‘We miss her’: Brother of Fort Lauderdale woman who vanished in Spain pleads for help
The last time Juan Felipe Henao spoke with his sister over the phone was late January, days before she vanished in Spain.
“She was looking forward to the future,” Henao said at a Fort Lauderdale press conference Wednesday about the Jan. 24 call. “She was telling me about concerts she wanted to go.”
Ana María Knezevich Henao, 40, a Colombian-American woman and Fort Lauderdale resident, had hopped on a plane from South Florida to Spain a month earlier hoping to rebuild her life as her divorce loomed.
But her dreams got cut short. She was last seen entering her Madrid apartment building in early February and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
Knezevich Henao’s estranged husband, David Knezevich, 35, was arrested Saturday at Miami International Airport in connection with her disappearance. An FBI criminal complaint filed Friday alleges that a man resembling Knezevich was caught on surveillance footage leaving her apartment in Madrid at 10:30 p.m. Feb. 2 — carrying a suitcase.
Odd WhatsApp messages
Knezevich, who is being held at the federal detention center in downtown Miami, faces a kidnapping charge. He has a hearing Friday in Miami federal court.
The FBI’s complaint includes a series of messages between Knezevich and a Colombian woman in which he asked her to translate a certain message into authentic Colombian Spanish for what he said was a friend in Serbia writing a script. The woman’s translation exactly matched a WhatsApp message that was later sent from Knezevich Henao’s cell phone to loved ones.
The message, which friends suspect wasn’t authored by her, claims that Knezevich Henao had met a man on the street the day before and intended to visit his summer home two hours from Madrid, according to NewsNation.
$15 million in shared assets
Before she disappeared, Knezevich Henao was negotiating a divorce and property settlement with her husband, according to an April 3 petition filed by her mother, Ana Ines Nino De Henao, in Broward circuit court. Her mother is asking a judge to appoint her son, Henao, as a conservator to “safeguard and manage” his sister’s multimillion dollar assets.
The missing woman had told a loved one that she feared her husband of 13 years— and that she realized during couple’s therapy that he was narcissistic and manipulative, according to the mother’s petition. The petition states she also told a close friend that the couple had agreed to split their assets equally in “a soon-to-be-filed divorce.”
The couple managed EOX Capital LLC, a Deerfield home rental business that owned 15 homes in Florida, valued at more than $15 million, according to the mother’s filing. The homes were mostly in Broward.
READ MORE: Odd texts, $15M and a divorce? Husband of woman who vanished in Spain arrested in Miami
From December 2023 to January 2024, Knezevich sold seven of the homes to a single buyer for nearly $7 million, a ‘suspicious fire sale,’ the petition says. And he sold the Fort Lauderdale home that her brother was living in on Feb. 26, three weeks after Knezevich Henao’s disappearance, the petition says.
“...Despite being overseas, [Knezevich] has been busy selling and transferring the very assets that he and [Knezevich Henao] had agreed to divide equally in a marital property settlement,” attorneys Courtney Caprio and Adam Ingber said in the mother’s petition.
Security cameras spray-painted, stolen license plate
The FBI complaint, filed by prosecutor Lacee Monk, says security cameras showed the missing woman entering her apartment building in Madrid at around 2:20 p.m. Feb. 2.
Sometime after 9:27 p.m., a man wearing a helmet spray-painted the cameras in black — about an hour before a man who looked like Knezevich was seen exiting the building with a suitcase.
“Once inside the building, the male is captured descending the stairs while holding a can of spray paint, which he then uses to disable a surveillance camera by painting the lens,” the FBI’s affidavit says. “The lens was not completely obscured, and the male is seen fastening a piece of duct tape to the lock of the building entrance to prevent the lock from engaging to allow subsequent entry.”
Agents also uncovered that Knezevich rented a Peugeot 308, a French vehicle, in Serbia around the time of the disappearance, the FBI’s complaint states. The car was returned to the rental agency with tinted windows, a different license plate, and nearly 4,800 additional miles. Knezevich has ties to Serbia.
The vehicle, the FBI filing alleges, passed through toll booths in the area. Sometime after, a license plate that was reported stolen was found on the street where Knezevich Henao’s apartment is.
A friend of Knezevich Henao reported her missing Feb. 5, according to the mother’s filing.
Where is Knezevich Henao?
Henao, sitting at a table in between attorneys and family members at the Wednesday press conference, said all he wants is justice and to find his sister alive.
“We love her. We miss her. We support her. We are her voice,” Henao said.
His sister gave him shelter, food and a job after he moved to South Florida.
“I’m eternally grateful for her,” he said.
Henao wants anyone with information about her sister’s disappearance — whether they are in Florida, Spain, Colombia, Serbia or anywhere else — to contact the FBI. He said he can barely sleep or eat not knowing what happened to her.
“We miss her a lot,” Henao said in Spanish.
Anyone with information about Ana María Knezevich Henao’s whereabouts can submit a tip to the FBI at tips.fbi.gov/home.
