Kim Wall was 30 years old and had been pursuing that interview for months.
On August 10, 2017, she boarded the UC3 Nautilus, the largest homemade submarine in the world, built by Danish inventor Peter Madsen. Her partner saw them set sail from Copenhagen harbor at sunset. The next morning, the submarine returned with Madsen alone on board, and he told police that he had left her on the pier, safe and sound, hours earlier.
The Nautilus later sank deliberately. Madsen changed his story twice. First he spoke of an accident involving a heavy hatch, then of carbon monoxide poisoning. On August 21, a passerby found a torso weighed down with metal in Køge Bay. It was Kim Wall. The head, legs, and clothing appeared weeks later, in bags deliberately sunk.
Madsen was sentenced to life in prison in 2018 for murder, sexual assault, and dismemberment. He never coherently explained what happened underwater. Kim Wall had reported from Haiti, North Korea, and the Marshall Islands, and died on an assignment forty minutes from her home.
