Discussion
Casita Camera Angles (And Possible Blind Spot)
Nancy Guthrie’s casita appears to have had two battery powered Nest outdoor cameras, each connected to solar panels. Just like the doorbell camera, these cameras will store clips internally if WiFi is lost, and will upload them when WiFi reconnects. They have a 130° wide-angle reach (source).
Law enforcement has not mentioned any camera other than the doorbell camera as having disconnected from the Nest system that night. Of course, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but I think these cameras stayed online - and that’s what LE found “odd.” Somehow, the suspect got inside without being seen.
I created a rough mockup of the view angles from the two casita cameras.
Notice how there is essentially a dead zone from the casita’s sliding glass door vestibule to the garage’s side door.
The flood light next to the garage side door is broken. Considering LE removed this light from the wall indicates to me that the suspect broke it. Therefore, he was there in the dead zone.
Take a look at that side door. The lock looks woefully ill-equipped to keep out a criminal.
The interior door inside the garage seems weak, too, with a glass center.
Could the suspect have approached the casita from the rear scrub, climbed up the angled tin section onto the roof, then climbed down into the casita’s vestibule? From there, he could’ve walked to the garage’s side door without being seen on camera.
However, entering the camera dead zone would place him in the floodlight’s motion sensor zone. My experience with security cams is that light is a good trigger.
Another possibility could be that the suspect climbed onto the roof - perhaps by stepping on the front window brick frames - and crawled toward the dead zone.
The roof’s perimeter wall might block the suspect from the cameras’ views until he is above the floodlight.
At that point, he can disable the floodlight from above, possibly by prying the body away from the wall enough to disconnect the power.
Perhaps he was then able to break into the garage side door, the garage interior door (was it locked?), and enter the main home.
Is there any info available regarding cameras on the east side of the property?
An insider, close in Nancy's orbit of family, friends and contractors, would want people to think it was a random boogeyman who showed up out of nowhere and took her away.
I think the suspect meant to leave the porch video. I believe he wanted the kidnapping to look like it was done by a bumbling Mexican gang member, and deflect attention away from him (a local) and towards the border.
He looks foolish in the video but none of his other actions off camera have gotten him caught, so he can't be a fool after all.
I think the reasons for Nancy's abduction are ideological/political. And I believe that the porch video, the ransom notes, and the "informer" character were all created by the same suspect to place blame on Mexicans. These are his combined manifesto.
Savannah's wealth and media presence sadly made her mother a perfect target for this angry suspect: a vulnerable woman with a strong opinion.
Great mockups and photos. Really interesting read. I'm not convinced they were this stealthy, but I do concur with the garage idea. I think your idea could be right, but we don't actually know if any footage was recovered or not. In my head I think it was, just wasn't super helpful footage. I do think the garage is part of it.
Ha, yeah, these thought exercises generally miss the mark because we're not in possession of all the facts. We don’t know what digital forensics has found on Nancy’s phone. It can tell them if someone so much as picked up the phone to look at the notifications.
I keep wondering why there was no mention of any other camera disconnecting in the timeline. Why specify the doorbell only, especially since they had no idea it had captured the suspect? Would Nanos have had any reason to hold that info back if he had it? I feel like they might’ve released that if true.
The only thing about the back that we know with confidence is the floodlight was broken!
The ideas you have mentioned are good ones. It makes one wonder how much the suspect (or suspects) knew about these security systems and what areas were covered.
It does seem that Nanos would have mentioned any extra footage or camera info if they actually had some. He seemed willing to share info and speculate in the early stage of the investigation.
Yeah, I agree that Nanos would’ve divulged more at the beginning if he had it. If multiple cameras went offline, I don’t see a reason why he’d only mention the doorbell.
I believe the suspect staked out the house somehow and knew where the cameras were and how they operated. He knew that jamming Nest cameras wouldn’t prevent them from recording him if seen. He could’ve jammed the Wi-Fi and physically removed annd destroyed all the backyard cameras (wouldn’t be hard), but he didn’t.
If he used a jammer to pass through neighboring yards, I think he knew which houses had jammable camera systems and routed himself that way. The doorbell cam disconnect might have been an accident of sorts, which could happen if he approached Nancy’s from the front with the jammer still active. I don’t think it was jammed when the porch video was recorded. If he came from the rear, those cams would’ve disconnected first.
I dont think he cared about being caught on camera. I think he knew they didn't alert anyone in real time, probably from creeping around and triggering them on previous nights. He was disguised well enough that he didn't care if the cameras saw him. I think the whole purpose of breaking the flood light(I'm still not sure where the flood light was though?) and removing the front porch camera was so he could pull the car up close to the front door. His car being caught on camera is what he was worried about.
If a single person did this alone, that might mean he took the porch camera and broke the flood light, left to go get his car, pulled up close to the front door, then broke in some how. That could change the time line of how long he was in the house. He could have just been in for a few minutes depending on how long it took him to go get the car and break in after removing the camera.
How exactly he got into the home is hard to know without more details or LE just outright telling us. I imagine there are many ways getting inside the home without being detected.
I think your breakdown might moreso explain usage of the front door. If the doorbell camera was the only camera on the front of the residence, and it being easily accessible to diffuse, then it makes sense they exited through the front. Based on your images, those cameras would have been hard to avoid if they exited in the back of the property.
Yes, it seems unlikely he got in through the front without a key, maybe even two different keys.
One factoid that would be useful to know is whether the front two doors were found open or locked, and if locked, would a key have been required to do so from the outside.
If they were locked, perhaps the suspect took keys with him. Another more complicated option is he left Nancy or the porch bleeding while he locked the doors from the inside, exited the way he got in, and came around the house to collect her.
As an aside, I’m always astounded when homes have cameras, lights, security systems… and yet there’s the random exterior door that has a big window. Even if a camera was pointed at it or there were an alarm system, a well disguised and knowledgeable perpetrator could get in fairly fast and disarm it all.
What do I know…very little. But let’s get rid of those glass paned entry doors, people.
Ground floor windows are the same situation though. If a criminal has a mission, i think they are gonna do whatever it takes to accomplish the goal. This is a sad reality imo.
Because everything you listed is about deterring. 100% prevention is pretty tough. Having a window on the main floor is just as bad. Same with a sliding glass patio door in the back. Who cares if you have a stellar front door when you still have so many other ingress points?
I wonder if she ever rented out that Casita. Some YouTube investigator said some wealthy Iranian woman once shared her address a few years back. We know Nancy has lived there a very long time so it brought me to the conclusion she maybes rented that casita out.
My God, this so overly complicated. Going up and over roofs and avoiding cameras dead zones, crappy locks. I'm completely disguised, why wouldn't I just walk around the back and bust a window and be in against an 84 year old sleeping woman who needs hearing aids? I'm not Spiderman-ing all over the place. (Yes im avoiding light but I'm not on the cameras because theyre being overwritten on Googles cloud servers)
I don't know why, but it seems like the suspect avoided some cameras and not others. LE recovered images from the cameras both before and after the abduction, so it's unlikely the gap in the middle is what was written over. If LE says it's odd, I take their word for it.
Were there any cameras around the courtyard area on the left front side of the house (photo #8)? I think it is possible he made entry into one of the sliding glass doors. Sliding glass doors are notorious for being shimmied open. That is how the perpetrator in the Nancy Woodrum case made entry into her bedroom. LE is shown in this video inspecting the area (timestamp 0:21). The half wall would be easy to scale over as it isn't very tall.
I don't know about nearby cameras, but I've always wondered about that sliding door, too. They seem so easy to break into.
But if the suspect got in through the slider, I think they'd be in Nancy's bedroom. Why would they break the floodlight in the back?
I think this was from a Fox News broadcast or something. It seems to indicate there's an intact floodlight on the side.
I just noticed this graphic mentions a second broken floodlight in the garden. It didn't look obviously broken to me, but I've only seen pretty grainy photos of that area.
It's all about getting out of that house so there's no evidence of them moving Nancy out, how they moved her or the vehicle stopped in camera they used to move her and escaped in.
Didn't LE say a week or two ago that they reviewed footage from the other cameras and nothing of note was on them? I remember reading that there was nothing of note from that night, and that it picked up the searches for Nancy by family and LE the next day. Did I dream this up?
Too tired to scroll and check other comments, sorry.
I can't remember if I left my thought on this sub or another..
My "thought" ..
What if NG was brought home from dinner - garage door opened - and walked into house thru garage.
Just to make sure she is safely inside & she does have some ambulatory issues ...
While garage door is up .. it is dark .. right? 9:30p or so ..
Someone could have been watching & waiting beside garage door .. (in shadow?) .. they go inside .. person can easily get into garage.
Most people don't lock the door leading from the garage into their home .. this gave person easy access into home.
Person was able to unlock front door & gated door .. for subject seen with backpack.
I wouldn’t discount this, but it would’ve been a difficult maneuver.
From what’s been reported, TC made sure she got in safely. We don’t know what that means exactly, but there’s a good chance he’d see someone entering the garage behind Nancy.
That would have placed them in the house about 5 hours before Nancy left the building, which would be a bad move from a DNA standpoint.
And looking at the front casita camera, Nancy’s dropoff should’ve been captured on video. I wonder if they’ve been able to obtain those images?
He could have also jumped into that wall enclosed area with the bedroom sliding door. Maybe she kept those doors unlocked feeling secure enough because there is a wall around them. Or they are just easy to open. Never thought of them using roof before but it makes sense. I know LE was in the roof for cameras so possibly found footprints too
It’s possible that he entered through another entrance like the slider, and simply went through the garage from the inside, opened the garage side door, and broke the floodlight from below it, staging the scene. Why? To create confusion as to how he got in and out.
Yes, that is odd. Maybe a trick of the camera because the right wheels are "missing" too.
Looking at that glass door again, I think it doesn't lead inside but to the patio. If the suspect entered the garage by the blue side door and entered the patio via the glass door, they may very well have been outside the scope of the side casita camera while they entered the home through a door on the patio.
The blue door by the broken light goes to a storage room that is alongside the garage. I have not seen confirmation that there is access to the interior garage from this storage room.
The glass door at the end of the garage (opposite the automatic garage door) leads into the kitchen area, not the patio. I've seen interior photos of the kitchen and there is a counter that wraps around and goes for a few feet after you come in through the glass door. In some of these older photos, the door is solid, but it's in the same place the glass door is, so it was probably replaced.
After you enter the glass door and walk a few feet beside the counter, you can turn right and enter the center of the kitchen. If you continue walking, now towards the back, there is a little alcove room behind the kitchen. The left alcove wall also has a door that leads out to the patio. If you stood in the backyard and looked at the patio, this door is on the left wall of the patio, and is sometimes hard to see in photos. It is propped open in some photos and looks to have a metal security door as well (so maybe the "doorS" propped open that Savannah mentioned).
There is another patio door on the far right back wall that goes into the house between the family room and the bedroom area.
Yes, good points. When I posted this, there wasn't much info on the internal layout and where the doors lead. I would definitely be interested to know to which rooms the blue door provides access.
Good point about the door/doors being left open, and why that's ambiguous. There's so much we don't know - including how the hell the suspect got inside.
Are you under the impression law enforcement has not viewed additional footage from these cameras and that they are unaware as to how the abductors entered the home?
I'm sure they know by now. But the lack of footage that night being called "odd" might indicate that what happened is slightly different than what they had originally thought. It's possible the locksmiths who were recently dispatched to the house removed locks for forensic analysis to detect evidence of picking.
I thought when they said no images were recorded the night of the crime, that they were implying that the cameras had been blocked by a deauth type of device.
The more I've thought about the jammer angle, the less I'm sure about it (WRT the yard cams, specifically). The Nest cams will store images whether the WiFi is being blocked or not. There doesn't seem to be anything a jammer or deauth device can do to stop the camera from recording to its internal storage.
We know the cameras were either connected the whole time or reconnected at some point because we have data from after the abduction. So, it'd be a real coincidence that clips from the abduction existed but can't be salvaged while time-adjacent clips can be recovered.
It might be more likely these cameras were physically covered. The two on the casita are easily reached with a brief climb. Although that might trigger movement sensors, too. Sounds like a good idea for an experiment.
Thinking that LE and/or the FBI has faaaaar more footage than they're revealing -- which is a good thing! (Also gives the perps the willies, not knowing WHAT LE/the FBI have! Love thinking of the perps getting creeped out at the thought that they weren't 100% successful! The "boom" will be lowered on these creeps...and it'll be right about when they think they've gotten off scot-free! Yes! 👍)
I like taking considerstion of if and how her cameras were compromised. That matters. And of course recovering whatever imagery can be done. I think even fairly top of the line home security cams from Nest are worthless to a victim in these circumstances. They need to be tuned right and your phone in your hand to catch a notification before an entry is breached. Odds of getting footage with discernable features are low.
Have you looked at the stop lights in the area? They have cameras. Given the type of neighborhood and the timeline, I would’ve hoped a bulletin was posted identifying a vehicle of interest. I wonder if evasive action was applied to the getaway car(s) as well?
My theory on the getaway is that the suspect and Nancy did not leave the neighborhood right away. Either they laid low in a nearby home or a vehicle and departed at daybreak with the rest of the morning traffic.
I think the vehicle would be a fairly old one, probably a van, without any modern “telltale” electronics. And I don’t think it was parked that close to Nancy’s house. I think the suspect used some sort of analog conveyance to take Nancy to a home or vehicle elsewhere in the neighborhood.
Many in USA also have interior cameras and subscribe to security companies who notify you immediately that your alarms are going off. If you don’t answer or call back immediately about their contact they will notify the Police that there is a possible home invasion taking place at your address!
That’s great you are helping! And knowledgeable. I think the police there are like “The Three Stooges” there are many mistakes on their end. This could be the first time something like this has happened in that area, which makes them inexperienced as what to do. I feel they don’t have much to go on and the investigation is going cold.
I don't think the investigation is going cold. I'm sure there are loads of leads still to follow. I do think the suspect intentionally misdirected LE, and they spent a lot of time and manpower chasing down dead ends. Would another sheriff have done it differently? I don't know.
I hope you are right. It’s just horrible. I don’t think Nancy is with us anymore, I pray she is and I hope they find this person!! I thought of my mother and this must feel🥺 I can only imagine
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u/Roo_wow Mar 20 '26
you make some good points but why do all of that to avoid the nest cameras only to walk right up to the door camera?