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Comment by donquichotte | Hacker News Reader

I'd been following Madsen before the Kim Wall murder. He founded the Copenhagen Suborbitals, a (now estranged) group of very successful rocket amateurs, and he built several working submarines. I have always been impressed by his zeal and his skill to use people to help build the stuff he envisioned.

On one occasion, they used one of the submarines to drag a rocket launch platform into the ocean. How cool is that! Using your self-built submarine to launch your self-built rocket into the stratosphere.

That said, the case seems pretty clear from the outside. I have no idea why he thougt he could get away with this.

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Rather than asking how he thought he’d get away, I would ask: why the fuck would anyone think it’s okay to kill someone? (excluding self-defense scenarios)

He is clearly a psychopath. So to you and me, it's impossible to understand but my best guess is that he would feel something similar to what we might feel "killing" a character in a video game: no compassion, just a curious interest.

I think it goes beyond neutrality, or curiosity. Some seem to have a rather urgent drive towards it. In this case it seems like there's a sexual element as well.

Aside from the vehement distaste I feel towards these abominations, they're also fascinating, in that they seem alien to me.

How does one come about? Does it feel and think as I do? How different is its experience of the world as compared to mine? Is it different on the same level as the hypothetical difference in perception between the sexes? Or is it further removed—as the perception of the world would be different for a bat, say.

Does it have a purpose in nature to perform some kind of function? Or is it a failed experimentation (mutation) on nature's part; over-optimizing certain things leading to "unintentional" suboptimization of other things? Or has it more to do with nurture rather than nature?

The fascination is directly proportional to how hard it is to comprehend this.

He did go through a physiological test and the report says he is sane and do not qualify the definition of psychological ill, but then the report says in the next meaning he is a psychopath with narcissistic behavior, pathological lies and with a severe sexual deviation.

Trying to understand why a sane person would commit such crime is impossible, so I personally consider that what we have heard and seen is not the behavior of a sane person. Trying to frame it like a video game is trying to impose rules of sanity to explain insanity.

From reading the coverage, I never got the impression that it was pre-meditated in so much as he lured her to his submarine to kill her.

I got the impression that it was a poorly covered up accident, or possibly the covering up of a failed sexual advance on her in the heat of the moment. I think he panicked after it had happened, or more likely after she was injured, and decided to cover it up by finishing her off and disposing of her body. I'm not sure he would have thought he could get away with it.

I agree with the sentencing, but I don't think this is as simple as him being a psycopath who wanted to kill someone. I don't think we have the full story.

There is evidence that it was premeditated. From the article:

> They [the jury] heard how he had joked about “a murder plan” involving tying up a woman on his submarine and slitting their throat with a knife in a set of messages sent to a friend, which he had subsequently tried to delete.

Ah yes, I am behind on news coverage. I was following the BBC who don't seem to have covered all the details. Sounds fairly conclusive then!

The judge thought it was pre-meditated. He had extra tools on board of the sub, that usually stayed in his workshop. He had also contacted multiple women in the time up to the killing, asking them to go on a trip with him in the sub. The day before he killed, maimed, and dismembered Kim, he watched a genuine snuff film, on his computer, showing a woman getting killed.

He is up to something like three or four different explanations for an accident, and they have all been refuted by experts. Also his psyc evaluation concluded that he is a danger for others.

I'm sorry but I find your apologetic tone uncomfortable.

Ah, I seem to be very behind on the news coverage then! I didn't know about all that.

I remember it being unclear in the first week or two whether it had been an accident or not, followed by some sketchy details that implied it might have been a cover up. I have not heard much since.

Thanks for the heads up, I of course don't mean to be apologetic at all for the crime, I was surprised at what seemed to be a significant change from the direction the case had been progressing, but this sounds like I was misinformed.

The "accidental" explanations all sounded pretty implausible in the first place. She hit her head and he claims he thought the best thing to do was cut her up and try to hide the body.

One of the reasons we don't have the full story is that Madsen has repeatedly lied about it, in ways that can be verified. The general drift of those lies has been to make it seem like an accident, so we can reasonably assume that the truth does not indicate that it was accidental.

Considering he mentioned wanting to do exactly what he did (slit a woman's throat and kill her on his sub) before he ever met wall. I would go with it was premeditated. "They heard how he had joked about “a murder plan” involving tying up a woman on his submarine and slitting their throat with a knife in a set of messages sent to a friend, which he had subsequently tried to delete." Note, he tried to delete these.

He also changed his story multiple times. Beginning with dropping her off on shore alive, to dropping a hatch on her head and finally carbon-monoxide poisoning.

Edit: Thanks to several people for pointing out large gaps in my knowledge of the case, sounds very much pre-meditated!

Same as Hans Reiser: "I am smart".

> That said, the case seems pretty clear from the outside. I have no idea why he thougt he could get away with this.

I'm not sure how you determined that? The article is light on details and it is not clear what Madsen defense is.

This is not the first article on the topic.

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