Google Maps helps solve murder mystery by capturing moment a person put suspected corpse into car in Spain

Google Maps has guided Spanish investigators to resolve a year-long murder mystery by capturing the moment a person stowed a suspected corpse into a car.

Police in the northern region of Castile and Leon began their probe in November 2023 when someone reported the disappearance of a male relative.

Officers arrested a woman who was the missing male’s partner and another man who was her ex-partner in Soria province on November 12, police said in a statement on Wednesday.

Investigators then raided the suspects’ homes and inspected their vehicles but also stumbled on an unexpected lead in the search for further clues.

These were “images in a location application” where they “detected a vehicle that may have been used during the course of the crime,” the statement said.

Spanish media circulated pictures of a screenshot of Google Maps’ Street View from October 2024 showing a person dumping an object covered in a white shroud into a car trunk in the village 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 resolving the case, though they were not “decisive,” police said.

Officials said another photo sequence shows the blurred silhouette of someone transporting a large white bundle in a wheelbarrow, the BBC reported.

The central government’s representative in Soria, Miguel Latorre, told public broadcaster RTVE the person “can presumably be” considered the culprit.

Police said a severely decomposed human torso believed to belong to the victim had been found this month in a cemetery in Soria province. El Pais daily reported that he was a 33-year-old Cuban.

A judge has ordered the suspects into custody and the investigation remains open.

Google technology has helped investigators make breakthroughs in cases before. In 2022, an Italian mafia boss who was on the run for decades was arrested after he was spotted on Google Maps.

In 2019,  the remains of a man missing for 22 years were finally found thanks to someone who zoomed in on his former Florida neighborhood with Google satellite images and noticed a car submerged in a lake.