Model Ivana Smit May Have Been Killed Before 20-Story Fall

On Dec. 7, Dutch model Ivana Smit plummeted nude to her death from a 20th-floor apartment owned by American bitcoin trader Alexander Johnson in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Her body was found on a sixth floor balcony hours after she was last seen alive.

Malaysian authorities confirm that in the early morning hours on the day she died, Smit went home from a party with Johnson and his Indonesian wife. But authorities has refused to consider the crime suspicious, and has implied instead that her fall was accidental. However, Smit’s parents adamantly disagree and are working to prove that their daughter’s death should be investigated as a murder. They have hired Dutch pathologist Frank De Grott who told The Daily Beast that there is no way to know for sure exactly how and when Smit died pending further lab results from an autopsy he conducted on Smit’s body when it was returned to the Netherlands. He also said that there is no doubt that there was a fall from the 20th floor, however, there is another large injury to the back of her head, a large bruise.

He said, “I can guarantee that if you make a long fall to the earth there is no time to get bruises.” De Groot thinks the impact of the fall might have killed the woman, something happened before she crashed through the awning of the sixth-floor balcony. The Daily Beast writes that bruisning only takes place for five to 10 seconds after death, until the heart’s final beat, so any major bruising on Smit’s body would have been there before she died. This does not rule out e possibility that she slammed into the side of the building on the way down, or died a slow death on the sixth-floor balcony, or even that she received the bruise the day before through an unrelated incident. Smit also had some spots on her arms. “She has bruises on her arms which means I cannot exclude her having been grabbed,” De Groot said to The Daily Beast. “But also does not confirm it.”