The work of the Central Brigade for Missing Persons and Homicide of the Spanish UDEV, with the support of the FBI, made it possible to obtain what until recently seemed improbable: David Knezevich, “Dusa”, born in Serbia but residing in the United States and aged 36. , will sit in the dock of the Florida court, accused of murder. This is what ABC has learned from both reliable police sources and legal informants.
The feat is quite a plot twist in this story, because, until now, the accusation brought against him was that of kidnapping, for the disappearance of his ex-wife, Ana María Henao, of dual Colombian nationality and American. The aggravated crime seemed distant since there remained no trace of his remains.
The event occurred at the beginning of February in Madrid, where the victim had been living for a month, after a difficult separation from David. He was captured upon arrival at Miami Airport from Belgrade after allegedly killing Ana. The context of the crime would be that the businessman refused to share his 12 million dollars during the separation.
Judicial times in North America are very different from those in Spain. The oral hearing was to begin in October, which had already been postponed, but finally, as ABC announced, it will begin on February 15, 2025. This moment was providential for our agents to have issued letters rogatory to the companies of telephone in five other countries: France, Italy, Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia. These are the territories through which Knezevich passed during his return trip between his country and Spain.
The triangulation of her three terminals and that of Ana herself, already dead, in part of this return journey to deliver to Belgrade the rental car with which she went to the crime and established an alibi that for the moment (“for indirect proof,” say the Americans) is being ruined.
The Italian track
A month ago, ABC released the virtually complete geolocation report, which revealed that David, after killing Ana, drove her to at least France; His terminal broadcast a signal in the French country. Then, due to a detour he made in a wooded area in northern Italy and which took him a total of 27 and a half hours with the Peugeot 208, instead of 8 and a half hours, investigators suspected that he had decided to get rid of his ex-wife’s body, which was never found. Missing Persons and Homicide agents went to the transalpine country to comb this entire area, without success.
According to French repeaters, David sent the following text to his friends via WhatsApp, posing as Ana, to one of his friends, Sanna, on February 3 at 2:03 p.m.: “I met a very cool person. He owns a leisure house about 2 hours from Madrid. Now we’re leaving and I’m going to spend a few days there. Even though there is hardly any signal. I’ll call you when I get back.” Apparently, he asked an ex-girlfriend to write the message in Spanish beforehand and then send it to him, according to the same person.
At 4:16 p.m., another friend received a WhatsApp apparently from Ana María Henao, in which she justified her absence. It was the same text as the previous one, but in English. Some informants relied on Knezevich’s confession to accuse him of the murder and not the kidnapping. But the accused always denied not only taking and killing the woman; but even that, he never went to Spain.
His lawyer directly requests acquittal, while that of the Henao family and the victim’s own brother stressed on Thursday, after hearing the news, the value of journalistic publications and investigations by the Spanish police to have the court recognize that is a suspected suspect. kidnapper to a textbook uxoricide.
Recorded by cameras
And here another piece of evidence plays a fundamental role: the cameras filmed his rental car, whose license plates had been changed by the Serb for those stolen in Alcalá de Henares, while he was going to buy some spray paint at a Coslada hardware store; a black can with which he was also captured in the Francisco Silvela building, 65 (Salamanca district), where Ana had rented an apartment, spraying the interior surveillance cameras. On February 2, 2024, he was disguised with a motorcycle helmet to avoid being recognized, and this happened shortly before he killed her. The National Police considers that it is a case of mechanical asphyxiation, since the scientist did not find a single drop of blood in the apartment. And that David then put the woman’s body, small in size, in a suitcase which he took in the Peugeot.
Toll controls and traffic cameras also put him on Spanish territory from Madrid to the border post of La Junquera (Girona), and repeaters from the other five countries also put him on the ropes. And he told his mother that he was going to spend a few days in Montenegro, even sending her photos supposedly taken on the coast of that country. “I had carefully woven the plan; but maybe he thought we wouldn’t investigate that thoroughly. “He doesn’t know the Spanish national police,” underlines one of the members of the team who managed to resolve this complicated matter.
Florida is one of the states where the death penalty is still applied. The next step will be for the American prosecutor’s office to publish its first indictment, in which it will have to specify whether it seeks the death penalty for Knezevich or prison. The businessman has a complicated life. Donald Trump, during the recent electoral campaign which will bring him back to the White House on January 20, announced a toughening of the hand in these matters and spoke in favor of the cancellation of new executions. A sanction rejected by the legal and social consensus in Europe but which, although it is considered the largest democracy in the world, remains in force in a good part of the fifty States which make up the Union. And furthermore, they still have a sufficiently broad niche of popular acceptance, at least in some cases.
