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Chapter 1: What led Ana to move from Florida to Madrid?
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. And Lauren and I, we go back to the very beginning of her extraordinary story.
We talk about why she always saw reality TV as temporary for her, the scrutiny she faced in the public eye, and why she says she'll never watch Laguna Beach again. Hope you'll join us for the drink. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
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. Search Glass Half Full with Craig Melvin from today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. tonight on Dateline.
She's 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 Anna 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.
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Chapter 2: What strange messages did Ana send before her disappearance?
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.
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.
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Chapter 3: How did Ana's friends react to her sudden disappearance?
And that, that is her apartment?
That's her apartment building.
And this is where the investigation begins?
Yes.
What all three 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 one week after her best friend Ana disappeared, Sana 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.
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Chapter 4: What were the initial findings from the welfare check on Ana's apartment?
She had a 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, 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 going to 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.
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Chapter 5: What evidence pointed to Ana's husband David in her disappearance?
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 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, 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 go 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?
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Chapter 6: How did investigators track David's movements after Ana went missing?
If he was getting a 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 at 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 Ana 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 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 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.
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Chapter 7: What crucial evidence was found linking David to Ana's case?
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 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 that?
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 going to be very hard for Serbia to approve an extradition of David to the United States.
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Chapter 8: What was the outcome of the investigation into Ana's disappearance?
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 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.
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 audio still?
Yes, I think that is this one. And she's just laughing.
Those audio recordings of laughter, you'll keep those forever.
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