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Google Maps cameras have taken some pretty interesting pictures in the past, saved 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 leaning over the trunk of a car on a nearly deserted street in Spain, loading a large, bulky object wrapped in what appears to be white sheet or bags.
Police say they believe the object is connected to the death of a Cuban national living in Spain who was reported missing in late 2023 by a relative.
According to newspaper El País, the man lived in the northern Spanish municipality of Soria, where he had turned up hoping track a woman who believed to be his partner.
The relatives of the missing man contacted the police, saying that he had received some suspicious text messages from the man’s phone saying that he had met another woman and would leave Spain and ditch his phone.
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“This made the complainant suspect that the messages were not sent by the missing person and led him to report it to the police,“, the police said in a statement.
Last month, according to Reuters, were a man and 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 the police say that they will continue to investigate the possible role the arrest had at the man’s death. Their statement, translated from Spanish to English, says they have become aware of “images in a location application” that appeared to have “discovered a car that can be used in 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 small Spanish town, where less than 60 people live.
Police described the pair as “known perpetrators of a crime of aggravated illegal detention to give no reason for the whereabouts of the missing person,” saying that a woman arrested appears to be a partner of the missing Cuban man, and a man arrested “had been a partner in the detainee.”
El País spoke to several residents in Tajueco, who told the outlet that they had seen the images on Google Maps, but didn’t pay much attention to it for this week.
“We would never imagine he did anything and we thought nothing of it,” said one resident, while another noted that “we didn’t think there would be a body in the picture of the suitcase.”
The investigation is still ongoing, police said, noting that the Google Maps image was just one of several clues in the case.
& copy 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
