Model Plunged to Her Death After Threesome with Bitcoin Mogul and Wife — but Who Killed Her? By Liam Quinn

Eight years after a Dutch model died after falling several stories onto a balcony in Malaysia, a court ruled that a homicide probe would be reopened.

Ivana Smit’s naked body was found dead on a sixth-floor balcony in Kuala Lumpur in December 2017, having fallen several stories, New Straits Times, a Malaysian paper, reported.

According to a report from another Malaysian outlet, The Star, American Bitcoin mogul Alexander Johnson and his wife had admitted to having a threesome with Smit shortly before she died.

In 2019, a coroner ruled Smit’s death to be the result of misadventure, saying that there was no evidence of foul play, New Straits Times reported. Her mother reportedly appealed the ruling shortly after.

Later that year, according to the paper, a judge overturned the coroner’s ruling, instead ruling that Smit’s death was caused by a person.

Smit’s mother subsequently sued the Inspector General of Police in 2020, claiming police did not properly investigate her daughter’s death.

On Tuesday, July 29, Judge Roz Mawar Rozain ruled in favor of Smit’s mother, awarding her 1.1 million in Malaysian ringgit and ordering police to reopen the investigation, according to New Straits Times, The Star and Harian Metro.

“The police are directed to brief the Attorney General’s Chambers (AGC) every three months from the date of this judgment on the updates of the investigation,” the judge wrote in her ruling, according to The Star.

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Speaking to reporters, Smit’s mother’s attorney, Datuk Sankara Nair, expressed satisfaction with the ruling.

“This judgment is historic and sets an example of the responsibility that senior police officers and authorities must shoulder in conducting proper investigations into unnatural and suspicious deaths,” he said, according to Harian Metro.

New Straits Times reported that Smit, who finished second in a Malaysian supermodel search when she was 15 in 2014, fell from the 20th floor of a condominium complex.