A Florida Man Used Google Earth To Unravel A 22-Year-Old Mystery
It’s hard to imagine that Google Earth was created for the purpose of solving decades-old cold cases — but that’s exactly what happened in 2019. One Florida man loaded up the software and started examining various satellite images. Then he spotted a shape in a body of water. And when he zoomed in, a shiver ran down his spine. This one discovery would lead the police to eventually fish out the object and clear a 22-year-old case from their books.
A discovery in his old neighborhood
The unidentified man was a property expert who happened to be scouting out his old Florida neighborhood on Google Earth. Poking around where he used to live, he clicked on the area behind one of the houses.
That's when he noticed something out of the ordinary: there, submerged in a pond, was what appeared to be a vehicle. Well, that’s what it looked like to the intrepid digital explorer at least.
Kick-starting the investigation
There was no way that the man could be sure exactly what he was looking at. He was, after all, just going off of a blurry image on Google Earth. But he had an idea of how he could get confirmation.
The man got in touch with his ex-wife, who reportedly still lived at his old address. According to a statement from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, the ex-wife later mentioned it to her neighbor, Barry Fay.
Taking a closer look
Fay agreed that the images on Google Earth made it look like there really was a vehicle in the pond behind his home. In September 2019 Fay told The Palm Beach Post that he went to check it out for himself.
He didn't find anything after his first look. By this time, Fay had been living in the house for over a year, and he’d apparently never seen anything to suggest that a car was submerged in the water. Fay seemingly didn't give up that easily, though.
Send in the drone
“The water’s been way low and I still never noticed anything,” Fay told The Palm Beach Post. Undeterred, he contacted another neighbor who owned a drone — the kind you can attach a camera to.
The curious pair flew the drone over the retention pond in the Grand Isles neighborhood in Wellington. It revealed, clear as anything, that there was indeed a car sitting in the murky waters.