House of horror the place Miss Switzerland finalist was dismembered
Behind the picture-perfect yellow walls of their family home in a village near Basel, Kristina Joksimovic, 38, was strangled to death by her husband Marc Rieben, 41, who went on to dismember and ‘puree’ her in a blender.
Now, eight months after the disturbing crime, the stairs leading up to the large semi-detached house are overgrown with weeds.
The property lies abandoned in an affluent area of Binningen, which locals call the ‘gold hill’ due to the ‘who’s who of rich people’ that live on the streets overlooking the Rhine and Basel.
The couple’s neighbour, who shares a wall with Kristina, told MailOnline she ‘never even heard the couple fighting’ and only realised what had transpired next door when police cars lined the road and officers went around to question residents.
‘I only knew her as a neighbour and saw her sometimes in our [shared] garage. It’s horrible,’ she said, adding that she never thought something like this could happen in Switzerland, let alone next door.
Kristina Joksimovic was discovered in February at her ‘upscale’ Binningen home in February
The property lies abandoned in an affluent area of Binningen, which locals call the ‘gold hill’ due to the ‘who’s who of rich people’ that live on the streets overlooking the Rhine and Basel
Tributes left outside the home in Basel where the former model and Miss Switzerland finalist was murdered by her husband
Eight months after the disturbing crime , the stairs leading up to the large semi-detached house are overgrown with weeds
The model’s husband admitted to having killed his wife, claiming self-defence, as reported by local media
Investigators determined that Kristina had been strangled before she died, and her husband Thomas later confessed to strangling his wife
The couple posed for loved-up pictures on their wedding day in August 2017
The door to their shared garage still features residue from when it was sealed by crime scene tape, just like the front door to the couple’s home.
Next to the front door are standing an abandoned pair of chairs and a small table, which often featured in Kristina’s social media posts during her pregnancies.
A family father, whose windows face Kristina’s home, said it was ‘awful’ and ‘catastrophic’ what happened to her, especially considering her two young daughters.
He told MailOnline: ‘It was a maniac. You would never think something like this would happen just outside your own front door, but it was one individual who is not normal.’
The man added that finding out he had a ‘maniac’ walking around the neighbourhood made him ‘gasp for words’.
‘I didn’t really know her, but everyone only had good things to say about her,’ he said.
Another woman who lives in the neighbourhood said she often greeted Kristina when walking her dog.
‘It is really tragic. When you hear what happened and how… You never really know what is going on behind closed doors,’ she told MailOnline.
She added that she was ‘shocked’ something like this happened in her village.
‘We are living in a bubble here. Most people who live on the gold hill are relatively wealthy,’ a woman living just a few houses away from the crime scene said.
Another resident told how there has been an increased police presence in the quiet neighbourhood since she was killed, but a woman living on the side opposite Kristina’s home said it was too little too late.
‘Police were called to her house before and they couldn’t protect her. I don’t believe it would have come this far if they had taken [Kristina] seriously the first time she called them.’
The door to their shared garage still features residue from when it was sealed by crime scene tape
An ornament found in Kristina’s garden where she was killed by her husband
Kristina coached the next generation of models for pageants, as well as businesswomen
The last photo of the family together shared on Instagram in August 2023
Investigators have said Thomas, a businessman (pictured above driving a Tesla), showed a ‘conspicuously high level of criminal energy’ in their assessment
Kristina, the mother of their two children, was allegedly killed because she had previously come at him with a knife. He admitted dismembering her body ‘in a panic’
She added: ‘Women come forward but are told ‘you provoked him’. They aren’t protecting women here. The police and the system failed to protect her.
‘I have experienced domestic abuse at the hands of my former partner and it took extremely long for the police to come, like 30 minutes or more, and when they were finally here, they told me it was his home and he could punch in the door.
‘They also asked me: ‘What did you? How come that he hit you? What did you do before?’.’
The mother of a little boy, who is around the same age as Kristina’s daughters, said people would still come and place new flowers and candles on a wall in front of the house.
Even now, dozens of pots with blooming orchids and other flowers are lining the top of the 3ft wall as well as two framed pictures of the mother-of-two.
Joksimovic’s body was found in her home with an autopsy revealing the mother-of-two was strangled to death before being chopped up with the garden implement, a knife and a saw.
Her husband, who was only named by pseudonym Thomas in local media due to Swiss privacy laws, 41, had an appeal for release from custody rejected earlier this week by the Federal Court in Lausanne after admitting to having killed his wife.
Kristina’s husband is reported to have claimed he killed her in self-defence after she came at him with a knife. He then reportedly said he dismembered the ex-model – with whom he has two children – ‘in a panic’.
Investigators said Thomas showed a ‘lack of empathy and cold-bloodedness after killing his wife’ and displayed ‘sadistic-sociopathic traits’ in their psychological assessment, while prosecutors said the businessman had grabbed a former partner by the neck and hit her.
