Judge decides again to detain Florida husband accused of kidnapping wife missing in Spain

For the second time, a judge has ruled that a Fort Lauderdale man accused of kidnapping his estranged wife in Spain amid a divorce battle over millions must remain in jail because he views him as a “serious flight risk” before his federal trial in Miami.

Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres concluded Monday “there is ample evidence” to support the kidnapping case against David Knezevich, 36, a native of Serbia, whose lawyers had asked the judge to reconsider his initial detention order after the defendant’s arrest in May at Miami International Airport.

“Indeed, the evidence produced at the second hearing supports the Court’s original finding that [Knezevich] presents a serious risk of flight given the cunning level of deception that he has demonstrated as part of the crime he is alleged to have engaged in,” Torres ruled in a 17-page order.

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Torres also rejected the defense’s “attack” that prosecutors have no jurisdiction to bring the kidnapping charge in Miami because the crime allegedly happened in Spain, saying their initial evidence supported the case. His ruling seemed to focus more on the viability of the prosecution’s case than on whether the defendant would appear for trial if he were granted bail with strict conditions.

Knezevich’s defense team expressed disappointment in Torres’ order, which was issued a month after the defendant’s second detention hearing, in August.

“We appreciate the time in preparing this order,” his defense team, Jayne Weintraub, Bruce Zimet and Christopher Cavallo, said in a statement. “We disagree with the conclusion and will be filing our appeal.”

While Knezevich’s defense team plans to appeal to U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, who is presiding over the high-profile case, it remains unlikely that Knezevich would be released from a federal lock-up before trial.

After his arrest in May, Knezevich faced intense scrutiny during two detention hearings where an FBI agent dug into a trove of circumstantial evidence suggesting he had the means, opportunity and motive to kidnap his estranged wife, Ana Knezevich Henao, in early February from her Madrid apartment.

Knezevich, who operated a tech business, owned millions of dollars in Broward County residential real estate with his wife, a native of Colombia. They were fighting over these and other assets when the 40-year-old left for Spain in late December. She was reported missing by authorities on Feb. 2.

The FBI believes the husband carried her body in a suitcase out of her Madrid apartment building that evening, citing security-camera footage of him exiting the elevator. Last month, the FBI joined Spanish and Italian authorities in a search for her corpse in the woods north of the city of Vicenza in Italy, where a GPS alert on the husband’s rented Peugeot 308 suggested he took a detour there on his return trip from Spain to Serbia.

READ MORE: Investigators comb Italy to find body of Fort Lauderdale woman who vanished in Spain

At the second detention hearing in August, Knezevich’s lawyer, Weintraub, zeroed in on a Spanish police forensic report that found “no traces of blood” in the wife’s Madrid apartment, contrary to what they initially claimed. Citing no signs of struggle, Knezevich’s defense team sought his release based on this new piece of evidence.

“I agree with you that some of their evidence is challengeable,” Torres said at the end of the hearing, pointing out the absence of blood evidence in the wife’s Madrid apartment.

The judge also said he could not detect a “suitcase,” as described by an FBI agent during her testimony, in the security camera video of Knezevich at the wife’s apartment building. The FBI suspects Knezevich carried out Ana, a petite woman, in something that looks like a suitcase, according to the agent’s testimony.

However, the judge cited the strength of another video showing Knezevich purchasing materials such as duct tape and spray paint at a Madrid hardware store that may have been used to keep the front door of the wife’s apartment building open during the alleged kidnapping and to coat over the security camera in the lobby.

“Doesn’t that make their case stronger?” Torres said, referring to the key piece of evidence presented by prosecutors.

In his latest ruling, Judge Torres pointed out that Knezevich allegedly wrote a series of text messages between him and a Colombian woman who prosecutors claim is his girlfriend. During one exchange, he asked the woman to translate a message into “perfect Colombian” for a friend in Serbia writing a script. Knezevich told the woman he wanted the writing to sound authentic, according to the FBI.

The day after Ana Knezevich disappeared, three friends told investigators they received the same strange message from her, which suggested she was still alive. “I met someone wonderful. He has a summer house about 2h from Madrid. We are going there now and I will spend a few days there. There is barely any signal though. I’ll call you when I come back. Kisses,” was the message on her cellphone.

In his ruling, Judge Torres seemed to be putting two and two together.

“He was buying those supplies in that hardware store, including the can of spray paint, to make sure the video cameras did not catch him moving her out of the building,” Torres said. “He was engaging in a scheme to make it look like the wife was alive and well, communicating with her friends about a man she just met, when in fact she was never to be seen again.“

Torres further noted that David Knevevich flew in January from Miami to Turkey then to Serbia, where he has family, and then rented the Peugeot to drive to Spain. The judge noted he drove the rental car for thousands of miles from Belgrade to Madrid and back to Belgrade, keeping the car for 47 days. When he returned it to the rental agency, the windows had been tinted, stickers removed and license plates swapped out.

“All these facts in combination reflect highly unusual behavior for someone with the means to fly from Serbia to Spain if he wanted to visit a hardware store in Madrid,” Torres wrote. “At a time he was supposed to be visiting his family in Serbia, he was blocks away from the apartment where his wife was last seen.”