Google Maps has led Spanish investigators to solve a year-long murder mystery by capturing the moment a man placed a suspicious body in a car.
The police in the northern region of Castile and Leon began their investigation in November 2023 when someone reported the disappearance of a relative.
Officers arrested a woman who was the partner of the missing man and another man who was her partner in the Soria area on November 12, said the police in a statement Wednesday.
Investigators then raided the suspects' homes and searched their vehicles but also took an unexpected lead as they searched for more clues.
These were “images in a location claim” where they “found a vehicle that may have been used during the crime,” the statement said.
Spanish media circulated images of a screenshot of Google Maps' Street View from October 2024 showing a person dumping an object covered in a white cloth into the trunk of a car in the town of Tajueco. It was the first time in 15 years that the car had been to the town of Tajueco, the BBC reported.
The images contributed to solving the case, although they were not “conclusive,” police said.
Officials said another series of photos shows a blurred silhouette of someone carrying a large white package in a wheelbarrow, the The BBC reported.
The representative of the central government in Soria, Miguel Latorre, told the public broadcaster RTVE that the person “apparently” can be considered the culprit.
Police said a badly decomposed human torso was found this month in a cemetery in the Soria district. El Pais daily said he was a 33-year-old Cuban.
A judge has ordered the arrest of the suspects and the investigation remains open.
This marks at least the second time that Google technology has helped solve a cold case. In 2019, the remains of a man missing for 22 years were finally found thanks to someone who stepped into his old neighborhood in Florida with Google satellite images and he felt a car immersed in a lake.
