An Ohio woman who killed her husband by injecting him with “poison” has been sentenced to 40 years in prison. The woman, Amanda Hovanec, 37, used M-99, a controlled substance that she got from her boyfriend, to kill her husband, Timothy, during a 2022 custody exchange.
Although Amanda Hovanec tried to cover up her involvement in the crime, some of what happened was captured via a dash camera on her husband’s car, and she later admitted to injecting her husband with “poison” in hopes that it would kill him within minutes.
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Amanda Hovanec's boyfriend also will spend time in prison for his involvement.
According to the US Attorneyâs Office for the Northern District of Ohio, Amanda Hovanec spent at least a year thinking about killing her husband. She considered other methods but decided to inject her husband with M-99, a controlled substance veterinarians use for anesthesia, which she got from her boyfriend, Anthony Theodorou. Because Theodorou obtained the substance and helped Amanda Hovanec bury her husband’s body after she poisoned him, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison and three years of supervised release.
Amanda Hovanec met Theodorou, who is a South African citizen, when she lived in South Africa due to her husband’s job with the US Department of State.
Amanda Hovanec and her husband were involved in a custody dispute.
The couple was married and shared three children, but Amanda Hovanec filed for divorce in 2020, according to the Northern District of Ohio US Attorney’s Office.
“In December 2021, she began to deny her husband visitation with their children despite a court order to permit it,” its press release stated. “After her husband filed several contempt motions against Hovanec for denying visitation, a judge ordered that the children be given visitation with their father in April 2022, and further ordered that the husband become the residential parent and legal custodian of their children for two months that summer, beginning in May.”
It was around this time that Timothy Hovanec went missing.
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Dash cam footage reportedly showed investigators what happened.
On April 24, 2022, Timothy Hovanec stopped by Amanda Hovanec’s house to drop off their three children. The children had been staying with him for the weekend before returning to Amanda Hovanec’s house. While investigating Timothy Hovanec’s disappearance, investigators found his car, which had a dash camera containing video evidence.
The footage shows Amanda Hovanec and her mother, Anita Green, waiting outside the house for the children to return. Amanda Hovanec encouraged her children to go in the house by saying, “I have a surprise for you inside.â
At this point, Amanda Hovanec was near the driver’s side of her husband’s car. Timothy Hovanec’s voice can be heard in the footage saying, “What the heck are you doing? Did you just assault me?â and “Get away from me . . . Get off of me,â Law & Crime reported.
Amanda Hovanec's actions were also caught on camera.
Dash cam footage showed Timothy Hovanec trying to use his phone. Amanda Hovanec tried to stop him by pulling his shirt and wrestling with him until he eventually dropped his phone, Law & Crime noted. She knocked him onto the ground and grabbed onto his neck “until his body went limp and he became unresponsive, lying on the driveway.” She then turned his car off, and the dash cam stopped recording.
Her mother drove her somewhere to bury her husband's body.
Amanda’s mother was charged as an accessory after the fact, according to the Northern District of Ohio US Attorney’s Office, because she reportedly knew that her daughter planned to kill Timothy Hovanec. She also drove her daughter and Theodorou (and Amanda Hovanec’s husband’s body) to the place where they planned to bury him. Because of her involvement and guilty plea, Green was sentenced to 10 years in prison and two years of supervised release, the district reported.