Ana María Knezevic traveled from South Florida to Spain in December to get away for a while. Her family and friends say the naturalized American, originally from Colombia, had been navigating a tumultuous divorce from her Serbian husband.

A man with his head covered by a motorcycle helmet painted over the security cameras in his Madrid building. The next day, two friends received text messages from the 40-year-old woman's phone, saying she was going to spend a few days with a man she had just met.