Madrid apartment cameras captured Florida man carrying suitcase from missing wife's apartment: docs
Florida man David Knezevich, who was arrested in Miami, allegedly returned his rental car with new tinted windows and a changed license plate frame
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}David Knezevich, a Florida man accused of kidnapping his estranged wife while she was in Spain, allegedly left her apartment building with what appeared to be a suitcase on the evening she disappeared in February, according to federal court documents.
Ana Maria Knezevich, 40, was last seen entering her Madrid apartment building around 2:20 p.m. on Feb. 2. Hours later, security cameras recorded a man who appeared to have the same characteristics as Knezevic, wearing a motorcycle helmet, entering the building around 9:30 p.m. with a can of spray paint, "which he used to disable" a surveillance camera, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit.
"The lens was not completely obscured, and the male is seen fastening a piece of duct tape to the lock of the building entrance to prevent the lock from engaging to allow subsequent entry," the affidavit states. "Notably, the male, who looks directly at the camera, has physical characteristics that resemble Knezevich. At approximately 10:30 p.m., the male is captured leaving the elevator with what appears to be a suitcase."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Ana's loved ones reported her missing soon after she was last seen because she failed to appear for a planned trip with friends in Barcelona. When Spanish firefighters arrived at Ana's apartment on Feb. 4, she was nowhere to be found.
David Knezevich, 36, was arrested at Miami International Airport in connection with the disappearance of his wife, according to Policía Nacional, the Spanish international police, on Monday.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A sign for Colombian-born missing American Ana Maria Knezevich is displayed on a streetlight in Madrid on Feb. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
Her friend from Florida, Sanna Rameau, previously told Fox News Digital she got a strange text from Ana on Feb. 3, making her think her friend was "taken against her will."
"I met someone wonderful!" a translated version of the WhatsApp message, sent in Spanish, reads. "He has a summer house about 2 [hours] from Madrid. We are going there now and I will spend a few days there. Signal is spotty. I'll call you when I get back."
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}This image of a screenshot provided by Sanna Rameau shows a Feb. 3, 2024, text message thread between Ana Maria Knezevic and Rameau. Spanish police are searching for Knezevic, a Colombian-American woman who went missing in Spain. (Sanna Rameau via AP)
A second message to Rameau reads, "Yesterday after therapy I needed a walk and he approached me on the street! Amazing connection. Like I never had before."
The FBI learned through their investigation that a Colombian woman who met David on a dating app received a Feb. 3 message from him on WhatsApp asking him to translate the same sentences Ana sent to Sanna from English to "perfect Colombian," telling the woman he had a writer friend in Serbia who was "writing a script about a Colombian character," the FBI agent wrote.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Ana Maria Knezevic, a 40-year-old Fort Lauderdale woman, vanished from the Madrid apartment building where she was temporarily staying on Feb. 2. (Sanna Rameau)
At some point during their communications, the Colombian woman told her mother about David, and her mother researched him on Google. Search results revealed that David's wife had gone missing, and the Colombian woman soon "discovered a news article that … contained a message purportedly from [David] Knezevich's wife that matched the exact wording of the text she and [David] Knezevich had put together on Feb. 3, 2023.
Law enforcement also determined that David rented a vehicle in Serbia, his home country, in January and drove it to Spain until he returned in March.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}This undated image provided by Sanna Rameau shows paint obscuring a building's security camera where Ana Maria Knezevic was staying in Madrid. Spanish police are searching for Knezevic, a Colombian-American woman who went missing suddenly in Madrid. (Sanna Rameau via AP)
"The owner of the rental car agency informed law enforcement that, when Knezevich returned the vehicle, the rental agency discovered that the windows had been tinted, the license plate frames had changed and two stickers had been removed from the vehicle," the affidavit says.
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The new license plates had been stolen from the same street where Ana's apartment building is located, Spanish police learned.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Sanna Rameau described David and Ana Knezevich as a "successful couple" who had been married 13 years before they decided to separate last summer. (Sanna Rameau)
Spanish law enforcement officials were also able to identify the brand of spray paint David allegedly used to black out the security cameras in Ana's building and obtained footage of a man who appears to be Knezevich purchasing the spray paint from a store in Madrid, the affidavit states.
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In March, a woman claiming to be Ana called an insurance carrier to cancel her insurance policies that she held under the business she shared with David. Together, they owned an IT company and real estate in South Florida. The next month, one of David's employees admitted that she impersonated the victim upon David's request to open up a new bank account in Ana's name using Ana's Social Security number.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}David and Ana were going through a contentious divorce, and law enforcement alleges David did not want to split assets evenly with Ana. David's attorney, Ken Padowitz, said he was not making any statements as of the time of publication.