No crime in Dutch model's lurid death

An 18-year-old Dutch model who slept with an American financer and his Kazakh wife only hours before she plunged to her death from their apartment was not pushed, a medical coroner in Malaysia ruled on Friday.

Mahyon Talib agreed with previous findings that Ivana Smit might have been in a struggle with the couple prior to the fall, but said that the fall had been a "misadventure" rather than a crime.

Smit is believed to have fallen from the 20th floor of the condominium in Kuala Lumpur onto the balcony of a sixth floor unit on December 7, 2017. Police found her naked body and initially ruled her death a suicide.

But her family suspected that she was murdered. In the Netherlands, a second autopsy found bruises on her arms, trauma to the back of her head and DNA of Alex Johnson, an American cryptocurrency trader, under her fingernails. Doctors also discovered drugs and alcohol in her body.

The family's lawyer said Smit's relatives would challenge the coroner's ruling in the High Court.

Police released Johnson and his wife, Luna Almaz, in March 2018 after deciding not to charge them. They left Malaysia shortly thereafter and have refused to return to testify at the inquest into Smit's death.

Both later admitted that they had slept with Smit hours before the fall.

Smit first moved to Malaysia when she was 3 years old and spent the rest of her life there with her grandparents.

amp/rt (AP, AFP)

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