Saw that may have been used to dismember journalist Kim Wall found, police believe sex fantasy was motive

Members of The Danish Emergency Management Agency (DEMA) assist police at Kalvebod Faelled in Copenhagen in search of missing body parts of journalist Kim Wall close to the site where her torso was found on on Aug 21, 2017. PHOTO: AFP

COPENHAGEN (AFP) - Divers have recovered a saw that may have been used to dismember Swedish journalist Kim Wall, whose body parts were found after she interviewed an inventor aboard his home-made submarine, Danish police said on Thursday (Oct 12).

The saw was found on Wednesday in Koge Bay, south of Copenhagen, police said. It was there that Wall's headless torso was found 11 days after her Aug 10 disappearance, and where divers recovered her head and legs in plastic bags on Oct 6.

"The saw is now being examined by our forensic technicians to determine whether it is the saw police have been looking for in connection with the submarine case," Copenhagen police inspector Jens Moller Jensen said in a statement.

Wall was last seen on board the submarine on the evening of Aug 10 as she and Peter Madsen, a self-taught engineer and inventor, sailed in waters off Copenhagen.

Madsen, 46, has been accused of Wall's death.

In custody since Aug 11, Madsen early on told police that Wall died when a 70-kilo hatch door fell on her head, and in a panic, he threw her body overboard.

He insisted her body was intact at the time.

But the recovery of her head contradicts his version of events, as police said an autopsy showed "no sign of fracture on the skull and there isn't any sign of other blunt violence to the skull".

Locating Wall's head has been crucial to investigators, as the final autopsy on the torso was unable to establish the cause of death.

However, it did show multiple mutilation wounds to Wall's genitals.

Prosecutors believe he killed her as part of a sexual fantasy, then dismembered and mutilated her body.

Investigators found a hard disk in Madsen's workshop that contained fetish films in which women were tortured, decapitated and burned.

Madsen has refused to cooperate with investigators since the head and legs were found, prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen said on Wednesday.

Danish and Swedish authorities are meanwhile re-examining unresolved murders involving mutilated women to see if there is any link to Madsen.

Wall, 30, worked as a freelance journalist based in New York and China, and her articles were published in the Guardian, The New York Times and others.

On Wednesday, a memorial ceremony was held for her in New York at her alma mater, the Columbia Journalism School.

"Of course we were worried many times," her mother Ingrid Wall said, noting that Kim had "travelled alone by train in the south of China, went on a motorbike in Burma, and showed fascinated girls in North Korea what to do with nail polish."

"Humanity needs more courageous women like Kim. A woman who wanted and dared to tell, to give voice to the weak and make this planet a better place to live."

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