Distinguished for being the first woman to graduate from the Institute of Foreign Services of the Nation, Holmberg was an important official of the military dictatorship which took power in 1976, and is generally believed to have been detained-disappeared and then killed by the regime to which she belonged.

[6][7] Due to friction with the staff of the "Pilot Information Center" (a group of Argentine Navy intelligence officers headquartered in Paris, where Puma Perrén [es], Alfredo Astiz, and Adolfo Donda [es] were also assigned), the diplomat was summoned to Buenos Aires to report to her superiors.

[8] People released from the Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy (ESMA) declared that at that time certain officers of the detention center alluded to their participation in the disappearance of Elena Holmberg.

[2] On 11 January 1979, her decomposed body was found in the Luján River in Tigre, Buenos Aires Province.

Holmberg's family and journalist Andrea Basconi have asserted they believe that Admiral Emilio Massera was the one who directly ordered her death, believing that she possessed compromising information about his contact with members of the Montoneros.