A federal grand jury has charged a man from Florida with planning to kidnap and kill his ex-wife in Spain as part of a complicated plan that included driving all over Europe and spray painting camera lenses.
David Knezevich was already charged in the Southern District of Florida U.S. District Court with the disappearance of Ana Maria Knezevich, 40, who hasn’t been seen since February in Madrid.
But on Wednesday, a grand jury filed a new indictment that charged him with kidnapping that killed someone, foreign domestic violence that killed someone, and murdering a US citizen while they were abroad. He could get the death penalty if he is found guilty of kidnapping with the intent to kill.
The police have not yet found Ana Knezevich’s body, but the indictment says they think her husband went from Miami to Madrid “with the intent to kill” her. Police say he killed her and threw away her body in a place that hasn’t been found yet.
The search for her body is still going on, and in the past few months, authorities have been focusing on a heavily wooded area in northern Italy.
Even though the crimes happened in Spain, 18 U.S.C. 1119 lets the DOJ bring charges if a U.S. citizen kills another U.S. citizen in a foreign country. The DOJ says that the case can only go forward with written permission from the attorney general, deputy attorney general, or assistant attorney general.
The suspect is “no longer present” in the country in question and that country “lacks the ability to lawfully secure the person’s return,” according to the DOJ. This means that the prosecution can’t happen until the AG talks to the secretary of state.
David Knezevich, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Yugoslavia, was arrested on May 4 as he arrived at Miami International Airport. The government says Ana Knezevich is a U.S. citizen from Colombia.
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In a criminal complaint, the FBI said that the couple was going through a fight during their divorce.
She took a plane on December 26, 2023, from Miami to Madrid. After February 2, her family and friends stopped talking to her. Police say she never showed up for the trip she planned with her friends to Barcelona.
It said that after that date, all of her non-automatic bank transactions stopped. The FBI says she was also charged a fee on February 10 for not showing up for a reservation at a restaurant in Madrid.
There was a complaint that friends and family told federal agents that Ana Knezevich and her husband were having a bad divorce because he didn’t want to share the family’s assets with her. Agents wrote that the victim was “very afraid” of her husband because she thought he was “surreptitiously monitoring her whereabouts.”
David Knezevich’s lawyer, Ken Padowitz, has said that his client had nothing to do with the disappearance.
“David has worked with the police.” A number of times, he has talked to detectives in Spain. He gave information about his credit card… As Padowitz told The Associated Press in February, “He had a lawyer in Spain sign papers that could help the Spanish government go into the apartment that his wife had rented.”
The Spanish government says that around 2:20 p.m. on February 2, surveillance cameras caught Ana entering her apartment in Madrid. That was the last time anyone saw her alive.
The complaint says that at around 9:30 p.m. on the same day, a man in a helmet went into the apartment building as people were leaving. The man walks down a flight of stairs with a can of spray paint in his hand, and the complaint says he covers the lens with the paint.
The complaint said that the paint didn’t cover the lens all the way and still showed a man putting duct tape over the door lock to keep it from closing.
The feds wrote, “Notably, the male who looks directly at the camera has physical traits that resemble those of [David] Knezevich.”
The man is then seen leaving the apartment around 10:30 p.m. with what looks like a suitcase in his hand.
The Spanish government looked for Ana Knezevich on February 4 but could not find her. The police said that her cell phone, laptop, and chargers were missing.
The police also saw the brand of spray paint and tracked the purchase to a store in Madrid. Surveillance camera footage from the store showed a man who appeared to be David Knezevich buying the paint and two rolls of duct tape, feds wrote.
FBI agents also spoke with a Colombian woman who previously met David Knezevich on a dating app. She told agents that on Feb. 3, the day after his wife went missing, he allegedly asked her to translate a message from English into “perfect Colombian.”
He claimed he had a friend from Serbia who was writing a script about a Colombian character and wanted it to sound “authentic,” the complaint said.
The translated message was said to say, “I met someone wonderful!” “His summer home is about two hours from Madrid.” I’m going to stay there for a few days. The signal is rough. When I get back, I’ll call you.
Apparently, other messages said things like, “I needed a walk yesterday after therapy, and he stopped me on the street!” “Wow, what a connection.” “Like I’ve never done before.”
Sanna Rameau, Ana Knezevich’s best friend, said those messages didn’t make sense before.
Rameau told Sierra Gillespie of the Law & Crime Network, “She doesn’t do those things.” “The way it was written was very different from how she writes.”
Rameau said that Knezevich “wouldn’t just walk up to a man on the street and say she’s going to leave for a few days.”
“That is not my friend at all,” she said, adding that Knezevich was planning to go to Barcelona in a few days.
She replied right away to the “weird” message that she thought came from her friend.
I asked, “What’s going on?” What do you mean? I became worried, so I asked you to tell me where you were. “This doesn’t sound safe,” Rameau told Gillespie. “My texts didn’t get through.” I became worried right away. When I didn’t hear from her again, I called the police in Madrid first thing on Sunday morning, February 2.
The strange text message that Knezevich’s brother Juan Felipe Henao got from his sister on February 2 was also very strange. It was in Spanish, which Ana Knezevich speaks well because she was born in Colombia, but Henao said something wasn’t right.
A police report from Ft. Lauderdale says, “He said it wasn’t like his sister to do something like this, and the text in Spanish looked like it had been translated from English to Spanish using Google Translate. The message made no sense at all and was definitely not written by his sister, who speaks both English and Spanish fluently.”
The police report says that Henao was “very worried that something bad happened to Ana” and that he told them that his sister was having a hard time with her divorce.
The police report says that Juan said that Ana and David are getting a bad divorce and that a lot of money is at stake. David does not like the idea of the money being split between the two of them. “Ana has a friend in Spain that she has known for a long time, so she went there three months ago to clear her mind,” Juan said.
As per the FBI, the Colombian woman who translated the message for David Knezevich told her mother about the new person she liked. The complaint said that when she looked him up on Google, she saw news stories that said he was a suspect in the disappearance of his wife.
Agents were also able to follow the suspect’s movements. On January 27, he flew from Miami International Airport to Istanbul, Turkey, and then to Belgrade, Serbia, where he was born. He is said to have left Serbia on January 30 and come back on February 5.
Agents said that the 2,592 km (about 1,600 miles) trip from Belgrade to Madrid takes about 26 hours to drive. They also found out that David Knezevich rented a Peugeot 308 from January 29 to March 15.
When he returned the car, the rental company saw that the windows were tinted and the license plates had been changed. In the time he had the car, David Knezevich had driven more than 4,700 miles, or over 7,600 kilometers.
The Spanish government also found out that someone had reported their license plates as stolen. People say they saw the plates on the street outside the victim’s apartment. The plates were also seen at two toll booths outside of Madrid, but the driver can’t be seen because the windows are tinted.
Then, agents talked to someone who worked at the alleged kidnapper’s business. The FBI said she told them that David Knezevich made her call and say she was his missing wife so he could cancel their insurance and open a new bank account.
Agents said that Ana Knezevich does not have children, and children could be heard in the background of one of the calls.
David Knezevich is said to have told the worker that the calls had to be made so that people could get paid.
“Knezevich further stated ‘I cannot call with my voice because I sound like a guy,’” the complaint said.
He is still in jail without a bond.
