Last updated at 13:49 05 October 2006

Internet search company Google could well have helped solve a 24-year old unresolved crime.

In 1982, Canadian man Jaroslaw 'Jerry' Ambrozuk, 19, crashed a rented plane in a lake and left his girlfriend to die. The couple had been attempting to elope to the United States.

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Dianne Babcock, 18, was found strapped into the passenger seat of a Cessna, 150 feet down at the bottom of the lake, uninjured apart from a broken collar bone.

Ambrozuk, disappeared, along with extra clothes and £10,000 that his girlfriend had taken from her savings account to fund their plan to start a new life in the US.

His disappearance sparked a manhunt in Canada, where the pair lived, and Montana, where the plane crashed into Bitterroot Lake.

Ambrozuk was featured on two episodes of America's Most Wanted, the television show which targets fugitives.

In the weeks between the crash and the discovery of her body he called a friend in Vancouver from Montana, New York and Dallas, saying he could not save his girlfriend as her seatbelt had jammed when the plane flipped over and sank.

But he did not explain how he was able to save his extra clothes and the cash.

Ambrozuk then disappeared completely. He was charged with negligent homicide, but Montana authorities held out little hope of finding him.

But in August this year, Flathead County Sheriff James Dupont received a phone call from a woman who had answered a lonely hearts advert on the Internet, posted by "Michael Lee Smith", aged 34. They exchanged e-mails and then met in person.

Eventually, he told her his real name and date of birth. She went home and did a Google search and found a newspaper story about the case.

Sheriff Dupont, who was at the lake when Babcock's body was recovered, and thought he was doomed to retire at the end of the year with the case unsolved, said: "She was very legitimate sounding and knew things that only Jerry could have known."

He recalls Babcock as a pretty girl with long blonde heir, whose body had been preserved by the cold water.

"She wasn't injured to the point where she couldn't get out of the aircraft," he recalled, noting that her seat belt was not jammed."

Thanks to the Google lead, police arrested Ambrozukin at his home in a wealthy Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas. He had a £38,000 Dodge Viper car parked in the drive and a swimming pool in his back garden.

According to Police reports he ran a computer software company, and had a fake social security number and US passport.

Since his arrest, Ambrozukin has been flown back to Montana and is being held without bail. He is due in court this week and also faces federal charges for living illegally in the United States.

Stunned neighbours recalled Ambrozuk as a quiet guy who led a good life which featured fast cars and skinny-dipping parties.

"He led what, for a lot of guys, would be a pretty enviable lifestyle," said neightbour Steve Walton.

Babcock's grandmother, Dorothy Babcock, who lives in Trail, British Columbia, said: "It was such a sad, sad thing. Dianne had graduated and had put money down to go in and become a nurse.

"She didn't know she was going to die."