On March 20th, 1982, eleven-year-old Nava Elimelech left her family’s home in Bat Yam, Israel to walk the 300-meter distance to a friend’s house; it was a familiar short trip that should have taken only minutes. She left a note for her parents reading, “To Mom and Dad and the whole family: I’m going to Tali. Don’t worry, I’ll be back home. I love you very much.”
When she failed to return and didn’t arrive at her friend’s residence, her family reported her missing. What followed was an extensive search involving police, volunteers and dogs scouring the Gush Dan area. At first, hope remained that she might be found safe, but that hope vanished in the horror that followed.
Ten days after Nava disappeared, the search took a devastating turn. Joggers on a Herzliya beach discovered a plastic bag containing Nava’s severed head. Soon after, additional bags washed ashore near Tel Baruch beach in northern Tel Aviv containing other parts of her body. A pathologist later confirmed that she had been killed on the very day she vanished.
The nature of the crime horrified the public and quickly made national headlines. Authorities described the case as one of the most shocking they had ever encountered.
The Israel Police launched a massive inquiry that included what was at the time described as the largest investigative team in the force’s history, involving some forty investigators and detectives. Law enforcement scoured leads, interviewed dozens of people in the Bat Yam and Tel Aviv areas, and even sent body parts to a laboratory in London to try to identify the murder weapon.
Despite these efforts, the investigation failed to produce enough evidence to charge anyone. In June 1983, police officially declared the case a dead end, unable to determine a motive or culprit.
Over the decades, several theories and potential suspects emerged. At one point, K-9 units led police to a Bat Yam resident who had taken photographs of Nava and her friends. He was later convicted of unrelated pedophilia charges but never linked to her murder.
Additionally, early in 1983, an Arab man from the Gaza Strip was arrested but released for lack of evidence. Later, a Shin Bet informant claimed a former cellmate confessed to the killing and had fled to Jordan, where he died before investigators could interview him. Some at the time speculated the murder might have been politically or ideologically motivated, a theory that was never substantiated with evidence.
And in 1998, brothers Amos and Yehuda Shelef were detained after a claim that one had confessed to the murder. A yard search and excavation revealed nothing, and both were later released for lack of evidence.
Decades after the murder, the case gained renewed attention. In 2019, Israeli police gained court approval to exhume Nava’s body to conduct modern DNA and forensic testing in hopes of unearthing clues that older investigative techniques had missed.
Hundreds of detectives, including undercover units from the Lahav 433 major crimes unit, were reported to be working the case, and a profile suggested that the killer could be alive and living in central Israel, possibly around age seventy with a criminal history.
A former suspect was even called in for questioning in connection with the reopened investigation, though authorities did not name him as an active suspect.
Despite these efforts and advances in forensic science, the identity of Nava Elimelech’s killer remains unknown, and the case remains officially unsolved as of February 2026.
Crime Immemorial 