Luna Almaz, wife of American cryptocurrency trader Alex Johnson, told Dutch newspaper AD.nl she had thought about how Smit died “thousands of times”.

“She must have climbed the edge; it is impossible to just fall over,” she said in the interview reported today. “Did she want to feel the wind in her hair?

“For nights (after she died) I stood on the balcony with a glass of wine, while Alex was sleeping, and in my mind I spoke with Ivana: ‘What the f***? What did you do? And why on my balcony?’”

Johnson told the paper he did not know why and how Smit fell.

“Ivana had a cocktail of drugs in her blood. And everyone who ever gets on the edge during a party knows your brain will not function properly.

“You think you can fly. You think it’s a good idea to do things that are life-threatening,” he said.

“This witch-hunt must stop,” he added, alluding to the Smit family’s constant claims that the Johnsons were behind Smit’s death. “Our story does not change. We don’t know how Ivana fell.

“Why would anyone throw a body off the balcony to mask an overdose? That is meaningless. Even if we had used drugs, a fine would have been rolled out for us at the most.”

The interview was carried out in Miami in the United States, where the couple relocated after Smit’s death.

The Johnsons hosted Smit, then 18, at their 20th floor unit at CapSquare Residence, off Jalan Dang Wangi, in Kuala Lumpur, on Dec 7, 2017.

Smit was found sprawled in the nude later that afternoon on a 6th floor balcony. She was pronounced dead.

There were traces of cocaine, cannabis, alcohol and polymethylmethacrylate, among others, in Smit’s system, the combined effect of which could have knocked her out, the inquest into her death heard.

Almaz and Johnson claimed to have had sex with Smit prior to her death but have maintained their innocence, saying the model died due to her own “youthful recklessness”. They also denied drugging her.

The police first classified the case as sudden death but it was reopened last year after pressure from Smit’s family, who claim there were elements of foul play.

After her inquest concluded, the Kuala Lumpur Coroner’s Court ruled this year that Smit’s death was a misadventure, which implied that she died in an accident due to voluntary risk.

Coroner Mahyon Talib, in her written judgment, said no one was involved in Smit’s death, although she said she accepted, in theory, that there was the possibility of foul play, given Johnson’s DNA under Smit’s fingernails, among others.

Almaz, 32, said that on the morning of Smit’s death, she went to sleep. Smit was still dancing in the living room and had turned up the music. Earlier, Almaz said, she dropped her daughter off at school.

“I was tired and said, ‘Girl, I’m going to sleep. You can crash here if you want’. I went to sleep next to Alex. I woke up around 1.30pm. It was raining hard. I turned on the TV.

“Ivana was not there. I looked everywhere in the house, the toilets, the storage room. Her clothes were in the kitchen. Her boots were at the door.

“I thought she went to her photo shoot with clothes from me; at night she had also worn lingerie from me.”

In the worst-case scenario, she thought Smit had taken the elevator down drunk and naked. “Then the surveillance would call,” she said.

When the police came knocking on their door some time at 3pm after Smit’s body was found, Almaz said she was watching TV in the bedroom and thought she heard something but when she muted the TV, she heard nothing.

“You have been to our apartment in Kuala Lumpur, right?” she asked AD.nl reporter Ton Voermans. “It was quite big. The bell rings at the door and you don’t hear it that well in the bedroom.”

In their first interview since they went underground 18 months ago following the international attention Smit’s death received, the couple also answered several questions and accusations thrown at them during the inquest.

On why they refused to testify during the inquest

Johnson, 46, said they were not subpoenaed and only received a text from the investigating officer, Faizal Abdullah, a few days before the inquest started in August.

“But we were already abroad,” he said, adding that Faizal “threatened” them with an extradition request if they refused to return.

“Our lawyer was there and he could have answered questions and read out our statement but was thrown out of the courtroom at the request of the Smit family lawyer,” he said, referring to SN Nair’s request to have the couple’s watching brief lawyer leave the inquest if his clients were not there.

On how Almaz could call her maid after she was taken in for questioning

Almaz said she and her husband were not suspects in the first police investigations in the wake of Smit’s death, only witnesses.

“We were not in a cell but in an office and we still had our phones. I called the cleaning lady to clean the apartment after she picked up our daughter and went to the apartment.”

Her maid, Nur Maisara Makha Abdullah, testified in the inquest that she cleaned up a stain in the kitchen on the night of Smit’s death. When the police showed up, they reprimanded her for doing so.

Johnson explained why Nur Maisara was tasked as such. “Our daughter Zoey has been sleeping in our room for years. She often came there.

“Luna, Ivana and I had had sex with each other for hours. Man, there were sex toys and lingerie everywhere. You don’t want your daughter to see that.”

He also shrugged off concerns of his DNA being under Smit’s nails. “We had sex. If I touch you, my DNA will also be on your arm,” he said.

On the Johnsons ‘taking advantage’ of Smit

Johnson said it may not be the social norm to have sex with partners outside of one’s marriage “but nothing criminal happened. The desire was mutual”.

Almaz said: “She wanted to be with us of her own free will.”

According to the couple, the three of them were in bed together several times. They furnished their WhatsApp conversations with Smit to show that she wanted to be intimate with the couple.

Smit: I miss you two haha, I really want you two haha.

Johnson: Save your powers, you’ll need them.

Smit: I will, you have no idea.

A text from a few days later read:

Smit: I want you guys so bad.

“Does this sound like a woman we had to drag into this relationship?” asked Johnson. “We had a sexual relationship. But Ivana’s family will say we portrayed her as a slut.”

Almaz also said that Smit told them she was 26, and not 18 as she was at the time. “If we had known that she was 18, we would have stayed away from her. No way would something have happened then,” said Johnson.

The Johnsons have threatened to take legal action against Smit’s family for accusing them of causing her death, which the family has said will not deter their efforts to seek justice for their daughter.

The family, meanwhile, has applied for a revision of the coroner’s ruling into her death.