Google Maps may have just helped police officers solve a murder after its vehicle captured something very suspicious on camera.
Boasting a population of just 56 people, mapping of the sleepy Spanish town of Tajueco unveiled an unsettling discovery thanks to what appears to be a chance encounter.
The Google Maps car, which captures street view imagery worldwide, appears to have driven past a red vehicle with a figure loading a large shrouded item into the boot.
According to El Pais, the mapping vehicle hadn’t passed through Tajueco for over 15 years but may have just helped crack open an ongoing missing person case.
In November 2023, family members of a Cuban national living in northern Spain raised the alarm after receiving some unusual messages from their relative.
The subsequent investigation into the man’s disappearance eventually cast its focus onto the missing person’s ex-partner and another man.
🚩Detenidas dos personas presuntamente implicadas en la desaparición y muerte de un varón en #Soria
— Policía Nacional (@policia) December 18, 2024
🚔Una de las pistas fueron unas imágenes que detectaron los investigadores en una aplicación de búsqueda de ubicaciones
👮Parte de los restos humanos han sido hallados… pic.twitter.com/5ZDFPbSul9
On December 18, Spanish police confirmed on social media that they had discovered the partial remains of a person buried in the Soria cemetery. Videos showed investigators using a digger to dig up the ground.
Two people have since been detained in relation to the disappearance and death of the man in question.
Although the investigation in ongoing, Spanish authorities have confirmed that the mapping platform helped shed clues on the more than year-long case.
“One of the clues that investigators used to solve the crime, though not conclusive, were the images detected during an investigation of a mapping application,” they said.
The Google Maps imagery reportedly helped police “detect a vehicle that may have been used in the course of the crime”.
It’s actually not the first time that Google Street View has helped investigators solve cases by capturing images from around the world.
In 2022, the Italian mafia boss Gioacchino Gammino was arrested in Spain after two decades on the run when Google Street View captured an image of him standing on a street corner near a fruit shop.
The mapping platform also led to the arrest of double murderer Leslie Todd Parvin in 2010, after police checked Google Maps and saw his car parked outside an address they were investigating.
