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Murder of Emilie Meng

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Emilie Meng
Born
Emilie Anine Skovgaard Meng

(1998-07-31)31 July 1998
Korsør, Denmark
Disappeared10 July 2016
Korsør Station
Body discovered24 December 2016
Burial placeSkt. Povls Kirke
NationalityDanish

In the early hours of 10 July 2016, a 17-year-old Danish girl named Emilie Anine Skovgaard Meng (31 July 1998 – c. 10 July 2016) disappeared in Korsør. Five months later, her body was found in Køge Municipality. The case received major media attention and police and civilian investigations. On 26 April 2023, 32-year-old Philip Patrick Westh was charged with Meng's murder. In June, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for her murder, and the abductions of two other girls.

Disappearance

Street façade of Korsør Station where Meng last was seen alive photographed in 2015.

Meng was last seen walking home alone on foot from Korsør Station where she and friends arrived at 4 a.m. on 10 July 2016 after a night out in Slagelse.[1] She was expected to sing at a local church at 9:30 that morning, but never showed up.[2] Many volunteers helped the police to look for Meng. Several tips[3] led to three suspects, including a 33-year-old truck driver, and a 67-year-old whose house was searched five times, but they were later released. After four months, police operated on three theories: Meng had run away, was involved in an accident, or was the victim of a crime. During the 168 days she was missing, volunteers hung up missing person posters across the nation, with hundreds of volunteers also searching for Meng.[4][5][6]

Discovery of Meng's body

Korsør Church where Meng was buried.

On 24 December 2016, Meng's body was found in a lake at Regnemarks Bakke near Borup in Køge Municipality.[7] Police authorities cordoned off and investigated the scene. Police announced at a press conference the following evening that Meng had been the victim of a very serious crime. Investigation by police of evidence and mobile traffic from the area where Meng disappeared and where she was found took place.

On 26 December, a memorial service was held at Korsør Station attended by several hundreds of people, including the mayor of Slagelse Municipality, Stén Knuth. On 30 December, Meng's family requested the removal of all missing person posters since she had now been found. Her funeral was held on 19 January 2017 in St. Povl's Church in Korsør. She was buried in Korsør Church cemetery.[8][9]

In June 2017, the South Zealand and Lolland-Falster Police published the results of technical examinations of a surveillance recording from Korsør Station. The police's reconstruction of the video showed footage of an indoor corridor in addition to a view towards the station's car park the top left corner. Quite faintly, a bright passenger car could be seen driving around at about 4:07 a.m. on 10 July 2016. The poor quality of the video made it difficult to determine the car's model, but following several months of work abroad, it was an expert's assessment that it most likely was a Hyundai i30, model 2011-2016.[10] By then, police had interrogated roughly 650 people in the case, written close to 2,000 reports and compared approximately 400,000 cars with telephone information.[11]

In 2021, Danish police confiscated a white van that at the time of Meng's murder had belonged to Peter Madsen, a Danish convicted murderer for the 2017 killing of Swedish journalist Kim Wall, unsuccessfully looking for possible traces of blood in the vehicle.[12]

2023 Kirkerup child abduction

Kirkerup Church near the scene of the child abduction which lead to the apprehension of Meng's suspected murderer.

On 15 April 2023, at about 11:45 am local time, a 13-year-old girl disappeared in Kirkerup, Slagelse Municipality after finishing delivery of newspapers to the surrounding area.[13][14] The same day, police, cooperating with other authorities, used dogs, drones, and helicopters to secure evidence.[15][16][17] A local property was cordoned off on the following morning.[18][19][20] At 10:57 am, police authorities stated they were working based on the assumption that a crime had been committed.[21][22][23][24] The event drew intensive media coverage in Denmark towards the otherwise relatively unknown village.[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] Early in the afternoon, police called for a press conference to be held at 3:00 pm.[35][36][37]

Briefly delayed, police inspector Kim Kliver announced that a 32-year-old man, shortly before the conference was to have begun, had been arrested in his house in Svenstrup, Korsør in which the missing girl was found alive and conscious.[38][39][40][41][42] Her mother wrote, "27 hours of nightmare is over and my dearly beloved (Victim's Name) is home",[43][44] in addition to Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen, expressing her gratitude.[45][46] Norwegian NRK journalist Søren Arildsen later described the event as follows: "A country that had held its breath for 27 hours could exhale. Almost all of Denmark had become involved. But primarily the local community".[47] Two other persons had also been arrested but released the same day because of their innocence.[48] Sunday morning, the police had received 600 inquiries from locals about the case[49][50] including dashcam recordings.[51][52] Correlation to the murder of Meng was at this point not publicly known, first being confirmed by police on 24 April.[53]

Trial

Retten i Næstved (Court of Næstved) where legal proceedings against the 32-year-old are currently taking place.

On 18 April, the 32-year-old defendant was arraigned (grundlovsforhør) at the Court of Næstved charged with at 11:46 am on 15 April, having initiated a long-lasting deprivation of liberty as well as committed violence, threats of violence, and several rapes against the 13-year-old.[54][38] He pleaded "partly guilty" and was pre-trial detained until 11 May, with his name being prohibited from public release.[38][55] The judge argued for the detention partly by reason of the probability that other perpetrators could be at large.[56][57] Despite the name ban (which is normal in serious cases in Denmark and automatically removed once a person has been convicted), the defendant's name persisted circulating on social media.[58]

On 24 April, the B.T. reported that police had seized a white Hyundai i30 in Slovakia which the defendant had sold to a Slovak family in 2016; the same model as the one sought after by police in 2016 regarding Meng's murder. At a press convention held by South Zealand and Lolland-Falster Police on 26 April, it was announced that the 32-year-old had been charged with Meng's murder, as well as another unsolved crime in Sorø committed during November 2022.[59][60][61][62] The same day, it was confirmed by police that the 32-year-old back in 2016 had been integrated in Meng's murder case and was among the 1,450 individuals who the police had collated DNA from,[63] but the DNA sample collected from the victim was too degraded and mixed to get a result with the methods existing at the time.[64]

On 9 May, the defendant voluntarily prolonged his detention.[62]

On 24 April 2024, the name ban against the now 33-year-old defendant Philip Patrick Westh was lifted.[65]

Westh's trial began on 14 May 2024 at Næstved Court House. There, he admitted long-term kidnapping, sexual relationship other than intercourse, illegal coercion and violence against the 13-year-old girl. She was bound with plastic strips when the police found her at Westh's residence. He also admitted possession of child pornography. He pleaded not guilty to the rest of the charges, which included attempted murder against the 13-year-old, murder of Emilie Meng and attempted rape and kidnapping of a 15-year-old Efterskole student in Sorø.[66]

In June, Westh was found guilty of the murder of Emilie Meng and the abductions of two other girls, and was sentenced to life imprisonment[67][68][69]. Wesths attorney annnounced that the ruling would be appealed.[67]

Legacy

The case was widely reported in the media. Three years after her disappearance, on 22 August 2019, television station TV 2 published a documentary named Hvor er politiet? (Where are the police?).[70] A few months later, broadcaster DR released a documentary series titled Emilie Meng – en efterforskning går galt (Emilie Meng – an investigation goes wrong).[71] During two seasons in 2019 and 2020, the B.T. made 22 episodes of the podcast series Emilie Meng Mysteriet (The Emilie Meng Mystery).[72] In August 2020, a true crime book titled Pigen der forsvandt (The girl who disappeared) authored by Jesper Vestergaard Larsen and Bo Nordström Weile was published by People's Press.[73] In 2021, a four-episode documentary by streaming service Discovery+ premiered under the name Nogen ved noget om Emilie Meng (Someone knows something about Emilie Meng).[74]

See also

References

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