he threw her body overboard.

He has insisted her body was intact at the time.

But Jensen said the decapitated head contradicted Madsen's version of events.

There is “no sign of fracture on the skull and there isn't any sign of other blunt violence to the skull,” he said, citing an autopsy carried out overnight.

Locating Wall's head has been a priority for investigators, as the final autopsy on the torso was not able to establish the cause of death.

However, it did show multiple mutilation wounds to Wall's genitals.

Fetish films

Prosecutors believe Madsen killed 30-year-old Wall as part of a sexual fantasy, then dismembered and mutilated her body.

Earlier this week, prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen told a court custody hearing that a hard disk found in Madsen's workshop contained fetish films in which real women were tortured, decapitated and burned.

“This hard drive doesn't belong to me,” Madsen insisted, saying numerous people had access to his workshop.

Madsen has insisted there was no sexual relationship between him and Wall, and their that contacts had been purely professional.

Jensen said the divers on Friday found the clothes and body parts in bags weighed down with metal pieces. Her torso had also been weighed down when it was found, also in Koge Bay.

“Yesterday morning we found a bag within which we found Kim Wall's clothes, underwear, stockings, and shoes. In the same bag laid a knife, and there were some lead pipes to weigh the bag down,” he said.

“Around dinnertime we found one leg, and then another leg. And then we found a head that also laid in a bag, and was weighed down with multiple metal pieces.”

Jensen said police would continue to search for her arms.

Link to Japanese tourist?

Police have previously said they were re-examining the unresolved case of a Japanese tourist whose mutilated body was found in a Copenhagen harbour in 1986, to see if there was any possible link to the Wall case.

Kazuko Toyonaga, a 22-year-old student, was on vacation in Europe when she disappeared. Her legs were found in a plastic bag floating in the waters off Islands Brygge, a harbour in Copenhagen.

Wall worked as a freelance journalist based in New York and China, and her articles were published in The Guardian, The New York Times and others.

At the time of her disappearance, she was believed to be working on a feature story about Madsen, an eccentric, well-known figure in Denmark.

Madsen has successfully launched rockets with the aim of developing private space travel.

His homemade submarine Nautilus, launched in 2008, was the biggest private sub ever made when he built it with help from a group of volunteers.

But the group became engaged in a long-running dispute over the Nautilus, before members of the board decided to transfer the vessel's ownership to Madsen, according to the sub's website.

In 2015, Madsen sent a text message to two members of the board claiming:

“There is a curse on Nautilus”.

“That curse is me. There will never be peace on Nautilus as long as I exist,” Madsen wrote, according to the volunteers.

Madsen's lawyer Bertina Hald Engmark was tightlipped after the discovery.

“I've been informed of the find, but I haven't received any material yet. Our society is governed by rule of law, and the case and any evidence will be judged by a court of law when the time comes, if charges are pressed,” she told Swedish news agency TT.

By Ethan Bilby

POLICE

Swedish police leaks scandal: How gang criminals got hold of sensitive information

A new report in Dagens Nyheter has revealed over 514 suspected leaks of sensitive information from at least 30 members of the police force to criminals since 2018. Here's what we know so far.

Published: 30 April 2024 12:28 CEST
Updated: 30 April 2024 15:45 CEST
Swedish police leaks scandal: How gang criminals got hold of sensitive information

What’s happened?

According to an investigative report by newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN), multiple gang members have infiltrated the police force by, for example, dating police employees, or using family connections to gain access to sensitive information about ongoing cases.

The first article in DN’s series focuses on a woman the newspaper calls Elin, who met a man, Jonas (not his real name), on a dating app when she had one year left of her police education. She falls in love, but his only goal with the relationship is to get a source within the police force which he can use for access to secret information.

Over the course of four years until she was caught, she made multiple illegal searches in the police register for Jonas, his associates and enemies, as well as providing him with information on ongoing investigations against him.

Other cases investigated by the newspaper include a border guard who sold classified information to gangs, a police officer who leaked information to what DN describes as “one of Sweden’s most notorious criminals” and an investigator who was dating a man she was investigating, who she shared screenshots of sensitive information with.

In another case, the police received a tip-off that information was being leaked to the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. It was discovered that a group of five alarm operators had made an unusually high number of searches for members of the Hells Angels, who were later discovered to have connections with the gang that they had lied about during their background checks.

What have the consequences of these leaks been?

In some cases, the leaks preceded revenge attacks on enemies of the gang member involved in the relationship. In other cases, the gang members’ enemies disappeared or were murdered.

Some of the people from the police force involved in the leaks were sentenced to fines for illegal data access or breaches of professional secrecy, while the evidence against others was not sufficient to prosecute. 

At least 30 employees had for different reasons been considered “security risks” and either resigned or were forced to quit, the newspaper reported, with over 514 suspected leaks taking place from police to criminals since 2018.

How do criminals find police officers?

According to DN, they look for things that can be used as blackmail, like police officers who buy drugs, or set “honey traps”, like the one used against Elin, where they meet police officers or students on dating apps and start a relationship.

“You take Tinder, for example, and set your search radius so the police school is in the centre. When you get a match, it’s easy to check if it’s a student, through class lists or how they present themselves on social media. They’re proud of their line of work,” Jonas told DN.

They might also use their family connections to put pressure on relatives who work in the police force.

Why is this important?

It’s important because Sweden has seen a rise in gang-related violence in recent years, with a surge in shootings and bombings as gangs fight for control over different drug markets.

Swedes also have a high level of trust in the police force – 72 percent according to a 2024 study by Medieakademin, topping the list of state authorities, with a higher level of trust than universities, healthcare, the courts and even the Swedish church. This was five percent higher than in 2023.

Although the vast majority of police officers do not leak information to criminal networks, Sweden does not have a history of organised crime infiltrating the police force, so officials are keeping a close eye on these leaks to make sure they don’t become more common.

On April 29th, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told TT newswire that the leaks were “very serious”, potentially putting trust in the police force at risk.

“There are many great risks and one is that trust in police declines, that people get the idea that mafia-like methods are used to infiltrate law enforcement,” he said, before adding that he was unable to say whether it constituted a threat to national security or not purely based on the initial DN article.

“But the mere suspicion of these types of connections are damaging,” he told the newswire.

What happens now?

Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer told DN that he planned to call a meeting with police leadership about the reports, which he described as “extremely serious”.

“[At that meeting] we will consider the need for further measures,” he said.

“Leaking sensitive information to criminals is against the law and can have very damaging consequences for the work of the police force,” Strömmer told DN, adding that it could undermine trust in the police and “damage democracy”.

Last summer, the government increased the penalty for breaching professional secrecy, and a special investigator was tasked with looking at a potential reform of the rules on corruption and professional misconduct in February – the Crime Prevention Council is also involved in that investigation, where it has been asked to provide information on how gangs use government employees.

“Protecting the integrity of the justice system against infiltration and other security threats is a central part of the new national strategy against organised crime that the government decided on earlier this year, and it is given the highest priority in our assignments to the authorities,” Strömmer told the newspaper.

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