Images caught on Google Maps give police big clue in Spanish murder case

Google Maps cameras have captured some pretty interesting photos in the past, preserved on the mapping software for the world to find, but this time the images have given police an extra clue in the arrests of two people in connection with a murder investigation.

The images in question were captured by a Google Maps car camera in October, in which a man can be seen hunched over the trunk of a car on a nearly 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 object is tied to the death of a Cuban national living in Spain who was reported missing by a relative in late 2023.

According to newspaper El País, the man had been living in the northern Spanish municipality of Soria, where he had turned up hoping to track down a woman believed to be his partner.

The relative of the missing man contacted police, saying he’d received some suspicious text messages from the man’s phone saying he’d met another woman and would be leaving Spain and ditching his phone.

“This made the complainant suspect that the messages had not been sent by the missing person and led him to report it to police,” police said in a statement.

Last month, according to Reuters, a man and woman were initially arrested on suspicion of kidnapping. On Dec. 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 murdered.

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Now, police say they continue to investigate the possible role the arrested had in the man’s death. Their statement, translated from Spanish to English, says they became aware of “images in a location application” that appeared to have “detected a vehicle that may have been used during the course of the crime.”

BBC reports that this was the first time in 15 years that a Google Maps car had driven the streets of the tiny Spanish town, which is home to less than 60 people.

Police described the couple as “alleged perpetrators of a crime of aggravated illegal detention for not to give a reason for the whereabouts of the disappeared person,” saying that a woman arrested appears to be a partner of the disappeared Cuban man, and a man arrested “had been a partner in the detainee.”

El País spoke with several residents in Tajueco, who told the outlet they had seen the images on Google Maps but didn’t pay much attention to them before this week.

“We would have never imagined he was doing anything and we didn’t think anything of it,” said one resident, while another noted that “we didn’t think that in the photo of the trunk there would be a body.”

The investigation is still underway, police said, noting that the Google Maps image was just one of several clues in the case.