How Surveillance Footage Helped Solve 5 Infamous Crimes

Surveillance footage from phones, doorbell monitoring systems and security cameras can provide crucial evidence in everything from kidnappings to murders to terrorist attacks. In the abduction of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today show anchor Savannah Guthrie, video obtained from Nancy’s doorbell camera revealed a man outside wearing a ski mask and gloves early on February 1, 2026, the day she disappeared.

However, limits exist with video evidence. Michael Primeau, a lead expert witness and partner at Primeau Forensics, which conducts audio, video and image forensic analysis, tells A&E Crime + Investigation, “You shouldn't always trust what you watch or listen to, because the technology can misrepresent things that occurred in reality.” Videos can be altered, perhaps via intentional manipulation or because data is lost when a digital file is recompressed.

In court, “the first requirement for video evidence to be admitted is that it be authenticated.” Primeau notes that experts like himself use digital forensics to determine authenticity," Neal Feigenson, a professor at Quinnipiac University School of Law, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “When the camera acts as an accurate witness, through whatever means need to be done forensically to validate that, then that becomes very powerful evidence.”

Here's how video helped investigators identify suspects, reconstruct timelines and secure convictions in five infamous cases.

At 2:50 p.m. on April 15, 2013, two explosives went off near the Boston Marathon's finish line. They killed three people and injured more than 500. A massive search for those responsible ensued. Evidence collected by the FBI included nearly 13,000 videos from sources like people's phones and nearby security cameras.

Brian Gallini, dean of the Quinnipiac University School of Law, tells A&E Crime + Investigation the right to privacy doesn't impede these recordings or their use by law enforcement. The Supreme Court established “the baseline legal principle that we have no right to privacy on public thoroughfares,” he says, adding, "When we're out in public, we knowingly expose ourselves.”

On April 18, the FBI released parts of department store surveillance video that showed two men carrying backpacks near the scene of the bombing. They turned out to be brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Tamerlan was killed during a standoff with law enforcement, but Dzhokhar was arrested and put on trial. He received a death sentence in May 2015.

On February 13, 2017, Libby German, 14, and Abby Williams, 13, disappeared while on a trail walk in Delphi, Ind. Their bodies were found the next day. Under Williams was German's cell phone, which contained a short video showing a man closely following Williams on a bridge.

After the murders, police released a still image of the suspected killer and an audio snippet of a man saying, “Down the hill.” The full video was not made public until after the girls' killer was convicted. Gallini says authorities can be cautious about sharing evidence so as not to jeopardize a case.

In 2022, Delphi resident Richard Allen was arrested and charged with the murders. Despite recorded confessions in calls made from behind bars, he pleaded not guilty. At trial, jurors saw German's full 43-second video. Allen was convicted of the killings in November 2024 and sentenced to 130 years the following month. He appealed his conviction in March 2025.

On July 18, 2014, a gunman fired a bullet into the head of law professor Dan Markel, 41, in his garage in Tallahassee, Fla. Markel died the next day. A neighbor who heard the shot told police he'd seen a light-colored Prius-like car leaving Markel's driveway.

Surveillance footage from Markel's gym revealed a green Prius in the parking lot the morning he was shot. Cameras on different buildings and multiple city buses also let investigators track the Prius as it followed Markel home. Police eventually linked the vehicle to a rental car agency in Miami.

In 2016, Luis Rivera and Sigfredo Garcia were indicted in what was described as a murder-for-hire. Garcia was connected to one of the murder's orchestrators. He had two children with Katherine Magbanua, who at the time of the crime was dating Charles Adelson, the older brother of Wendi Adelson, Markel's ex-wife who'd been fighting him for custody of their two sons.

After reaching a plea deal that named Garcia as the gunman, Rivera got a 19-year sentence. In 2019, Garcia was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. For helping to organize the murder plot, Magbanua, Charles and Donna Adelson—Charles and Wendi's mother—all received life sentences after separate trials.

In Philadelphia on the night of November 2, 2014, an attacker forced Carlesha Freeland-Gaither, then 22, into a vehicle. There was an eyewitness, plus a nearby building had surveillance cameras.

Primeau works in the private sector but has discussed video evidence with colleagues in law enforcement. He says being able to access video data in its native format is critical for time-sensitive situations like kidnappings. In this case, an employee of the organization that operated the cameras let police into the security booth late that night. By the early morning of November 3, they'd pulled footage of Freeland-Gaither's abduction.

This recording was shown nationwide, as was additional video evidence the suspect at a gas station and using Freeland-Gaither's card at an ATM in Maryland. Virginia police saw some of the footage and recognized a suspect from another kidnapping: 37-year-old Delvin Barnes.

Investigators then located the car dealership where Barnes had purchased a Ford Taurus. Due to his bad credit, the vehicle had a GPS tracker. On November 5, 2014, authorities surrounded the vehicle and rescued Freeland-Gaither. Barnes was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

After a friend reported Shanann Watts missing on August 13, 2018, Chris Watts made public pleas for the safe return of his wife and their two daughters. Yet footage from a neighbor's doorbell camera showed that around 5 a.m. that day, a few hours after Shanann had returned from a business trip, Watts backed his truck up the driveway, made three trips between the house and his truck and put a gas can in the vehicle.

Watts, who'd been having an affair, was arrested on August 15. He initially told police he'd strangled his wife in a rage because she'd killed their daughters, then taken their bodies to an oil field where he'd worked. The next day, his family was discovered there: Shanann was in a shallow grave, while his daughters were in oil tanks.

Prosecutors believed Watts had killed every member of his family. In November, in a deal that spared him from the death penalty, he pleaded guilty to the three murders and unlawfully terminating a pregnancy, as Shanann had been expecting. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Gallini notes that Watts' case demonstrates how video doesn't have to provide all the answers. The doorbell footage served as a piece of what Gallini calls "layering evidence" that allowed police and prosecutors to work toward a "conviction with integrity."