Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast · Ben Gibson

Murder on a Submarine - Kim Wall

·1 hr 4 min·4 clips

Peter Madsen is rescued alone while the UC-3 Nautilus slowly sinks without Kim Wall aboard.

1. Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast covers the submarine murder case of Kim Wall in Copenhagen, Denmark. 2. Ben and Nicole host the episode, and Kim Wall matters because she was a Swedish journalist whose work took her across multiple countries. 3. The episode asks how a planned interview on Peter Madsen’s UC-3 Nautilus turned into a missing-person case. 4. Kim Wall had reported from post-war Sri Lanka, Haiti after the earthquake, Cuba’s underground tech culture, and the Marshall Islands’ nuclear-testing legacy. 5. Her bylines included The New York Times, The Guardian, Vice, and The Atlantic. 6. She studied international relations at the London School of Economics and later earned graduate degrees at Columbia University in journalism and international affairs. 7. By summer 2017, she was living in Copenhagen with her boyfriend, Ole, and preparing to move to Beijing. 8. Peter Madsen had built a public reputation around unusual engineering projects, including Copenhagen Suborbitals and the UC-3 Nautilus. 9. The submarine was crowdfunded and had made Madsen a local celebrity who gave talks and interviews. 10. Wall first tried to arrange an interview with Madsen, but dates kept getting postponed before he called her on the morning of August 10. 11. He invited her to board the submarine that evening for a short trip in the harbor, and she told Ole she would be back by about 9:30. 12. Wall sent a message from the submarine around 8:30 p.m. saying there were "cookies and coffee" on board and that they were about to go down. 13. When she did not come home, Ole waited until about 1:45 before calling police. 14. Danish police, the Coast Guard, and the Navy searched Copenhagen waters with patrol boats, helicopters, sonar, and marine radio checks. 15. The UC-3 Nautilus was found the next morning south of Copenhagen, with Madsen on top of the hatch and Wall absent. 16. Witnesses later saw the submarine sink slowly, and Madsen told police that he had dropped Wall off safely on land. 17. CCTV footage and witness checks did not support his account, and investigators found blood and Wall’s clothing inside the submarine. 18. Madsen later changed his story and claimed an accident, then another version involving carbon monoxide poisoning. 19. The hosts describe the tone as narrative and chronological, with discussion between the two hosts as they react to each development. 20. Listeners who like maritime true crime and forensic timelines will likely stay engaged, while anyone avoiding graphic case details may skip it.

As heard by us

A measured true crime breakdown that keeps returning to the details that do not quite add up.

The episode works best when it stays close to the sequence of events: the submarine, the shore drop-off, the early questioning, and the small physical clue on Peter's nose that keeps his account from settling into anything neat.

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Why you'd press play

You want the story to stay with the details that do not line up.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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