Police: Nava Elimelech’s killer still alive and living in Israel
The 12-year old girl, murdered in 1982, was exhumed this week as part of a revived investigation
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Police have compiled a profile of the suspect in the murder of 12-year old Nava Elimelech, whose dismembered body was found in 1982 but whose death has gone unsolved for decades.
According to a Monday report by Channel 13, investigators at the Lahav 433 investigation unit believe Elimelech’s killer is 70 years old, has a criminal background and is currently living in the center of the country. The station reported that 100 detectives, many of them undercover, are currently on the case.
Elimelech’s body was exhumed earlier this week as the long-dormant case suddenly heated up after years with no new leads. Citing unspecified new developments in the case, police investigators brought the remains to the Abu Kabir forensic institute for testing on Sunday. Police did not elaborate on the nature of the new evidence and a gag order has been imposed on the case.
Elimelech’s family approved the move. Her mother, now 90, expressed hope on Monday that police would soon unmask her daughter’s killer.
תיעוד: שוטרי לה"ב 433 בבית העלמין חולון מוציאים את שרידי גופתה של נאווה אלימלך@daniel_elazar pic.twitter.com/Kk7UCxvf1N
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) August 4, 2019
“I’m ready to do anything to get to the truth,” Mazal Elimelech declared. “I’ve been praying for 40 years. I hope we will learn what happened. I constantly light candles in the hope that justice for my daughter will come. It isn’t easy for us.”
The girl, the youngest of four siblings, went missing on March 20, 1982, after leaving her parents’ home in the central city of Bat Yam to visit a friend, who lived 300 meters (less than two-tenths of a mile) away.
After 10 days of searching, Elimelech’s head and other body parts washed up on various beaches in central Israel, wrapped inside plastic bags, horrifying bathers and the country. A pathologist determined that the murder took place on the day she went missing.
The murderer was never apprehended, despite the Israel Police assembling what was described at the time as the biggest investigation team in the country’s history, with some 40 members.
Elimelech’s body parts were sent at the time for examinations in a London lab in an attempt to determine the murder weapon. Several suspects were arrested over the years, but were released over lack of evidence.
In 1983, a Gazan man was arrested and then released. Shortly afterward, IDF chief of staff Rafael Eitan claimed the murder was nationally motivated and had been an entrance test for joining a Palestinian terror group.
In 2001, a member of the original investigation team told Army Radio that the Shin Bet security agency had found evidence to support that allegation. An Israeli Arab prisoner had provided information that his former cellmate, a Palestinian jailed for terror offenses, had confessed to killing Elimelech. However, between 1983 and 2001 the man was released, moved to Jordan, and died. He was never questioned in the case.
The breakthrough in the investigation happened several months ago. Reports said the new development was related to recent technological breakthroughs in DNA identification.
The Times of Israel Community.