Thirty-eight-year-old Kristina Joksimovic was found slain in her home in February in Binningen, near the city of Basel in Switzerland.
Her 41-year-old husband, who was only referred to as “Thomas” in local media reports, was taken into custody but had appealed for his release, which was rejected on Wednesday by the country’s federal court in Lausanne after he confessed to the killing.
The ruling, which brought horrific new details about the murder to light, said the ongoing investigation has revealed “concrete indications of a mental illness” in the case, according to Swiss outlet BZ Basel.
Joksimovic’s butchered body was discovered on the night of February 13.
The model’s husband and father of their two daughters admitted that he killed her in March, but said it was to protect himself after she had previously attacked him with a knife.
However, medical experts found no evidence of self-defence and identified her cause of death as strangulation.
Joksimovic’s body was dismembered with a jigsaw, knife and garden shears, according to an autopsy report obtained by the outlet.
Several of her body parts were then chopped up with a hand blender, “pureed” and dissolved in a chemical solution, according to the report.
Thomas was arrested the day after her body was found, initially telling investigators the month prior that he had found her dead and dismembered her body in their laundry room in a panic.
Thomas showed “a noticeably high level of criminal energy, lack of empathy and cold-bloodedness after killing his wife” and trying to cover it up, prosecutors said in Wednesday’s update.
Prosecutors also revealed that he had choked his wife before.
A former partner also alleged he once grabbed the beauty queen by the neck and slammed her head into a wall.
Joksimovic was crowned Miss Northwest Switzerland and in 2007 was a finalist for Miss Switzerland, according to 20 Minuten.
She later ran her own business as a catwalk coach, and mentored model Dominique Rinderknecht for the Miss Universe pageant in 2013.
“It’s terrible. I’m really shocked,” former Miss Switzerland Christa Rigozzi, who was friendly with Joksimovic, told the outlet after she was killed.
“I’m thinking of her two daughters. She was such a beautiful and kind-hearted woman,” Rigozzi said.
Thomas was a successful entrepreneur, and their family lived in a large home with a picturesque view overlooking Basel.
They posed as a picture-perfect family on social media, according to 20 Minuten, with an Instagram post just weeks before Joksimovic’s death showing her and Thomas on a “couple’s getaway” on Lake Lucerne.
Credit: New York Times
