First of all I want to thank you all for your warm welcome. You’re very kind.
I’m going to write a bit about the Dominic family’s background and some more about the whole case.
I will try to maintain some consistency so I might repeat myself or some informations you already know. Sorry about that.
As I already said the media in Croatia is all over this case and several articles about it are published on a daily bases since the day Jasmina’s body was discovered.
There were a lot of contradictory and incomplete informations in the media because the police and the state attorney’s office are still holding back (only several very short official statements were released by now).
So most of the things I’m going to write about come from the informations given to the media by neighbors, people from the village in question and unofficial police sources.
Jasmina’s and Smiljana’s father (Martin Dominic also called Fredi) was a pretty good soccer player (he played in the second league of the national soccer team). He was very well liked in the village of Palovec where he moved after marrying his wife (Katarina). People from Palovec described him as a very kind and hardworking man who was always ready to help. Soon after Fredi met Katarina they married and moved into a house near the village’s soccer field. They had two daughters: first Smiljana followed two years later by Jasmina.
Fredi was a carpenter and he worked at the nearby factory (until it went bankrupt) then later on he worked in construction all around Croatia and Slovenia. But he was having a hard time finding a steady job so to stay on top of their finances Katarina eventually had to go to work abroad (in Germany) while Fredi and their two daughters stayed behind in their family home.
Smiljana and Jasmina were very different.
Smiljana is described by her friends and acquaintances as a very talkative and outgoing person (some people even describe her as aggressive). She wasn’t good at school and she never graduated (high school).
In fact she dropped out of high school without her parents knowing about it for quite some time. Smiljana pretended in front of her parents for about a year to attend classes but eventually her lie was discovered and her parents got very angry with her. After that incident Smiljana soon started to work as a waitress in the local café. After Jasmina disappeared Smiljana got pregnant and gave birth to her eldest daughter. According to some sources after getting pregnant Smiljana accused a local man (who had a fiancée at that time) of being the father of her child so the paternity test was made and it proved that the man in question wasn’t the child’s father (the biological father of Smiljana’s first daughter remained unknown). After giving birth Smiljana stayed in the family home with her child.
Jasmina was the polar opposite. She was more calm and quiet and excelled academically. She won the first prize at the state high school biology contest in 1991. She was also good at sports (she was into athletics and handball).
After graduating high school Jasmina went to Zagreb (the capital city) where she attended university and found a job. She was known to be happy, friendly, hardworking, responsible and very much into her studies.
No one really knows when exactly Jasmina disappeared. She was last seen by her uncle at the end of 1999/beginning of 2000. and by a former classmate in the spring of 2000. When eventually Jasmina’s mother reported her missing in 2005. the mentioned date of Jasmina’s disappearance according to her family was september 2000.
The autopsy report determined that the cause of death was a fractured scull. Jasmina was hit in the head with a blunt object at least two times. Soon after she died (before rigor mortis set in) her nude body was wrapped in a plastic plastic sheet and put inside the freezer in the fetal position (her head turned towards the bottom of the freezer and her legs up). Her body was then covered with frozen food.
After Jasmina disappeared stories started to circulate around the village. Allegedly Smiljana convinced her family members that Jasmina left the country. There were stories going around about Jasmina living in France, working on a boat or just leaving with a boyfriend (some anonymous truck driver).
Fredi changed after his younger daughter disappeared, he became depressed and started to drink. He was very close to Jasmina and he thought that her leaving just like that was completely out of character. When he would get drunk he would say that he thinks Smiljana knows something about Jasmina she doesn’t want to tell and that she might’ve done something to her.
Soon his drunk talk came to the knowledge of the local police but when they went to talk to Fredi he said nothing.
So the local authorities had some suspicions of foul play even before Jasmina was officially reported missing.
After Jasmina was reported missing in 2005. the police started to investigate. They talked to Fredi, Smiljana, Katarina, other family members, neighbors and people from the village.
The family members kept telling the police that Jasmina was in Zagreb or abroad.
It seems that Smiljana persuaded them that Jasmina disappeared of her own will.
She even told them that Jasmina was in contact with a friend in Zagreb (which was proven to be false after further investigation).
It’s still not sure who knew what in that family about what really happened to Jasmina. After the discovery of the body Smiljana’s husband claimed he never knew that Jasmina’s body was in the freezer. Who knew exactly what will hopefully be determined after the state attorney’s office would be able to start with their investigation and interrogation of all the witnesses (in 8 days).
Anyway after talking to everyone the police could think of they were still suspicious and pretty sure that Jasmina never left the country so they conducted some polygraph testings.
They had nothing (not a clue or a shred of evidence) and the court refused to issue the search warrant. At that point the police only had the power to inspect the house without conducting a real search of the premises.
I don’t know much about USA legal system but in Croatia there’s a difference between real search (court ordered) and a plain inspection that can be done without a warrant. The difference is that while conducting an inspection the police can only gather informations by looking around and they’re forbidden to open or look inside anything (like for example pockets or dressers or freezers) without legal grounds to do so. So the police inspected the house and since after that they still had no clues to move forward they concentrated more on the outside of the house. But still notning was found.
Later on Smiljana married, had two more daughters (as far as I know they’re in elementary school now) and she kept living with her children, her husband and her father in her childhood home. Her father died in 2013. from lung cancer.
Then in 2015. Smiljana reported to the police that someone attacked her and stole her earrings and the money her mother sent her from Germany to pay some bills. The police eventually discovered that her story was a lie and charged her with false reporting. The police thinks she concocted the whole story because she spent the money her mother sent her on gambling (Smiljana was known to have a gambling habit).
After that incident the police was even more convinced that Smiljana is involved in her sister’s disappearance but they still had no real evidence of foul play so their hands were tied.
Last year (2018.) the police thought they finally had a breakthrough after they got a tip about Jasmina’s body being in the family home’s septic tank. But again they didn’t have enough informations to get a court’s search warrant. Eventually they found a way to legally search the septic tank but they again found nothing.
Smiljana’s eldest daughter got married recently and her husband moved into the family home.
As I already said the freezer was on the ground floor of the house under the stairs. It was so rarely opened that when the eldest daughter’s husband tried to open it he had some difficulties to do it because the rubber part of the freezer’s lid was all melted and like glued to the freezer (so he had to cut it to open to be able to lift the lid off).
Smiljana’s husband is a ceramic tile flooring installation specialist so a while ago he put new tiles in the house but when he wanted to move the freezer where the body was to finish his work Smiljana told him not to touch it so the part of the floor under the freezer stayed as it was before. Because of that fact the body was eventually discovered. The eldest daughter’s boyfriend wanted to put new tiles on that part of the floor so while Smiljana was out with her two younger daughters (she went out to the store with them and brought them later to the catechism lesson) the boyfriend moved the freezer out and discovered the body.
After the body was discovered Smiljana and her husband were taken to the police station. Smiljana’s husband was soon released but Smiljana remained in custody.
Allegedly she admitted to the police in her first informal talk (before she was formally arrested) that she killed Jasmina. Allegedly she told them: “Yes, I killed her. She had everything and I had nothing. She was given everything and I was given nothing”.
She said that she took a piece of wooden lath and stroke her sister on the head with it. She couldn’t remember how many times she hit her.
After she said that the police waited for her lawyer to come for her admission to be valid in court but after the lawyer came Smiljana didn’t want to repeat what she previously said.
The public prosecutor requested the detention to be imposed and the investigating judge accepted the prosecutors request on two legal grounds: justified fears that the accused will obstruct the investigation influencing the witnesses and justified fear that the accused will commit crime again.
Yesterday criminal charges were filed and Smiljana’s detention was extended for a month.
The investigation by the state prosecutor’s office will begin in 7 days.
