Google helped solve the mystery
The body of a woman who disappeared without a trace for two years was found thanks to Google Maps.
Paulette Landrieux, 83, disappeared from her home while her husband Marcel Taret was doing housework.
Taret had left her watching television while she was eating lunch while he hung washing outside.
But that would be the last time he saw Landrieux for two years, as when he came back inside she had gone.
Marcel was Paulette’s full-time carer, The Mirror reports.
Podcaster Mr Ballen, who specialises in bizarre true events stories, said in a recent episode: “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.”
On the fateful day, Marcel set Paulette up in front of the television with lunch while he popped out to peg his laundry on the line, only for her chair to be empty on his return.
Marcel looked inside and outside the house to find his wife, and even knocked on neighbours doors, but they hadn’t seen her.
He called the police who promptly sent out a search helicopter and Marcel felt sure they would find his wife in no time.
But that never happened, with Mr Ballen explaining: “Over the next few days and weeks Paulette didn’t turn up. Nobody had any idea where she was, and weeks turned into months and then months turned into two full years that nobody had seen Paulette.
By that point Marcel had basically resigned himself to the fact that he very likely would die without ever figuring out what happened to his wife.”
But by sheer coincidence, on the day Paulette disappeared, a Google Streetview camera was in the area. After two years, a neighbour made the connection and looked at the photos of the street in Andenne in Belgium where the couple lived.
In the photos, Paulette can be seen crossing the street near her home with Marcel in the background hanging up the laundry.
Police used this new information to trace Paulette’s route, and discovered a steep hill that led down to a bramble bush, where her body was discovered.
Mr Ballen said: “When that huge search for her was going on, very likely she was just trapped down there. She didn’t understand what was going no and couldn’t necessarily yell up to communicate with anybody and so she stayed down there and died.”
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