The Danish man convicted of torturing and murdering a Swedish journalist on his homemade submarine was sentenced on Tuesday to 21 months in prison for his attempt to escape from a suburban Copenhagen prison last year during which he imprisoned staff and police with ‘ a fake gun and threatened false explosives.
Peter Madsen was quickly arrested on October 20 near Herstedvester Prison in Copenhagen, where he is serving a life sentence for the murder of Kim Wall.
The conviction does not really matter because it will not be added to the life sentence. However, it could play a role if Madsen makes a trial request at some point. Madsen, 50, accepted the verdict.
This 2008 file photo shows Peter Madsen and his submarine. Madsen was sentenced on Tuesday to 21 months for his attempt to escape from a suburban Copenhagen jail last year during which he threatened prison staff and police with a fake gun and fake explosives. (AP)
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Before the verdict was announced, Madsen told the city court in Glostrup in the suburban Copenhagen that he wanted to flee because he considered the prison conditions to be poor, according to the tabloid Ekstra Bladet.
Madsen, one of Denmark’s most notorious criminals, was caught about five minutes after the escape and less than half a mile from the facility. Prison staff who followed him saw him jump into a passing white van and inform police.
He used a fake handgun and sham explosives he made in jail when he threatened to get out of jail. Madsen told the court he intended to hijack cars, take the owners’ cellphones and move south and eventually reach Germany.
In 2018, Madsen was sentenced to life in prison in Copenhagen City Court for the murder of Wall, a 30-year-old Swedish reporter he lured aboard his homemade submarine last year with the promise of an interview. He broke her body and threw it into the sea.
Madsen later lost his appeal, shortly after apologizing to the family of the victim who was present in the appellate court. The sensational case has gripped Scandinavia.
Madsen denies killing Wall. He claims she accidentally died in the submarine, but he admitted throwing her body parts into the Baltic Sea.
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Life imprisonment in Denmark usually means 16 years in prison, but convicts are re-evaluated to determine if it would pose a danger to society if they were released and held longer.
Wall planned to interview Madsen – a self-taught engineer – for a story about a rocket program he set up in 2014, with the goal of building a crowd-funded rocket to send himself into space. But when he finally responded to her, his cash flow had dried up and he had canceled the planned test launch.