The most famous Danish prisoner Peter Madsen tried to escape on Tuesday. However, someone helped the inventor convicted of the murder of a journalist. This was stated by investigators in a document available to the court hearing the escape. “He escaped with the help of one or more accomplices,” investigators write, citing the Danish media.
Forty-nine-year-old Madsen is serving a life sentence in Herstedvester Prison in the suburbs of Copenhagen. Three years ago, in a submarine built by this inventor and designer himself, he sexually abused and tortured Swedish journalist Kim Wall to death. He cut her body, threw the remains into the sea off the coast of Denmark, and then deliberately sank the submarine.
On Tuesday, he managed to escape, even if only for five minutes. Police are now finding out how this is possible.
So far, it is known that Madsen’s action began on Tuesday morning. He pulled a pistol on a prison guard, threatening a prison psychologist with it. Subsequent analysis showed that it was a dummy, but made so believably that the guards considered it a real weapon.
Madsen took one of the guards hostage and forced the gate open. Armed security guards chased him. But the frantic chase didn’t last long: about a mile from Madsen Prison, he hijacked a van and forced the driver to start and leave immediately, or he would be shot. “Go, go, go! If you don’t go, I’ll trick you!” shouted the designer according to sources in the daily Politiken.
What exactly happened in the following seconds is not yet known. However, one of the guards burst into the van, disarmed the attacker and handcuffed him.
He then let him sit on the lawn because Madsen had what looked like an explosives belt. Less than an hour later, pyrotechnicians arrived at the scene with a robot for disposing of explosives, who discovered that the belt was also a dummy, although again very believably made. This ended Madsen’s attempt to escape.
“She has a huge ego”
“We sent our people to see him, they caught him at 10:26,” prison director Mogens Lauridsen told a news conference.
Remarkable in the case is that, according to the police, the driver of the assaulted van is a foreigner who does not speak Danish. It is therefore possible that he did not understand Madsen’s threats, and this contributed to the neutralization of the escaped prisoner.
Prior to his conviction, the designer built several mini-submarines and also worked on space projects. Police are now investigating what he used to make models of weapons and explosives in prison and how he came up with the material.
In court, the inventor denied murdering journalist Wall. He did not confess until the beginning of September this year in a documentary made about him by Kristian Linnemann. He spent a total of twenty hours on telephone conversations with Madsen and told Danish journalists that he was not surprised by Tuesday’s escape attempt. “He has a huge ego and thinks of himself as a very unique person. He likes to be the center of attention and he likes to talk about himself,” Linnemann said.
He planned the murder in advance
Thirty-year-old Wall boarded a submarine called Nautilus with Madsen on August 10, 2017. She wanted to write a report about the designer and his technical inventions. When the court sentenced him to life imprisonment for her murder, he ruled in favor of the indictment, according to which Madsen planned the act in advance and “realized his violent sexual fantasies.” Investigators then found videos on his computer depicting the physical abuse of women.
People sentenced to life in Denmark may be released after sixteen years behind bars, but this is not automatic. The Special Commission shall consider whether the person concerned would not constitute a danger at large.
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