A nightmare in the waters of the Baltic sea: what we know about the death of Kim Vallee

10 August at 19:00 Swedish journalist Kim Vallee in Copenhagen village aboard a mini-submarine built by the project of the Danish inventor Peter Madsen, a local celebrity to interview him. A trip to the Danish island of Borneholm, which was to last for a few hours, became journalist of the latter.

On the morning of 11 August, the submarine sank due to problems with the ballast tank as claimed in consequence of the inventor. Madsen was saved from the submarine and immediately told reporters that he was there alone, a Swedish journalist marooned on an island off Copenhagen the previous evening. However, the guy Valle and her friends, and not waiting for some news from her, went to the police.

After version with landing Kim Vallee on one of the Islands began to cause all doubts in the police, Madsen was taken into custody for 24 days. He changed his story and said that the journalist was killed on Board the submarine in an accident, her body is the inventor of the “buried at sea tradition” in the sea in the Bay Koge South of Copenhagen. Ten days later the torso of the body of the journalist without the head and limbs were discovered on the coast near the Danish capital and the story began to acquire more sinister connotations.

The whole story and its versions in the material LIGA.net.

Who was Kim Vallee

Born in southern Sweden Kim Valle received a degree in international relations at the London school of Economics and political science, visited on an exchange program at Beijing University, and then received a master’s degree at Columbia University in the United States.

Working as a freelance journalist for the leading Western publications The Guardian, The New York Times, Vice, Slate, she visited a number of interesting corners of the globe, telling readers the stories about the torture chambers of the Ugandan dictator and cannibal IDI Amin, the life of the Chinese communities in USA and Africa, the struggle for access to the Internet in Cuba, vodun in Haiti, people who drink human blood in the United States, the fetishists.

In 2016, the Valle was awarded the Hansel Mita for the article “the Exodus” about the effects of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. Friends of the deceased say that she was from the category of journalists who prefer to explore the world instead of writing articles, sitting in the office. Shortly before the interview with Madsen journalist decided to move to Beijing with her boyfriend and start a new life there.

Friends of the journalist say that in a bitter twist of fate, Kim Wall, who visited a number of dangerous locations in distant countries, were killed not far from home in a stable Europe.

Danish Musk

A suspect in the murder of journalist Peter Madsen calls himself an inventor-entrepreneur. In local media it has repeatedly called Scandinavian Elon Musk, compared with the French Explorer and inventor Jacques-Yves Cousteau and popularizer of science Carl Sagan.

Peter Madsen after the sinking of the boat on 11 August (photo – EPA)

Childhood Madsen was heavy, judging by what he told journalists earlier about his father. When he was six years old, his parents divorced. The future inventor was left to live with his father, owner of a small hotel, which he later called authoritarian and prone to violence. “When I think about my father, I think, how would children in Germany feel if their father was a commandant in a concentration camp. How it is to feel that your own father is the villain?” said Madsen in 2014 in an interview for a biography, written by journalist Thomas Durina.

In his youth, Madsen became interested in military history and technology. At age 15, he creates his first company – the Danish space Academy, and three years later started to study engineering, but soon left that profession, considering that already knows enough about the construction of submarines.

His first, seven-meter mini-submarine Madsen was built in 2001. A second submarine Madsen, a 13-metre UC2 Kraka is now presented in the exposition of the Danish Technical Museum in Helsingor.

Submarine Nautilus (photo – EPA)

The 18-metre Submarine Nautilus, which killed or was killed Valle, was built in 2008 by donations that Madsen was collected online and through friends. Its value amounted to 200 thousand dollars. With 25 volunteers who helped build the submarine for three years, Madsen later quarreled.

After starting Nautilus Madsen goes on to implement their plans for the rocket. He wanted to launch a rocket into space, created by the hands of Amateurs without any help from the state or large corporations. In 2008, together with Christian von Bagdona it creates non-profit aerospace organization Copenhagen Suborbitals. In 2011, the organization managed to launch a single stage rocket HEAT-1X hybrid engine from the island of Borneholm in the Baltic sea. Later, the organization received the award from the International aviation organizations. In 2014, Madsen creates her own project for the development of space technology and Space Lab RLM is leaving Copenhagen Suborbitals, which has been successfully implementing projects and at the present time.

“My passion is finding ways how to travel beyond the known worlds,” wrote the inventor on his website Rocket Madsen Space Lab.

Biographer Madsen, journalist Thomas Dursin described it in an interview with the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten as a man with difficult character, great ambition and desire to do everything as he sees fit. According to him, the inventor of life was accompanied by conflicts with people with whom he worked. To violence of course is not reached, but the debate was fierce. At the same time, he argues that Madsen is married, although the relationship with his wife can be described as free and preferred as dwelling their submarine.

What the investigation showed

The Madsen currently charged with manslaughter. It was found that the submarine was flooded on purpose. On Board raised from the seabed of the submarine found traces of blood Valle, however, some other evidence because of the consequences of flooding could not be found.

August 23, the police confirmed that the body discovered on the shore of the island of Amager without a head and limbs belongs to the journalist. It was also known that the body was tied to iron rebar, to prevent its ascent to the surface. “As for the autopsy, I can add that the body there are some injuries that appear to have been deliberately made so that the air left the body, it floated in the water or left on the seabed. Similarly, the piece of metal was attached to the body, to ensure that it will sink to the bottom,” said the Danish investigator Jens Jensen.

Danish divers continue search for body parts Swedish journalist (photo – EPA)

Madsen denied the murder of the journalist. “The suspect denied the murder and dismemberment of the human body,” – said the police on Friday, August 25. About some new details in the Danish police refuse to disclose, citing “the private nature of the case and ongoing investigation.”

At the moment, the inventor sent for psychiatric examination. Danish prosecutors want to extend his detention after 5 November. If the fault murder is proved, Madsen faces at least 12 years in prison. If the incident would be an accident, he faces 3-4 months in prison for ridding the body into the sea.

The media is now discussing several versions of the causes of death of the journalist.

Accident

Madsen helped to build Nautilus Jens Falkenberg suggested that the journalist could really die in an accident – slipped on the stairs inside the submarine and to break down.

“When I heard that she was dead, my first thought was that she might have slipped on the stairs leading to the first hatch,” said Falkenberg in an interview with Metroxpress. He also mentioned that there is a door on steel handle which is easy to hit the back of his head due to carelessness.

Serial killer?

Because of the coincidence of some parts of crimes after the arrest, Madsen Danish police reopened the murder case of 22-year-old Japanese tourist Kazuko Toyonaga in 1986. Toyonaga dismembered body was discovered in the black bags over a month after her disappearance in different places off the coast of Copenhagen. The murder still remains unsolved and causes a lot of speculation.

The version of the connection Madsen murder Toyonaga immediately caused a stormy discussion in social networks and forums about the mysterious murders. At the time of death Toyonaga, Madsen was only 15 years old and many doubt that the teen could dismember the body and discreetly throw the remains into the sea without assistance.

Kazuko Toyonaga (photos wikipedia.org)

And if we talk about a serial killer, in Europe there are many other candidates for the role responsible for the murder of a Japanese student, based on the handwriting of the offender. For example, the infamous “manhunter” – the Briton John Sweeney, who dismembered two of his ex-girlfriends and threw the remains into canals in London and Rotterdam in the 90s.

Expressed and suspicions about Montenegrin killer, Smajo of Gorlice, which the FBI suspects in the murder and dismemberment of several women in Belgium, Albania and the United States, parts of the body which he had scattered in trash bags in different parts of the city.

The violence of the drug cartel

It is known that mini-submarines are often used for transporting drugs in Latin America and the Caribbean. On 23 August the Danish edition The Copenhagen Post reported that according to an anonymous source, Kim Vallee wrote a piece on the drug trade and were able to investigate the possible involvement of Madsen in a similar business. The murder and dismemberment of bodies is quite in the tradition of Mexican drug traffickers.

Colombian military near the submarine, which the mafia wanted to use for the transport of cocaine, 2005 (photo – EPA)

A dangerous profession

The death Valle opened the discussion around the problems that exist in modern journalism.

First, although wine Madsen has not yet been proven, some media have already managed to declare him guilty of murder and not a serial killer.

Second, a friend of Valle Sruti Gottipati in a column for The Guardian drew attention to the growing risks journalists-freelancers and gender bias. “As the media face shrinking budgets, they increasingly rely on freelancers, which cost less and are often willing to take responsibility for the messages of risky of places did not send full-time employees. Even against this background, the competition is tough, and women freelancers work hard so that their gender was not considered a hindrance”, she said.

The journalist writes that violence against women even in this Bastion of gender equality like Scandinavia, not eradicated. “There is a way to knock down women who stand out toughness, wit and courage. There is a tradition to stifle the voices that dare to speak to humiliate women who go beyond their comfort zones to crush those who violate the rules,” she said.

The OSCE representative on freedom of the media, Harlem Desir called for the Danish police to find and punish those responsible for the deaths of the journalist, and said that journalism is a dangerous profession, especially for women. “Journalists-women are particularly vulnerable to attacks and intimidation”, – he stressed. Desir also hinted at underestimating the work of freelance journalists who often highlight important events and sacrificing their lives.

The story of the murder of Kim Vallee has eclipsed the expanses of Scandinavia another mysterious story about the murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986, which for many years is the interest of the audience. In social networks have drawn Parallels between the deaths of the Valle and the plot of the story of the popular Danish-Swedish series the Bridge, which begins with the discovery of the dismembered woman’s body under the bridge linking Denmark and Sweden.

Perhaps investigators will eventually be able to achieve from Madsen confessions, however, not less likely, and that true details of the death of the journalist will remain a mystery.

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