Murder of Eva Blanco

The case remained unsolved for over a decade, gaining significant media 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.

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.

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.

[5] Blanco's body was found the next day by two elderly Ajalvir residents[6] at 9:00 AM,[3] next to a road construction site between Cobeña and Belvis de Jarama, six kilometers away from Algete.

[6] 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[2] and most other forensic evidence.

[6] 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 dominant theory was that a single person known to Blanco had approached her in a car, offered her a ride which she accepted, and took her to the construction site, a known lovers lane,[2] where they had sex before she was murdered.

Other neighbors linked the crime to a strange blue car seen in the town following another girl around midnight, one of whose occupiers was a blond man around twenty years old.

Blanco's father's sample was extracted from a cigarette that he had smoked and left behind while drinking coffee and discussing the case with Civil Guard officers; others were taken under the guise of unrelated blood alcohol content tests or from cups and glasses used in bars.

The proposition was unanimously rejected by Spanish judicial organizations who considered it "simple-minded," "disproportionate," "useless," and a potential stigma for Algete residents who refused to provide a DNA sample without court order and were in their legal right to do so.

A specialist from the University of Santiago de Compostela re-examined the DNA evidence and concluded that it belonged to a man not of European descent.

[3] Six years later, in 2013, the number of people investigated had risen to 1,503, and 208 men from Algete and other towns had had their DNA tested, including criminals who were on leave at the time of the murder.

The program recapitulated the known evidence and included interviews with Blanco's parents, friends, teachers, officers working on the case and Vicente Garrido Genovés, a psychologist and criminologist who gained notoriety when he helped identify serial killer Joaquín Ferrándiz Ventura in Castellón in 1998.

Garrido disagreed with the Civil Guard's theory that the murderer was a "secret boyfriend" of Blanco, arguing that she would not agree to meet a lover 15 minutes before her curfew because of the risk of exposing such relationship.

The criminal would be of low intelligence, uneducated, with a low-skilled profession and emotionally immature, since he sought sex with a teenager rather than a woman closer in age.

The Civil Guard deemed the testimony reliable, in part because a Renault 18 had been reported by other witnesses over the years and the model was compatible with the fiber retrieved from Blanco's body.

[17] When told about the DNA evidence, Chelh claimed that he had gone out for a walk alone and that two unidentified men had grabbed him, brought him to Blanco's body and forced him to masturbate over it.

"[15] On 5 October, Chelh unsuccessfully tried to cut his jugular vein with a small glass in his cell, yet he accepted to be deported to Spain to stand trial two days later.

[14] At the preliminary hearing on 13 October, Chelh declined to make a statement but he agreed to give a DNA sample, following the advice of his lawyer in both cases.

He was formally charged with murder, rape, and illegal detention, and was recluded in Soto del Real prison pending trial, after a request from his lawyer to release him until the DNA results came in was denied.

Chelh's lawyer argued that there was no evidence tying his client to the crime besides DNA, that the hypothesis worked for the past 18 years by the Civil Guard was that Blanco had willingly boarded the car of an adult known to her, and that she had consensual sex before she was killed, according to the same investigation.

[22] At the next hearing on 15 January, Chelh claimed that two people forced him into a car and threatened him with a navaja in order to make him ejaculate over Blanco, who was inside alive.