A heartbreaking Google Maps image has helped to solve a case two years after a woman vanished from her home.
The image helped to solve the disappearance of Paulette Landrieux, 83, an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s disease in Andenne, Belgium.
Paulette was last seen alive in November of 2020.
A podcaster, MrBallen, recounted in a recent video how she disappeared after her husband turned his back for just a few moments.
Her husband, Marcel Taret, was the sole carer of Paulette
Paulette went missing in 2020 (YouTube/MrBallen)
MrBallen explained in his video: “Paulette needed help remembering to eat or to take her medications on time.
“Sometimes she would just wander off without telling Marcel and he would have to go and corral her and bring her back home.”
Marcel turned away from hers to peg some clothes on a line, only to turn around and not find her where he’d left her.
He had left her in front of the TV with some lunch.
This would be the last time he would see her alive.
He called the police and within an hour, a search and rescue helicopter arrived, but they were unable to find her.
Two years later, one of Paulette’s neighbours happened to be looking on Google Maps when they spotted something bizarre: Paulette herself.
Paulette was spotted on Google Maps (Google Maps)
By pure coincidence, there was a Google streetview car driving past Paulette and Marcel’s house at the very moment she walked away from him.
The picture shows Marcel pegging clothes on the line and Paulette walking away from him.
The neighbours realised and passed on the information, with investigators eventually looking into the photo and tracing her path away from the house.
MrBallen explained: “Across the street was a steep hill that led down to a thick bramble bush.”
You can see Marcel putting up clothes in the garden (Google Maps)
Investigators found Paulette’s body in the bush.
The YouTuber went on to say: “When that huge search for her was going on, very likely she was just trapped down there.
“She didn’t understand what was going on, couldn’t necessarily yell up to communicate with anybody, and so she stayed down there and died.”
The video was part of a MrBallen video on ‘disturbing stories’, featuring two other unsettling tales.
One comment regarding the story of Paulette said: “Far as the first story goes, instant anxiety.
“I’m 32, almost been married 10 years, if my wife up and vanished I’d be afraid I wouldn’t last long. She does more for me than she will ever know every single day.”
Another said: “The one thing that confuses me is how tf for nearly TWO YEARS nobody at the neighbouring house realised there was a dead body in their yard. That’s insane.”
Featured Image Credit: Google Maps/YouTube/Chilling Scares
Topics: Google Maps, True Crime
A haunting Google Maps photo seems to have convinced two brothers that they have found the debris for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Brothers Ian and Jackie Wilson were on a late night wander through the depths of Google Maps when they made a discovery so harrowing, they wanted to embark on a journey to solve one of the world’s biggest mysteries.
Back in 2016, Ian was on his laptop as he struggled to sleep, stumbling across something that looked like a while outline in Cambodia.
The tech expert spoke to the Daily Star at the time, saying: “I was up all night. I was having real trouble sleeping, and when I eventually came across that plane it was really surreal, the hairs stood on the back of my neck.”
What he found was enough for him to be convinced that he had solved the mystery around flight MH370, which saw the disappearance of a flight during its route from Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur to Chinese capital Beijing on 8 March, 2014.
The plane mysteriously veered off course, disappearing without a trace along with the 239 people onboard – who are all presumed dead.
Though the aircraft sent no distress calls with the plane never being heard from again, the search for the Boeing 777 is on-going today, with experts hopeful with the help of new technology to find out what really happened.
But Ian himself thought he had done it despite governments and companies spending millions looking for the wreckage.
The cause of the plane’s disappearance is still in question. (Mat Zain/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Upon finding the wreckage in Cambodia, he copied and pasted the co-ordinates in Google Earth, switching to 3D ground view.
From here, it looked like the plane was lying on the side of a mountain at a 45-degree angle, according to Ian – who then measured it on the app to find it to be about 70 metres long, only a bit longer than the Boeing 777-200 used for the MH370, with a gap between the tail and fuselage.
According to the Malaysia Transport Ministry, air traffic controllers enquired about the jet disappearing during a handover between Malaysia and Vietnam.
A private investigator of military tech company Unicorn Aerospace said that Ian’s findings were ‘significant’ and ‘clearly a match’, though he later said it was a plane caught mid-flight, which the Aviation Safety Network agreed with.
Debris of the plane was found in the Indian Ocean though, which disproves the brothers’ theory further.
But the pair still made their way to Cambodia to see it for themselves, and the trip ended up being more costly than planned.
Ian explained: “From every angle possible, it’s laying up against the mountain, and you can view it at ground level.
“I can’t take talk of it being airborne seriously at all. As I say it’s a program I use all the time and I’ve seen many planes in flight. If I thought this could be one of them I wouldn’t have bothered arranging vaccinations and saving money to go and find it.”
Ian found this, which prompted him to make the trip. (Google Maps)
Jackie accompanied him on the trip, where they had to venture through punishing conditions in the depths of the rainforest.
Ian further said in 2019: “It was so dangerous, every time we came to a river, where the waterfall would be crossing, it might only be 10 metres the other side but you’ve got no idea how deep it is, it’s about a foot deep and it goes up past your thighs.”
He stated that he wanted to go back, but money was the only thing stopping him.
Jackie then said in 2020 that he would ‘definitely’ visit the site again on Instagram.
Chinese satellite firm Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co Ltd reportedly assembled 10 satellites to investigate the area Ian identified, but found no signs of wreckage.
Following a $200million+ (£157 million) international search effort stretching over the years since the crash, the plane wreckage was never found, though debris has been found in the sea by Mauritius, Madagascar, Tanzania and South Africa
