Wife Accused of Poisoning Husband with Animal Tranquilizer During Custody Handoff

An Ohio woman, aged 38, faces a life sentence after being convicted of murdering her husband by injecting him with a lethal dose of animal tranquilizer during a custody exchange in 2022.

Amanda Leigh Hovanec stood before the Auglaize County Court of Common Pleas last month, where she admitted to the charge of aggravated murder for the death of her husband, 36-year-old Timothy Hovanec, according to court records accessed by Law&Crime.

Previously covered by Law&Crime, Hovanec is already serving a 40-year sentence in federal prison after pleading guilty to several felonies, including the distribution of a controlled substance leading to death. At her federal sentencing, Amanda Hovanec attributed the murder of her husband to her own “selfish” actions.

The couple shared three daughters, and Timothy Hovanec worked as a researcher for the U.S. State Department. His job required the family to relocate multiple times, including a period in South Africa in 2018. During this time, Amanda Hovanec began an affair with a South African named Anthony Theodorou.

Both Anthony Theodorou and Amanda Hovanec’s mother, Anita Green, have been found guilty of federal offenses related to Timothy Hovanec’s murder and are currently awaiting trial in state court.

When the Hovanecs moved 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,” federal prosecutors previously said.

But two days before the slaying, a judge ordered the victim be given two-day custody of the kids and that he be “the residential parent of custody and legal custodian of the children for the summer, beginning on May 28, 2022 until August 5, 2022.”

During Timothy Hovanec’s two days of custody, Amanda Hovanec concocted the plan to inject him with M-99, a drug that is about a thousand times more potent than morphine, which prosecutors said is “used in veterinary medicine for zoo and wildlife anesthesia.”

Federal prosecutors filed a sentencing memo stating that the victim was “unloading the children’s car seats from his car” when Amanda Hovanec sneaked up and injected him with the drug. The attack was recorded by the victim’s dashcam.

“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,’” prosecutors wrote in a news 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 tranquilizer was shipped to Amanda Hovanec just one month earlier by Theodorou, who admittedly dug a shallow grave the day before the slaying.

From there, Amanda Hovanec “put a plastic bag over [Timothy Hovanec’s] head and body because she was concerned about fluids secreting from [Timothy Hovanec’s] body” before she dumped the victim’s remains with the help of her co-defendants.

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, according to court documents.

“Prior to killing [Timothy Hovanec], Amanda told her mother, Green, that she was going to kill him,” prosecutors wrote. “After Amanda killed [Timothy Hovanec], she also informed her mother that it had been done. Amanda and Theodorou loaded [Timothy Hovanec’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 [Timothy Hovanec] in a wooded area located at the northwest corner of Blank Pike and Wrestle Creek Road in Auglaize County. 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.”

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 [Timothy Hovanec] in the shoulder while they were standing next to his vehicle after he dropped off the children,” a federal affidavit said. “Amanda was not able to name what she injected [Timothy Hovanec] with but referred to it as ‘poison’ or ‘drug.’ Amanda understood that the drug would kill him within minutes.”

A date for Amanda Hovanec’s sentencing hearing had not been set as of Monday. However, under Ohio law, she will face a mandatory sentence of life in a state correctional facility without the chance for parole.

Green and Theodorou are still facing state charges for complicity to aggravated murder. They have a pretrial hearing scheduled for March 13.