Missing Ana

I've always been a glass half-volt kind of guy, and now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that we too.

“Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, challenges, their stories, their funny, and my candy.”

So I hope you'll join me each week and who knows. You might just come away with your own glass half-volt. Search Glass Half-volt with Craig Melvin from today on YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Kate Snow, NBC News Anchor, and host of the NBC News Podcast, The Drink. And this month I'm grabbing a Hugo Spritz with former reality star, Lauren Conrad. Here at The Drink, we love learning about someone's journey to the top.

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Tonight on Date Live. She is very bubbly person, adventurous. We talked about all the trips we're going to do. She wanted to go to Madrid. She was thriving here. She made a lot of friends.

“I see this message that we're very strange. She had met a wonderful man, and she's going away on a summer house with him.”

It wasn't written the way Anna and I right to one another. She went radio silent. It's as if she just vanished. Yes. I wanted to come here to find my friend.

You're acting like a detective here. I felt that I had to. We have Anna coming in around 2 o'clock. All of a sudden you see this man. Then you see him spraying the lens. I started screaming in my squad. We have it. We have it.

It was a shock to learn what he was accused of doing. His personality, he was so sure of himself. That's a mindset of a murder. She moved across the world looking for a new life. Soon, friends and law enforcement were looking for her.

I'm lester halt, and this is date line. Here's Jose Diaz ballard with Missing Anna.

“What will you do if your best friend suddenly disappear?”

It was an unimaginable situation, like I had thousand thoughts in my head. If a woman who loved to sing and laugh and make plans, simply vanished. I failed tomorrow, but tomorrow married came. What if it was your job to find her? You really are in a race against time.

Everybody at this point was a suspect. For these three women, there was only one option. I need to see someone now. I'm not leaving. I was trying to do all I could do to find my friend. It was very overwhelming, but it takes a village.

Sana Ramo, first met 39-year-old Anna Kinesovich at a local happy hour in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

It's almost as if you clicked almost immediately. Yes, I want to say we did, and we immediately started talking about travel memories and discovered that we have the same interests. You know, you could tell she's adventurous, telling me about places that she wanted to go in the future. As they got to know each other, Sana learned that Anna was a successful businessman who had the freedom to go where she pleased. And the place she really wanted to go was Madrid Spain.

She was drawn to the way the city pulses with culture, history, and light. Love the passionate nature of its people. The winding cobblestone streets, she believed, could be the stepping stones for a simpler, more authentic life. To her, living in America in that big house with a swimming pool, wasn't her dream anymore.

She said, "I'm going to go to Madrid and be there by myself for a little while." Just to get away just to clear my thoughts. So in December of 2023, Sana said goodbye to Anna. She packed up and moved from Fort Lauderdale to Madrid. She checked in with Sana almost every day.

I just landed in Madrid and I'll let you know how everything goes. Bye. This is a happy time for her. Yeah, she was very happy. Happy New Year. Everything that we saw this year, we're going to make it better next one.

The Lisa Romero was one of Anna's best friends in Madrid.

“She let Anna live with her until she found her first home.”

A six-floor apartment in Salamanca, Madrid's most upscale neighborhood. She felt safe and comfortable here. Yes. Because here she made a lot of friends and she was having a lot of support from us. Anna needed that support.

She wasn't just leaving behind her successful businesses. She was also separating from her husband of 13 years, David. She was growing and improving. So it was going to be a good beginning for her. We were talking about me coming there. I had plans to go and see her in Madrid.

I don't know if we want to go maybe to Asturias, which I know is beautiful. Anna promised it would be the adventure of a lifetime. So you just so many places that I don't know. But less than a week before that trip, Sana got a text from her. It said that she had met a wonderful man on the street and she's going away on a summer house with him.

It's a couple of hours outside of Madrid.

“The cell signal would be spotty on a text.”

So she promised to call when she returned to Madrid. Sana got worried. It wasn't written the way Anna and I right to one another. What did you answer? I said, what are you talking about Anna?

This is not sounding safe at all. Please share your location. Who is this man? I mean, you were changing information to 24 hours before. She never mentioned it.

She says in the message, I met a man.

Instance connection, like I've never felt before.

And you haven't called to tell me this. Sana called Anna as a strange husband, David. He said he was at home in Florida and had not heard from her. He has no idea he has not heard contact with Anna.

“Then she called Aliza, who told her she'd receive the same strange text from Anna, but in Spanish.”

I started to message her friends on Instagram. We was the last time that you talked to Anna. Aliza learned that Anna failed to show up for a train trip. She had planned with another close friend. So the friend reported her missing.

That's when panic said it. For me, it was like I was not real. It was like a dream, like a nightmare. Firefighters went to Anna's apartment to conduct a welfare chat. Spanish police followed.

They found no forced entry. No signs of violence. And no Anna. Sana couldn't wait any longer. She jumped on a plane bound from Madrid, hoping she and Aliza could find Anna.

And they wouldn't have to do it alone. My last 18 years, I worked crime against U.S. citizens. Mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean. Alex Montilla, then an agent with the FBI took on the case after Anna's family notified the Bureau that she was missing. What did you got to tell you?

My God told me that this was not a deliberate disappearance from Anna. Because Anna was thriving in Madrid, she had future plans. This is not a behavior of someone that would just disappear. Agent Montilla would eventually fly to Madrid herself to investigate. And that is her apartment building.

And this is where the investigation begins. Yes. What all three women discovered would become the focus of an international manhunt. The man with a helmet spray painting to surveillance cameras. For me, that's a mindset of a murderer.

[Music] Less than one week after her best friend Anna disappeared, Sana Ramov flew to Madrid, determined to find out what happened to her. I wanted to come here and just do everything that I can and my power to find my friend.

Her first stop, the American Embassy.

I said this is regarding an American citizen who has been missing for several days. There has been no sign of life. I need help. But the Embassy's initial suggestion? Send an email with her concerns.

I didn't give up. I said I'm not leaving. I need to go in. I need to see someone now. I'm not leaving.

And you did. And I did. Sana got her meeting and learned the Embassy was aware of Anna's disappearance and was working with police. Then Sana went to meet Elisa. The two friends plotted their next move.

They would scour Anna's neighborhood looking for any signs of her. So I said, "Will Alisa, let's go here.

Let's look for surveillance cameras so I can take pictures of them

“and then take it to the police station."”

You're acting like a detective here. I felt that I had to because Anna is still missing. I don't know what's being done. The International Search for an American. Within weeks, the story of Anna's mysterious disappearance hit the news.

An international search is underway for an American woman who went missing in Madrid. Sana became the family's spokesperson. Someone has done something to her. And I'm trying to understand who it could be and why. Sana felt sure her friend was in danger.

But she couldn't imagine anyone wanting to hurt the vivacious Anna. Talk to any of you best friend Anna. What was she like? She's a very bubbly person. Great smile. And I was very easy going.

“She always was looking or finding the good things of the people.”

Every time. She never got angry. Never.

Anna was full of life. She was so romantic. Those dreams let Anna to leave her hometown of Bogotá, Colombia when she was in her early 20s and moved to the US. She had difficult life back in Colombia and she wanted a better life for herself.

She didn't know English when she first came and she learned English later on. She met David, her husband. David was a fellow immigrant from Serbia. The two bonded over their love of travel and the American dream. They quickly fell in love and got to work.

They built two successful businesses together, real estate and IT. So they worked very hard and became successful. Successful is an understatement.

“Their two companies took off eventually worth more than $10 million.”

Anna told me that David was extremely driven in their marriage. A lot was about just working hard all the time and making money. But after 13 years, Anna and David decided to split. The separation seemed amicable. By the time Anna left from Madrid, she told Sana that she and David had agreed to split their assets 50-50.

She had decided with David that they were going to wait a month with the official filing of the divorce. Anna didn't mind waiting, especially now that she'd found a new life in Spain. So why would she suddenly disappear? She was missing from Salamanca and I lived here before and this neighborhood is a very high-end low-prime neighborhood. FBI agent Alex Montilla knew this was much more than a missing person's case.

The only things that were missing from the welfare chip was her computer and her cell phone. She also went radio silent that day and that was very telling. She was a very social person.

She was always in contact with her friends and family.

Agent Montilla learned that Anna usually raved about her new adventures. And yet, the friend who first called police to report her missing told them Anna had been depressed lately. She said I fear she may have taken her life. Anything was a possibility. So she thought maybe she overdosed in her pills.

Anna had been going to therapy because she had some childhood trauma and because of her divorce with David. She was taking and to the presence. But when Agent Montilla spoke with Sana and Eliza, they told her on the day she disappeared, Anna seemed perfectly happy. In fact, she was looking for a new apartment.

She left Sana a voice message about it. I saw an apartment that I loved yesterday. I am now in my way to see another one. Everything's done great. I'm feeling I should be really scared. Eliza and Sana didn't believe Anna had harmed herself.

They were convinced someone else was to blame. And they were about to find proof that Anna's apartment building.

We came here first and looked around.

We tried to enter the building and there was a door lady there. It was the building soup and she told them something harrowing. She told us that the same night that Anna had disappeared. There was a man spray painting the surveillance cameras in the building. And the paint was still on it.

The paint was still on it. Someone sabotaging the camera, Sana knew it was a bad sign. It was a complete shock. I had 1,000 thoughts in my head. But I was convinced that a terrible crime had happened and someone had kidnapped her. Sorry, oh my gosh. Sorry.

No. No. Sana didn't know that El Grupo dosa, one of Spain's most elite police squads,

Their specialty cracking the most impossible cases. Veteran detective Remo Rodriguez took the lead.

“I think everyone has their own way of working.”

Mine in particular is to go little by little, pulling a thread, which leads me to the next one and which leads me to the next one.

His first thread, that man, spray painting the security camera.

Who was he? And what if anything did he have to do with Anna's disappearance? Honey, did you invite the minions over? Well, you know how we talked about getting Wi-Fi from Exfinity? Yeah. I ordered it this morning. It was online in minutes.

Then they showed up. So they just came over to use the Wi-Fi? What? Better not to know. Get online in minutes with same-day Wi-Fi from Exfinity,

plus lock in your price for five years, and see minions and monsters only in theaters. Exfinity, imagine that. Restrictions apply not available in all areas. Learn more at xfinity.com/sameday Wi-Fi.

Hey guys, Willie guys, Tear, reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit Down podcast. On this week's episode, I get together with the biggest rock star of the mall. Take Jagger to talk about the stone's latest album,

and his favorite of the band's iconic records over all these years. You can get our conversation now for free, wherever you download your podcasts. You know, every day on our first NPR's Golden Globe

nominated morning news podcast,

we bring you three essential stories.

At the heart of each story, our questions. What really happened? What really mattered? What happens next?

At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and to follow the facts. Follow our first wherever you get your podcasts

“and start your day knowing what matters and why.”

Two women were on a mission in Madrid. Find out what happened to their friend Anna. Sana was terrified that she had been kidnapped. I was thinking about Anna's physique, like she weighed barely 90 pounds.

It's easy for anyone to just take her, and I thought maybe she's been trafficked. I can go and just pick her up under one arm and just carry her away. Aliza, hit the streets of Madrid,

canvassing Anna's neighbor. And what I did was to bring some flyers, and I put them on around Anna's house. How many did you print? It was around 100.

It has her picture, the name, that they went she disappeared, the deer, and how she looks like. And the numbers were the people who call with any information. And did anyone call with any information?

No, no one. Never. No one. It's as if she had just vanished. Yes. Exactly.

“Aliza was haunted by her last conversation with Anna”

just hours before she went missing. She asked me to go out three times that day. I said no, but I said no.

And I said tomorrow, but tomorrow never came.

As Anna's friends desperately searched for her, the detective Rodriguez focused on the building security footage from the day Anna disappeared. The first thing we did was ask for the videos and watch them.

When he hit play, he saw Anna entering the apartment at around 220 p.m. Later that night, someone dressed like a food delivery man walks down the hallway. He looks up at the camera before heading upstairs.

And then... After three or four minutes, that same person comes down. Looks at the camera again. It takes out spray paint and paints the camera.

It seemed that whoever had done it had been thinking for a long time about how they were going to do it. The fact that he painted the camera and he was concealing his identity told us that his intentions were to do something really bad.

Detective Rodriguez shared what he found with Agent Montilla. What did that lead tell you? That was huge. For me, I saw that I'm like we have our guy.

Agent Montilla watched the video over and over again. And she kept watching. Even after the man spray painted the lens. Even while the paint was drying, there is information you could gather.

Yes. So once the paint started drying in the surveillance camera, we can see the suspect exiting the building. A few minutes later, you see somebody coming to the building

because the light in the lobby turns on. The person was just a blur,

But as Agent Montilla studied the images,

she spotted something flashing. It looked like the reflective vest the man in the helmet was wearing. You can see the reflective vest going into the elevator

and then the elevator comes down and then you see the reflective vest dragging what we believe is a suitcase, exiting the building.

“What do you believe was in that suitcase?”

I believe Anna was in that suitcase. Anna was a very small petite woman and she could easily fit in that suitcase. Inside that suitcase, but was she dead or alive?

Agent Montilla didn't know. The question was, who took her? We traced back the days before she went missing and we identified every single person that she came in contact with.

Bumble and other applications. Anna was active on dating apps, including Bumble. That gave investigators a series of new leads. This has opened the case to many people

that we will have to investigate. So I named it Operation Bumble from the beginning. Lieutenant Emilio Trimino Leva, an investigator in the Missing Persons Unit, helped identify and interview everyone

on a contacted through the site. The people on a had relationships with were people who had a high level of intellectual and economic status. She didn't date just anyone.

Cultured people, educated people, people that added something to her life. There was an Italian man. He cooperated with police,

but after his first interview, he left the country.

It could raise alarm bells. Why has this person were trying to contact left Spain and gone to Portugal? There was a married Spanish CEO. He had an open relationship

and among these relationships, there was Anna. Then there was the youngest of the bunch, an engineer. He had a closer, more intimate relationship with Anna compared to the others.

“I believe Anna wanted something more serious with him,”

but he wasn't ready. Every single person she met could be a possible suspect, so we had to locate and interview each one of them. It was a challenge because a lot of them were hesitant to give us an interview.

Some of them already left the country. As police worked their way through Operation Bumble, they were gathering information on another man, one who didn't need a dating app to find Anna. Police searching for Anna,

can us of it work focused on finding the man in the helmet. They knew she had been dating men in Spain, but they were also curious about her husband David, who lived in Florida. Anna's friends said their recent split seemed friendly enough.

They knew she had been dating men in Spain, but they were also curious about her husband David, who lived in Florida. Anna's friends said their recent split seemed friendly enough. She still loved him a lot.

She said that he was trying to do his best. I think that she admired him a lot. It's not like they were at war. They were talking. But as police continued their investigation,

they were hearing something else. Any of the other interviews you had with people who knew David, David painted a picture of him in any way. Yes, they all said that David was very controlling of Anna. He controlled everything from the economic aspect to her social aspect,

all through their marriage. Sana saw that aspect of David too and said it was a factor in their separation.

“Did you get a sense that he was a controlling person?”

Anna was basically a tool to David, to becoming successful. She was the passenger in the back seat of that car.

And he was the driver, always deciding where to go,

what turned to make until Anna realized that, "Hey, I think I belong in the front seat." The couple turned to therapy to try and salvage their marriage until Anna discovered David had been cheating on her. She confided in her friends about it.

Really amazing. I told my psychiatrist the couple's one that I didn't want anything more. And again, he cheated on me again. He was using Tinder.

He had been seeing a Colombian woman he matched with on the dating app Tinder. And that to her was the last straw. Yes, exactly. It was one day beside it to get the first.

Anna loved David.

but she realized that there was no turning back after everything that had happened.

“The couple managed the separation themselves without help from attorneys.”

But once Anna was living in Spain, David changed his mind about that 50/50 split. They had originally agreed to. She tells me that David doesn't want to give her half of the assets in the divorce. He believed that he should take 75%.

She should get 25%. Then he changed it to that. She wasn't going to get anything. He was going to give her a monthly allowance. Agent Montilla wanted to speak with him.

I called him. I texted him. I never heard from him. But I did hear from his attorney.

“And he's attorney told me that David is in service”

at taking care of his mother. So David was not in Florida, like he told Sana. He was in Serbia, still more than 1600 miles away from Anna's apartment. His attorney went on TV to defend him. David has nothing to do with this. He was in another country.

But while his attorney was communicating with police, David was not.

He never called and asked where is my wife.

I haven't heard anything about her. He acted completely absent and didn't want to have any kind of relationship with us. If he was getting at the divorce or not, this is a person that he spent the last 13 years with. I would think that he would want to help the FBI, especially to eliminate him as a suspect.

Investigators searched for any sign, David had been in Spain. He was not registered as having come in any airport, any airport, any hotel, any place, David did not show up. So we asked Serbian police. Serbian police gave them what appeared to be a lead.

David had rented a car four days before Anna disappeared. A blue Pujol 308 and crossed the border into Croatia. And the Serbian police gave us the license plate number of the rental car with which David had left Serbia.

“Could David have driven the 25 hours from Serbia to Madrid?”

Detective Rodriguez tried to find any trace of David's rental car in Spain. We asked the Madrid City Hall and the Department of Transportation. If that Serbian license plate number had been registered by any of the license plate readers, there are throughout Spain, including like that reader, right? That reader over there.

And the Spanish authorities said that Serbian license plate has never come to Spain.

It doesn't appear anywhere in Spain. So that lead seemed to be a dead end. And Operation Bumbers wasn't getting them any results either. One by one police tracked down the men's alibis. We verified where everybody was, the day she went missing.

Everybody had an exact alibi. The Italian. Did his alibi check out? Yes. The married Spanish CEO did his alibi check out. Of course, yes. The engineer. Did his alibi check out?

Absolutely, yes. The detectives were at an impasse, but they weren't giving up. And their hard work was about to pay off. I started screaming in my squad. We have it. We have it. 3 weeks passed with no trace of honour.

Investigators feared that the worst case scenario was true. That honour was dead. Her friend Aliza couldn't bear the thought.

I always had the hope, always had the hope that she was going to appear.

And now that she was going to the hellow, I'm here, and then I'm back. Well, that's a good idea. But the truth, time, has a way of removing your hopes. Yes, exactly. As Aliza's hope gave way to overwhelming loss.

Can we stop, please? Yes. Detective Rodriguez was out for justice. As a seasoned in Valencia, he'd learned long ago to keep his emotions at bay,

but there was something about honour. You put yourself in that situation of a young person with her whole life ahead of her. Who came to Spain to discover another world and start a new life. Investigators now believed that honour's husband David had something to do with her disappearance. But they couldn't prove he had driven his rental car into Spain.

We had no tracking information from Croatia to Spain.

None of the licensed plate readers in Spain had picked up David's car. Detectives wondered, did David switch licensed plates so he could get into the country undetected?

“The only way to tell was to get a list of all the plates that crossed into Spain the day before honour disappeared.”

And see if any of them had been stolen. It totaled over 100,000 licensed plates. Detective Rodriguez as teams spent five weeks going through each and every plate. Finally, they got a hit. They discovered a stolen Serbian plate had entered into Spain through Italy.

But when they looked forward in Madrid, it was nowhere to be found. Detective Rodriguez was exasperated, but he had a hunch.

If it was David who stole that Serbian plate, perhaps he swiped a second one in Spain

and used it to secretly drive around on his neighborhood. I was totally desperate. I wouldn't stop annotating in searching for licensed plates. It was the end of the work day at the station. Everyone had gone home except detective Rodriguez. He scribbled down one last plate and then bingo.

They found out that there was a licensed plate reported stolen in Alcaladenares, which is on the way into Madrid. That license plate had moved a lot throughout Madrid, particularly this reader got it several times. And we said, "This is the license plate." Police tracked that stolen plate to this toll booth the night on a wet missing. They checked the security cameras and there it was.

The Blue Pujo 308 David rented in Serbian. Its windows were tinted. And even though it was past midnight, the driver had pulled the sun visor down.

“As it goes through that toll booth, are you able to see him?”

What we could actually see inside was that there was only one person driving. But we couldn't actually see the person. Investigators traced the car to a neighborhood filled with stores selling motorcycle gear. We have the route the person traveled from one point to another. It took them longer than usual.

Something must have happened there. They called every single store and asked if anyone had bought a helmet or a reflective vest around the time on a disappeared. They hit the bullseye right here. It a place called boutique motor. The owner told them that a foreigner paid cash for two items.

The exact helmet and vest that was seen in the surveillance video. So this is the helmet that he picked up here. This is the exact helmet. White, same brown, L502.

“The owner tells me that he's, these are pretty common helmets to sell.”

He sells about 100 of these helmets here every year.

But then there's another even more critical piece.

He also bought this reflective vest, which the owner said is not sold that often. But this was very critical because we were able to track him because of the reflectors. The evidence against David was mounted. Investigators also found that wherever his car went. We were able to identify a survey and telephone number in the same vicinity.

Huge break in the case. That's amazing. Serbian police discovered that David had purchased a burner phone with that number. But the clincher came at this hardware store on the outskirts of Madrid. Police found that on the day on a disappeared, a customer bought the same exact

paint the man in the helmet used to cover the security camera. There's a camera right here as he purchases this. Yes. But there was a hitch. According to Spanish law, businesses are only required to hang on to security footage for two weeks. And Anna had, by then, been missing for much longer.

When the owner of the store says we have a surveillance video, it's like, oh my gosh. I'm just struck by the extraordinary luck in this investigation. The fact that the suspect, when he spray paints the lens, shows for just a nanosecond, the brand of the paint. And then this is way past 14 days, and he had the video.

And he had the video.

And for the first time, a clear image of the buyer.

No, thank you. We didn't have any doubt that it was David. And that David was the one who bought the spray paint. I just can't imagine what your reaction was when you open up those files and see this. I started screaming in my squad. I went to my supervisor. We have it.

What do you say when you see that? That's a guy. There's no ifs or bots. Agent Montella believed she had enough evidence to arrest David.

Just one problem. David was back in Serbia.

“We knew that it was going to be very hard for Serbia to approve an extradition of David to the United States.”

Assimingly insurmountable hurdle. Or was it? And so there you are at Miami International Airport. And that flight arrives. I'm at the window like this.

Agent Alex Montella was frustrated. She believes she found the man who killed Anna and thought she could prove it. She just couldn't get her hands on him.

We knew David was back in Serbia.

So it's not that we had given up, but we know it's going to be a very tough road ahead to get David in our soil. So imagine her surprise.

“When out of the blue, a source told her that David was boarding a plane back home to Florida.”

I told all my coworkers, I wasn't going to believe it until I was in the airport and I would see him walking out of that plane. Holding her arrest warrant, Agent Montella paced anxiously inside Miami International Airport. That plane lands and I'm glued to the window. I cannot believe it. I cannot believe it. As soon as they opened the gate, there was David with his backpack walking out of the plane.

So then there you are face to face with David. My partner is like so ready to put handcuffs on him. I'm like do it. And when he puts the handcuffs on him, I go, you're under arrest for the kidnapping of Anna Dominguez. Agent Montella deliberately avoided using Anna's married name. I didn't give him the pleasure listening to his last name.

“Do you think he had a sense of how much information you had on him?”

I don't think he did. But I also think that he thought he could get away with it. Why? His personality, I think, you know, he was so sure of himself. The evidence against David was staggering. And even more so, when the FBI got a phone call from the Colombian woman David had met through Tinder,

her strange texts, Sana and Aliza received about Anna running off with that man. The girlfriend told Agent Montella, the David asked her to translate that message from English to Spanish. The exact wording? The exact wording. It was David using Anna's phone. And as soon as those text messages were sent, he turned off the phone.

The stakes for David were high, especially after the U.S. District Attorney up to his charge from kidnapping to murder. What would David's motive for murder be? He did not want to give Anna half of the marital assets. But I also believe he was used to having total control of Anna. Once Anna decided to move to Madrid and break free from him, he was not having it.

It was either he's way or no way.

It was to me a worse of a shock, almost in first learning that she was missing and that she was gone.

But David's defense attorney, Jane Wyntrop, argued in pretrial hearings that the state could not prove her client killed his wife. There's no evidence. Then there was no evidence now that David kidnapped her, murdered her. In fact, she said investigators couldn't even prove that Anna was really dead. What we do know is that the Agent testified there was no struggle. There was no taking and there's no evidence of any foul play in that apartment.

She also took issue with that security video of the man in the helmet. She said the lens was so covered in paint, it was impossible to make out a reflective vest or a suitcase. Agent Montia disagrees. I've seen the video a thousand times. It does look like a hard white case, suit case. Still, this was a no body case and the evidence was circumstantial until two months before the trial.

When the prosecution received the delayed analysis of a speck of DNA police found on the front door knob of Anna's apartment, it was David's. Finding David's DNA in the door puts him directly there with DNA that's direct evidence. So put all that together, put it in front of a jury in trial. There's no way he would have not been convicted.

The next day, Agent Montia received some disturbing news. So I get a call from Anna's family telling me that David was dead. Jail guards had found David's lifeless body in his cell. His manner of death suicide. It did not surprise me. There was a lot of evidence against him. So when things got real for him, he just quit.

“He's a coward. That's what coward's do. They take the easy way out.”

Do you think in a way that was his confession? Pretty much, yeah. I don't think that David would ever confess he would rather kill himself than admit to doing something wrong. And I keep thinking, why would she open the door? I honestly think that if he knocked on the door and said, hey, Anna, it's me, David.

I've come all this way. We need to talk. We need to figure this out.

She would think positive thoughts. She would never ever think that he would come there to hurt her, never.

“David's death did not end the case for the authorities.”

The FBI has offered a $25,000 reward for any information leading to the location of Anna's body, and the Spanish national police continue to search for her. I want to make it clear to her family and friends that we haven't forgotten about Anna, and that we're going to keep looking for. And with every day that goes by, it can be more difficult to find her, but it will never be because we stop trying to find her.

Whether they do or not, Eliza says that Anna's wonderful spirit will always remain.

The trauma of losing her, she says, can never diminish the beautiful memories of Anna's generosity, her kindness, and the happiness she found in Madrid. For Eliza, that will never die. I have one audio where it's almost one minute where it's only laughing. Do you have that audio still?

Yes, I think that is this one. And she's just laughing. Those audio recordings of laughter, you'll keep those forever. Yes, I'm going to have her in my heart forever, and I was a person fully of love for everyone.

“And this is the thing that everyone should remember about her.”

No, they wait till it pass. That's all for this edition of Date Line. And don't forget to check out our Talking Date Line podcast, to which we'll go behind the scenes of tonight's episode. Available Wednesday, in the Date Line feed, wherever you get your podcasts,

we'll see you again next Friday at 10th, 9th Central. I'm Lesterholt, for all of us at NBC News. Good night. I'm Craig Melfer. Cheers. Cheers.

I've always been a glass half-full kind of guy, and now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that we too.

It's really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, challenges, their stories, their funny, and my candy. So I hope you'll join me each week and who knows. You might just come away with your own glass half-full. Search Glass Half-full with Craig Melfer from today on YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts.