A shocking photo from Google Street View has led to the discovery of a murder in the province of Soria, Spain.
The shocking image showing a man loading a dead body into the trunk of a red Rover in broad daylight became one of the clues that police used to solve the criminal incident that had occurred in the Andalusian village.
Police discovered, thanks to this photo from Google Street View, the dismembered human remains buried in the cemetery of the village of Andaluz, which belong to a 33-year-old Cuban man who disappeared last November.
A couple has been arrested on suspicion of murdering him. The arrested are the Cuban's wife and her ex-boyfriend.
The Google image and court-ordered phone intercepts have been described as "decisive" by local press covering the gruesome find in the small Andalusian village, in the northern Spanish province of Soria.
Central government officials for the region have already said they believe the body found is that of a 33-year-old Cuban man. Local reports indicate the victim was killed after he flew to Spain and discovered his Cuban wife had cheated on him with a man described as the man in blue jeans seen in the photo loading the body into his car.
The Spaniard accused of murder owns a ranch called "The Wolf of Tayueco" in the small village of 56 residents, which is a 15-minute drive from the cemetery where the Google photo was taken.
“Officers have arrested two suspects involved in the disappearance and death of a man who was reported missing in November last year by a relative. That relative had become suspicious of messages he had received that were claimed to be from the missing man. The messages the missing man’s family received said he had met a girl and was leaving Soria and was getting rid of his phone. This made the relative suspect that someone else was sending him the messages and this led him to alert the police. The police investigation focused on the missing man’s inner circle and led to the arrest of two suspects believed to be responsible for his disappearance on November 12. They were the missing man’s partner and a man who had been in a relationship with him. Part of the victim’s remains were found buried in a cemetery in Andalusia in Soria using “advanced techniques”. "One of the pieces of data that investigators were working with was an image from an online location search application," a spokesman for Spain's National Police explained.
This is not the first time that criminal activity has been caught using Google Maps. Italian mafia fugitive Gioacchino Gammino was caught after 20 years on the run with the help of Google Maps, after being photographed outside a grocery store in the town of Galapagar, north of Madrid.