How a Danish teenager's murder was finally solved—and the marketing manager convicted in 2024
Emilie Anine Skovgaard Meng, 17, vanished in the early hours of 10 July 2016 after leaving a railway station in Korsør, Denmark. Her body was discovered six months later in a lake 60 kilometres away. In June 2024, a marketing manager and youth football coach was sentenced to life imprisonment for her murder.
Emilie Anine Skovgaard Meng, 17, was a typical teenager heading home from a night out when she disappeared from Korsør, a small Danish town of roughly 14,000 people. In the early hours of 10 July 2016, around 4:00 a.m., she said goodbye to friends at Korsør railway station and began the approximately 3.3-kilometre walk to her mother's apartment. She never arrived. The following morning, when Emilie failed to appear for a planned performance at her local church at 9:30 a.m., her disappearance became public—and quickly became a national obsession.
The search for Emilie captured Denmark's attention. Police, hundreds of volunteers, mounted units, divers, and canine teams combed the region in one of the country's most high-profile missing persons investigations. Yet weeks turned into months with no sign of the teenager. Four months into the search, investigators explored three primary theories: that Emilie had run away, that she had died in an accident, or that she was the victim of a crime.
During this period, police investigated several suspects. A 33-year-old truck driver and a 67-year-old man were scrutinised, with the latter's house searched five times. But without a body or conclusive evidence, the case stalled.
Then, on Christmas Eve 2016—nearly six months after Emilie vanished—her body was discovered in a lake at Regnemarks Bakke in Borup, Køge Municipality, approximately 60 kilometres from where she disappeared. The discovery was both a breakthrough and a tragedy. A post-mortem examination determined that Emilie had been strangled. On 25 December, police held a press conference confirming that she had been the victim of what they described as a "cruel and callous" crime.
But identifying the perpetrator would take years. The investigation continued in relative obscurity, files accumulating, leads pursued and abandoned. It was not until April 2023—nearly seven years after Emilie's death—that Philip Patrick Westh, a 32-year-old marketing manager and youth football coach, was charged with deprivation of liberty, rape, and murder. The charges were serious and specific: Westh was accused not only of Emilie's murder, but also of abducting and raping another girl, and attempting to abduct a third. Notably, Westh owned a car matching the model sought by investigators in the original 2016 inquiry.
