Google Street View helped police solve a missing persons case

The Verge

A Google Street View image played in role in solving a missing person investigation in Spain, according to reports from the BBC and The New York Times. The image, which can still be seen on Street View, shows what appears to be a person loading a large object into the trunk of a car, as Gizmodo points out. Another image showed someone “transporting a large white bundle in a wheelbarrow,” the BBC reports.

Spanish National Police:

Part of the human remains of the missing person have been found buried in a cemetery in a town in the province of Soria and advanced technical means had to be used to locate them.

One of the clues that investigators had to solve the crime, although it was not decisive, was some images that they detected during the investigations in a location search application.

A screenshot from Google Street View showing a man bending over putting something into the trunk of a red car. — *This is the Google Street View image allegedly linked to the crime.*

Though the press release doesn’t explicitly name the location application it used, a spokesperson for the Spanish National Police confirmed to The New York Times that it was Google Maps while also saying, “The image was not the key to solving the case.”

Authorities were investigating the case of a 33-year-old man who disappeared last year while visiting a partner in Tajueco, Soria, according to the Spanish outlet El País. Police arrested a woman and her ex-partner in connection with the crime in November.

Google Maps has been credited with helping investigators in the past, with Italian authorities using Street View to trace the location of a mafia fugitive in 2022.