Transcript of Missing Ana New

I'm Craig Melvin. Cheers.

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 way too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, their challenges. Their stories are funny and quite candid. So I hope you'll join me each week. And who knows, you might just come away with your own glass half full.

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Tonight on "Dateline." She is a very bubbly person, adventurous. We talked about all the trips we were gonna do. She wanted to go to Madrid.

She was thriving here. She made a lot of friends.

I see these messages that were 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 Ana and I write 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 Ana 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 murderer.

She moved across the world looking for a new life. Soon, friends in law enforcement were looking for her. I'm Lester Holt, and this is "Dateline." [MUSIC] Ah.

Here's Jose Diaz-Balart with "Missing Undercover." What would you do if your best friend suddenly disappeared?

It was an unimaginable situation. Like, I had 1,000 thoughts in my head.

If the woman who loved to sing and laugh and make plans simply vanished.

I said, "Tomorrow." But tomorrow never 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 3 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 Ana Knezevic 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. We did. And we immediately started talking about travel memories and discovered that we had 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 Ana was a successful businesswoman 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, loved 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 gonna 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 Ana as 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, it seems.

Yeah, she was very happy.

Happy New Year. Everything that where we suck this year, we're gonna make it better next one. She wanted to start fresh, to have a new story.

Elisa Romero was one of Ana's best friends in Madrid. She let Ana live with her until she found her first home, a 6-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.

Ana 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.

Ana promised it would be the adventure of a lifetime.

So, there's 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 and it's a couple of hours outside of Madrid.

The cell signal would be spotty, Ana texted, so she promised to call when she returned to Madrid. Sana got worried.

It wasn't written the way Ana and I write to one another.

What did you answer?

I said, "What are you talking about, Ana? This is not sounding safe at all. Like, please share your location.

Like, who is this man?" I mean, you were exchanging information 24 hours before, and she never mentioned that.

She never mentioned it. She says in the message, "I met a man, instant connection like I've never felt before. And you haven't called to tell me this?" Sanaa called Ana's estranged husband, David.

He said he was at home in Florida and had not heard from her.

He has no idea. He has not had contact with Ana.

Then she called Eliza, who told her she'd received the same strange text from Ana, but in Spanish.

I start to message her friends on Instagram.

"When was the last time that you talked to Ana?" Eliza learned that Ana failed to show up for a train trip she had planned with another close friend, so the friend reported her missing. That's when she called the police. When panic set in.

For me, it was like it was not real. It was like a dream, like a nightmare.

Firefighters went to Ana's apartment to conduct a welfare check. Spanish police followed. They found no forced entry, no signs of violence, and no Ana. Sana couldn't wait any longer. She jumped on a plane bound for Madrid, hoping she and Eliza could find Ana. And they wouldn't have to do it alone.

My last 18 years, I worked crimes against U.S. citizens, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Alex Montilla, then an agent with the FBI, took on the case after Ana's family notified the Bureau that she was missing. What did your gut tell you?

My gut told me that this was not a deliberate disappearance from Ana. Because Ana 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— that is her apartment.

That's her apartment building.

And this is where the investigation begins. Yes. What all 3 women discovered would become the focus of an international manhunt.

A man with a helmet spray-painting the surveillance cameras.

For me, that's a mindset of a murderer.

Less than 1 week after her best friend Ana disappeared, Sanaa Ramo flew to Madrid, determined to find out what happened to her.

I wanted to come here and just do everything that I can in 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.

Sanaa got her meeting and learned the embassy was aware of Anna's disappearance and was working with police. Then Sanaa went to meet Eliza. The two friends plotted their next move. They would scour Anna's neighborhood, looking for any signs of her.

So I said, "Willa-Lisa, let's go here. Let's ask around. 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 Ana is still missing. I don't know what's being done. The international search for an American—

Within weeks, the story of Ana's mysterious disappearance hit the news.

An international search is underway for an American woman who went missing in Madrid. She is just so—

Sana became the family's spokesperson.

Someone has done something to her, and I'm trying to understand who it could be and why.

Sanaa felt sure her friend was in danger, but she couldn't imagine anyone wanting to hurt the vivacious Ana. Talk to me about your best friend, Ana. What was she like?

She's a very bubbly person, great smile. Ana was very easygoing.

She always was looking or finding the good things things of the people. Every time. She never got angry. Never. Never. Ana was full of life, you know. She was a dreamer. She was so romantic.

Those dreams led Ana to leave her hometown of Bogotá, Colombia, when she was in her early 20s and move to the U.S.

She had a difficult life back in Colombia, and she wanted a better life for herself. She didn't know English when she first She came and she learned English. Later on, you know, 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.

Ana 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, Ana and David decided to split. The separation seemed amicable. By the time Ana left for Madrid, she told Sana that she and David had agreed to split their assets 50/50.

She had decided with David that They were gonna wait a month with the official filing of the divorce.

Ana 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 had lived here before, and this neighborhood is a very high-end, low-crime neighborhood.

FBI Agent Alex Montilla knew this was much more than a missing persons case.

The only things that were missing from the welfare check 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 Ana usually raved about her new adventures. And yet, the friend who first called police to report her missing told them Ana 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. Ana had been going to therapy because she had some childhood trauma, and because of her divorce with David, she was taking antidepressants.

But when Agent Montilla spoke with Sana and Eliza, they told her on the day she disappeared, Ana seemed perfectly happy. In fact, she was looking for a new apartment. She left Sanaa a voice message about it.

I saw an apartment that I love yesterday. I am now on my way to see another one, and everything is doing great.

I'm feeling actually really good.

Aliza and Sanaa didn't believe Ana had harmed herself. They were convinced someone else was to blame. And they were about to find proof in 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 super, 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?

Yes.

This paint was still on it.

Someone sabotaging the camera? Sanaa knew it was a bad sign.

It was a complete shock. I had a thousand thoughts in my head, but I was convinced, obviously, that a terrible crime had happened and someone had kidnapped her. Sorry, oh my God, sorry, I'm so sorry.

No, no, no. Sanaa didn't know that El Grupo 12, One of Spain's most elite police squads was about to join the investigation. 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?

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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. 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.

Eliza hit the streets of Madrid, canvassing Ana's neighborhood.

And what I did was to print some flyers, and I put them on around Ana's house.

How many did you print?

It was around 100. It has her picture, the name, the day when she disappeared, the year, and how she looks like, and the numbers where the people could call with any information.

And did anyone call with any information?

No, no one.

Never? No.

No one.

It's as if she had just vanished.

Yes, exactly.

Eliza was haunted by her last conversation with Ana. Just hours before she went missing.

She asked me to go out 3 times that day. I say, "No, baby, today no." And I say, "Tomorrow." But tomorrow never came.

As Ana's friends desperately searched for her, Detective Rodriguez focused on the building security footage from the day Ana disappeared.

The first thing we did was ask for the videos and watch them.

When he hit play, he saw Ana entering the apartment at around 2:20 PM. 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 3 or 4 minutes, that same person comes down, looks at the camera again, and 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 come in the building because the light in the lobby turns on.

The person was just a blur, barely visible through the painted lens. 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 Ana was in that suitcase. Ana 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 every person person that she came in contact with. Bumble and other applications.

Ana 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 Treminio Leva, an investigator in the Missing Persons Unit, helped identify and interview everyone Ana contacted through through the site.

The people Ana 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 we're 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 Ana.

Then there was the youngest of the bunch, an engineer.

He had a closer, more intimate relationship with Ana compared to the others. I believe Ana 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 had 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 Ana. Police searching for Anna Kinesiewicz were 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. Ana'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 paint a picture of him in any way?

Yes, they all said that David was very controlling of Ana. 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?

Yes. Ana 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 turn to make, until Ana realized that, "Hey, I think I belong in the front seat." in the front seat.

The couple turned to therapy to try and salvage their marriage until Ana discovered David had been cheating on her. She confided in her friends about it. I told my psychiatrist, the couple's one, that I didn't want anything more since, you know, 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 when they decided to get divorced.

Ana loved David. She never really wanted to divorce him, 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 Ana was living in Spain, David changed his mind 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 gonna get anything. He was gonna 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 his attorney told me that David is in Serbia taking care of his mother.

So David was not in Florida like he told Sana. He was in Serbia, still more than 1,600 miles away from Ana'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 a divorce or not, this is a person that he spent the last 13 years with. I would think, you know, 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 4 days before Ana disappeared. Disappeared, a blue Peugeot 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 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 Bumble 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 Ana. Investigators feared that the worst-case scenario was true, that Ana was dead. Her friend Eliza couldn't bear the thought.

I always have the hope, always, always had the hope that she was going to appear. You know, she was going to say, "Hello, I'm here," and then, "I'm back." But the truth, time has a way of Removing your hopes. Yes, exactly.

As Eliza's hope gave way to overwhelming loss—

Can we stop, please?

Yes.

Detective Rodriguez was out for justice. As a seasoned investigator, he'd learned long ago to keep his emotions at bay. But there was something about Ana.

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 Ana'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. And at this point, we needed to put him in Spain with the car.

None of the license plate readers in Spain had picked up David's car. So detectives wondered, did David switch license 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 Ana disappeared and see if any of them of them had been stolen.

It totaled over 100,000 license plates.

Detective Rodriguez's team spent 5 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 for it in Madrid, it was nowhere to be found. Detective Rodriguez was exasperated, but he had a plan. 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 Ana's neighborhood.

Yo, está totalmente—

I was totally desperate. I wouldn't stop annotating and searching for license plates.

It was the end of the workday at the station. Everyone had gone home except Detective Rodriguez. He scribbled down one last plate. And then, bingo.

They find out that there was a license plate reported stolen in Alcalá de Henares, which is on the way—

Into Madrid.

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 of the murder. The night Ana went missing. They checked the security cameras, and there it was, the blue Peugeot 308 David rented in Serbia. 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, you're— are you able to see him?

Look, it's— What we could actually see inside was that there was only one person driving, but we couldn't actually see 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 Ana disappeared. They hit the bullseye right here at a place called Bucaramanga. Boutique Motor. The owner told them that a foreigner paid cash for 2 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 brand, L52.

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.

Correct.

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 mounting. Investigators also found that wherever his car went—

We were able to identify a Serbian telephone number in the same vicinity.

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 Ana 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 2 weeks, and Ana 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.

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!

We have it! What do you say when you see it?

That's our guy. There's no ifs or buts.

Agent Montilla believed she had enough evidence to arrest David. And since Ana was an American citizen, David could face charges in the U.S. Just one problem. David was back in Serbia.

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

A seemingly 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 Montilla was frustrated. She believed she found the man who killed Ana 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 knew it's gonna 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 gonna believe it until I was in the airport and I would see him walking out of that plane.

Holding her arrest warrant, Agent Montilla paced anxiously inside Miami International Airport.

That plane lands, and I'm glued to the window I cannot believe it. I cannot believe it. And as soon as they opened the gate, there is David with his backpack walking out of the plane.

So then there you are face to face with David.

My partner's 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 Ana Dominguez.

Agent Montilla deliberately avoided using Ana's married name.

I didn't give him the pleasure of 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. Those strange texts Sana and Eliza received about Ana running off with that man? The girlfriend told Agent Montilla that David asked her to translate that message from English to Spanish. The exact wording?

The exact wording. It was David using Ana'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 upped his charge from kidnapping to murder. What would David's motive for murder be?

He did not want to give Ana half of the marital assets. But I also believe he was used to having total control of Ana. Once Ana decided to move to Madrid and break free free from him. He was not having it. It was either his way or no way.

It was the most gruesome thing. It was, to me, a worse of a shock almost than first learning that she was missing and that she was gone.

But David's defense attorney, Jane Weintraub, argued in pretrial hearings that the state could not prove her client killed his wife. There's no evidence then, and there's no evidence now that David kidnapped her, murdered her. In fact, she said investigators couldn't even prove that Ana 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 Montilla disagrees.

I've seen the video 1,000 times. It does look like a hard, white case, suitcase.

Still, this was a no-body case, and the evidence was circumstantial, until 2 months before the trial, when the prosecution received a delayed analysis of a spectrophotometer DNA police found on the front doorknob of Ana'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 DNA results arrived on a Wednesday. On Sunday, David met with his lawyers. The next day, Agent Moltilla received some disturbing news.

So, I get a call from Ana'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 cowards do. They take the easy way out.

Do you think in a way that was his confession?

Pretty much, yeah, 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 door.

I honestly think that if he knocked on the door and said, "Hey, Ana, 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 for any information leading to the location of Ana'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 Ana and that we're going to keep looking for her. 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, Elisa says that Ana's wonderful spirit will always remain. The trauma of losing her, she says, can never diminish the beautiful memories of Ana's generosity, her kindness, and the happiness she found in Madrid. For Elisa, that will never die.

I have one audio where it's almost one minute where she's only laughing.

Do you have that? That audio still?

Yes, I think that is this one.

It's the—

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. Ana was a person fully of love. Love for everyone. And this is the thing that everyone should— should remember about her, not the way she left us.

That's all for this edition of Dateline. And don't forget to check out our Talking Dateline podcast, which will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 10:00, 9:00 Central. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night. I'm Craig Melvin. Cheers.

Cheers.

Cheers.

I've always been a glass half full kind of guy, and now I'm talking to some people who who look at the world that way too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, their challenges. Their stories are funny and quite candid. 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 Melton from today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.