Federal authorities have made public the first images of the individual suspected in the abduction of Nancy Guthrie, ten days after the 84-year-old grandmother disappeared from her Arizona residence. The delay in releasing the footage stemmed from two critical issues: the home’s security camera had been removed, and Guthrie did not have a subscription to the cloud back-up service that would have automatically preserved the video.

The newly released footage, recovered from a missing Nest camera, shows a masked figure tampering with the device outside Guthrie’s Tucson home. According to one legal expert, the video’s recovery highlights the technological reach of Google, Nest’s parent company.

Guthrie had not enrolled in a Google Home subscription plan, which for $10 per month — or $100 annually — stores motion-activated or “event” recordings for up to 30 days, even if the physical camera is taken. Without that service, retrieving the footage required significant additional effort.

“It gives us some insight to what Google is capable of,” former prosecutor and current criminal defense lawyer John W. Day told The NY Post.

“Even without paid subscription, there is a way to go to some data center and spend a lot of time and effort to try to find that particular camera, at that particular time without a subscription,” Day said. “You can only imagine how difficult that was if it took 10 days to get there.”

Day outlined three primary paths investigators may have used to obtain the footage. Federal authorities could have secured a search warrant compelling Google to provide the data. Alternatively, Guthrie’s family may have authorized the company to search for it. A third possibility is that Google voluntarily assisted in locating the recording.

“Everyone has the same incentive, which is to find this sweet woman before too long,” Day said. “Google had every reason to cooperate. The family has got to be grateful, law enforcement has to be grateful.”

“It’s a miraculous turn of events because this could be the thing that leads to a break in the case,” the attorney added.

Guthrie was last seen on the night of Jan. 31, when her son-in-law dropped her off at her home around 9:45 p.m. On Feb. 2, the case was officially classified as a criminal investigation after media outlets received what authorities described as a $6 ransom demand. The deadline referenced in the note passed without any publicly known developments regarding her condition.

The video of the masked individual interfering with the camera appeared to strengthen suspicions that the mother of “Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie was abducted.

“We believe she is still alive. Bring her home,” Savannah wrote in a social media post Tuesday.