Fort Lauderdale woman disappears in Spain after suspicious text
The night Ana Knezevic disappeared in Madrid, a man with his face obscured by a helmet spraypainted security cameras at the apartment building where she was staying, friends and family say. A text from her phone informed her friends that she had met a man on the street and was going to stay at his home, hours outside of the city.
They never heard from her again.
The 40-year-old Fort Lauderdale businesswoman has not been seen since the night of Feb. 2. Her friends and family believe the circumstances are suspicious:
The text she sent was written as if someone else had written it, and she was going through a “nasty divorce” from her husband who has since traveled to Serbia, her brother told Fort Lauderdale Police, according to an incident report.
Her brother, Juan Felipe Henao, first reported her disappearance to News Nation on Monday.
“I don’t know anything more than that someone has taken her,” one of Knezevic’s best friends, Sanna Rameau, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel Wednesday from Sweden. “She has not left on her own. Who has done this to her, I have no idea.”
Rameau and other friends have grown frustrated with American and foreign authorities, who they say are still treating the case as a routine missing persons case.
Recently, a judge in Madrid denied a request from police to search her phone records and apartment, Rameau said.
‘I met someone wonderful’
Knezevic arrived in Madrid on Dec. 27 for a three-month trip to visit friends. In mid-January, she spent several days in Austria with Rameau. The two made plans to see each other again in Madrid on Feb. 8.
Then, on Feb. 2, she decided to look for a place to live more permanently, Joaquín Amills, a spokesperson for her family, told the Sun Sentinel from Spain on Thursday.
“Ana had the intent of establishing herself definitively in Spain,” Amills said in Spanish.
About 1:30 p.m. that afternoon, she talked to a friend about a unit she had toured, but said she didn’t like it.
The night of Feb. 2, the man in the helmet was seen spray-painting the security cameras at Knezevic’s building, Rameau said. She said she spoke with the person at the front desk, who told her what had
happened, a suspicious event on its own but particularly at a nice building in one of Madrid’s safest neighborhoods.
About 2 p.m. on Feb. 3, two texts from Knezevic’s phone went out to her friends:
“I met someone wonderful!! he has a summer house about 2h from Madrid,” the first text read. “We are going there now and I will spend a few days there. Signal is spotty. I’ll call you when I get back.”
Then another, one minute later: “Yesterday after therapy I needed a walk and he approached me on the street! Amazing connection. Like I never had before.”
Knezevic’s phone has not turned back on since, Rameau said. Texts she sent back appeared undelivered.
The Spanish text appeared to have been translated from English, Knezevic’s brother, Juan Felipe Henao, told police.
“The message made no sense whatsoever and was definitely not written by his sister who is fluent in both English and Spanish,” he said, according to the report.
The text used commas and periods; Ana never did, Amills said.
It also made no sense because Knezevic was supposed to take the train from Madrid to Barcelona to meet up with another friend on the morning of Feb. 5, Rameau and Amills said.
So Rameau contacted the police. On Feb. 4, police did a welfare check at her apartment but couldn’t get in, so they brought the fire department, who gained access through a window, Amills said. Knezevic wasn’t there.
There were no signs of foul play, besides a normal amount of untidiness, he said.
Police told Rameau to wait and see if Knezevic showed up in Barcelona the next day. Her friends showed up at the train station to meet her, but she never came.
On Feb. 7, Henao called Fort Lauderdale police, according to an incident report. He told them that he wanted them to talk to his sister’s husband, David Knezevic, about her disappearance.
He told them that David Knezevic had traveled to Serbia on Jan. 17 but he did not know for how long. When Henao called and texted him, asking where his sister was, he said David Knezevic replied to him on What’sApp about
6 p.m. on Feb. 6, as if he was still out of the country, saying she was missing and nothing more.
But David Knezevic was in town at some point between Jan. 17 and Feb. 6, because on Jan. 25, he reported a theft to Fort Lauderdale police. Someone had stolen close to $6,000 worth of motorcycle gear, bags, accessories, electronics and cash from his Mercedez-Benz, according to another incident report. He met with police that day and said he wanted to press charges.
David Knezevic did not respond to voicemails or emails from the Sun Sentinel on Wednesday.
On Feb. 7, after the call from Henao, police went to the apartment that the couple shared on Northeast Eighth Avenue in Fort Lauderdale. No one answered the door, but three Amazon packages were piled up in front, the report says.
“At this time the whereabouts of David or Ana are unknown,” the report concludes.
Rameau and Amills both said they aren’t sure where Knezevic is.
Fort Lauderdale Police told the Sun Sentinel Wednesday that they are aware of the disappearance but “are not the lead on the missing person investigation.”
The ‘nasty divorce’
Ana and David Knezevic had been married for 13 years, but were recently separated and in the midst of a drawn-out divorce, friends and family said.
“Ana and David are going through a nasty divorce and there is a substantial amount of money on the line to be split up between the two,” her brother told police, according to the report, “and David is not happy about it.” He said she went to Spain for three months to “clear her head.”
The two had a real estate business together, Rameau said. They own several properties throughout the city, according to county property appraiser records. David Knezevic is the CEO of an IT company called EOX Solutions, where Ana Knezevic also works, according to its website.
Ana Knezevic had first started talking about separating over the summer, said Rameau, who supported her as she went through the turmoil of leaving her marriage. By this winter, she seemed much happier.
“She has been really, really happy,” Rameau said. Nothing about her mental state seemed alarming besides the struggles associated with a divorce.
Who is Ana Knezevic?
Knezevic was born in Colombia, Rameau said. The two met a year ago at an event in Fort Lauderdale and quickly became friends, she said. They have since traveled together across the world, to Colombia, Croatia, France and Mallorca.
She described her friend as “caring, fun, curious, smart, and successful.” She said she knew very little about David Knezevic or the details of their divorce.
Maria Krajnak and Diane DeNoble met Knezevic in April 2010 through a meet-up group for women called the “Sex and the City group.” The group gathered at B.B King’s Blue’s Club in West Palm Beach, just before Ana met David Knezevic.
DeNoble, Krajnak, Knezevic, and two other women hit it off instantly that night and became a tight-knit group of friends.
Knezevic was working for her uncle doing accounting for a nursing home at the time, Krajnak said. She described Knezevic as smart and business-savvy, the breadwinner of her family. Both of her parents lived in Colombia, but Knezevic wanted her mother to move to the states.
DeNoble remembered Knezevic as sweet and soft-spoken. She was “always very present in our conversations,” DeNoble said, “even if she didn’t speak that much or talk that much.”
The group would go out dancing together and have regular Sunday dinners where they caught up on what was going on in their lives. “We were crazy, wild, fun,” DeNoble said.
A whirlwind romance
When Ana met David Knezevic while biking, it was a “whirlwind romance,” Krajnak said.
Though he calls himself David, his Serbian name is Dusan, Krajnak said. He was previously a ballroom dancer. Almost exactly a year later, in April 2011, the two got married on Fort Lauderdale beach. After the wedding, DeNoble and Krajnak said they didn’t see her as much, though the other four women in the group continued hanging out for many years.
The last time Krajnak spoke to Knezevic was about a year ago. They talked about meditating, because Krajnak works in health and wellness. Knezevic mentioned that she was going through some business stress.
Then, earlier this week, Krajnak was scrolling on social media when she saw a clip of the News Nation segment. The picture looked like Ana Knezevic, she thought, but she couldn’t be sure. They showed another picture; it was clearly Knezevic. Krajnak sent the clip to their friend group.
DeNoble was shocked when she saw it.
“I got chills,” she said. Krajnak wishes they had stayed more in touch.
“We always think we have more time,” she said. “I think that’s the most shocking part. Ana went on her trip thinking she’s going to just regenerate from whatever was going on in her life. And I think that’s just the part where we feel, we wish we were closer with her.”
‘I can’t even think of the worst’
In recent years, Knezevic had settled down. She never did drugs or got herself into trouble, Rameau said.
“She doesn’t even drink hard liquor,” she said. “She drinks wine.”
The two “are like old grannies,” Rameau added, never going out to clubs or parties.
Rameau wonders if Knezevic is “an easy target,” at only 5 feet tall and about 80 pounds. She has considered the possibility of human trafficking, though the thought is often too painful for her to imagine.
On Feb. 8, the day Rameau was supposed to meet Knezevic, she traveled to Madrid anyway, where she filed a police report and began looking into her friend’s disappearance herself.
She and Henao have voiced frustration with Spanish police, who have not named the man in the helmet as a suspect. Many of them do not speak English, she said.
“I know police in Spain are working really hard,” Henao told News Nation earlier this week. “I just don’t know if they have all the tools they need. They don’t have a detective that speaks English. I find that ridiculous.”
“I just want my sister back,” he added.
She and Henao have also been in contact with the FBI and the American embassy in Spain, but she said she wishes American authorities would do more.
“She’s an American citizen and she just went on a trip, and no one deserves to be put through a crime or suffer, no one deserves that,” Rameau said. “Whatever has happened to her, we need to find out.”
An FBI spokesman declined to comment Wednesday, telling the Sun Sentinel that the Department of State is the lead for media queries about the case.
“We are aware of reports of a U.S. citizen missing in Madrid, Spain,” a spokesperson for the department said in a statement. “When a U.S. citizen is missing, we work closely with local authorities as they carry out their search efforts. The Department of State has no higher priority than the welfare and safety of U.S. citizens abroad. We stand ready to provide appropriate assistance to U.S. citizens in need and to their families.”
Asked whether he thinks Knezevic is still alive, Amills said that the family “can’t lose hope of that.”
However, he added, “as the days go by, that’s not good.”
Krajnak didn’t want to entertain the idea that Knezevic is no longer alive.
“I can’t even think of the worst,” she said. “I just don’t want to think of the worst.”
The next steps for police will be to conduct forensics at the apartment, look at nearby cameras, and try to track Knezevic’s phone.
“The goal is to find her in good shape,” Amills said. “We all suspect it’s not a voluntary disappearance. We are looking for her with the expectation she is still alive in good health.”