The mystery surrounding the death of teen model Ivana Smit, whose naked body was discovered 14 floors below a Kuala Lumpur apartment last December, is one that has titillated not just Malaysians, but the international press.
Claims of drugs and threesomes have been a consistent part of the story’s narrative, with the bedroom proclivities of the expat couple who last saw her alive getting headlines on the other side of the world in the NY Post.
This weekend, at least some of those sordid details were confirmed for the first time by American Alexander Johnson and his wife Luna, the couple with whom the 19 year old spent her last moments on earth.
In an exclusive interview with British tabloid The Mail on Sunday, the duo claim to have started a sexual relationship with the teen weeks before her death, and that a sexual encounter took place in the hours before her body was found.
The claim of a tryst the night of Smit’s death is particularly troubling given the fact that CCTV footage of the teen being carried out of nightclub the same night raises serious questions as to her ability to have willingly consented.
So why go public now in the pages of a British tabloid? The couple claim that “fake news” surrounding Smith’s death has led to “death threats.”
Like a recent bill being debated in Parliament as we type, their definition of “fake news” is left up to the reader’s interpretation.
“We never intended to make the details of our marriage public. Now we fear our own lives are in danger, and we have no choice,” they told the Mail on Sunday.
While interviews with the model’s friends and family described a girl who was at heart naive despite having lived a fairly tumultuous life, Smit’s innocence was lost on 40-something Johnson and his 31-year-old wife.
The duo claim to have met her weeks before her death at a nightclub, where Ivana danced “sexy moves” with Luna, who identifies as a bisexual. They later arranged for a babysitter to watch their young daughter while the trio enjoyed a night in a Kuala Lumpur hotel.
The Johnson’s have called their arrangement a “progressive marriage,” saying they have enjoyed threesomes in the past.
In contrast to her friends’ and family’s claims of Smit’s lack of experience, Luna described her as “bold and “confident” in the nightclub setting.
On the night of her death, the couple alleges that Ivana was actively searching for drugs, and that they were aware that she was under the influence of them. They also added that as their time together wore on that evening, her behavior became increasingly erratic, a fact that clearly didn’t deter them from engaging in sex.
Ivana’s toxicology reports came back showing not only alcohol in her system, but cocaine and ecstasy as well.
Despite initial reports in Malaysian papers stating that the couple had been detained not only on drugs charges but immigration violations as well, Sunday’s Daily Mail article insists that both Johnson and his wife had clean lab results, though it gives no indication of how it would have obtained or verified that information.
Following their tryst, the couple told the tabloid that they went to sleep, leaving their teen guest to sleep in the living room. Luna described that Ivana was in a state, having taken off her clothes and was giggling. This did not alarm the mother of one, and she left Ivana to sleep.
The article also claims that the balcony barrier at the condo was only 91cm, despite being described by the same newspaper previously as being 120cm high.
Unanswered questions including the provenance of bruises on her body, the lack of blood at the scene (which Dutch pathologists say is an indication Smit may have been dead before the fall), and why the young model would have climbed over a barrier in the first place, remain.
The couple at the center of it all want you to know one thing: They totally, like seriously, didn’t have anything to do with it, nor can they explain what happened, even though it happened in their own home.
