A Florida man accused of killing his wife in Spain dies from suicide, lawyers say

MIAMI — David Nezevich, a Fort Lauderdale man accused of killing his estranged wife in Spain early last year, claimed his life Monday morning while in custody at a federal jail in Miami, defending his lawyers said.

Knezevich, 37, awaiting trial in Miami federal court in Madrid with accusations of kidnapping and murder, was found dead in his cell from an obvious suicide.

His defense attorney Jayne Weintraub said she learned about the client’s death from federal prosecutors on Monday morning, and made a Zoom call with them and US District Judge Kathleen Williams to discuss it later that day. The FBI is investigating his death.

“It’s just terrible,” Weintrob said. She and another defense attorney met with knezevich at the detention center on Sunday after a court hearing on Friday. “As usual, he was extremely grateful and polite.”

Weintraub, along with defense attorneys Christopher Cavallo and Bruce Zimet, issued a statement Monday afternoon saying “they were devastated to learn about this news.”

“We sincerely hope that there will be a proper and prompt investigation,” they said.

His death is expected to dismiss the charges against him by prosecutors at the U.S. Lawyer’s Office.

Prosecutors decided in January that they would not pursue the death penalty, but Knezevich still faces life sentence if convicted at his trial, scheduled for mid-June.

In December, Knezevich pleaded not guilty to accusations of his wife, Ana, 40, of murder on February 2, 2024. Knezevich, who was initially arrested on charges of a donation at Miami International Airport last May, has been newly charged with a donation that led to his wife’s death.

He was also charged with foreign domestic violence resulting in the death of a US citizen and foreign murder, according to the amended indictment.

Anna’s body was never found. This has put the international murders a challenge for FBI agents and prosecutors who have built up primarily circumstantial evidence against Knezevich.

Knezevich, who had been detained in Miami federal detention center since his arrest after he was deemed a risk of flying to his hometown of Serbia and elsewhere, was denied bonds from onset. The death-prone surcharge showed a dramatic change in the cases surrounding Ana’s loss of disappearance from an apartment in Madrid.

Fighting over millions on Broward properties

Knezevich, who ran a high-tech business, owned millions of dollars at Broward County Residential Real Estate, a wife from Colombia that he acquired during his 13-year marriage. When she left for Spain in late December 2023, they were fighting over these and other assets.

Prosecutors said the defendant reported his estimated net worth to the court’s probation office, with seven residential properties sold for around $6.7 million between December 2023 and February 2024 for about $2.5 million before the loss of his estranged wife in Spain.

Knezevich was accused of leaving Miami in late January 2024 by Serbia. There, prosecutors say they rented a car to track down his Spanish wife.

The FBI said it suspected that he carried Ananezevic’s body into a suitcase in a Madrid apartment building on the evening of February 2, 2024 and cited security camera footage of him leaving the elevator.

In August, the FBI joined Spanish and Italian authorities to search for bodies in the forests of Italy’s northern Vikunza. There, I suggested that my husband’s Peugeot 308 GPS alert had detoured on a return trip from Spain to Serbia.

However, his wife’s body was not found.

“What we know is that evidence that she was killed between Spain and Serbia is supported,” US lawyer Jessica Obenauf said at a January hearing before Judge Williams. The judge forced the prosecutor to kneel with fingerprints, cell phones, photos, videos and other evidence from the FBI and Spanish national police.

For months, the FBI coordinated an investigation with Spanish authorities, collecting footage of suspected security cameras of Knezevich’s existence in her apartment just before her loss of failure, and collecting text messages and stolen license plates manufactured in a car rental suggesting cover-up.

However, authorities found no blood traces or evidence of the struggle in his estranged wife’s Madrid apartment after she was reported missing.