Beach in Huacho.

For many youngsters, online dating sounds like an exciting prospect. There is a frisson of thrill which engulfs the whole being. The girl or boy happen to meet someone through the internet, go into raptures over his or her photograph, and start conversing with what they think is their newfound love. But there is a huge risk involved. What you see is not what you get. The end result could be very disastrous. It could even be macabre, as happened with a Mexican woman who travelled 3,000 miles from her home in Mexico to meet her online date in Peru. She met a gory end: her body was subsequently dismembered.

Blanca Arellano, 51, told her family at the end of July that she would be taking a trip to Lima, to meet her online boyfriend, Juan Pablo Jesús Villafuerte, in person. She was in an internet courtship with him for several months.

Arellano was planning to visit the beach city of Huacho, where her 37-year-old Peruvian boyfriend lived. Then her family stopped hearing from her on 7 November.

It was her niece, Karla Arellano, who noticed that something was seriously wrong. The 51-year-old had not done anything that would raise any alarm bells or give endless worries. Her aunt said that her contact with her ‘boyfriend’ was standing the test of time.

The Mexican woman’s family kept anxiously looking for her – only to have their worst fears confirmed, according to the Independent.

Karla was savvy on social media, and thanks to her, her aunt’s case was widely publicised. Her posts about her missing aunt garnered hundreds of likes, retweets and comments.

“I never thought I would be in this situation, but today I’m asking for your support to spread this post and find one of the most loved and important people of my life. My aunt Blanca Olivia Arellano Gutiérrez disappeared on Monday November 07 in Peru. We fear for her life,” the 12 November post read.

Karla had doubts about the medical student her aunt had met in an online gambling forum after a conversation with him in November revealed that the pair broken up. His ex-lover was returning to Mexico.

Juan P was the only contact she had in that country, Karla wrote in a follow-up post to her Twitter thread on her aunt’s disappearance.

“Is she OK?” she asked Villafuerte.

He responded by saying that he’d stopped talking to Arellano several days before and that she’d told him that she was catching a plane back to Mexico after deciding, he claimed, “I couldn’t offer the life she wanted.”

This rankled her nerves. She found it hard to believe his statement as she knew her aunt very well and this behaviour was very unlikely of her. She “WOULD NOT DISAPPEAR JUST LIKE THAT EVER AND LESS WITHOUT WARNING,” she said in her post.

Juan P was the last person to see her Aunt Blanca alive. He was not willing to cooperate with information to help in searching for her. On the other hand, he refused to assist the family in their efforts to locate their missing relative. He said he didn’t “know anything else from here and I’m saying this with sadness”.

“Take care and I hope she gets safe back home,” the 37-year-old said in his last text exchange with the family.

Soon after, Peruvian authorities launched a probe into her disappearance after her niece’s posts went viral on social media.

On 10 November, they discovered something nightmarish: a severed finger with a silver ring still attached.

Though the identifying fingertips had been removed, according to investigators, the family was able to infer that the ring belonged to Blanca.

In the following days, more unsavoury discoveries began washing up on the same beach in Huacho.

An arrest warrant was issued for Villafuerte on 17 November, and he was subsequently arrested.

The suspect had allegedly begun posting videos on TikTok shortly after Arellano’s disappearance that appeared to show him dissecting human organs.

“We have no words to express what we are experiencing,” her niece tweeted on Wednesday. “My aunt was a kind, warm person, full of light, intelligent, dedicated, loving and that is how she should be remembered.”