Google Maps helps unlock Spanish murder mystery

A screengrab from Google Street View’s images of Tajueca, the tiny Spanish hamlet where a Cuban man disappeared. Photo / Google Maps

A Spanish couple have been arrested on suspicion of murder after Google Street View cameras appear to have caught the man loading a body into the boot of his car.

Police renewed their investigation into the disappearance of a Cuban man in the tiny hamlet of Tajueco after Google published the image two months ago.

Last week, they found a male torso in a nearby cemetery and confirmed it was that of the missing man, named only by his initials, JPLO.

In what was described as a love triangle in local media, it appears that the victim, 33, visited the area to find his former partner and discovered that she was in a relationship with another man.

The suspect, Manuel Isla Gallardo, a 48-year old known by the 56 residents of Tajueco as “The Wolf”, has been arrested alongside his former partner.

In one of the images released by Google, a man is seen loading a large bundle wrapped in a white sheet into the back of his maroon Rover car.

In an earlier image captured by the Google Street View car, the same man can be seen pushing a white bundle towards his vehicle in a wheelbarrow.

The Street View images were published almost one year after the Cuban was reported missing from his home in the Spanish city of Soria.

A cousin of the victim who also lives in Spain reported him missing in November 2023 after he received strange text messages in which the victim said he had met a woman and would not be using the same mobile number anymore as he was leaving the country.

‘Out of character’

The cousin told police officers that he knew immediately that the messages were not written by the missing man as they were completely out of character.

Within weeks of the Google pictures going live, the police arrested the two suspects, who have been remanded in custody on suspicion of kidnapping, failure to report a missing person and murder.

Police recovered the torso of a man from a cemetery near Tajueco.

Last week, a police search of a cemetery in a village called Andaluz, about a 10km drive from Tajueco, turned up the buried torso of the missing man, with officers continuing to look for other body parts.

Police are trying to ascertain when the victim was killed and his body dismembered, as well as his exact relationship to the two suspects.

According to locals who spoke to El Pais, the Spanish newspaper, “The Wolf” had recently lost his job running a bar and had seemed “distracted”.

One local told the newspaper that he had seen the Cuban around the village, describing him as “a very large man”.

“Where did they keep such a great big body? You have to have ice-cold blood,” he said.

The judge in charge of the investigation had initially ordered the details of the case to remain secret, but Spain’s National Police force revealed information on the alleged killing on Wednesday, including the key role played by the Google Street View images.

Google had not updated its Street View images of Tajueco for 15 years.

-Agence France-Presse