Tuesday’s breakthrough in the Nancy Guthrie case came in large part thanks to technical expertise provided by Google, a person familiar with the investigation told CNN.
Google, which owns Nest, was able to recover data from the Nest-made doorbell camera at Guthrie’s front door.
The recovery process took several days and was so technically complex that investigators didn’t know whether it would be successful, the source said.
Nest has not yet commented.
FBI Director Kash Patel said the government has been “working closely with our private sector partners” to recover imagery from the cameras at Guthrie’s home.
Investigators sent a search warrant to Google for the Nest cameras at the Guthrie residence last week, the source added. Such a move is common in a criminal investigation.
But Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos initially said there was “no video available” because Guthrie “had no subscription” to Google’s video recording service.
That’s why it is notable that, as Patel put it, some video “was recovered from residual data located in backend systems.”