Killing of Eva Blanco

On the night of 19–20 April 1997, Eva Blanco Puig, a 16-year-old high school student, disappeared while walking home through a vacant lot shortcut in the Valderrey residential area of Algete, Madrid, after leaving a local disco with friends. She had agreed to be home by midnight but never arrived. Her parents reported her missing to the Civil Guard, who were initially slow to respond. Her body was found the next morning by two residents of nearby Ajalvir, near a road construction site between Cobeña and Belvis de Jarama, roughly six kilometers from Algete. She had been stabbed 19 times in the back while trying to flee an attacker.

An autopsy determined Blanco died from blood loss around 4:00 AM. The murder weapon was a small folding knife (navaja). Evidence indicated she had been in a vehicle after her disappearance, including a red upholstery fiber recovered from her mouth. Semen matching a single male donor was found on her body. Investigators initially theorized the encounter was consensual and that the killing followed an argument, a view disputed by Blanco's parents, who believed she had been abducted and raped at knifepoint. Early suspicion focused on an ex-boyfriend, who was ruled out, and later on adult men known to the family; DNA samples were covertly collected from many local men without matches.

The case drew sustained media attention in Spain over the following years, including a proposed town-wide voluntary DNA testing campaign backed by Algete's mayor in 1999, which judicial authorities rejected as impractical. By 2007, dozens of Civil Guard officers had worked the case, and DNA analysis in later years indicated the perpetrator was of North African descent. A 2013 television program on the case (La Sexta's Equipo de Investigación) prompted a new witness to come forward, leading to a facial composite release and a renewed DNA collection effort among North African men who had lived in Algete in 1997.

This effort led investigators to Fouad Chelh, whose DNA showed a sibling-level match to the semen evidence, and subsequently to his brother Ahmed Chelh Gerj, a Moroccan-Spanish citizen who had lived in a caravan near Algete in 1997. Chelh was arrested in Besançon, France, on 1 October 2015 in a joint Civil Guard–Gendarmerie operation and extradited to Spain. He was formally charged with murder, rape, and illegal detention and held in pretrial detention. Chelh denied direct involvement, offering a changing account involving unidentified third parties, but could not explain how his semen was found inside the victim's body. On 29 January 2016, he was found dead in his cell at Alcalá-Meco prison, having hanged himself with his shoelaces. The prosecution was formally closed on 15 February 2016.