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Danish Submarine Inventor Says He Buried Swedish Journalist at Sea
- frenchman_in_ny 9y agoIt's unfortunate to see this & negative press on Copenhagen Suborbitals. Hopefully it doesn't shut down the program.
- tomjen3 9y agoHe is no longer associated with them and hasn't been for some time. They are going to launch a rocket a couple weeks from now, weather permitting.
- frenchman_in_ny 9y agoThanks! I hadn't actually followed that. I remembered about an argument between him and Kristian von Bengtson (which led to vB's departure), but thought he was still with the group. Looking forward to the upcoming launch!
- brynjolf 9y agoNevermind someone died. The most important thing is the reputation of an organization. Holy Moly are you ever compassionate?! She was a well known reporter and talented, show some respect would you?
- mindcrime 9y agoWhile I agree with your basic sentiment, I have to wonder - would this be any less of a tragedy if she wasn't a talented and well-known reporter?
- dmix 9y ago> would this be any less of a tragedy if she wasn't a talented and well-known reporter? I believe so yes. But I'm more honest than most people.
- bhouston 9y agoThis guy does not seem smart.
- discreteevent 9y agoHe is smart. There are many competing forces in a human being. Smartness doesn't always win out. You might even notice this in yourself some day.
- Tomte 9y agoHans Reiser comes to mind. Very strong engineer, comically inept at defending himself in court.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- AdamGibbins 9y agoHe was on certain levels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Madsen_(inventor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Madsen_(inventor)
- hyperbovine 9y agoSmart is not a number. You can be smart and dumb all at the same time.
- ufmace 9y agoIt's sadly common for people to be brilliant at one thing and hopelessly inept at others.
- kpil 9y agoI have worked with a lot of people that were technically competent in a narrow field, but surprisingly clueless in most aspects of life. It was sometimes a bit frustrating, since they could occasionally spend a lot of time on problems that had a simple solution for someone with some common sense. I don't feel smart myself but generally get the big picture so I find it fascinating that smartness is multidimensional like that.
- EternalData 9y agoThis seems like an ill-advised thing to admit?
- Numberwang 9y agobetter admitting accident and ill advised burial than rape, murder and cover-up.
- jacquesm 9y agoBut not better than first misleading authorities with a lie and then to have the truth come out anyway. That tends to make things considerably worse for the defendant.
- avs733 9y agoEven if this was at all believable, to change your answer from 'I dropped her off' to 'she's dead' isn't really going to do you any favors...
- rightbyte 9y agoThe police have found a women body "without arms, head and legs" they said this evening. They have not denied confirmed that it is Kim though. Is it resonable that the limbs comes off from propellers at random in the sea? Does that happen? http://ekstrabladet.dk/112/article6787128.ece http://ekstrabladet.dk/112/article6787128.ece Murder, dismemberment and maybe more. Well, submarine murders are kinda tech related ...
- rleigh 9y agoThere's an awful lot of sea and a very small number of propellers. Plus if the body is floating, it would not be anywhere near anything but the smallest outboard prop. Also, if you look at the shape of a rotating prop, it could clip you, or mangle you a bit, but for most propellers the leading edge pushes you away so won't act as a cutting device unless you push against it or it's at high speed. I would think it very unlikely a propeller would do what was claimed.
- pvaldes 9y agoIf you cut head and arms in the same level (in a single clean cut) maybe, but is not the common way. Dolphins have similar sizes to a human body and had accidents with propellers all the time; they lose tails or heads, but not tails, heads and arms at the same time.
- jacquesm 9y agoNot a chance a body would lose all limbs and the head in such a short time. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/how-long-do-dead-bodies-remain-inta-2009-06-10/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/how-long-do-d... That could only be deliberate, so if it is Kim Wall's body then Madsen will have a lot more explaining to do.
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- tlb 9y agoThere was a time when, if someone in your traveling party died, you'd dig a hole 6' deep and bury them with some words of tribute. Or at sea, you'd weigh them down with a rock and slip them over the side. For future reference, if a traveling companion dies far away from any emergency services (which wasn't really the case here), what is one's legal and moral obligation to bring the body back to civilization?
- QAPereo 9y agoThat is almost certainly a very complicated issue which has a lot to do with where the person died, your country of origin and so on. In this case however the guy lied about the timeline and events, which speaks to something other than death of natural causes.
- lb1lf 9y agoAlso worth mentioning is that the police were very quickly charging him with manslaughter - so quick, they probably had indications something was wrong with his statement even before the sub was raised. Educated guess - there's cell phone coverage in most, if not all of Køge bay; it wouldn't surprise me if she managed to call the emergency services.
- jacquesm 9y ago> it wouldn't surprise me if she managed to call the emergency services. Not from within the metal hull of a partially submerged submarine.
- lb1lf 9y agoI work offshore on occasion; when in areas with excellent coverage, you'll often have (spotty) coverage on decks below the waterline - the signal bounces off any reflective (to RF energy) surface and finds its way into lots of nooks and crannies where you wouldn't expect to have reception.
- fiatjaf 9y agoWho goes alone in a home-made submarine with a strange mad scientist?
- knodi123 9y agotons of people, regularly, over the last few years. this guy was very active and his sub has been in service for the better half of a decade.
- fiatjaf 9y agoSo he was apparently a nice normal guy, with no signs of madness?
- plorkyeran 9y agoOh no, he was very clearly mad. Just not the sort of madness that gave the slightest indication that he'd deliberately cause harm to anyone (accidentally causing harm by talking people into things, on the other hand...).
- fiatjaf 9y agoahahah, sorry, that was an unexpected response. So maybe that's what happened? He talked the journalist into something and later saw that she had died because of that, probably also causing harm to the submarine?, then panic'ed and told lies to the police.
- aw3c2 9y agoMadsen, not madness.
- wodenokoto 9y agoI met him at a conference where he talked. Very charismatic person with a strong passion for his projects. Very friendly and openminded about ideas from anybody, but obviously also eccentric. I would definitely have gone on a tour of that submarine with him.
- dtparr 9y agoFor context/history, here's the discussion from last week when the events were first reported (and his story was that he'd dropped her off at shore, still alive): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998270
- petre 9y agoWhy woukd he kill the poor journalist while also sinking his sub? I'm very curious how this turns out.
- lb1lf 9y agoPure conjecture - the sub was sunk in an attempt to destroy evidence; after all, exposing a crime scene to sea water probably doesn't make it simpler for a forensic investigator to figure out what happened. The murder itself? Try to cover for another crime? Again, (obviously) just conjecture.
- waqf 9y agoI don't get it. If you're seriously going to go with the story "I dropped her off ashore, something else must have happened to her" then you don't want to attract attention to yourself, so you definitely don't sink the sub. Conversely, if you feel you need to sink the sub to destroy evidence, then you don't say you dropped her off, you say she died in the same "accident" that caused the sinking.
- dragonwriter 9y agoCriminal cover-ups are often impulsive and full of logic failures in retrospect. Like other plans made hastily under high stress, really.
- grahn 9y agoMost likely for the same reasons almost all crimes of this sort happen. He made a pass on her that wasn't well received, things got out of hand, emotions took over and at some point he either injured or killed her in the heat of the moment, then panicked and tried to cover up the situation. Violent crime is rarely based on rational, well reasoned acts. I wouldn't try to read too much logic into it.
- dmix 9y agoDo you have any data to support the claim that most crimes of passion involve "him making a pass at her"? This seems like an obvious narrative for a TV show but this is merely one of hundreds of possibilities that could result in her accidental death.
- fiatjaf 9y agoWhat does Madsen say about: * What happened while the two were at the submarine? * What did he do after he supposedly left her at a restaurante? * Why did he changed his story? * How did she die? Did the journalist had any special information/characteristics/secret agenda that could have caused Madsen to kill her and destroy his own life in that way? What was happening in the life of this Madsen recently that could indicate that he was going to do something like that?
- piquadrat 9y agoCopenhagen Police just announced on Twitter that they got reports of a female body in the waters southwest of the city this afternoon https://twitter.com/kobenhavnpoliti/status/899675228250529792 https://twitter.com/kobenhavnpoliti/status/89967522825052979...
- sondr3 9y agoThey're also holding a press conference tonight at 2030 local time. https://twitter.com/KobenhavnPoliti/status/899687678383460352 https://twitter.com/KobenhavnPoliti/status/89968767838346035...
- jacquesm 9y agoWhatever Madsen did trying to cover it up is definitely not going to help when sentencing time rolls around. What a fool. It also doesn't help because no matter what will come out next there will always be a feeling that he's still holding something back. It takes a special kind of warp to claim that you tossed someone overboard because of an accident and then expect to be believed if you already have admitted to lying about dropping her off on shore in the first place. Not to mention that additional grief caused to boyfriend and family by first giving them hope knowing full well that she is dead and then to snatch that hope away again. Asshole. The most logical explanation that fits all the details is that he killed her and is simply fighting a rearguard action on having to admit that not realizing that his confession is going to end up in the 'optional' bin and that whatever he says will be discounted. Expect to see the book being thrown at Madsen, he's lucky if he gets out in the next decade.
- cmyr 9y agoWe can only speculate about what happened here. Whatever it was, it happened in some mixed cloud of panic, fear, anger, shame, &c &c. I think the whole project of trying to evaluate the rationality of Madsen's response is poorly formed. Something terrible happened on the sub. We don't know what, yet. Maybe we will some day. In the interim, I think there's room for compassion towards all involved.
- noncoml 9y ago> I think there's room for compassion towards all involved Compassion? Seriously? I can only assume you are a close friend. He is putting the family of Kim Wall through hell by giving them hopes she is still alive. He sinks the submarine on purpose so they never find out what really happened. Her body is found with no head, arms or legs. He deserves no compassion at all. A fair trial yes. But no compassion whatsoever.
- jacquesm 9y agoThere is this thing that I keep noticing. Some kind of 'faux balance', where two things that are totally not at all on the same level are given equal billing. Nazi's and counter protesters, killers and their victims, Intelligent Design and science. Highly annoying development, as if if there are two sides to some story they both automatically deserve equal weighing. If Madsen did all this - and there is no evidence so far that the did not - then he definitely does not deserve compassion. To coldly claim he dropped the woman off knowing full well that she was dead is utterly despicable.
- sarabande 9y agoI understand this is a juicy story -- but forgive me, how is this not considered off-topic given the HN guideline: Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
- dtparr 9y agoshrug Apparently the peculiarity and the fact that the accused is well known in certain tech/engineering sectors has passed the 'things hackers are interested in' bar. From the same guidelines you quote: Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its 'flag' link.