CCTV shows Dutch model being carried out of posh KL club

Ivana Smit being carried by a man towards a lift, in this screen grab from CCTV footage recorded hours before her nude body was found sprawled on the balcony of a high-rise apartment in Kuala Lumpur.

KUALA LUMPUR: A CCTV snapshot has emerged, showing Dutch model Ivana Smit being carried out of a high-end club in Kuala Lumpur, hours before her body was found on the balcony of an apartment in a case police have classified as sudden death by falling.

The picture shows a person who looks like a Caucasian male carrying Smit and walking towards the lift, in the early hours of Dec 7, the same day Smit’s nude body was found on the sixth floor of the 36-storey CapSquare Residences.

Smit, 18, was said to have stayed with an American and his Kazakh wife at the couple’s unit on the 20th floor.

It was reported that she had earlier gone out drinking with the couple in Bangsar before returning to their apartment.

The picture, with a time stamp of Dec 7, 5.22am, was made available with the help of a private investigator hired by Smit’s family, according to their lawyer Sebas M Diekstra.

Smit’s family, who disputed Malaysian police findings on the case, recently hired award-winning British criminologist Mark Williams-Thomas as their private investigator.

Last week, Williams-Thomas said he felt the case was likely murder, and alleged that there was a cover-up in the Malaysian investigation.

Meanwhile, a family spokesman said the picture could likely be Smit’s last.

“It is difficult for us to look at her picture. It was exactly two months ago today (Feb 7) that we lost her,” Fred Agenjo told FMT.

He said in the CCTV video, Smit looked tipsy and seemed to be flirting with the Caucasian man, while his wife trailed them from behind “appearing to be okay”.

“The only thing we could deduce from this picture is that she left at 5.22am, and this establishes a very important timeline on how she might have died,” he said.

Smit moved to Malaysia when she was three and lived for 13 years in Penang with her grandparents.

Police have classified the case as sudden death pending the results of the post-mortem and pathology tests, which have yet to be released.

Smit’s body was kept at a hospital morgue in Kuala Lumpur for 21 days before being repatriated to the Netherlands for cremation. Her funeral received wide coverage from the Dutch media.

Earlier, a second post-mortem on Smit found bruises on her arms, likely inflicted before her fall.

In his findings, pathologist Dr Frank van der Goot said the bruises on Smit’s upper arms indicated that a struggle had likely taken place before she plunged to her death.

“We have also found drugs that might have been consumed long before her death,” he had told FMT.

He said cocaine and traces of the para-Methoxymethamphetamine (pMMA) drug were found in Smit’s system.

“The combination of pMMA with cocaine could be lethal,” he added. -FMT