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Google Maps cameras have captured some pretty interesting photos in the past, preserved in mapping software for the world to find, but this time the images gave police an additional lead in arresting two people in connection with the murder investigation.
The images in question were captured by a Google Maps car camera in October, showing a man hunched over the trunk of a car on an almost deserted street in Spain, loading a large, bulky object wrapped in what appears to be a white sheet or bags.
Police say they believe the case is related to the death of a Cuban national living in Spain who was reported missing by a relative in late 2023.
According to El País newspaper, the man lived in the northern Spanish municipality of Soria, where he turned up hoping to find a woman believed to be his partner.
A relative of the missing man contacted police saying he had received some suspicious text messages from the man’s phone saying he had met another woman and was leaving Spain and discarding his phone.
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“This led the complainant to suspect that the messages were not sent by the missing person and led him to report to the police,“, the police statement reads.
Last month, according to Reuters, they were a man and a woman initially arrested on suspicion of kidnapping. On December 11, part of the man’s dismembered body was found buried in a cemetery in the local hamlet of Tajueco, confirming that he had been killed.
Now police say they are continuing their investigation possible role those arrested had in the man’s death. Their statement, translated from Spanish to English, said they became aware of “location app images” that appeared to have “discovered the vehicle which may have been used during the crime.”
The BBC reports that it was for the first time in 15 years that the Google Maps car was driving through the streets of a small Spanish town with less than 60 people.
Police described the pair as “alleged perpetrators of the crime of aggravated unlawful detention for failure to provide reasons as to the whereabouts of a missing person,” saying the woman arrested appeared to be the partner of the missing Cuban man and the man arrested “was the detainee’s partner.”
El País spoke to several Tajuec residents, who said they had seen the images on Google Maps, but he didn’t pay much attention to them before this week.
“We would never have imagined him doing anything and we didn’t think anything of it,” said one resident, while another noted that “we didn’t think there would be a body in the photo of the trunk.”
The investigation is still ongoing, police said, noting that the Google Maps image is just one of several clues in the case.
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
