A guy from South Florida pleaded not guilty on Monday to a federal charge that he kidnapped his ex-wife, who has been missing in Spain since early February. He is also fighting the order that kept him in jail in Miami from a federal judge.
On one count, David Knezevich, 36, was charged with taking his wife hostage from Miami to Madrid between January 27 and February 5. In the charge, the wife is only called a “victim.” Her name is Ana María Knezevich Henao, and she is 40 years old. She left for Spain at the end of December, while the pair in Fort Lauderdale was going through a divorce and a fight over millions of dollars in joint assets.
The wife, who is from Colombia, hasn’t been seen since February 2 in Madrid, according to Spain’s National Police. They are looking into her loss as a possible murder case and have searched for her body. FBI officers have helped the Spanish government with these searches.
Knezevich was arrested by FBI agents at Miami International Airport in early May as he was coming from his home country of Serbia. He has been in jail at the Federal Detention Center in Miami since he was caught. He could spend the rest of his life in jail and lose any money that came from the kidnapping charge if he is found guilty.
In the past, Magistrate Judge Edwin G. Torres refused Knezevich’s bond in Miami federal court. He is suspected of planning a complex plot to kidnap and kill his wife in Spain across international borders. Based on a criminal complaint filed by the FBI before Knezevich was charged with kidnapping, the judge decided that he was likely to flee because he was wealthy and had ties in other countries. For his part, Torres said at his arrest hearing last month that it was “a close call.”
In the arrest order he sent out in early June, Torres explained why he thought Knezevich should stay locked up until his trial.
There is a lot of evidence to back the government’s complaint, such as the fact that the defendant was seen traveling from the US to Turkey and then to Spain using unusual means, Torres wrote. “Also, the defendant is seen on video surveillance in Spain buying things that could have been used in a kidnapping, even though he says he was somewhere else.”
“The government’s complaint is also backed up by the strong evidence that [the defendant] may have had to commit this crime because he was very angry about his divorce from the victim.”
In a court document, Knezevich’s lawyer Jayne Weintraub said that the man should be freed because he has lived in Fort Lauderdale for 15 years, is close to a brother who also lives in the area, and owns both an IT business and real estate interests.
She also said that “most of his means are tied up in second mortgages” and that Knezevich has “very little money available at all” because his ex-wife’s family has set up a trust to handle her property.
In response, federal officials say Knezevich is both likely to run away and a threat to the community. They said in a court document that the suspect told the court’s probation office that he thought his net worth was about $2.5 million after selling seven homes for about $6.7 million between December 2003 and February 2024, before his ex-wife went missing in Spain.
An assistant U.S. attorney said that Knezevich then loaned most of the money to the buyer of the homes. The assistant U.S. attorney also said that an FBI questioning of a title agent revealed that the agent is holding $214,000 in an escrow account for Knezevich. Monk said Knesevich didn’t tell the probation office about that money.
The death of Knezevich’s wife of 13 years, Ana, has not yet been charged. That is a chance if the FBI or Spain’s National Police find his wife’s body.
We don’t even know if she’s dead right now.
Federal investigators think that Ana Knezevich’s husband scared her so much that when she left for Madrid the day after Christmas, their relationship in Fort Lauderdale was pretty much over. They say that once she got there, she told her family and friends about the bad relationship and started going out with a few different guys.
After Ana Knezevich went missing on February 2, she stopped talking to her family and friends.