Police searching for missing Swedish journalist Kim Wall found a body without a head or extremities was found Monday in the Baltic Sea. The remains were later identified as her.
Police spokesman Jens Moller Jensen said the female torso was discovered by a passerby as police mounted an intense search.
“We have recovered the body. ... It is the torso of a woman,” Moeller Jensen said, Fox News reported. “An inquest will be conducted.”
Moeller Jensen said the arms and legs were “deliberately” cut off the body.
Wall was known to be on board a homemade submarine owned by 46-year-old Danish inventor Peter Madsen before her death. Madsen initially told police he dropped Wall off on land before she disappeared, but just before the discovery, Madsen changed his story to say she died on board the submarine in an accident and he buried her at sea.
Madsen was arrested after his sub sank off the coast of Denmark on Aug. 10 and he was charged with manslaughter in Wall’s death. He has maintained his innocence and said the sub sank because of technical issues.
An autopsy of the body was completed Tuesday and DNA test results are expected Wednesday.
Wall graduated from Columbia University and London School of Economics. She was based between Beijing and New York, CNN reported. Her work had appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, and Time, among others.
Columbia classmate Valerie Hopkins said Wall’s “exuberance” was “contagious” and that she had written stories about voodoo in Haiti, tourism in North Korea, and Idi Amin’s legacy in Uganda over the last four years since graduating, CNN reported.