Google maps solves nine year mystery after man vanishes after leaving bar
8 January 2025, 22:15 | Updated: 9 January 2025, 09:39
A man disappeared after leaving a bar, until Google Maps solved the mystery nine years later.
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A man named David Lee Niles went missing after a night out at a bar, seemingly leaving no trace.
Niles went missing, and the mystery went unsolved for 9 years, until a Google maps image finally revealed what happened to him.
Niles was 72 when he died, and was diagnosed with cancer and depression before he died.
He went to Jake’s Bar in Byron Township, Michigan to meet up with a friend, before leaving abruptly on October 11, 2006.
David got into his car and wasn’t seen again for nine years, with his family and friends grappling for answers.
After the police investigation did not solve the case, Niles’s family published an obituary five years after he went missing, in 2011.
Years later, in 2015, an image captured on Google Maps brought new information to light, finally providing answers as to what happened to Niles.
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The breakthrough came from a local man named Brian Houseman, who was decorating his Christmas tree less than a mile from where David was spotted.
After Mr Houseman climbed on top of his tree to put some decorations on it, he saw what he believed was a car in the nearby pond.
In an interview with WOOD-TV, he recounted: "All of a sudden, it's like, 'Whoa, there's a car out there.”
He added: "No one could ever see it. It was murky and things moved around."
After he alerted the Kent County Sheriff's Department of what he saw, they used Google Maps to do some further digging, where they found a photo of the car submerged in the water.
A team of divers then confirmed that the car was Niles’s, and found his skeletal remains inside, with his wallet next to him.
His family gathered at the scene, where they finally got answers to the mystery that had eluded them for nine long years.
