Man caught on Google Street View putting dead body in car boot

This is the moment that led police to the arrest of two people after a man was spotted loading a large white plastic bag with a dead corpse into the boot of his car.

A Google street view image of a man loading a large white plastic bag into the boot of his car has led to the arrest of two people on suspicion of murder.

The alleged crime took place in the sparsely populated province of Soria, in the northern Castile and Leon region. Last week, the dismembered body of a man was found in the cemetery of the village of Andaluz, which has 12 inhabitants.

Police have arrested a Cuban woman, the former partner of the deceased and the former wife of the other detainee, a man from the area.

Both suspects are in prison accused of being responsible for the disappearance and murder a year ago of a man aged 32, who has been identified as Jorge Luis Perez.

The accused man lives seven miles from Andaluz in the municipality of Tajueco, which has a population of 50 people. El Pais newspaper reported that “nothing ever happens [there] and if something did, surely nobody would know about it, or so the alleged murderer must have thought when he put a bundle in the boot of his old burgundy Rover last October that has led investigators to believe it could be a corpse”.

A Google Street View image of a man loading a large white plastic bag into the boot of his car has led to the arrest of two people on suspicion of murder. Picture: Google

It added: “The man became overconfident. Just as he was bending down to put the bundle in the boot, with no neighbours or onlookers nearby, something happened that hadn’t happened for 15 years: the Google Maps car passed.”

Police used the visual evidence to piece together the puzzle of the disappearance. The Google app, which allows users to navigate maps in three dimensions, using real photos captured by cameras in cars driving the streets, shows images of the alleged crime, which is believed to have taken place in October 2023.

The suspect, 48, was seen wearing jeans, a blue jacket of Club Deportivo Numancia - a local football team - and brown boots, and was handling a long white package.

Police told Spanish media that Google Street View offered more potential clues as another photo sequence shows the blurred silhouette of someone dressed in dark blue ferrying a large white bundle in a wheelbarrow.

An investigation was launched after the victim was reported missing by a relative. Police say that for the moment they have found only the torso “in an advanced state of decomposition”.

Since Google launched Street View in 2007 it has captured some surreal sights while documenting most of the world’s highways and byways.

Either by accident or design, people have been snapped in fancy dress, striking odd poses, in flagrante delicto or dropping their trousers for the mobile cameras - although many of the rudest examples have been censored.

Among the less mischievous examples have been a perfect rainbow captured over Dartmoor in 2018, a pink horse-drawn carriage holding up traffic in West London the same year, and the Stig from Top Gear, apparently standing by the roadside near Loch Ness in 2013.

This story was originally published on The Times.

Originally published as Man caught on Google Street View putting dead body in car boot