Eva Blanco Puig

Eva Blanco Puig (17 February 1981 – 20 April 1997) was a Spanish high school student who was murdered in Algete, Community of Madrid.

The case remained unsolved for over a decade, gaining significant attention in Spain and is popularly known as the Eva Blanco Case (Caso Eva Blanco), the Crime of Algete (Crimen de Algete) or Operation Gang (Operación Pandilla), the code name given to the investigation by the Spanish Civil Guard.

Hundreds of people with North African origins that had lived in the Algete community subsequently contributed their DNA profile to help the investigative effort; one of the donors showed a sibling-level match with the perpetrator, and further investigations eventually led to the arrest of Ahmed Chelh Gerj, a Moroccan-Spanish citizen who had lived in Algete with his brother in 1997.

In 2013, new advancements in genealogical DNA research led to the determination that the suspect had North African origins.

Chelh committed suicide in prison in 2016, and the case was closed.

Blanco played tennis with her friends during the afternoon of 19 April.

At night, the group stayed in a local disco until 23:30, when they prepared to return home.

Blanco, who had agreed to return at midnight, was among the first to separate from the rest.

A female friend accompanied her to a vacant lot some 700 meters from Blanco's home in the Valderrey residential area, before they parted ways at 23:45.

Blanco intended to walk across the vacant lot as a shortcut to her home, avoiding a longer detour through the town center, but she never reached her destination.

The same shortcut was used by her and other Valderrey students regularly to get to high school.

Because Blanco had always been on time before, her mother became worried and she called Blanco's friends, who told her that she had already left.

She alerted her husband, a tow truck driver, who searched for her in the town with the help of his nephew, a local police officer, and the father of one of Blanco's friends.

Finding no trace of her, the parents reported her disappearance at the local Civil Guard station at 1:00 AM, but the officers were apathetic about filing a disappearance after little over an hour.

The guard at the door even said that children of her age were all on drugs and she was probably lying in some doorway.

By 2:30, Blanco's family, friends, Civil Guards and the local police began her search in Algete and the area leading to nearby Fuente el Saz de Jarama, although a missing report was not filed by the Civil Guard until 8:00.

At 12:00, the family contacted the regional TV station Telemadrid and requested its help publicizing the case.

Blanco's father visited the local Civil Guard station fifteen times during the night and criticized the institution for not searching the rural roads or using vehicles in the search before sunrise, except for a short 20 minutes run around Valderrey.

He claimed that they did not do it earlier because they did not have the gas.

The Civil Guard denied the accusation and said that it was customary to wait some hours between a missing person report and its search.

Blanco's body was found the next day by two elderly Ajalvir residents at 9:00 AM, next to a road construction site between Cobeña and Belvis de Jarama, six kilometers away from Algete.

The residents thought that she might have been run over by a car, but the Civil Guard noticed that the victim, lying face down on the ground, had actually been stabbed several times

in the back while she tried to run away from an attacker.

The body was dressed with the same jeans, dark sweater and mountain boots that Blanco was wearing when she disappeared, with only one sleeve of her jacket taken off.

Both killer and victim were also assumed to have reached the area in a vehicle, although abundant rain in the night of the murder had Washed Out any tire tracks and most other forensic evidence.

Nevertheless, some footprints from the victim and a man wearing size 42 moccasins survived.

The Civil Guard notified Blanco's family of the discovery at 15:30.

The news caused commotion in Algete, a town of just 12,300 people, with no recent instances of violent crime.

At 19:00, 200 people gathered silently before Blanco's home to condemn her murder.

Blanco's funeral on 23 April was attended by 2,000 people.

The autopsy report showed that Blanco was stabbed in the back 19 times before dying from blood loss around 4:00 AM.

The murder weapon was a navaja between 8 and 10 centimetres long and 1 cm wide.

The first stab to the side of the body was made while she was sitting in a vehicle and the rest after she exited it and tried to run up the slope next to the road.

Many of these later wounds, mostly found on Blanco's ear and back of the head were superficial and interpreted as "passionate."

In contrast, the first injury was deep and may have been fatal even in the absence of all others.

Blanco's hymen was torn and the same man's semen was found in her mouth, vagina and underwear.

A red fibre was also retrieved from Blanco's mouth, and subsequently identified by the Catalonia Textile Museum and Documentation Centre as belonging to a common type of car upholstery, confirming that Blanco had been in a vehicle after her disappearance.

Because the body was found dressed and showed no previous signs of violence, both coroner and officers believed that the sex had been consensual and that the murder was the result of an argument after.

In contrast, Blanco's parents thought that their daughter had been kidnapped and raped at knifepoint, then murdered to avoid prosecution for the previous crime.

The Civil Guard initially believed that the case would be closed after a short investigation.