TOLEDO — Two Wapakoneta area women and a man from South Africa made brief appearances in U.S. District Court in Toledo Friday for their respective roles in the murder last month of 36-year-old Timothy Hovanec.
Amanda Hovanec, 35, and her mother, 61-year-old Anita Green, both of Wapakoneta, and 33-year-old Anthony Theodorou of South Africa appeared before Magistrate Judge Darrell A. Clay in the federal courtroom and waived their rights to preliminary hearings. Their cases will now be bound over to the grand jury.
Continued detention was ordered for all three defendants.
Hovanec, Green and Theodorou were arrested April 28 after the body of Timothy Hovanec, the estranged husband of Amanda, was found in rural Auglaize County near Waynesfield.
Federal investigators says on or about April 24 Timothy Hovanec was killed through the injection of a lethal dose of a controlled substance known as “M99.”
According to an arrest affidavit, the substance was shipped to Amanda Hovanec from South Africa by Theodorou, with whom she had developed a relationship while she and her husband were in that country for Timothy’s work with the U.S. Department of State.
Court documents show that Amanda Hovanec injected the drug into the shoulder of her husband after he had returned the couple’s children to her rural Wapakoneta home from a visitation. Amanda allegedly pulled Timothy to the ground and held him down until his body went limp. The affidavit then alleges that Green later drove Amanda and Theodorou to a wooded area at the corner of Blank Pike and Wrestle Creek Road to bury the body.
Hovanec and Theodorou face federal charges of the distribution of a controlled substance that resulted in death, conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance that resulted in death and importation of a controlled substance that resulted in death. Green is charged with being an accessory after the fact.
The government was represented at Friday’s hearings by attorneys Michael Freeman and Alissa Sterling. Hovanec was represented by attorney Kenneth Bailey and Theodorou appeared with attorneys Mark Satawa and Stephen Palmer. Green was represented by attorneys Cherrefe Kadri and William Kluge.
