Main: Amanda Hovanec and her mother Anita Green wait at the door as victim Timothy Hovanec arrives to exchange custody of 3 daughters (court documents). Left to right inset: Amanda Hovanec, Anita Green, Anthony Theodorou (Auglaize County Sheriff’s Office).
A 37-year-old Wapakoneta, Ohio, woman who divorced her U.S. State Department researcher husband, the father of their three daughters, and started a relationship with a man she met in South Africa is going to federal prison for 40 years after she “ambushed and injected” her ex with animal tranquilizer and killing him after he arrived to exchange custody of the children in 2022.
Amanda Hovanec apparently didn’t have much of an explanation as to why she poisoned 36-year-old Timothy Hovanec on April 24, 2022. The Lima News reported that Hovanec acknowledged at her sentencing hearing Tuesday that “it comes down to me being selfish.”
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio, the crime, also implicating Amanda’s mother Anita Green and Anthony Theodorou, Amanda’s new boyfriend from South Africa, occurred in the course of an ongoing child visitation dispute amid the divorce.
Prosecutors said that the victim’s job with the State Department often involved moves, and that one of those trips was to South Africa in 2018. During that time, she met Theodorou. When the Hovanecs got back to America in 2020, Amanda Hovanec filed for divorce and the defendant subsequently denied her ex “visitation with their children despite a court order to permit it.”
A court battle over visitation got heated enough that Timothy Hovanec traveled from Virginia to Ohio for court proceedings so he could see his daughters, but the hearing did not happen as planned. Instead, on April 22, 2022, two days before the slaying, a judge ordered that the victim be “given visitation” for the next two days and that he be “the residential parent of custody and legal custodian of the three children for the summer beginning on May 28, 2022 until August 5, 2022.”
Over the two days of visitation, the evidence showed the victim and his daughters spent time together and swam in a Best Western pool. What Timothy Hovanec did not know is that his ex had planned to kill him by injecting him with M-99 upon exchanging custody of the children at a home where Amanda Hovanec lived with her mother.
A government sentencing brief for the three defendants detailed that Timothy Hovanec was fatally injected as he was “unloading the children’s car seats from his car” in the driveway. The DOJ, citing the victim’s dashcam, noted that Hovanec and Green were waiting at the front door when the victim arrived and that Amanda told her kids “I have a surprise for you inside” just before the attack.
“The children entered the residence, followed by Green. Seconds later, the victim was heard saying, ‘What the heck are you doing? Did you just assault me?’ and then, ‘Get away from me . . . Get off of me,”” said the DOJ’s press release. “The victim and Hovanec came into the camera’s view, at which time video footage captured her pulling on her husband’s shirt as he tried to use his cellphone.”
“She wrestled with him and eventually knocked the phone out of his hand. She then pulled on his back to bring him to the ground, holding him around the neck until his body went limp and he became unresponsive, lying on the driveway,” the DOJ added. “Hovanec stood up, picked up her husband’s cellphone, removed his smart watch, and turned off his vehicle’s engine, at which point the dash camera stopped recording.”
The drug of choice was shipped to Hovanec just one month earlier by Theodorou, who admittedly dug a shallow grave the day before the slaying.
From there, defendant Hovanec “put a plastic bag over T.H.’s head and body because she was concerned about fluids secreting from T.H.’s body” before she dumped the victim’s remains with the help of her co-defendants.
While Theodorou still awaits sentencing, prosecutors noted that Green was also sentenced to 10 years in prison for her role in the attempted cover-up, as an accessory after fact.
The day after the murder, Green drove her co-defendants and the victim’s body to a pre-dug “burial site […] near farmland” that Amanda’s “grandfather used to own” and then picked them up when they were done, a probable cause affidavit said.
“Prior to killing T.H., AMANDA told her mother, GREEN, that she was going to kill him. After AMANDA killed T.H., she also informed her mother that it had been done. AMANDA and THEODOROU loaded T.H.’s body into the back of AMANDA’s Honda Pilot. Shortly thereafter, GREEN drove AMANDA and THEODOROU to where they buried the body. AMANDA and THEODOROU buried T.H. in a wooded area located at the northwest corner of Blank Pike and Wrestle Creek Road in Auglaize County, in the Northern District of Ohio,” court documents said. “AMANDA and THEODOROU used shovels from GREEN’s home to bury the body. AMANDA said that GREEN dropped them off and later returned to pick her and THEODOROU up at a predetermined time.”
The evidence that Green knew her daughter planned to kill the victim reportedly prompted U.S. District Judge James Knepp II to remark the he was “left with the inescapable conclusion that she helped facilitate a murder, not just after the fact.”
As to the case as a whole? Knepp reportedly said it was “as bad a crime as I have seen or could have imagined.”
While defendant Hovanec initially claimed that her ex simply left after dropping off the children, she confessed when confronted with the video evidence, the feds said.
“AMANDA admitted she injected T.H. in the shoulder while they were standing next to his vehicle after he dropped off the children. AMANDA was not able to name what she injected T.H. with but referred to it as ‘poison’ or ‘drug.’ AMANDA understood that the drug would kill T.H. within minutes,” the affidavit said.
Not only was Hovanec sentenced to 40 years, she’s also on the hook for $2,108,559.36 in restitution.
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