Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported that the lawyer, who represents an American couple in whose apartment Smit had stayed prior to her death, told a private investigator hired by the family that he had looked through her phone.
Smit’s uncle, Fred Agenjo, told the daily that the lawyer’s remarks were shocking. He questioned how an important piece of evidence, such as Ivana’s phone, could have been accessed by a third party.
The front page report quoted private investigator Mark Williams-Thomas as claiming the Malaysian lawyer had told him to look through Smit’s phone, as it would “reveal the innocence of the American couple” and her frame of mind at the time.
“The lawyer, however, did not explain how it was possible that he, as a lawyer of the other party, had access to the phone,” Wiliams-Thomas told the daily.
When contacted, the Smit family lawyer Sébas Diekstra told FMT the American couple’s lawyer should be investigated over the claim that he had access to Smit’s phone.
On Dec 7 last year, Smit’s nude body was found on the balcony of an apartment on the sixth floor of CapSquare Residences, off Jalan Dang Wangi, in Kuala Lumpur.
She was said to have stayed with an American and his Kazakh wife at the couple’s 20th floor unit.
It was reported that she had earlier been out drinking with the couple in Bangsar before returning with them to their apartment.
Police had originally classified the case as sudden death. Her body was kept at the Hospital Kuala Lumpur mortuary for 21 days before being flown to the Netherlands for cremation on Dec 30.
A second post-mortem by Dutch pathologist Dr Frank van der Goot found bruises on her upper arms, suggesting that a struggle had likely taken place before she fell over the balcony.
Her case was reopened by Dang Wangi police following claims of foul play by her family.
Kuala Lumpur police chief Mazlan Lazim said investigations are ongoing since the case was reopened, with police waiting for a toxicology report.
Dutch model might have been dead before fall from balcony, says PI
Model Ivana Smit’s death definitely a murder case, says British PI