If this were the plot of a Scandi-noir novel, it would be dismissed as ridiculously implausible.
Headless body found near topless beach: Missing private sub journalist identified
Danish cops have identified the headless torso found in Copenhagen bay as that of Kim Wall – the journalist who went missing after taking a ride in a homemade submarine. Wall, 30, had disappeared on August 10 after embarking on what was supposed to be a short trip with engineer Peter Madsen aboard the UC3 Nautilus, the world's …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 24th August 2017 07:14 GMT Pompous Git
"he lost her head because he lost his head because she wouldn’t give head"
Sounds like you're Heading in the Right Direction
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Thursday 24th August 2017 08:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
>This guy sounds like another Hans Reiser.......
Steady on, there has to be a full police investigation, a trial then finally a conviction. Just a couple of names to throw at you that always make me reserve judgement and avoid a lynching: Colin Stagg and Stefan Kiszko.
Things look mighty suspicious though and he's a lot of unexplained questions to answer. I don't think he should be making long term plans to live abroad or buy a house on the prima facea situation.
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Thursday 24th August 2017 18:25 GMT Jeffrey Nonken
Re: Making light of tragedy
Oh dear, you got me started.
Hanging on a wall: Art
Floating in a hot tub: Stu
Lying in the garden: Pete
Lying in a safe: Will
Sitting on a stage: Mike
Flying over a fence: Homer
What do you call a man with no feet? Neil
What do you call a woman with one leg shorter than the other? Ilene
If she's Asian? Irene
I trust there are people I haven't offended, but the day is young.
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Thursday 24th August 2017 13:52 GMT felixk
Re: Making light of tragedy
Finally -- I was already wondering whether the Humour Police might have been disbanded. Welcome back, Comrade, and don't forget to check in with the Commissar For Serious Matters to pick up a copy of the current List Of Things That Are Inappropriate to Joke About.
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Wednesday 23rd August 2017 23:39 GMT RegGuy1
Awful, simply awful
The submarine bit really is irrelevant.
If this had been a gangland killing the opprobrium would have been extreme.
Whilst I, like everyone here, can concoct my own story of what may have happened, we must wait for due process to reveal the 'truth.'
Therefore I would argue any humour is misplaced. Sorry for being a killjoy, but we must show some respect.
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Thursday 24th August 2017 03:09 GMT Haku
Re: This story is still nowhere near as strange as...
I always loved dystopian sci-fi films because they would ask the question "How bad would life be like if..." and for a short while I'd live in an alternate, twisted universe, then when they end I would be thankful things aren't that bad.
But unfortunately, looking around at the current state of the world, "if..." appears to be happening and now after watching those sorts of films I don't have that comforting feeling anymore.
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Thursday 24th August 2017 13:53 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: This story is still nowhere near as strange as...
I'd live in an alternate, twisted universe, then when they end I would be thankful things aren't that bad.
But unfortunately, looking around at the current state of the world
It's not that bad - at least we haven't been invaded by aliens yet.
Hang on - why has the sky gone dark?
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Monday 28th August 2017 19:27 GMT wayward4now
Re: This story is still nowhere near as strange as...
"It's not that bad - at least we haven't been invaded by aliens yet." That is because we don't WANT your stinkin' planet. Here, on Mars, I am about to finish my harvest of my Ham Bushes, in time to start on my Blanket Trees. After all of that, I will be ready to cast my NSM seeds for a new crop. It is a bunch of work to fertilize each of them, personally, but there is no one else but me to do the job. If you all just stay on Earth, I promise not to invade. .
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Thursday 24th August 2017 03:53 GMT fnj
Obvious and stupid mistake
One look at any photo and it's obvious as hell the sub was a lot longer than "26 feet", snort. It's pretty obvious the length was 26 METERS. God help us from idiot writers who don't know the difference between feet and meters. Who gives length in feet of anything anywhere in the world outside of the the US?
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Thursday 24th August 2017 04:57 GMT Teiwaz
Re: Obvious and stupid mistake
Who gives length in feet of anything anywhere in the world outside of the the US?
This is an English 'paper' - I expect the Brexit will eventually lead to a return to Imperial from any greasy undemocratic and republican metric system - closely followed by pounds and shillings, child labour and serfdom, God bless her majesty, she was never amused by Europe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJpZmOl0-PU
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Thursday 24th August 2017 07:40 GMT BongoJoe
Re: Obvious and stupid mistake
All this rabid dislike of Imperial measurements when they can be just as decimal as decimal.
Ten pounds weight is a gallon of water.
Ten chains (length of a cricket pitch) to a furlong (used in proper sports) and an area described as a furlong by a chain is an acre. And what's so hard about that?
And best of all: an ounce of gold does weigh more than an ounce of feathers!
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Thursday 24th August 2017 08:46 GMT Rhyd
Re: Obvious and stupid mistake
The size is quoted elsewhere as 17 metres / 56 feet. 5 is above 2 on a the numeric keypad - this is commonly called a typo, an honest and simple mistake.
I don't know how big a meter you're using, but as the sub is 17 metres long I'm assuming your meter is about 2/3 of a metre, or 2.15 feet long.
Incidentally, Wikipedia states 17.76 m (58 ft 3 in).
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Thursday 24th August 2017 11:41 GMT Anonymous IV
Re: Obvious and stupid mistake
> One look at any photo and it's obvious as hell the sub was a lot longer than "26 feet", snort. It's pretty obvious the length was 26 METERS. God help us from idiot writers who don't know the difference between feet and meters. Who gives length in feet of anything anywhere in the world outside of the the US?
You're quite right! "Feet" is a measurement of length, and "meter" is a measuring device. You probably were not thinking of "metre" since you spelled it wrong twice.
Who's the idiot writer now?!
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Thursday 24th August 2017 11:18 GMT gypsythief
Re: Impounded submarine?
They lugged it away on a low-loader, there is a picture of that here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/21/missing-journalist-died-in-submarine-accident-inventor-tells-police
The follow-up article has a picture of it dumped in what looks like a weedy corner of the police station carpark (2nd picture down):
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/23/danish-police-confirm-torso-found-copenhagen-journalist-kim-wall
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Thursday 24th August 2017 11:25 GMT handleoclast
Headline
I admit to being baffled by the reaction to the headline.
Was the body headless? Yes. Uncontrovertibly so.
Was the body found near a topless beach? Yes, for some values of "near." To a lazy bastard like me, if travelling on foot, 10 miles is far. Many people, however, think nothing of a 30-mile commute to work by car.
So was the body found near a topless beach? Yes.
Was the headline intended to be funny? Yes.
Was the headline actually funny? Well, that's a matter of taste. I thought it was mildly amusing.
As another commentard has pointed out, the headline may well have been a homage to the Headless Body in Topless Bar newspaper (for small values of "newspaper") headline from 1983.
Was the headline unacceptably offensive? Nah. I could do much better than that. Maybe not in the headline, but with a little more room to play with (the body of the story) I could instantly outrage 99% of the readership, and the remaining 1% would be outraged after they'd had a while to think about it.
Get real, people. She's dead. She's not going to be any more dead if El Reg reports on her death with a mildly tasteless/mildly amusing headline. If her family are more upset by the headline (if any of them read it, which is doubtful) than by the fact that she's dead and the fact that she was murdered and the fact that she was dismembered then their priorities are badly disordered.
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Thursday 24th August 2017 11:30 GMT James Hughes 1
For a presumably intelligent person, Madsen seems to be exceptionally dumb. Headless/armless torso? Why? DNA will ID the body. Changing his story? Why? Changing a story implies guilt. Burial at sea? Weakest excuse in the history of the world - no one does that - they take the body back to shore.
A bizarre story, made more bizarre by completely irrational behaviour.
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Thursday 24th August 2017 18:40 GMT Tikimon
Planned vs Impulse
He's not really an idiot for such a pathetic story, just very unprepared. He probably didn't plan a murder that day. He had to improvise in the chemical aftermath of physical violence and stress. Wrong state of mind for a crafty cover story, they always say something that comes back to haunt them later.
His biggest complication was having a corpse aboard and no way to get it discreetly ashore. Snug up to the dock and borrow a cart? Anchor offshore and float the body to shore from an attention-grabbing vessel? I'm pretty devious but I'd be hard pressed to get away clean from that scenario, even given time to soberly think about it.
I'm NOT defending a murdering asshole, but his clumsy cover story doesn't necessarily come from being stupid.
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Thursday 24th August 2017 13:57 GMT schafdog
Still charged with murder
... but he is held on a charge with Involuntary manslaughter of special aggravating kind (up to 8 years) after telling the judge (behind closed doors) on Saturday 12th August that an accident on board has cause the journalist's death. And that he had "buried her at sea somewhere in the Bay of Køge"
This information was not public until Monday 21st where the "closed doors" was partly lifted. So how much more has been said by Madsen is still unknown.
What fascinates me is that he thought he could get away with it.
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Thursday 24th August 2017 17:03 GMT TheElder
Evidence
Blood IN the submarine sounds bad. BUT, like nearly everything so far mentioned it is circumstantial evidence. Maybe she cut herself while escaping. One big question not yet answered in public is just how does it seem that body parts were removed? There is a big difference between a shark and a sharp knife, especially near the spine.
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Thursday 24th August 2017 18:48 GMT Tikimon
Re: Evidence
WARNING GRIM STUFF HERE. According to one report, the body had been perforated in ways seemingly intended to let gases escape and not float later. Sharks just saw off chunks, they're not capable of deep penetrating injuries. The nature of the severed appendages won't match a shark bite either. Propeller cuts are hard to mistake for anything else and won't cleanly sever limbs anyway. In Florida we have plenty of manatees with prop scars on their backs and every limb intact.
Unless she stabbed herself to death and fell overboard to be dismembered by knife-wielding (until the lasers arrive) sharks, blood in the submarine is pretty strong evidence of murder.
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Friday 25th August 2017 01:52 GMT JJKing
Burial at sea? HA!
It would have been very difficult to get her body up the conning tower to do his "burial at sea" bullshit unless he used the hatch on the deck. This would account for why she was dismembered. It also puts paid to the "burial at sea" because she wasn't buried, just thrown overboard. Why would the dickhead do the "burial at sea" when he was so close to the port. It's not like he was on a clandestine mission for the Danish (mmm, daaaaanish, arrrrrgh) navy.
Finally, I was surprised they managed to get a DNA match from blood inside a previously water filled sub. I would have thought the sample may have been contaminated by all the crap in sea water especially around a port.
Hope they get this prick for murder and get confined to a special control room for the rest of his life.