Get you up to speed: Switzerland’s Marc Rieben sentenced to life for murdering wife Kristina Joksimovic
Marc Rieben has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his wife, Kristina Joksimovic, in Binningen, near Basel. Following the February 2024 incident, he dismembered her body using various tools and blended the remains.
Marc Rieben has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his wife, Kristina Joksimovic, in Binningen, near Basel. According to prosecutors, Rieben acted with “systematic” cruelty and “full awareness” of his actions, despite claiming he had acted in self-defence.
Marc Rieben has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his wife, Kristina Joksimovic, in Binningen, Switzerland. He has also been ordered to pay approximately £94,600 to the couple’s two daughters and over £264,000 to Ms Joksimovic’s family.
Husband jailed for ‘sadistic’ murder of his Miss Switzerland finalist wife | News World
Kristina Joksimovic was murdered ‘in cold blood’ by her husband, Marc Rieben (Picture: Instagram/catwalkcoach)
A husband who murdered his beauty pageant finalist wife and blended her remains has been locked up for life.
Mum-of-two Kristina Joksimovic, 38, was killed at home in Switzerland following an argument with her husband, Marc Rieben, 43.
The depraved businessman, who shared two young daughters with Ms Joksimovic, then used a jigsaw, a knife and garden scissors to dismember her body inside the family home before using a blender on her body parts.
Rieben left her remains for Ms Joksimovic’s dad to find following the February 2024 murder that shook the country and put Switzerland’s domestic violence epidemic in the spotlight.
Kristina Joksimovic, a Miss Switzerland finalist and a modelling coach, was brutally killed by her husband (Picture: Instagram/Catwalkcoach)
Now Rieben has been jailed for life for the sadistic killing in Binningen near Basel.
Ms Joksimovic is said to have told her husband she wants a divorce along with financial support and custody of their children before her murder.
Prosecutors said Rieben acted knowingly and intentionally, and in full awareness of his actions.
Chilling details from the trial revealed how Rieben studied the Atlas of Human Anatomy to teach himself how to dismember his wife’s body.
Anina Hofer, the lawyer for Ms Joksimovic’s parents, read their heartbreaking statement in court: ‘I stand here today in court as a mother who has lost her daughter. Whose children miss their mummy every day.
‘She was loving, protective of her children, and gave them everything. Just one month after she tried to forge a new path for herself and her children, she was brutally torn from life.
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Kristina Joksimovic’s dad discovered her daughter’s remains after going to look for her when she didn’t pick up her phone (Picture: Instagram/catwalkcoach)
‘No verdict can bring our daughter back. But it can show that her life matters.’
Rieben was ordered to pay around £94,600 to the couple’s two daughters, now aged five and six, and over £264,000 to Ms Joksimovic’s family, Daily Mail reports.
A group of protesters had gathered outside the court building in Muttenz, with extra police officers brought in as Judge Daniel Schmid sentenced Rieben.
The judge said: ‘There are cases that make fiction become reality. This case has changed our reality.
‘No court ruling can fill the void left by the loss of a loved one. We as a court will also never forget you and will carry you in our hearts.’
Mr Joksimovic suffered an ‘agonising’ death as her husband punched, kicked and strangled her ‘’in cold blood,’ prosecutors said.
He then tried to dispose of her body using the tools and bleach before the blender.
Rieben said he acted in self-defence after his wife allegedly threatened him with a knife during the argument, but the prosecutor, citing evidence from the forensic report, said ‘there was never a knife attack.’
The prosecutor said: ‘The man’s behaviour after the crime was almost beyond belief in its cruelty and absurdity.
‘The man acted systematically and with a plan; his behaviour demonstrated the full extent of his hatred for his wife.’
An expert at the trial, professor Frank Urbaniok, said he had diagnosed Rieben with narcissistic traits and an obsessive-compulsive disorder.
He said Rieben acted with ‘meticulous precision,’ and how after the murder, he had gone to have dinner with the couple’s two children pretending nothing had happened.
The professor said he has ‘never seen anything like this before’ during his over 30 years of experience spanning 5,000 cases.
The couple’s eldest daughter, who was four at the time, told the police their dad is ‘lying’ when the detectives first told the children that their mum had died, their dad was responsible and that he said he didn’t do it on purpose.
The children now live with their mother’s parents.
Ms Joksimovic, a winner of the Miss Northwest Switzerland title, was a finalist in the Miss Switzerland competition. She went on to work as a modelling coach and she was well-known in the community.
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