Google better than the police

A guy finally find is brother dead after 4 month on Google

[Allergic]

In april 2003 a 35 old man disappears. His family contact Montreal Police to research him. The study of the case reveal the guy probaly suicide him in the St-Lawrence river.

In late august the brother, with no news of the montreal police detective, make a search in Google "corps retrouvé fleuve" (body found st-lawrence river) and find a press release from the "sûreté du québec" (the fbi of quebec province).

By reading this press release, dating from july, all the details was matching is brother body description. Finally it was him!

The story in french by the official canadian broadcaster :
[radio-canada.ca...]

The cached page of Google on the press released (The police did not comment this bad news yet ;-)
press release [216.239.51.104]

[edited by: ciml at 12:02 pm (utc) on Sep. 26, 2003]
[edit reason] Fixed scrolling. [/edit]

[yonnermark]

interesting.
I was recently in court and I was crossing my fingers hoping that the opposition didn't find me in the newsgroups. Its easy to act out of character in the newsgroups and it could come back to haunt you

mark

[Jakpot]

Hope my exwife don't know Google

[BigDave]

I guess there are reasons that you might not want to come out on top when you google yourself ;)

[Allergic]

Funny BigDave...

When I post that I was thinking of the 2001 joke about : I found my lost keys with Google... But I never suspect a guy will found his brother body in Google. Dramatic and... disturbing for the police corp here!

Latest statement from the Montreal Police and SQ ... The body was found more than 60 miles away from the bridge and this is unusual ;-(

The first declaration of the family was talking of bad dentiton of the guy and it was this declaration who was put in database matching program and not the next one taken by the official detective, where that matching statement corrupt the police matching program.

GoogleGuy, you should contact our police force to sell your Google Appliance ;-)

[edited by: Allergic at 3:28 am (utc) on Sep. 27, 2003]

[bether2]

I've been doing some volunteer work on a missing persons case recently and found some very useful information on the case through google. Something which helped put a few more pieces together.

So, in spite of my several posts over the past few months griping about the quality of google searches, I have to say this time it was a real help. So, thank you, google.

Now I just have to remove the information about the case from my site before it accidently gets spidered by google. Or do "no index, no follow". No links to it but am still nervous. If the laywer for the "person of interest" finds it, the tables will be turned. :(

[Wired Suzanne]

Anyway, how did you find out? The article didn't say Google.
Radio?

[Allergic]

Wired Suzanne: I see it clearly at the TV news. The brother camera shot was showing clearly using Google. But when the audio was saying "corps retrouvé st-laurent" and when I was making my research the brother have probably use "corps retrouvé eaux" who was the first result. ("body founded water" at the place of "body founded st-lawrence").
At 1.10 min. in this Windows Media clip [radio-canada.ca] you can see the Google screen research!