One theory I've seen was that PM is a highly eccentric person, that's always had problems fitting in and dealing with other people - when working on co-projects. The submarine project was his own, and he was his own boss. If in fact it was an accident that happened down there, it could be hypothesised that PM was afraid that he would loose everything he cared about if the police did not believe it was an accident. Imagine that everything you hold dear is in risk of being taken away from you - that everything you've worked on for so many years may disappear due to something that wasn't your fault? If you have a derailed mindset and think your odds of not loosing everything will improve if you dispose of the body instead of contacting the police immediately? If you have no faith in other people and their judgements?

I am not defending PM, as I think his reasoning and action in any case were completely psychotic in itself, but I can imagine a scenario that - with everything we know up until now - has not been disproven ... although I'm of the firm belief that he did kill that poor girl.

I'm sure that Madsen will do everything he can to make this sort of explanation for the facts (that is: until some new bit of evidence pops up).

Being eccentric is fine, Howard Hughes was an eccentric and so are many writers and film makers. But butchering bodies (the result of an accident or a murder) goes substantially beyond merely being eccentric, it points to having a complete lack of empathy.

I agree. So far we just haven't heard anything from PM's past that would indicate the lack of empathy ... until now. It's going to be interesting once the police starts talking more about the accident that should've happened. PM must have given a version of what happened, and to some extent a plausible one, since the prosecutor is still sticking to involuntary manslaughter (and most likely also improper interference with a corpse after today's identification and facts).

It still wasn't premeditated murder either. Which is an important distinction.

Best case scenario was his desperation to protect his reputation given this was the first journalist to visit his submarine who proceeded to die within his care would destroy his reputation. He probably freaked out and made a series of bad choices.

Worst case this was a crime of passion.

A 10yr manslaughter sentence seems like an appropriate punishment here.

My comment came out a little more ambiguously than intended, so just for the sake of clarity: I was pointing out that there is not much room for doubt here. There is certainly no reasonable probability that he's innocent with the evidence that's shown up by now.

Imagine for some reason the journalist died, but then he felt the need to hide the body to, for example, hide evidence of an affair.

That makes absolutely zero sense, he was seen going on board with her by many people and there are pictures in the media of it. Besides that, the guy was according to many accounts in an open relationship, on top of that the trip with the sub was going to be published.