Man who murdered pregnant woman sent to prison for life in Denmark

A heavily pregnant woman clutches her stomach with both hands. A man in Denmark has been sentenced to life imprisonment and subsequent preventive detention after stabbing a heavily pregnant woman to death in 2016. Felix Heyder/dpa

A man in Denmark has been sentenced to life imprisonment and subsequent preventive detention after stabbing a heavily pregnant woman to death in 2016.

The district court in Glostrup announced the sentence on Monday.

The now 30-year-old man is said to have stabbed the woman 11 times with a knife in a park near Copenhagen and then cut off a piece of her nose, according to the court's statement.

The man denied the crime and his defence lawyer said that he would appeal against the judgement.

The murder weapon has still not been found and there is no technical evidence such as fingerprints or DNA to prove the man's guilt.

In 2020, the police deployed an undercover investigator as a cellmate of the suspect, who was serving a prison sentence for the attempted murder of his ex-girlfriend.

The undercover investigator recorded the man describing how he had killed the pregnant woman, which contributed to the court's decision to find him guilty.