Why Didn’t the Intruder at Nancy Guthrie’s Expect a Doorbell Camera?
One of the most puzzling details in the footage at Nancy Guthrie’s house is what the intruder did not bring with him.
He brought a gun. He brought gloves. He brought a mask. He brought a backpack full of what we can reasonably assume were tools for the job. He approached the house with what multiple law enforcement analysts have described as an unhurried, calm gait — the walk of a man executing a plan, not improvising one.
And then he got to the front door and appeared to discover the doorbell camera.
His reaction tells the story. He seems surprised to see the doorbell camera. That means he knows what a doorbell camera is. He tried to cover the lens with his gloved hand. That didn’t work. He stepped back, looked around, grabbed a piece of shrubbery from the yard, and tried to obscure the camera with it. This is not the behavior of someone who planned for this obstacle. This is someone adapting in real time to something that wasn’t supposed to be there.
Think about what that means.
Whether this was a kidnapping or a burglary gone wrong, even a teenager in 2026 knows to expect a doorbell camera. Nearly 80 percent of American homeowners have some type of security camera. Anyone planning a home invasion — especially a targeted one against a specific individual — would account for cameras as step one. You’d bring tape, a bag, spray paint, a signal jammer, something. The fact that this individual brought none of those things but brought everything else suggests the camera wasn’t his problem to solve.
It was someone else’s.
The simplest explanation for the intruder’s behavior isn’t that he was an amateur who forgot about doorbell cameras in the year 2026. It’s that someone else was supposed to have dealt with it.
Either someone was with him that night who was supposed to handle the camera before he approached the door — and didn’t. Or someone earlier in the evening was supposed to have removed or disabled it before the operation began.
But nobody did. And so the intruder arrived expecting a clear path and found a camera staring back at him.