MIAMI – David Knezevich is now facing charges in connection with the death of his estranged wife, Ana Maria Knezevich, after previously being federally charged with kidnapping after she disappeared in Spain in early February.
Prosecutors allege that the 36-year-old Fort Lauderdale businessman snatched his 40-year-old wife from her Madrid apartment and spray-painted security cameras at her building. He’s now charged with kidnapping resulting in death, foreign domestic violence resulting in death and foreign murder of a U.S. national. He’s been jailed since May following his arrest on the kidnapping charge; a federal judge denied him bond that month.
Family members said Ana Knezevich fled to Spain around Christmas amid a contentious separation with her husband, who did not want to split their assets equitably.
Authorities said Knezevich asked a Colombian woman he met online to translate messages into Colombian Spanish, claiming they were for a movie script. These messages, supposedly written by Ana Knezevich, a native of Colombia born Ana Maria Henao, raised suspicions when her friends doubted their authenticity.
Authorities said travel records showed a roundtrip journey from Miami, to Istanbul, to Belgrade, the capital of his native Serbia. They said he rented a car there and made the roughly 26-hour drive to Madrid.
The vehicle was later returned in Belgrade with tinted windows, altered license plates and missing stickers. Stolen license plates were detected near Ana Maria Knezevich’s apartment during the critical timeframe.
“This is a step in the direction to start to mourn while we continue to search for answers and honor Ana’s memory by advocating for her story to be told, and for accountability to prevail,” Diego Henao, Ana Maria Knezevich’s brother, said in a statement.
David Knezevich could face the death penalty if convicted.
That topic came up in Knezevich’s hearing in Miami federal court on Thursday.
The judge granted a defense request to move the formal arraignment on the new charges until next week, stating that she had just received the superseding indictment this morning. The defense attorney said she needed more time to speak with her client, in part because of the broader national context of the new filing: on the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump has signaled he would like to resume federal executions.
“Whenever there is a change with the administration things can change with the Department of Justice protocols,” defense attorney Jayne Weintraub said. “The protocols that have been in place with Merrick Garland and the Biden administration I am sure will be adjusted by — I can’t even say it — Matt Gaetz and we will go forward.”
Earlier Thursday, the ACLU petitioned the Biden administration to commute all federal death sentences before he leaves office. They wrote, “Donald Trump executed more people during his first term as president than all of the past ten administrations combined, and he has promised to expand the use of the death penalty even more in his second. We must take action immediately before he is sworn into office.”
Also in the hearing, Weintraub described the government’s evidence against her client as flimsy, including what prosecutors described as a grainy piece of surveillance video they said showed him leaving the apartment with an object that could be a suitcase.
“There is no evidence of a kidnapping or a murder,” Weintraub said.
Attorney Adam Ingber, representing the Henao family, thanked the media for its reporting on the case, which he believes has brought focus to the investigative efforts of law enforcement in the United States and Spain as federal prosecutors move forward.