David Knezevich, the husband of a Fort Lauderdale woman who in February, was arrested Saturday by federal authorities at Miami International Airport.
David Knezevich, 36, was arrested “without incident” at the airport by Diplomatic Security Service and the FBI “for his alleged involvement in the kidnapping of a U.S. Citizen” in Madrid, said FBI Miami spokesperson James Marshall.
Knezevich appeared in federal court in Miami briefly Monday, and a bond hearing is scheduled for Friday, the Associated Press reported.
Ana Knezevich, 40, and David Knezevich were separated and preparing to divorce when she went to Madrid in December 2023 for a three-month trip. She hasn’t been heard or seen from since Feb. 2 — the day that an unknown person spraypainted the outside security cameras at the apartment building where she was staying in Madrid, according to a conservatorship petition filed last month in Broward County court by her family.
Sanna Rameau, a friend of Ana Knezevic, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel earlier this year that a man wearing a helmet was seen spray-painting the security cameras.
Her friends received suspicious text messages from Ana Knezevich’s phone on Feb. 3 that they do not believe were written by her, the South Florida Sun Sentinel previously reported. The messages said she had met a man and was going to stay with him for a few days.
One of Ana Knezevich’s friends filed a police report on Feb. 5 with the National Police in Madrid “due to the suspicious circumstances surrounding Ms. Knezevich’s disappearance,” according to the conservatorship petition.
David Knezevich had traveled to his native country of Serbia in January, Ana Knezevich’s brother told Fort Lauderdale Police, according to an incident report.
David Knezevich is in federal custody, Marshall said. Marshall’s statement did not name Ana Knezevich as the citizen.
“The Spanish National Police, Customs and Border Protection, the Diplomatic Security Service, and the FBI continue their investigation,” Marshall said. “Because this is an ongoing investigation, no further information will be released at this time.”
David Knezevich’s attorney Ken Padowitz could not be reached by phone for comment Monday afternoon. He did not return an email. Padowitz in late February that David Knezevich did not know what happened to his wife.
“He has no information about what was happening in another country that he was not residing in,” Padowitz said in February. “He has no idea what happened.”
In a text message Monday afternoon, Ana Knezevich’s friend Rameau said, “I am very happy that an arrest has been made and I am hoping that this new chapter will bring clarity and that we get the answers that we are hoping for.”
“We want to know what happened to her and where she is,” Rameau said. “Obviously we want the person responsible for this to be held accountable.”
Ana Knezevich’s family filed a conservatorship petition in Broward County in April, requesting that her brother Juan Felipe Henao be appointed the conservator of her estate, totaling millions of dollars. The petition alleged that David Knezevich had “been conducting a fire sale” of the couple’s assets in the months before and shortly after her disappearance.
The Knezeviches, who sometimes spell their surname “Knezevic,” owned and ran a home rental business and an information technology business together, according to the petition. About the same time Ana Knezevich traveled to Spain in December, she was negotiating terms of a divorce and property settlement agreement with her husband, the petition said. The two were also at that time attending couple’s therapy.
Ana Knezevich told a friend early this year that she and her husband had agreed to split their assets in half and were planning to file for divorce soon, according to the petition. Ana Knezevich told the friend who reported her disappearance to Spanish authorities that she “was afraid of her husband since they began attending group therapy,” the petition said.
The petition said “despite his being overseas,” David Knezevich “has been busy selling and transferring the very assets that he and Ms. Knezevich had agreed to divide equally” in their settlement.
Padowitz told the Sun Sentinel in February that the portrayal of the divorce as a difficult one was “not accurate.” He told the newspaper that the couple were selling properties together to prepare for the divorce.
There was “no hotly contested divorce, no divorce proceedings yet, no lawyers hired, no legal proceedings, no attorneys, no nasty pleadings from lawyers, no emails back and forth,” Padowitz told the newspaper in February. “None of that has occurred. The description that it’s a nasty divorce is just false.”
Sun Sentinel staff writer Shira Moolten contributed to this report.
