In ten days, the verdict is expected to be delivered to the husband of Kristina Joksimović, who was brutally murdered and butchered in Switzerland. Her husband, Marc Rieben, is expected to learn his fate on May 13, after he killed and decapitated Kristina, and then destroyed parts of her body in a blender!
To the rest of the world, Kristina Joksimović and her husband Marc lived a perfect life, and friends spoke of them as the “perfect couple.” Kristina was a former Miss Switzerland and coached models. Marc is the son of a successful lawyer, had a good job, they lived in a large house, and Marc was known as a dedicated husband and father.
Kristina regularly posted photos on social networks showing her smiling with her husband and their two daughters. Everything seemed idyllic… But often, nothing is as it appears at first glance.
Just a month before she was murdered, Kristina Joksimović shared photos on social networks of a “getaway with her husband,” surreal snowy scenes from a luxury hotel above the lake in Lucerne. And then, in February 2024, Marc Rieben killed his wife in a fit of rage, before dismembering her body and putting parts into a blender — “pureeing” them, as described in the autopsy report.
The gruesome details of the crime shook not only Switzerland but all of Europe, and especially Serbia, where Kristina was originally from.
From an idyllic life to a cruel crime
Kristina married Marc in 2017, and they lived in a spacious terraced house overlooking the hills of Binningen, near Basel. To neighbors and acquaintances, Marc Rieben appeared to be an exemplary husband. He was a dedicated father and volunteered in a scout group in his spare time.
Former Miss Switzerland Nadine Vinzens, Kristina’s friend, told Nau.ch: “She always left a happy impression on me. I would never have thought her husband would do something like that.”
“They seemed like a perfect family to me,” another friend of Kristina’s told Blick.
Details from the indictment
Marc Rieben is expected to be in the defendant’s dock on Monday, and now, for the first time, the motive for the horrific crime is coming into the focus of the public and the media. According to the indictment filed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Canton of Basel, the violence followed an argument over divorce. Allegedly, on February 13, the couple discussed the terms of the upcoming divorce during lunch.
Marc Rieben reportedly refused to accept the divorce, wanted permanent custody of the children, and denied financial support to his wife, the paper reported. An escalation of the conflict followed, far greater than the arguments they were known to have had during the marriage. Prosecutors say that during the argument, Rieben grabbed his wife Kristina by the throat and pressed her against the wall.
He then allegedly wrapped a “string-like object” around her neck and strangled her, before mutilating and destroying her body in a blender.
All the details of what happened on that tragic day in February are laid out in court documents seen by the Daily Mail. The autopsy showed that Kristina’s body showed signs of blunt force trauma, including cuts on her face and bruises on her leg, foot, shoulder blades, and the back of her head. Part of her hair had been torn out.
After death, Rieben dismembered her body using a jigsaw, a knife, and garden shears.
Investigators say he “carefully removed” her uterus, the only organ taken from her torso, in what experts described as “deliberate mutilation or ritualized degradation of the body” which may indicate a mental disorder.
Some body parts were placed in an industrial blender, while others were dissolved in a chemical solution. Investigators also discovered that he was playing YouTube videos on his phone while performing the dismemberment.
Inside the laundry room in the basement of the family home, described as an “isolated bunker with thick concrete walls,” investigators later discovered a “large number of skin flaps, some with muscle attached,” along with pieces of muscle and bone.
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Father found Kristina’s head in a trash bag
The parts of Kristina’s dismembered body were not originally discovered by the police, but by her father. After she failed to pick up her daughters from kindergarten, her parents became worried. When Kristina’s father went to her house, Marc first claimed he did not know where Kristina was.
For hours, Marc acted as if nothing had happened. He cooked dinner and spoke normally with his father-in-law, and then he got the children ready for bed.
“Marc insisted that he didn’t know where Kristina was and claimed that she had a habit of ‘just leaving’ sometimes,” Kristina’s friend told the media.
While Marc was talking to Kristina’s mother over the phone, her father began searching the house, room by room. In the basement, Kristina’s father saw a black trash bag from which strands of blonde hair were protruding.
“When he opened the trash bag, he saw Kristina’s severed head inside,” a friend told the Daily Mail.
Kristina’s father ran out of the house screaming, stopped the first passerby and yelled to call the police immediately, and then he ran back into the house to face his son-in-law.
According to investigation reports, Marc Rieben, who obviously did not expect the body to be found so quickly, showed no emotion or distress during the arrest. During the hearing, he admitted to dismembering his wife’s body, stating that he killed her in self-defense, and that he “mutilated the body in a panic.”
Describing what happened before the murder, Marc Rieben said that he had a “positive” conversation with Kristina before she “suddenly attacked him with a knife.” Although Kristina’s family has not made a public statement, local media reported that her parents received intensive psychiatric support after the gruesome murder of their daughter.
After the incident, testimonies from friends emerged, detailing a completely different private reality marked by violence and abuse prior to her murder.
“He seemed critical, arrogant…”
One of Kristina’s closest friends claimed that Marc Rieben wanted to keep Kristina under control and they were increasingly withdrawing.
“She was really in love at the beginning, but I was a little surprised when she entered into a relationship with him because he didn’t suit her at all. He seemed very introverted, very critical, and sometimes quite arrogant,” a friend told the Daily Mail.
“He was really derogatory towards her, in gestures, words, and even tone… he wanted Kristina to disappear,” she said, adding that Kristina and Marc’s relationship worsened after the birth of the children.
“Kristina would often complain that their relationship, especially after the birth of the children, had gone wrong. He closed himself off even more and didn’t let anyone get close to him. She tried to talk to him, to save the marriage. They even went to therapy with a psychologist, but he would always leave the session or simply wouldn’t show up. She didn’t know what more to do, and the situation was getting worse,” the friend claims.
Kristina’s friend also points out that her friend once complained to her that she had to call the police, although Kristina did not want to reveal what had happened.
“She didn’t want to tell me the details, only that he was violent and that he threatened her if she called the police, that he would turn everything around and accuse her, and then ‘she would see what would happen to her’,” the friend said.
Kristina’s long-time friend described Marc Rieben as increasingly obsessive, especially when it came to their children.
“They were his perfect project, and Kristina was in his way,” she said.
She added that he controlled many aspects of their upbringing, from strict bedtimes to banning screen time and limiting what they could listen to.
He allegedly insisted that they avoid “feminine clothing” and placed importance on them growing up multilingual.
“He hates femininity,” she added, referring to the removal of Kristina’s uterus.
Kristina suffered physical violence all along, but told no one?
The prosecution states that Rieben had a history of violence and that he had strangled his wife in the past, which investigators were able to prove based on old photographs of the victim. Other allegations include that he grabbed a former partner by the neck, hit her, and pushed her against a wall.
According to the indictment, Rieben committed the murder in a calculated and deliberate manner, with full awareness, and out of a “selfish attitude and mentality characterized by a need for control, hurt feelings, revenge, and intense rage.”
A forensic psychologist diagnosed him with narcissistic and obsessive-compulsive traits, describing him as a “highly rational thinker with a pronounced cognitive-technical perspective.”
Investigators stated that Rieben showed a “lack of empathy and cold-bloodedness after killing his wife” and displayed “sadistic-sociopathic traits.”
It was determined that his risk characteristics include “increased rigidity,” an intensified need for control, egocentricity, reactivity driven by anger, and a tendency toward manipulation. A psychiatrist disputed the claim of self-defense, stating that victims of sudden, life-threatening attacks usually contact the police immediately to report trauma without hesitation or “filtering” details.
In addition, the expert said that his behavior after the incident consisted of a series of “fast, purposeful, and methodically executed actions,” which contradicts Rieben’s claim of “panic.”
His actions make psychological sense only if his interest was “removing as many traces as possible, including the body, in order to cover up what actually happened,” the expert added in comments reported by Tages-Anzeiger.
Rieben’s trial begins on May 4 before the Criminal Court of Basel-Landschaft in Muttenz and is expected to last five and a half days. The verdict is expected on May 13.
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