MIAMI — His wife’s corpse has still not been found in Europe.
But on Wednesday, federal prosecutors obtained a grand jury indictment accusing David Knezevich of killing Ana Knezevich Henao, in addition to a previous charge of kidnapping her in Madrid in early February.
Knezevich, 36, a Fort Lauderdale businessman from Serbia who has been held at a federal lock-up in Miami since his arrest in May, faces a potential death penalty if convicted of the new charge, kidnapping resulting in death.
Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami have still not indicated whether they will seek the death penalty. If they do pursue it, the Justice Department would have the final say. If the department were to approve it and Knezevich was convicted at trial, he would face the death penalty at his sentencing — an elaborate process.
But if prosecutors don’t opt for the death penalty, Knezevich, if convicted, would face a potential maximum sentence of life in prison.
The prosecutors’ decision marks a dramatic shift in the largely circumstantial case surrounding 40-year-old Ana Knezevich’s disappearance from her Madrid apartment on Feb. 2. Before the Colombian-American’s presumed death, the couple was going through a difficult divorce while fighting over millions in Broward properties they acquired during their 13-year marriage.
Ana María Knezevich Henao CBS News Miami
For months, the FBI has been been coordinating its investigation with the Spanish National Police, gathering suspicious security-camera footage of David Knezevich’s presence in a Madrid hardware store and at her apartment just before her disappearance, as well as fabricated text messages and stolen license plates on a rental car suggesting a cover-up. However, authorities found no evidence of blood traces or a struggle in the estranged wife’s Madrid apartment after she was reported missing.
The question of whether prosecutors would charge Knezevich with killing his 40-year-old wife had been hanging over the highly publicized case since his arrest in May at Miami International Airport upon his return from Serbia. The feds hinted at their answer in court papers last month as defense attorneys continued to pressure prosecutors to turn over more evidence. The case is scheduled for trial in February but is likely to be postponed.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams had tried to prod the prosecutors to make up their minds about pursuing a capital case, ordering them in October to “advise” the defendant and his attorneys of their plan to seek the death penalty — or not.
At an October 22 court hearing, prosecutor Jessica Obenauf told the judge that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami has been in discussions with the Justice Department in Washington, regarding bringing a potential death penalty case.
“They are aware and we are in constant contact with them,” Obenauf told Williams. Knezevich’s main defense attorney, Jayne Weintraub, who has challenged prosecutors to produce evidence of an alleged murder, zeroed in on that issue at last month’s hearing.
“We are all kind of pussyfooting around this ‘word’ that I know the Court is well aware of, and that word would be protocol,” Weintraub said, referring to hiring a “learned counsel” who specializes in death penalty law to assist in Knezevich’s defense if he’s charged with killing his wife.
“I’m sitting here just trying to wrap my mind around what is happening here,” said Weintraub, adding that prosecutors filed the original kidnapping charge as “a bookmark or a placeholder.”
The issue of additionally charging Knezevich with both kidnapping and killing his wife runs parallel to another high-profile case in Miami: a Colomban man was arrested last month on the charge of kidnapping his former mistress and their 9-year-old daughter, resulting in their deaths eight years ago.
Knezevich’s case is strikingly different because the alleged crime involved his traveling from Miami to Serbia before prosecutors and FBI agents say he kidnapped his wife in Spain.
Italian firefighters combed the heavily wooded area in the province of Vicenza in northern Italy on Wednesday and Thursday, August 21-22, 2024. They, along with investigators from Spain, Italy and the FBI, were searching for the body of Ana Knezevich Henao, the Fort Lauderdale woman who was reported missing in early February in Spain. Her body has not been found. Il Giornale di Vicenza
‘CUNNING LEVEL OF DECEPTION’
In two consecutive detention hearings, a magistrate judge in Miami ordered that Knezevich remain in jail because he considered him a “serious flight risk.”
After the second hearing, Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres concluded “there is ample evidence” to support the kidnapping case against Knezevich, whose lawyers had asked the judge to reconsider his initial detention order.
“Indeed, the evidence produced at the second hearing supports the Court’s original finding that [Knezevich] presents a serious risk of flight given the cunning level of deception that he has demonstrated as part of the crime he is alleged to have engaged in,” Torres ruled in a 17-page order in September.
Torres also rejected the defense’s “attack” that prosecutors have no jurisdiction to bring the kidnapping charge in Miami because the crime allegedly happened in Spain, saying their initial evidence supported the case.
After his arrest in May, an FBI agent dug into a trove of circumstantial evidence suggesting he had the means, opportunity and motive to kidnap his estranged wife from her apartment in Madrid.
BROWARD REAL ESTATE HOLDINGS
Knezevich, who operated a tech business, owned millions of dollars in Broward County residential real estate with his wife, a native of Colombia. They were fighting over these and other assets when she left for Spain in late December 2023. He’s accused of leaving Miami the following month with a plan to track her down. She was reported missing by authorities on February 2.
The FBI believes the husband carried her body in a suitcase out of her Madrid apartment building that evening, citing security-camera footage of him exiting the elevator. In August, the FBI joined Spanish and Italian authorities in a search for her corpse in the woods north of the city of Vicenza in Italy, where a GPS alert on the husband’s rented Peugeot 308 suggested he took a detour there on his return trip from Spain to Serbia.
NO BLOOD FOUND IN MADRID APARTMENT
At the second detention hearing, Knezevich’s lawyer, Weintraub, focused on a Spanish police forensic report that found “no traces of blood” in the wife’s Madrid apartment, contrary to what they initially claimed. Citing no signs of struggle, Knezevich’s defense team sought his release based on this new piece of evidence.
“I agree with you that some of their evidence is challengeable,” Torres said at the end of the hearing, but nonetheless ruled to detain Knezevich.
The judge also said he could not detect a “suitcase,” as described by an FBI agent during her testimony, in the security camera video of Knezevich at the wife’s apartment building. The FBI suspects Knezevich carried out Ana, a petite woman, in something that looks like a suitcase, according to the agent’s testimony.
DUCT TAPE, SPRAY PAINT PURCHASES
However, Torres cited the strength of another video showing Knezevich purchasing duct tape and spray paint at a Madrid hardware store that may have been used to keep the front door of the wife’s apartment building open during the alleged kidnapping and to coat over the security camera in the lobby. “He was buying those supplies in that hardware store, including the can of spray paint, to make sure the video cameras did not catch him moving her out of the building,” Torres said.
The judge also pointed out that Knezevich allegedly wrote a series of text messages between him and a Colombian woman who prosecutors claim is his girlfriend. During one exchange, he asked the woman to translate a message into “perfect Colombian” for a friend in Serbia writing a script. Knezevich told the woman he wanted the writing to sound authentic, according to the FBI.
The day after Ana Knezevich disappeared, three friends told investigators they received the same strange message from her, which suggested she was still alive. “I met someone wonderful. He has a summer house about 2h from Madrid. We are going there now and I will spend a few days there. There is barely any signal though. I’ll call you when I come back. Kisses,” was the message on her cellphone.
“He was engaging in a scheme to make it look like the wife was alive and well, communicating with her friends about a man she just met, when in fact she was never to be seen again,“ Torres said.
The judge further noted that Knezevich flew in January from Miami to Turkey then to Serbia, where he has family, and then rented the Peugeot to drive to Spain. The judge noted he drove the rental car for thousands of miles from Belgrade to Madrid and back to Belgrade, keeping the car for 47 days. When he returned it to the rental agency, the windows had been tinted, stickers removed and license plates swapped out.
“All these facts in combination reflect highly unusual behavior for someone with the means to fly from Serbia to Spain if he wanted to visit a hardware store in Madrid,” Torres wrote. “At a time he was supposed to be visiting his family in Serbia, he was blocks away from the apartment where his wife was last seen.”
By JAY WEAVER/Miami Herald
Jay Weaver writes about federal crime at the crossroads of South Florida and Latin America. Since joining the Miami Herald in 1999, he’s covered the federal courts nonstop, from Elian Gonzalez’s custody battle to Alex Rodriguez’s steroid abuse. He was part of the Herald teams that won the 2001 and 2022 Pulitzer Prizes for breaking news on Elian’s seizure by federal agents and the collapse of a Surfside condo building killing 98 people. He and three Herald colleagues were 2019 Pulitzer Prize finalists for explanatory reporting on gold smuggling between South America and Miami.
