A mom has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for having “ambushed and injected” her estranged ex-husband with a fatal dose of poison after he dropped their children back at her home.
Amanda Hovonec, 37, of Wapakoneta, Ohio, pleaded guilty to the murder of Timothy Hovanec in front of a district judge on Tuesday.
Investigators attained dash cam footage from the victim’s car that showed her wrestling him to the floor, before she injected him in the shoulder with M99: an anesthetic used on Rhinos and other zoo animals that is up to 3,000 times the strength of morphine.
The 36-year-old father-of-three, who worked as a US State Department researcher, was returning the couple’s children after they stayed with him during a weekend visit on the evening of April 24, court documents revealed.
Timothy’s job demanded they live in South Africa between 2018 and 2020, in which time Hovonec was engaged in an affair with Saffa Anthony Theodorou. The couple divorced shortly after a return to the US in 2020.
At approximately 7pm, Hovonec and her mother Anita Green were waiting beside the garage outside her residence when the dad pulled into the drive, the court heard.
According to prosecutors, the mom walked up to the car and told her children: “I have a surprise for you inside.”
As Green ushered the children inside, Hovonec leapt on her ex-husband on her driveway while he was unloading the children’s car seats, according to a sentencing brief.
“What the heck are you doing? Did you just assault me?” Timothy could be heard wailing in an audio recording captured by the car’s dash cam that was given to investigators. “Get away from me… get off of me.”
Edging into the camera’s view, Hovanec was filmed yanking her ex-husband’s shirt and wrestling with him as he tried to pick up his cellphone, officials said.
Taking him to the ground, she held the victim by the neck until his body went limp and he lost consciousness prosecutors said.
After plundering his phone and smartwatch, Hovanec switched off the vehicle’s engine and, with it, the dashcam, prosecutors said.
She placed a plastic bag over the victim’s head and body over fear of “fluids secreting” from his remains, according to court documents.
Hovanec revealed to investigators that she injected her ex-partner in the shoulder with M99. She knew that the poison would kill him within minutes, prosecutors said.
The defendant also confessed to where she claimed to have sourced the poison: Theodorou.
The paramour, who had traveled to Ohio at the time of the murder, had not only allegedly supplied the M-99, he admitted to digging a shallow grave a day prior to Timothy’s death.
On April 25, Green drove the pair to the burial site at a farm that the defendant’s grandfather used to own, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Green’s taxiing of Hovonec and Theodorou was “inescapable conclusion that she helped facilitate a murder,” District Judge James Knepp II said.
“Hovanec’s violent and intentional actions were cold-blooded, calculated, and cruel. Her extreme malevolence toward her husband and complete disregard for how his murder would affect their innocent children is incomprehensible and unforgivable,” said US Attorney Rebecca Lutzko for the Northern District of Ohio said in a statement released on Tuesday.
“We know that no amount of time served can bring back a family’s loved one. But our hope is that the victim’s family may find some sense of closure as they painstakingly work to heal from this unimaginable and horrific tragedy.”
Green, the defendant’s mother, pleaded guilty to being an accessory to the crimes committed by Hovanec and Theodorou. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison, followed by two years of supervised release. She was ordered to pay $2,108,559 in restitution.
Hovanec’s lover, Theodorou, is scheduled sentenced on Thursday.
