How Google Engineers Cracked the Nancy Guthrie Case

A major breakthrough in the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, mother of NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, came down to a technically complex data recovery performed by Google engineers.
Investigators initially believed no footage existed from the Nest doorbell camera at her Arizona home because Guthrie lacked a paid cloud subscription.
However, Nest’s free tier stores approximately three hours of event-based video, and even deleted data can persist on servers until overwritten.
Google’s team successfully recovered residual footage from backend systems, leading to the FBI’s release of images showing a masked, armed suspect outside her door the day she disappeared.
Forensic experts explain that cloud video passes through hundreds of thousands of servers globally, each leaving potential traces, proving that “deleted” data is often far from gone.
The case demonstrates how digital forensics and private sector partnerships are transforming criminal investigations.