Inventor Who Killed Journalist Kim Wall Recaptured After Escaping From Prison While Claiming to Have Bomb
A Danish inventor convicted of murdering journalist Kim Wall on his submarine, has been recaptured after he escaped from a prison in suburban Copenhagen, where he reportedly took a hostage and threatened guards with a bomb.
Peter Madsen fled the Herstedvester Prison, in Albertslund, after threatening a prison employee with what appeared to be a home-made explosive on Tuesday, according to the Ekstra Bladet newspaper. The bomb was later found to be a fake.
The killer managed to get around 500 meters from the prison before he was recaptured in a massive police operation.
Video footage published by the Danish newspaper shows the convicted killer sitting in the grass with his arms behind his back while armed police watch him from a distance. Madsen had a "belt-like object" around his stomach, the newspaper reported. A bomb squad was also on the scene.
Police on Twitter confirmed a man had been arrested in Albertslund after attempting an escape, but did not reveal his identity.
After several hours, experts determined the belted object around Madsen's abdomen was fake, police said at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon. Madsen was then taken back into custody.
The head of the prison, Hanne Høegh Rasmussen, said no one at the prison was injured during Madsen's escape, but added that the incident had traumatized employees.
According to Ekstra Bladet, Madsen has previously been placed in solitary confinement due to suspicions that he was plotting an escape.
The prison was placed on a lockdown on Tuesday, with inmates confined to their cells so they could be searched.
Madsen was sentenced to life in prison in 2018 after he was found guilty on charges of premeditated murder, aggravated sexual assault and desecrating a corpse.
Wall, an award-winning freelance journalist from Sweden who had reported from around the globe for outlets including The New York Times and Time magazine, boarded Madsen's homemade submarine in Copenhagen harbor on August 11, 2017.
She was reported missing when she did not return from the trip. Her mutilated body was discovered on a beach more than a week later.
Throughout his trial, Madsen denied killing 30-year-old Wall, maintaining that her death was an accident. He admitted throwing her remains into the sea.
But in a television documentary that aired recently, Madsen finally confessed that he killed her. The confession was made to a journalist who secretly recorded more than 20 hours of phone conversations with Madsen for the documentary, called The Secret Recordings with Peter Madsen.
Madsen replied "yes" when the journalist asked if he had killed Wall. "There is only one who is guilty, and that is me," he reportedly said.
