A Danish man convicted of torturing and murdering a Swedish journalist has been recaptured after escaping from his suburban jail in Copenhagen by taking a psychologist hostage.
Peter Madsen threatened a prison employee with what appeared to be a homemade explosive device before fleeing from Herstedvester jail, pursued by guards, who alerted a nearby police patrol.
Madsen had tried to hide in a white van but officers surrounded the vehicle and dragged him out. They then handcuffed him to a fence while waiting for bomb disposal officers to arrive.
The Ekstra Bladet tabloid posted a video of Madsen sitting calmly on the grass with his hands behind his back while armed officers watched from a short distance away. After several hours, specialists established the belted bomb-like object around his stomach was a fake.
Police then arrested Madsen and took him back into custody. Nobody was physically hurt during the escape, the head of the prison, Hanne Høegh Rasmussen, said on Tuesday in a press conference, but she added that the incident had traumatised her employees.
In 2018, Madsen was sentenced in the Copenhagen city court to life in prison for killing Kim Wall, a 30-year-old reporter from Sweden whom he lured onboard his homemade submarine with the promise of an interview. He dismembered her body and dumped it at sea.
Madsen – a prolific inventor – lost his appeal, shortly after apologising to the victim’s family who were present in the appeals court. In September, during a TV documentary, he confessed to the crime for the first time.
The programme maker, Kristian Linnemann – who recorded more than 20 hours of telephone conversations with Madsen from inside Herstedvester prison – said on Tuesday he was not surprised by the escape.
“Peter Madsen sees himself at the centre of events. He loves to create stories. He has a huge ego and thinks himself to be very unique,” Linnemann told Danish media.
Madsen has been transferred to another prison, a police inspector, Mogens Lauridsen, said. Life sentences in Denmark usually mean 16 years in prison, but convicts are reassessed to determine whether they would pose a danger to society if released and can be kept longer.
The escape is the latest twist in a case that has gripped Denmark ever since Wall failed to return from a trip on Madsen’s self-built Nautilus submarine in August 2017. Madsen was a semi-celebrity at the time of his arrest. He had made a name for himself after building three submarines and launching two crowdfunded manned space projects.
He was found guilty of premeditated murder, aggravated sexual assault and desecrating a corpse. The trial judge, Anette Burkø, described the crime as a “cynical and pre-planned sexual assault of a particularly brutal nature”. At the time of her death, Wall, aged 30, was a well-known journalist who had written for the Guardian and New York Times.
Madsen claimed Wall died when an accident filled the vessel with toxic exhaust fumes. Burkø said this was “not credible and not consistent with the decision to dismember the body”. Madsen had changed his explanation for Wall’s death several times, the judge noted.
She said the court instead believed the prosecution’s theory that he had sexually assaulted Wall to fulfil a violent sexual fantasy.
It is unusual for a life sentence to be handed down for the murder of a single person in Denmark.
Madsen admitted to only one of the four charges, mistreatment of a corpse. He confessed to dismembering Wall’s body after divers found her head, legs and clothing in Køge Bay, claiming it had been necessary to cut it up to remove it from the submarine.
