Divorce, Disappearance & Death: The International Hunt for for Ana Knezevich

She is an American citizen and she is missing and she has not left on her own. There is foul play involved in her disappearance. A beautiful American woman vanishes without a trace while living abroad, leaving behind only a string of mysterious texts to friends and family. But could the mystery suspect car on camera be someone close to Anna? I feel from the beginning that his actions were very strange. I didn't add up. This is scandal presented by Lone Cron. I'm Sierra Gillespie. This is a case that has puzzled investigators for years. A beautiful American woman, 40-year-old Anna Kinesovich, abruptly goes missing while living abroad in Madrid. This happened way back in February 2024 and to this day, there is still no clear answer of what really happened to Anna. Instead, we're left with so many unanswered questions and only a few key pieces of evidence, including some bizarre texts Anna sent to her friends before her disappearance, a mysterious suspect caught on camera in the area of her Spanish apartment, and assorted love affair that ended in a pricey divorce. To understand where the case is now, we have to begin with how it started. This is Anna Kinesovich. She's originally from Colombia but later became an American citizen, and the first part is important and it's going to come back later. Now in the United States, Anna lived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with her husband, David Kinesovich. Together, they owned an IT company and managed several vacation rental properties. According to the fence, their bank account was certainly in the millions, but in late 2023 and early 2024, the relationship grew to mulchewis. Anna described all of this in a WhatsApp voice note to one of her friends on January 24th, 2024. Anna said, "I was looking for a therapist, couples therapy, doing all this while he was playing behind my back. He behaved very bad with me. Even in sex he acted extremely aggressive. I mean, bad, bad, bad. He treated me like explicit, like explicit, like the worst way possible. He told me that he called me a explicit name. He called me all types of names that you can imagine. He mopped the floor with me and that he had no longer wanted to be with me." At the time of her disappearance, Anna and David were reportedly estranged and in talks of divorce. She even left Fort Lauderdale and rented an apartment in Madrid, Spain, as they were separated. Here's Anna's friend, Sana Ramo. "She was going through this separation with her husband and they had been talking about that since, you know, on and off. It started last year. She loves Europe. She has a Colombia. She's from Colombia, so she has the Spanish-speaking background and she had been to Madrid before. Her husband is from Serbia, so I believe during their marriage, they did travel around in Europe and she really enjoyed being in Spain. So, going through the separation with her husband, she wanted to leave Florida for a while and just spend time in Madrid and in Europe." "She is very, very sweet. She's genuine. She is kind and I recognize that. Like I said, the first time meeting, I had, you know, I just immediately sensed her energy as a very kind and caring and genuine person and adventurous, so we clicked." Sana and Anna's relationship blossomed right away, so much so that they made plans to get together in early February 2024. "I had planned to go and visit her in Madrid on February 8th and then this tragic event happened on February 2nd." Sana said she spoke to Anna on February 2nd and everything seemed normal, but the next day she received a weird message from Anna and so too did Anna's brother Felipe. Anna's native language is Spanish, so the message to her brother was in Spanish, and I've spoken to Felipe multiple times by the way. He never wanted to appear on camera, but in our texts, Felipe told me he knew right away that the message seemed weird. Almost as if someone who spoke a different language put the message into Google Translate or asked someone else to write it. Now, Sana's message was in English, though, and while it makes sense grammatically, the message itself doesn't seem like Anna. The message reads, quote, "I met someone wonderful. He has a summer house about two hours from Madrid. We are going there now and I will spend a few days there. Signal is spotty. I'll call you when I get back." The next message then reads, quote, "Yesterday after therapy, I needed a walk and he approached me on the street, amazing connection, like I never had before." She doesn't do those things. It was worded very differently than how she writes, but more so, she wouldn't meet a man in the street and then say that she's going to go away for a few days. That's not Anna. That is definitely not my friend. Secondly, logistically, it didn't even make sense because she had those plans to go to Barcelona early Monday morning, so she would not leave Madrid Saturday afternoon and state that she would be away for several days when she has already made plans to go to Barcelona Monday morning. That didn't make sense, so all of these things got me concerned immediately. Sana called police and made her way to Madrid, but when first responders entered Anna's apartment, nothing seemed out of place. At first, all Sana learned was that the last time Anna was seen was on February 2nd, 2024, at 142 pm. She was seen entering her apartment. And for a brief moment, that was the only read investigators hat, except for contacting Anna's estranged husband, David Kinesovich. So I reached out to him on that Sunday evening, and I remember trying him many, many times before I actually got a hold of him. And he said to me at the time that he was in Fort Lauderdale. And I spoke to him and we talked about what had happened to Anna. He claimed at the time that he had no idea that she was missing. I discussed with him that I was still planning on going to Madrid, because I had that trip planned on the 8th. So I said, well, I'm going to go to Madrid and do what I can to find out what's going on and help in any way that I can. I think you should meet me. Are you going to meet me? I even looked up a flight from Miami airports the day before me going to Madrid and suggested for him to take that flight, which he agreed to do. So I went ahead and flew to Madrid on the 8th. And that whole day I tried to reach him. I reached him very late that day. And then he told me that he instead had gone to Serbia. At the time, David told Sana he was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. But according to later FBI reports, that's not the case. The defendant lied about being in Fort Lauderdale at the time of the victim's disappearance. After the victim disappeared, the defendant told multiple people, including the victim's brother, one of the victim's close friends, and an employee that he was in Fort Lauderdale. When in fact, he was actually in Serbia. According to the FBI, David flew to Serbia by way of Turkey in late January 2024. So when he spoke to Sana and claimed to be in sunny Florida, he was actually in Europe. And that wasn't the only issue that investigators soon found. Upon checking security camera footage of the area, investigators discovered a mysterious suspect caught on cam at 9.27 pm on February 2. The video shows a man wearing a helmet and a mouth covering entering the building. He spray paint the lens of the security camera to cover it up, but we do still see a good look at him. Investigators believe this person was David Kinesovich. Court documents even know this man's physical characteristics resemble those of David. Based on surveillance footage, Spanish law enforcement was able to identify the brand of spray paint used to disable the security camera. Law enforcement then determined that a realtor in Madrid had a recorded sale of that particular brand of spray paint on February 2, 2024. Surveillance footage from the retailer depicted an individual who appeared to be David purchasing the spray paint along with two rules of duct tape on February 2, 2024 around noon. The US Attorney's Office released an image of the hardware source CCTV and the suspect has a striking resemblance to David. So after spray painting the security cam, this man was still seen with what the feds believe was a rolling suitcase. There's video of him entering and exiting Anna's apartment with this suitcase. And investigators now believe that Anna may have been in the suitcase. Meanwhile, as investigators dug deeper into David's history, they found some shocking parallels with the timeframe of Anna's disappearance. On February 3, 2023, the same day Anna sent her brother and Sana that bizarre message about meeting someone on the street and running off with him. David sent some strange messages too. He met a Colombian woman on Tinder back in October 2023 and reached out to her for translation help. Cortox revealed part of their conversation. David said, "Hey, babe, I need your help." The woman's identity hasn't been revealed, so she's just listed here as individual one. She replies, "Hello, babe. Of course. Tell me." David says, "I have a friend in Serbia who is a writer. She has a small character who is Colombian." She has a few sentences that have to be translated from Serbian English to Colombian Spanish, like how a Colombian girl would speak. Later on, David writes out nearly the exact same message that was sent from Anna's phone. I'm at someone wonderful. We're going there now, and I will spend a few days there. There's barely any signal though. I'll call you when I come back. Kisses. He says, "What do you think? The reason we know about all of this is because the woman listed as individual one told her mom that she was talking to a Serbian man, her mom Googled his name, and learned of Anna's disappearance. Individual one then discovered a news article that contained a message purportedly from David's wife that matched the exact wording of the text she and David had put together on or about February 3rd, 2024, and it was about the same time when Anna's activity completely stopped. Think she regularly used, like her bank account, Spotify, gym membership, all fell silent. She just disappeared. Or was she murdered by David Kinesovich? That's what United States prosecutors thought, alleging David murdered Anna in her Madrid apartment, carried her body out via a suitcase, and dumped her body somewhere in Italy. And here's where another key piece of evidence comes in, the rental car data. According to the FBI, David rented a car on January 29th, 2024. He turned it back in on February 5th, but with some notable changes. The owner of the rental car agency informed law enforcement that when David returned the vehicle, the rental agency discovered that the windows had been tinted. The license plate frames had changed, and two stickers had been removed from the vehicle. The vehicle had traveled approximately 7,677 kilometers while rented by David. And that mileage doesn't quite make sense based on what David told the rental car company about his travel plans. Is it possible? He made a detour. Data from David's GPS proves just that, that he took a major detour off his scheduled route and headed into a wooded area in northern Italy. Extensive searches of this area were conducted, yet Anna's remains have never been recovered. At the time of this recording, a $25,000 reward for any information leading to the recovery of Anna's remains is still being put on by the FBI. And that leads to the next major milestone in the case, the arrest of David Kinesovich, which came on May 4th, 2024. He was arrested at the Miami International Airport after flying in from Serbia. He was charged federally with one count of kidnapping that was later bumped up to kidnapping resulting in death, foreign domestic violence resulting in death, and foreign murder of a US national. The Kinesovich pleaded not guilty, and that's where the case ends. Because on April 28th, 2025, David was found unresponsive in his Miami jail cell. Officials later ruled he died from apparent suicide. And with him, all the answers to Anna's death were lost. That is, unless new clues emerge, which investigators are always looking for. One such investigator is former FBI agent and CIA officer Tracy Walder, who's today's guest, a friend of the show Tracy, it's so great to see you. Thank you for joining us on Scandal. And, okay, let's start way back at the beginning. It's February 2024, Anna has gone missing. And my question for this is, how does it change when it's an American who's missing overseas in terms of the investigation, when it's still a missing person's investigation? Thank you so much for having us here. So the way that it changes is obviously they are liaising with the embassy. So there are typically, obviously, depending on the country, but really most countries, 95% of countries have something called a legal attaché office, which is an FBI office within that country. And so they are liaising with them. Now, theoretically, the FBI is not what I would call the boots on the ground in that country for obvious reasons. That would be a huge issue. They can't take control of that investigation. But because it is one of our citizens, they can potentially provide them with digital assistance, with any kind of assistance that they need, as well as be kind of that point person between liaising with the family in the U.S. and then obviously overseas. So it sounds like they work in concert at least a little bit right from the start, just because this is an American who obviously went missing overseas. The Spanish authorities are the first ones to kind of like start things going. And in your mind, if you were there working on this, what are the first steps that you take? I know security camera video plays a huge piece in this investigation, is that where you would go right away? I would actually say I'd go further back. I think the first thing that you want to do is secure the crime scene, right? You want to secure that crime scene. And because some time has passed from when she was last seen to obviously when she was reported as missing. So you want to preserve as much as you possibly can at that crime scene. Then yes, in my opinion, and some people may disagree with me on this, but I think digital evidence is far more important, sometimes in terms of a missing person than forensic evidence, simply because you can go through it faster and it can give you a much more real time update in terms of where the person is. Digital evidence is huge. In this case, I talked about the security camera video, but of course, we have these texts or rather WhatsApp messages from Anna to her brother to a couple of her friends. And this is where things get tricky, right? Because the messages came from Anna's phone or her account, whatever. But her friends right away are like, okay, this does not sound like her. This is not something she wouldn't run away with this random man that she just happens to meet on the street. That's so strange. But of course, the texts are coming from her phone. Who is that something investigators would take into account if her friends say, this is not her. She just doesn't text like this. So what that would do. And honestly, that's some really perceptive friends to be honest and to kind of latch onto that quickly. I think what it helps them do, aside from, you know, security camera footage and all of that, is it gives them a narrow time frame, right, to when her last text message was sent that was believed to be her to when I guess the fake, right, text message was sent to her family members about riding away. It helps them sort of narrow that time frame down a little bit. So that's where that can be really useful. And I wonder if that's exactly what investigators did. They looked at the timestamps of these things. Then they went back and looked at the CCTV video from around her apartment. And that's where we get the first suspect, the person who's involved in this. We see a person and the images have been widely shared at this point where it's a person who spray paints the lens to cover it up, has an helmet, a face covering, but investigators say it looks a lot like David Kinesovich. And that's eventually, you know, what they would say when they are filing charges against them, I'm getting ahead of myself. But what are your thoughts about that? The fact that right away, the person who's seen in the area doing something weird with the spray paint looks a lot like her estranged husband. I think it's obviously impressive that they were able to pick up on it so quickly, especially in a foreign country, right? He wasn't known to live there with her, that was part of why she had gone there in the first place. And so the fact that they can latch on to that really quickly, just by really looking at his build to be honest, because as you mentioned, his face is covered. And also, the covering it up with spray paint really just goes to show you, at least in my opinion, how premeditated this was. Most of us don't run around with cans of spray paint looking for CCTV cameras to paint. To me, it also screams consciousness of guilt. If you know you're going to do something wrong, you're going to try to cover up the cameras so that people can't identify you or see you commit this alleged crime, which investigators say is what happened here. I mean, we don't know exactly all of the details, but later a person believed to be David Kinesovich is seen on similar camera video with what looks like a suitcase. And I mean, I guess it's speculation as to what happened inside of the home, but based on your experience, what would you guess or hypothesize happened in Anna's apartment? I mean, they're looking for signs of a struggle, right? Any law enforcement officer is looking to see, did this person leave on their own free will or were they taken against their will? So that's really what they're trying to determine. I believe since there doesn't seem to be, at least from what I can gather, a ton, a ton, a ton of forensic evidence in this case that he most likely killed her in the apartment and then took her body out through the suitcase. The next thing that I wanted to ask about to was the rental car that he had, because there's a lot of conflicting reports. First, he's telling people he's in Florida when actually he's in Serbia, his native country, then he rents a car. He goes through a couple of different countries, comes back, and the updates to the car are what stood out to me. I actually, I literally just rented a car in Austria a couple weeks ago, last month, okay? When I came back, I had not all the sudden tinted the windows. I didn't remove any of the stickers. I didn't do. I returned the car. How we found it, you know? And so that to me is a huge red flag. I mean, what do you make of those changes to the vehicle? I mean, it also, again, goes to sort of that covering up, right, what you were discussing before. There's no question that he was using this vehicle to disguise something or to throw people off. I think to once people found out that that was the vehicle that he had rented. obviously they would be on the lookout for that and potentially altering the appearance makes it less easy to identify. And yet investigators were able to connect David Kinesovich to this vehicle that you and I were talking before we started recording went through multiple different countries kind of all over a roundabout way from Madrid back to Serbia multiple different countries and I know that investigators were searching in northern Italy. I know they were searching in other areas but I mean and this is this terrible to think but what is the likelihood of actually finding Ana because when you look at Europe I mean different countries even within America different states that's that's tricky to have to go you know crossing the international lines and where could this be and all like I mean I guess what do you make of all of that? Well obviously I am certain that the police in Madrid did notify Interpol right when this first occurred to ensure that police in those countries were on the lookout but again you're dealing with five potentially six different countries now so you're trying to coordinate all of those efforts not to mention different municipalities within those countries right they're all getting information from Interpol and that's a good thing but I feel that because of the route that he took because of the fact that he used so many different countries which I think was purposeful I mean yes obviously if you're going to drive from Madrid back you know if you're going to drive from Madrid back to Serbia you're going to have to take multiple countries to do that but I think the way that he did it was probably too concealed and I don't mean to be insensitive but I think it's unlikely that she will be be found I want her to be found I just don't think it's likely it's I mean when you just think about the sheer volume of places there are to store a body for lack of a better term or you know her final resting place where that may be it's just so much and as you pointed out too of course I'm sure that they followed the protocol and contacted Interpol but even still if I'm thinking about like my day-to-day within Lawn Crime I tell my boss something my coworker tells my boss something there could be things that are lost in translation you know what I'm saying like not everybody is always on the same page a hundred percent at the time and when we have different municipalities as you pointed out different countries it just makes it harder and I guess that's one of my questions too because Anna went missing I spoke to her friends her family for months kind of leading up to all of this and eventually David Knessovich is charged you know he's arrested when he flies back to Miami he's arrested there why do you think there was an interim between her going missing and him being arrested and eventually charged with her murder I think again I can only speculate at this point that they probably knew where he was and knew what he was doing but I think the reality is is they felt that clearly in the US they could try him convict him and give him a sentence that he probably deserved for this crime more so than in his his native country so that's probably why they worked out the agreement I have no doubt in my mind that they tipped off local law enforcement that he was on his way there and then those were the plans they made I mean yeah if he's arrested at the airport when he lands it kind of makes sense that people were coercing or excuse me conversating and talking about all of this and oh David seer we're gonna arrest him however that you know was a win for the family I remember speaking to them at the time and her friend and they're like okay great like finally we're seeing some form of justice however all of that is sort of dashed in a way when David is found dead in his cell a huge shock to everyone it is eventually ruled a suicide and I guess I'm wondering this is a speculation slash an opinion question but I wanted to ask you Tracy what are your thoughts about him dying by suicide do you think it's an emission that he did commit this murder it wasn't this is just my own personal thoughts but it in in my opinion yes I think if he didn't he probably would have stayed to fight and I'm gonna be honest I'm surprised he even came back to the US because I think it goes to show how cavalier probably he was about he had to have known and he did know that people were looking for him and so the fact that he came back is is honestly surprising to me I think he probably thought he may not get caught because the reality is is if he thought that he was going to why not just stay gone and so I think that it was his way of admitting go the cowardly way obviously you're right I think it is interesting that he came back to the United States because I just remember going back in the timeline of working here at Longcrime I did multiple stories before David was arrested like where is Anna here's the latest update etc etc so if he was really like searching for her and searching her name and whatever he would know that a lot of people were kind of pointing in his direction too so very interesting that he came home and I'm wondering too if all of the answers in this case then died with David I mean we don't have he obviously pleaded not guilty there never really was there was never a trial there was never a conviction there was never anything but he was the one who according to federal prosecutors completed this act he's the one who did all of it so does that mean that all the answers in this case die with him I don't want to say that they all have died right there's there's always maybe some piece of digital evidence maybe some piece of forensic evidence but I'd say a big part of it did especially because it spans so many different countries you've got a time frame here too that you're working with this and all just kind of happen overnight and so he had time to potentially wipe messages he had time and so I think for me I guess maybe I'm just more of a pessimist I do think that a good portion of information died with him so hard I mean it makes sense why you would maybe be a pessimist quote-unquote based on your experience what you've seen the depravity that is some people in humanity but at the same time you're right not all hope is ever lost or case is never completely cold and I'm wondering what investigators are up to now I mean at this point we believe that Anna has been deceased or has been murdered we don't know where she is I mean is the investigation in your opinion still active what do you think is the status right now my guess is I think it's still active I don't think they're going to necessarily close it at least without not knowing notifying the family I do think that they are potentially at this point really focusing on the geographic location or the GPS systems in the vehicle and in his phone to see if they can pinpoint because I do think one of the things they probably want to do is recover her if they can and so I do think that that's something that maybe they will be looking for I think in terms of looking for additional suspects that ship has probably sailed I think they know that their suspect is is deceased it's it's so hard that we have so many questions without answers and like I said I've spoken to her friends and her family and they just want justice they just want answers and to your point I hope that investigators are able to find on us so that she can be reunited with her family and placed arrest properly because that's all anybody wants at the end of the day is answers for what happened this is just such a tragic case not the ending that I expected or wanted to see it all but Tracy Walder thank you for coming on scandal and giving us your expertise about it thank you for having me Sierra and that's where today's episode of scandal leaves us for now if you like what you saw and you want to see more or connect with me on social media you can find me on places like instagram at Sierra Gillespie thanks for watching today's episode of scandal as always I'm your host Sierra Gillespie and I'll see you next time