The spouse of a missing American woman in Spain rejects the accusation of kidnapping.
David Knezevich, aged 36, pleaded not guilty on Monday in court to a federal kidnapping charge, almost four months after his wife went missing in Madrid, as per the court records.
His wife, Ana Maria Knezevich Henao, hasn't been heard from since February 2. Prosecutors allege that a man wearing a face mask and helmet who's suspected to be Knezevich entered her apartment building in Madrid and sprayed paint on the lens of a surveillance camera. About an hour later, the man came out of the elevator with a suitcase.
Before his arrest in May, Knezevich's lawyer, Kenneth Padowitz, told CNN that his client has never been to Spain and had no involvement in the incident.
However, investigators assert that links between Knezevich and the crime include the can of spray paint, security camera footage, stolen license plates, and rental car records, as well as messages sent by Knezevich to a woman he met on a dating app.
If found guilty, the husband may get life imprisonment as a punishment.
How FBI investigators pieced together the evidence
The couple lived in Florida and planned to divorce. Their separation became tense because Knezevich refused to equally distribute their assets, the criminal complaint stated. However, Padowitz told CNN in February that the separation was amicable.
Henao had moved to Spain in December, residing in an upscale apartment in Madrid's Salamanca neighborhood, according to court documents.
When Henao disappeared from her Madrid apartment in February, Knezevich's attorney claimed his client had been in Serbia, his native country. But federal authorities claimed records show Knezevich flew from Miami to Turkey in January and then went to Belgrade, Serbia, where he rented a car on January 29.
The owner of the rental car agency informed investigators that the rented car had tinted windows, a new license plate frame, and traveled around 4,800 miles when returned in mid-March.
Toll booth cameras captured images of the same model Peugeot, with tinted windows, near Madrid on the nights of February 2 and 3. It had license plates stolen from a different vehicle on the same Madrid street where Henao resided, judges said.
After 9 p.m. on the day Henao disappeared, a man with a face covering and helmet similar to Knezevich's features entered her apartment building and partially covered the surveillance camera with spray paint.
Spanish authorities identified the particular type of spray paint and found that a Madrid retailer had sold this paint, along with two rolls of duct tape, to a man resembling Knezevich on the day Henao disappeared.
Henao, a US citizen, originally from Colombia, frequently communicated with her family while abroad. She was supposed to travel to Barcelona with friends on February 5 but suddenly halted communication and never arrived.
Two days before her intended trip to Barcelona, her friend Sanna Rameau received an enigmatic WhatsApp message from Henao, indicating she was abruptly leaving town with a man she had recently met.
The message read, "I met someone amazing!!! He has a summer house about 2h (hours) from Madrid. We are going there now and I will stay there for a few days. Signal is spotty. I'll call you when I get back."
Rameau and Henao had talked by phone just before she vanished, but she hadn't mentioned meeting a new guy then.
Investigators suspect that the texts from Henao's phone were actually sent by her husband. He's thought to have asked another Colombian woman he met on a dating app to help translate the messages into Colombian, court documents revealed.
A similar message Knezevich sent to the unidentified Colombian woman for translation was the same as the one sent from Henao's phone regarding a man she'd met.
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The FBI investigators found that the couple lived in Florida and were planning to divorce due to financial disputes.Despite claiming to be in Serbia during his wife's disappearance, US authorities have evidence suggesting that Knezevich was in Spain around the time of her disappearance, which raises questions about his involvement with her whereabouts ['us'].
