David Knezevich, the South Florida businessman accused in the February disappearance of his estranged wife in Spain, is now charged with her murder.
A federal grand jury in Miami indicted Knezevich, 36, Wednesday on charges of kidnapping resulting in death, foreign domestic violence resulting in death, and foreign murder of a US national.
Ana Maria Henao disappeared in February while living in Madrid. Since then, authorities in Spain and across Europe have searched for Henao’s body, but have still not recovered it.
According to the new indictment, Knezevich traveled to Spain from Miami “with the intent to kill, injure, harass, and intimidate his spouse and intimate partner and committed a crime of violence against her, resulting in her death.”
Knezevich “did willfully and unlawfully seize, confine, kidnap, abduct, and carry away” Henao and did “willfully, deliberately, maliciously, and with premeditation and malice aforethought, unlawfully kill” Henao, according to the indictment.
Knezevich was arrested in May at Miami International Airport for his involvement in his wife’s kidnapping.
Henao’s family said the new charge 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,” said Diego Henao, Ana’s brother.
“We will continue to rely on the strength and love of our friends, family, and community as we try to process this latest information,” said Ana’s mother, Aura Henao, of her family’s well-being.
If convicted of the newest charges, Knezevich could face the death penalty.
Jayne Weintraub, Knezevich’s attorney, called the superseding indictment a “desperate attempt” by the government to charge everything possible and see what sticks. “There is no evidence that David Knezevich kidnapped or murdered his wife,” she wrote in a statement to CNN Thursday. “He will plead Not Guilty to these charges at the arraignment next week.”
“The FBI has presented overwhelming evidence that he is responsible for her disappearance, and I am happy the case against him is getting stronger,” said Henao’s friend Sanna Rameau, one of the last people to speak to her. “Justice will be served.”
The couple was in the middle of a contentious divorce.
Prosecutors said Knezevich traveled from Miami to Turkey and later to his native home of Serbia, where he rented a car and drove to Spain in late January.
They said he kidnapped Henao from her apartment and spray-painted cameras at her building in Madrid. He was also seen leaving the apartment building with a suitcase, court records said.
According to court records, surveillance cameras captured Knezevich buying spray paint and duct tape at a hardware store in Madrid the same day Henao was last seen.
The owner of the rental car agency in Serbia told investigators that when the car was returned in mid-March, someone had tinted its windows and added a new license plate frame, and it had traveled nearly 4,800 miles, the criminal complaint said.
Tollbooth cameras captured images of the same model Peugeot, with tinted windows, near Madrid in the late night and early morning of February 2 and 3. The complaint said the vehicle’s license plates were stolen from another vehicle on the street in Madrid where Henao was living.
