An image from Google Street View helped lead to the arrest of two suspected murderers in Spain earlier this month, according to a report from Spain’s El País.
One of the suspects was photographed by a Google Maps car that happened to be driving through the quiet and sparsely populated town of Tajueco in the province of Soria, in the northern part of the Castile and León region of Spain.
The image depicted the suspect, dressed in jeans, a blue jacket and brown boots, allegedly packing what appeared to be the body, which was wrapped in a white plastic bag, into the trunk of his car.
“[H]e allegedly placed in his car trunk, in broad daylight, a bundle that police suspect could be the body of a man who went missing a year ago,” according to El País.
“The moment was captured last October by a car working for Google Maps, the application that allows you to visually navigate almost every corner of the planet; it had been 15 years since the last time one of these cars had passed through Tajueco.”
The U.K. Times reported the victim has been identified as 32-year-old Jorge Luis Perez.
One of those arrested was a Cuban woman who is the ex-wife of both the deceased man and the other suspect. The male suspect lived in Tajueco.
Both suspects are currently behind bars.
The body was found seven miles from Tajueco in a cemetery in the village of Andaluz, which has a population of a mere 12 people.
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El País indeed emphasized the quiet nature of the region in their report.
Their coverage of the murder said that “nothing ever happens [in Tajueco, a town of about 58 people] … And if it did, surely nobody would find out, one of the residents must have thought,” El Pais reported.
Police said Perez was reported missing by a relative in late 2023.
🚩Detenidas dos personas presuntamente implicadas en la desaparición y muerte de un varón en #Soria
🚔Una de las pistas fueron unas imágenes que detectaron los investigadores en una aplicación de búsqueda de ubicaciones
👮Parte de los restos humanos han sido hallados… pic.twitter.com/5ZDFPbSul9
— Policía Nacional (@policia) December 18, 2024
“The relative became suspicious when he started receiving WhatsApp messages from his cousin, who told him that he had met a woman and would leave Soria and leave his phone behind. The relative did not believe at any time that it was J. L. talking to him, but someone else, and he alerted the National Police,” El Pais reported.
“Google declined to comment on the case,” the Washington Post reported. “The company’s policy stresses that Street View does not provide real-time images and the content is a few months to a few years old.”
Google Street View offers interactive 360-degree images from across the globe, covering virtually all major and minor cities in the United States, as well as many from other countries around the world.
The application, which launched in 2007, usually relies on cars that drive down streets and take stitched panoramic images.
Google also relies on other, more specialized vehicles, or even a portable camera system called the Trekker, which mounts as a backpack, to take images in harder-to-reach parts of the globe.
“Equipped with a camera system on the roof, the Street View car is our most used equipment for collecting imagery and has helped us capture more than 10 million miles around the world,” Google said on its website about the project.
“We drive and trek around the world to bring you imagery that enhances your experience and helps you discover the world around you.”
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