(NewsNation) — New details are emerging in the case of a Florida woman who disappeared while going through what family members called a tough divorce.
Ana Maria Knezevich Henao disappeared in Spain three months ago, and U.S. authorities recently arrested her husband on kidnapping charges in connection to the disappearance of his estranged wife.
In new court documents, investigators say they have surveillance video of a man resembling David Knezevich buying spray paint and covering security cameras in her apartment building the day she went missing.
Ana Maria Knezevich Henao disappears
Knezevich Henao had been renting an apartment in Spain while having marital troubles with her husband. She wanted to divorce and move to Spain, but the split was proving contentious, which family members said had to do with finances.
In early February, a friend texted Knezevich Henao one night and got no response. The next day, she received a strange message from Knezevich and contacted authorities.
Authorities performed a wellness check at Knezevich Henao’s apartment and didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. When she didn’t show up for a planned trip to Barcelona, authorities began investigating in earnest.
Evidence revealed in court documents
David Knezevich has maintained he wasn’t in Spain when his wife disappeared, saying he was in Serbia at the time. But new court documents allege Knezevich rented a car and drove from Serbia to Spain and back around the time his wife vanished.
The documents claim he rented that car, tinted the windows and even swapped the license plate out with a stolen one. Authorities say there is also surveillance video of a man who looks like Knezevich buying spray paint and two rolls of duct tape in Madrid, alleging it is the same spray paint seen covering surveillance cameras near Knezevich Henao’s apartment around the same time she disappeared.
According to documents, Knezevich rented the car in Serbia days prior to his wife’s disappearance.
A few days later, a Spanish driver reported his license plates were stolen. On the night Knezevich Henao disappeared, a license plate reader on her Madrid street recorded the stolen plate number, according to Spanish police.
Additionally, hours after she disappeared, a Peugeot vehicle bearing the stolen license plates went through a suburban Madrid toll booth, surveillance video showed. The driver could not be seen behind the tinted windows.
Strange messages from Ana Knezevich
There are also allegations that David Knezevich asked a woman he met on a dating site to help him translate some sentences into perfect Spanish. Those messages, investigators say, are the same ones that Knezevich Henao allegedly sent her friends.
On the morning after his wife disappeared, the FBI says Knezevich texted the woman asking if she could translate into “perfect Colombian” Spanish a few English sentences for a friend who was writing a screenplay.
The woman replied she doesn’t speak English and would have to use a generic online Spanish translator. Knezevich replied that’s fine; she could then tweak it to make it sound Colombian.
That message was the same one Knezevich Henao allegedly sent to her friends saying she had met a new guy and was going somewhere without cell signal.
Her family and friends told NewsNation from the beginning that they believed she could not have written those messages herself.
“That message in Spanish — it is like it’s translated from Google. It’s not her,” Knezevich Henao’s brother told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo. “You don’t say those things, she doesn’t say those things, nobody in Spain would say it like that.”
What’s next in the case
As of now, Knezevich is charged with kidnapping in the wide-ranging investigation by both Spanish authorities and the FBI. He will be in federal court Friday for a bond hearing.
Knezevich’s attorney told NewsNation his client was in town for a civil case not related to the divorce but has previously maintained Knezevich’s innocence.
While the court documents lay out new information about her disappearance, they still don’t answer what happened to Knezevich Henao, who has been missing since early February.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
