A South Florida businessman accused in the February disappearance of his estranged wife in Spain is now facing a murder charge in the case. NBC6’s Marissa Bagg reports
A South Florida businessman accused in the February disappearance of his estranged wife in Spain is now facing a murder charge in the case.
A grand jury indictment filed Wednesday charges David Knezevich with kidnapping resulting in death, foreign domestic violence resulting in death and foreign murder of a United States national.
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Knezevich, 36, had previously only been charged with kidnapping his 40-year-old wife, Ana Maria Henao Knezevich.
Knezevich was arrested in May after arriving at Miami International Airport on a flight from Serbia.
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Henao Knezevich, a Colombian native and naturalized American, has been missing since Feb. 2 when she was last seen in Madrid.
According to the new indictment, Knezevich traveled from Miami-Dade to Madrid "with the intent to kill, injure, harass, and intimidate his spouse and intimate partner" and committed a crime of violence against her that resulted in her death.
Knezevich "did willfully and unlawfully seize, confine, kidnap, abduct, and carry away" Henao Knezevich and did "willfully, deliberatively, maliciously, and with premeditation and malice aforethought, unlawfully kill" her, the indictment said.
Knezevich's attorneys on Thursday questioned the evidence in the case and maintained their client's innocence.
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"There's no evidence then and there's no evidence now that David kidnapped her, murdered her, there just is no evidence of any of this and we're just as dumbfounded," attorney Jane Weintraub said.
Henao Knezevich had lived in Fort Lauderdale but had moved to Madrid in December after friends said she was separating from her husband.
Court documents show that authorities believe Knezevich resembles the man wearing a motorcycle helmet who spray painted the security camera lens outside hers Madrid apartment on Feb. 2. The man left an hour later carrying a suitcase.
Prosecutors said security video showed Knezevich in a Madrid hardware store using cash to buy duct tape and the same brand of spray paint the man in the motorcycle helmet used on the security camera.
Prosecutors also allege the man in the motorcycle helmet is the same height and has the same eyebrows as Knezevich and that his cellphone connected to Facebook from Madrid.
License plates that were stolen in Madrid in that period were spotted by police plate readers both near a motorcycle shop where an identical helmet was purchased and on Ana’s street the night she disappeared. Hours after the helmeted man left the apartment, a Peugeot identical to the one Knezevich rented and sporting the stolen plates was recorded going through a toll booth near Madrid. The driver could not be seen because the windows were tinted.
The morning after his wife disappeared, prosecutors say Knezevich texted a Colombian woman he met on a dating app to translate into “perfect Colombian” Spanish two English messages. After the woman sent those back to Knezevich, two of Ana’s friends received those exact messages from her cellphone. The messages said Ana was going off with a man she had just met on the street, something the friends say she would have never done.
Knezevich’s attorney has said his client is innocent and was in his native Serbia on the day his 40-year-old wife disappeared, 1,600 miles away. But agents say Knezevich rented a Peugeot in the Serbian capital Belgrade four days earlier.
When Knezevich returned the Peugeot to the rental agency five weeks later, it had been driven 4,800 miles, its windows had been tinted, two identifying stickers had been removed and there was evidence its license plate had been removed and then put back, prosecutors said.
Knezevich pleaded not guilty to the initial kidnapping charge and has remained jailed without bond.
Knezevich's attorneys said they planned to seek his release from jail while he awaits trial, but prosecutors argued he was a danger to the community and a flight risk.
The Fort Lauderdale resident, who has dual citizenship in the U.S. and Serbia, sold six South Florida rental homes to one buyer in the month before Ana Knezevich disappeared from her Madrid apartment on Feb. 2. He sold another to a second buyer three weeks after, Broward County records show.
The seven sales grossed $6 million. The sales include David Knezevich supplying large second mortgages to the buyers, an arrangement prosecutors say could give him enough money to flee the country if they were paid off.
Knezevich's attorney disputed that, saying he had few liquid assets.
The case has garnered international attention as law enforcement from several different countries have come together to help find Henao Knezevich and the person responsible for her disappearance.
Her family has held out hope that she would be found alive but said the filing of the new charges "confirms their worst fears."
"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," her brother, Diego Henao, said in a statement Thursday.
"Our hope is that Ana's life, love and legacy will not be overshadowed by this tragedy but will instead inspire meaningful conversations about domestic violence and the importance of protecting those at risk, as Ana would have wanted," brother Felipe Henao said.
