Google Maps Solving True Crimes and Mysteries
You can’t really have a podcast that discusses the internet without talking a lot about Google. So this episode is all about Google’s role in real-life missing persons cases and other crimes. We’ll start with the story of William Earl Moldt.
Moldt was a 40-year-old man with a pretty average life. He was a mortgage broker. He was about 6 feet tall, and about 225 pounds. He disappeared back in 1997. He’d been out drinking at a strip club the night before, calling his girlfriend from there at about 9:30PM, telling her he was going to be leaving soon. He was confirmed as leaving the bar at 11PM.
Not much else is known about his disappearance. He just vanished without a trace. Patrons of the bar said he wasn’t drunk while leaving. Police had absolutely no theories about the disappearance. He wasn’t loud or disturbing anyone else’s experience. He wasn’t getting in fights. He was pretty unassuming, both in looks and personality.
The case went dead nearly immediately, with no leads, no suspects, and no trails to follow. And the case stayed dead. For 22 years. Until the internet came along, once again, to save the day.
In 2019, a man was using Google Maps to check out the neighborhood of his ex-wife. He saw something very strange in a nearby pond. It looked like a car had sank there. He took screenshots of this unusual sighting, and he sent them to his ex-wife. His ex-wife then took those screenshots to her neighbor. A man named Barry Fay. The pond, and the potential sunken car, were in his backyard.
Fay quickly rushed to his back yard to see if he could see what was in the water. Fay had lived in this home for over a year, and visited the pond many times. He’d never seen anything in the water, and the water had actually gotten quite low at times. He was looking especially closely in the area the screenshot showed, but from the land, you couldn’t see anything.
Fay called over his neighbor and his drone to help. As the drone flew over the area depicted on the map, there it was. Clear as day. A sunken car. Fay called the police, who quickly put up crime scene tape and roped off areas. But those were very temporary. Everything was cleared up and put away, including the car itself, by the next morning, as if nothing had happened.
As if you hadn’t put this together yet, the body was William Moldt, discovered missing after 22 years by a man stalking his ex-wife, and of course, the internet, satellite photos, and Google Maps.
In 2019, this area was a fully developed neighborhood. But that wasn’t the case in 1997 when Moldt had gone missing. Only the roads and lakes had been in place, and guardrails were not installed until 1998. It was fairly obvious that Moldt had just driven off the road on that fateful night. After 22 years and the real estate developing all around him, he’d been boxed in, and any evidence of what had happened was very long gone. Maybe he just fell asleep at the wheel, or maybe he turned quickly to avoid hitting a wild animal of some kind. We’ll never know the answer to that question, but at least the missing persons case has been cleared up.
Without Google Maps, this case may never have been solved. With the help of these tools, who knows what other cases that technology can help solve? Is it possible to build some sort of AI system to scan other lakes across the world to look for other vehicles? That technology doesn’t seem too out of this world.
This case is fascinating to me because Moldt went missing in 1997, and at the time, high-quality satellite imagery was like something out of a science fiction book. This was back in the days of 28.8 modems, slow computers, small monitors. If you told the cops working the case that the case would be solved by this sci-fi tech, I’m sure they wouldn’t have believed you. In 2021, we’re used to technology blowing our minds, so this story may not seem extraordinary now.
But maybe it’s worth expanding the idea of using this technology, either with crowdsourcing manual review of Google Maps, or with some sort of AI to help put other unsolved mysteries to rest.
And that technology would also prove to be quite valuable. Because, believe it or not, this isn’t the only time Google Maps helped solve a case of yet another man who drove into a lake.
David Lee Niles, a 72-year-old man, disappeared one night in Michigan after walking out of a local bar. Sounds familiar right?
Just like Moldt, the case went cold very quickly with no leads. The family couldn’t do anything but sit around and wait for answers. They had to wait nearly a decade to get those answers.
In 2015, a man thought he saw something suspicious in the water while he was high up in the air on a cherry picker.
A check on Google Maps confirmed this suspicion. A car was in the lake. Police retrieved the and removed the vehicle, and identified the remains inside as David by his wallet. Just as with Moldt, police had no theories about how he could’ve ended up in the lake that night, but I’m sure you can draw your own conclusions.
This is only highlights of some mysteries solved by Google Maps. Google also has technology called Streetview, where they drive specially-equipped vehicles around and take multiple photos, allowing users to virtually drive through cities or neighborhood streets and check things out as if they were driving themselves.
Streetview, too, has been used to solve some mysteries. Like when a man named David Soanes’ vehicle was stolen from his driveway, never to be seen again. David’s son was checking out their house on Streetview, and remarkably, a Google car had driven by at the exact second their car was being stolen.
Law enforcement was called in, and subpoenaed Google to release the raw images of the event. By default, Google will blur out license plates and faces to protect people’s privacy, so police needed the unblurred documents to solve the crime. And solve it, they did. Police made their arrests 2 years after the car was stolen. This combination of incredible luck and incredible technology solved this crime that was likely unsolvable in any other way.
In 2008, a 14-year-old was mugged in Holland. Police were totally unable to help because the young man had no way to identify his attackers. But again, the remarkable coincidence of Google Streetview cars driving by at the right time helped save the day. Moments before this mugging, the Streetview car caught the attackers on camera. With the help of Google unblurring the faces, this information was forwarded to authorities and arrests were made 2 months after the crime.
So I think the crimes I’ve spoken about so far will inspire most people listening to say that these are positive changes that technology has made in our world. The technology allowed bad guys to be caught, and allowed us to close the books on some missing people cases and provide closure to families.
Depending on your political views, you may be convinced that this technology isn’t always used to serve the greater good.
In 2009, Swiss police discovered a large field of cannabis through the use of Google Maps satellite views. 16 people were arrested, and over 1 ton of cannabis was confiscated.
Similarly, in Greece, Google Maps was used to survey certain neighborhoods to see if anyone had built illegal pools. In Greece, if you want a swimming pool, you have to pay higher taxes. So people just build pools without letting the government know. In 2009, Greece had 324 pools being taxed in the Athens area. After reviewing satellite imagery from Google, they counted over 16,000 pools that were untaxed. Using the imagery, they were able to collect taxes from these citizens.
Another man in Italy was caught dodging taxes when authorities used Google Maps to check the satellite imagery of his estate that he’d recently sold. They discovered the estate should’ve sold for much more than what he claimed, so they were able to go back to him and collect more taxes from the sale of the estate.
Using the data that Google collects can be used for good, like catching bad guys, solving crimes, finding missing people. Avoiding taxes or growing cannabis may fall into a legal gray area for you. There’s no denying the power technology, satellite imagery, and Google have, and the power that technology and the internet has played in modern crimes.
I believe that everyone has the right to be as private as they want to be, online or otherwise. There is something kind of intrusive about how Google uses satellite imagery, as well as drives cars through neighborhoods to post photos for anyone on the internet to see with a few clicks. They take some measures, like blurring faces and other identifying characteristics, but that falls short of true privacy. In a way, it’s a perfect example of the internet infiltrating the real world, and vice versa. The line between your life on the internet, and your life online, has never seemed blurrier than when talking about the impact Google has had on your personal and online life. Is giving up some privacy worth the convenience that Google offers? It’s a very personal question with a personal answer, but no matter how you answer it, it actually makes very little difference. Google will continue to drive their Streetview cars and improve their satellite imagery, and people will continue to use that information in whatever way accomplishes those goals. You can support it and agree with it or not, but it’s happening either way.