Inventor Admits to Dismembering, Not Killing, Journalist Kim Wall on Submarine

The Danish inventor who's been charged with murdering Swedish freelance journalist Kim Wall aboard his homemade submarine admitted on Monday that he dismembered her body, but still denies that he had anything to do with her death, CNN reports.

Wall, 30, was working on a story about Peter Madsen, 46, when she boarded his submarine with him on August 10, according to the Washington Post. A day later, the boat sank at sea, and Madsen made it back to shore, but Wall had gone missing. Later that month, a dismembered torso washed up off the coast of Copenhagen that local authorities matched with the reporter's DNA. Investigators later found her head, legs, and clothing in bags that were weighed down in the water with pieces of metal, BBC reports.

The inventor has continued to change his story about what happened to Wall during the doomed August 10 trip. Before Wall's torso was found, Madsen first said he dropped the journalist off at the port of Copenhagen before the boat sank, the New York Times reports. He later said that Wall died aboard the vessel after hitting her head on the sub's hatch and that he had buried her body at sea, denying he had mutilated her. On Monday, Madsen admitted to dismembering Wall's body, but now says she died of carbon monoxide poisoning, according to local police.

"This explanation of course causes police to want to get further supplemental statements from the medical examiner, as well from the defense ministry's submarine experts," chief investigator Jens Moeller Jensen told CNN.

According to CNN, Wall's body sustained 14 stab wounds to her ribcage and genitals "around or shortly after her death." And in early October, investigators found videos that they "presume to be real" of women being decapitated, strangled, and tortured on Madsen's lab computer, Reuters reports. Madsen told a court that the computer was used "by everyone in the laboratory" and wasn't his.

The inventor has been detained and charged with murder, mutilation, and "sexual assault without intercourse," BBC reports. Although he admitted to dismembering the journalist's body, he still denies the remaining counts against him. According to the Times, Madsen could face up to 16 years in prison if found guilty of Wall's murder.