Feds drop potential death penalty against Florida man accused of killing wife in Spain

MIAMI — The death penalty is no longer hanging over a Fort Lauderdale man charged with killing his estranged wife in Spain.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami said this week that “it does not intend to seek the death penalty against the defendant in this case,” according to a one-paragraph court filing that italicized those two words.

Federal prosecutors did not elaborate on their decision in the murder case of David Knezevich, which was reached after they asked officials in the Capital Case Section of the Justice Department for their final say last month, according to a recent court hearing. Prosecutors filed the no-death penalty decision in Miami federal court on Tuesday, the day after Joe Biden left the White House and Donald Trump was sworn in as president.

For Knezevich, it was a small measure of solace, for he still faces up to a life sentence if convicted at his trial in mid-June of kidnapping and killing his wife, Ana Knezevich Henao, last February, when she was reported missing in Madrid. Her body has not been found, which has made the international murder case a challenge for FBI agents and prosecutors who have built a largely circumstantial body of evidence against Knezevich.

“We are pleased the government recognized this should not be a death penalty case,” his Miami defense attorney, Jayne Weintraub, said Thursday.

In December, Knezevich, 36, pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnapping and killing his wife, Ana, 40, on Feb. 2, 2024. Knezevich, who was initially arrested last May at Miami International Airport on a kidnapping charge, was charged anew with kidnapping resulting in his wife’s death. He was also charged with foreign domestic violence resulting in death and foreign murder of a U.S. national, according to the amended indictment.

Knezevich, who has been held at the Miami Federal Detention Center since his arrest after he was deemed a flight risk to his native Serbia or elsewhere, is trying to obtain a bond again at a hearing in early February.

The charge of kidnapping resulting in death marked a dramatic shift in the case surrounding Ana’s disappearance from her Madrid apartment.

Fight over millions in Broward properties

Knezevich, who operated a tech business, owned millions of dollars in Broward County residential real estate with his wife, a native of Colombia., that they had acquired over the course of their 13-year marriage. They were fighting over these and other assets when she left for Spain in late December 2023.

Prosecutors have noted the defendant reported to the court’s probation office that his estimated net worth was about $2.5 million after selling seven residential properties in Broward for about $6.7 million between December 2023 and February 2024, before his estranged wife’s disappearance in Spain.

Knezevich is accused of leaving Miami in late January 2024 for Serbia, where prosecutors say he rented a car to track down his wife in Spain.

The FBI said it believes the husband carried Ana Knezevich’s body in a suitcase out of her Madrid apartment building that evening, citing security-camera footage of him exiting the elevator.

In August, the FBI joined Spanish and Italian authorities in a search for her corpse in the woods north of Vicenza, 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.

The wife’s corpse, however, was not found.

“What we do know is that the evidence supports that she was killed between Spain and Serbia,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Obenauf said during a hearing last week before U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams. The judge prodded prosecutors to turn over fingerprint, cellphone, photo, video and other evidence from the FBI and Spanish National Police to Knezevich’s defense team.

For months, the FBI has been coordinating its investigation with the Spanish authorities, gathering suspicious security-camera footage of David Knezevich’s presence in a Madrid hardware store and at her apartment just before her disappearance, as well as fabricated text messages and stolen license plates on a rental car suggesting a cover-up. However, authorities found no evidence of blood traces or a struggle in the estranged wife’s Madrid apartment after she was reported missing.

Brother, his family stopped at MIA after trip to Spain, Portugal

Another controversial issue arose at last week’s hearing in federal court: On Jan. 7, Customs officials stopped Knezevich’s brother and his family at Miami International Airport upon their return from a holiday trip to Portugal and Spain.

Customs officials pulled the sibling aside because they suspected he had stashed a “ham” in his baggage from an overseas trip, according to Knezevich’s defense lawyers. They said the real reason Customs and Border Protection officers detained his brother, Ugljesa Knezevich, was to establish a pretext for seizing the sibling’s laptop and cellphone.

Knezevich’s lawyers asked Judge Williams to stop federal investigators from searching the brother’s electronic devices, saying they included confidential attorney-client information because the sibling has been helping the defense team prepare for trial.

In a court motion, Knezevich’s lawyers argued “there is a real and legitimate concern that [the brother] may have been stopped, detained, harassed, questioned, or had his electronics seized at the request of [federal prosecutors] in this case, for the sole purpose of obtaining evidence to be used in the pending criminal case.”

Customs officials say they can search a passenger’s luggage upon arrival from abroad as long as they have a “justifiable reason,” without a warrant or probable cause.

Knezevich’s defense team asked Williams to prohibit investigators from searching the brother’s laptop and cellphone until she has had an opportunity to review the basis for the seizure at MIA — a request opposed by federal prosecutors.

Prosecutors argued in a court filing that the Customs border search of the brother was lawful and that the FBI later obtained a search warrant for his devices. They also said a “filter team” has been set up to ensure that any attorney-client information on the brother’s electronic devices would not be shared with the prosecutors and investigators in the case.

Family returning

After clearing customs at MIA, the brother, his wife and their two children, all U.S. citizens, were questioned by Customs officers for several hours, according to the defense motion in Miami federal court.

“The border agents told [the brother] and his family that they were looking to see if the family had brought a ham into the United States from Spain,” the motion says. “The border agents searched the family’s carry-on bags and backpacks but did not locate a ham.”

Knezevich’s brother was further questioned by five Homeland Security Investigations agents, who asked him about his travels to Spain, and then told him that he was stopped because he was Serbian — contrary to the Customs officers’ suggestion that it was to look for a purported “ham.”

When the Homeland Security agents asked Knezevich’s brother to provide the pass code for his cellphone, he refused. One of the agents told the brother that the agency would be keeping his phone for months.

At last week’s hearing in Miami federal court, Williams cast doubt on the basis for the Customs’ border stop of Knezevich’s brother at MIA.

Judge: Man stopped because he was brother

“Let me say that this search — or the initial stop — was not made to protect the border,” Williams said in court on Jan. 15. “And I would hope no one here would insult anyone present with that argument. The man was stopped because he was the defendant’s brother. Be that as it may, the state of the law as to border encounters is what it is.”

This week, Williams rejected the defense team’s request to put a stop to the seizure of the brother’s cellphone, but said the prosecutors must use the government’s “filter team” to prevent them from viewing any confidential attorney-client information on the device.

But in her order, the judge said prosecutors “should be prepared to explain why the search warrant should remain under seal” from the defense.