Simon Hunter
A JUDGE in the American state of Florida has denied bail to David Knezevich for a second time, as the court proceedings against the Serbian native on the suspicion that he kidnapped and possibly murdered his wife Ana Knezevich in Madrid continue.
Judge Edwin Torres ruled on Monday that there is ‘ample evidence’ to support the kidnapping case against the 36-year-old, according to a report in the Miami Herald.
“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 wrote in a 17-page court document cited by the newspaper.
Knezevich was arrested in May after a joint investigation into the disappearance of Ana Knezevich, 40, from her apartment in Madrid.
The pair were married at the time that she vanished back in early February, but were fighting over their millions of dollars of joint assets as part of their divorce proceedings.
She has not been heard from since then, and extensive searches for her body in several different countries have so far proved fruitless.
The FBI concluded that circumstantial evidence shows that David Knezevich had not only the motive to kidnap his estranged wife, whose full name is Ana Knezevich Henao, but also the means and the opportunity.
Investigators believe that a man seen spraypainting the lenses of a security camera in Ana Knezevich’s apartment was her husband, a theory that was bolstered when CCTV footage of Knezevich in a nearby hardware store purchasing duct tape and spray paint, among other items, was also located.
What’s more, Judge Torres pointed to the fact that Knezevich took a flight in January from Miami to Turkey, and then on to Serbia, where he is originally from and has family, before renting a car.
The Peugeot he hired was driven thousands of miles all the way to Madrid, and then back to Belgrade – a total trip of 47 days.
What’s more, he had the car’s windows tinted during his journey and had changed the licence plates.
“All these facts in combination reflect highly unusual behaviour for someone with the means to fly from Serbia to Spain if he wanted to visit a hardware store in Madrid,” the judge stated in his ruling.
“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,” he added, according to the Miami Herald.
The defence team acting for Knezevich said that it was disappointed about the ruling, the second of its kind in two months, and that they would appeal.
