
A former Miss Switzerland finalist was strangled to death and brutally dismembered by her husband, who then "purged" her remains in a blender, Swiss officials have revealed. Kristina Joksimovic, 38, was found murdered in her home in February in Binningen, near the Swiss city of Basel.
Her 41-year-old husband, referred to only as "Thomas" in local media reports, was arrested but had appealed for his release, which was rejected on Wednesday by the country's federal court in Lausanne after he admitted that he killed his wife. The ruling, which brought to light gruesome new details about the murder, said the ongoing investigation had revealed "concrete indications of mental illness" in the case, according to Swiss newspaper BZ Basel.
Joksimović's butchered body was discovered on the night of February 13. The model's husband and father of their two daughters admitted he killed her in March but said he had acted in self-defence as 'she had attacked him with a knife before.' However, medical examiners found no evidence of self-defense and identified her cause of death as drowning. Joksimovic's body was then dismembered with a knife and garden shears, according to an autopsy report obtained by the media. Some of her body parts were then chopped up with a hand blender and dissolved in a chemical mixture, according to the report.
Thomas was arrested the day after her body was found, initially telling investigators a month earlier that he had found her dead and dismembered her body in their laundry room in a panic. Thomas showed "a remarkably 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 strangled his wife before. A former partner also claimed he once grabbed the beauty queen by the neck and slammed her head against a wall. Joksimovic was crowned in the Miss Northwest Switzerland pageant and in 2007 was a finalist for Miss Switzerland, according to 20 Minuten. She later ran her own runway coaching business and mentored model Dominique Rinderknecht for the 2013 Miss Universe pageant.