One of the Nest doorbell camera images released by the FBI in the disappearance of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie was taken on a different date than the others, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation who confirmed the detail to Fox News Digital on Monday.

If true, the finding is significant. It would mean the masked suspect captured on Guthrie's doorbell camera visited her Tucson, Ariz., home before the night she was taken, turning what looked like a single criminal act into something far more deliberate.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department isn't having it. Or at least isn't confirming it.

Dueling accounts

The PCSD fired back with a statement emphasizing that authorities have not released timestamps on the Nest video. The department's position is blunt:

There is no date or time stamp associated with these images. Therefore, any suggestion that the photographs were taken on different days is purely speculative.

The department did acknowledge that the released images show the suspect "in different stages of attire, including with and without a backpack," a detail that had already drawn scrutiny from unnamed experts questioning whether the masked figure was even the same person across the images.

According to Fox News, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos echoed the department line in a phone interview with NBC News, calling different-day claims speculation and adding that his office has "no evidence to suggest that that occurred that day or days before." He told Fox News the information did not come from him. He also conceded the obvious:

We cannot tell you it's a different day. We don't know that. It's under the, it's still under investigation.

So the sheriff's position is not that the claim is wrong. It's that he can't confirm it. There's a difference, and it matters.

What premeditation means

The suspected scouting visit was first reported by ABC News, citing unnamed sources. If the suspect did case Guthrie's home before returning to abduct her, it reshapes the entire investigative picture.

Retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jason Pack laid out what that looks like from a law enforcement perspective:

That's sophistication. That's the hallmark of someone who thought about this before they acted. And it matters significantly from a legal standpoint, because premeditation and planning elevate the severity of what investigators are looking at.

Pack also pointed to a paradox that should give whoever did this no comfort. The suspect tried to conceal their identity but showed up on camera more than once:

The suspect in this case may have thought they were being careful. But appearing twice on camera while trying to avoid identification isn't careful. That's exposure. And right now, investigators are working very hard to close that gap.

Careful enough to wear a mask. Not careful enough to avoid the camera twice. That's the kind of mistake investigators build cases on.

A shifting timeline

The known facts around Guthrie's suspected abduction on Feb. 1 remain sparse but telling:

• Her doorbell camera disconnected at 1:47 a.m. on the night she was taken.
• At 2:12 a.m., one of her cameras registered a person but did not record the event.
• Authorities have asked neighbors to check their home security systems for the entire month of January, for the night of Jan. 11 specifically, and for the hours between Jan. 31 and Feb. 1.

That January 11 date has never been publicly explained. If authorities are asking neighbors to pull footage from three weeks before the abduction, they clearly believe something relevant happened well before Feb. 1. The separate-date doorbell image, if authenticated, would confirm what the investigation's own requests already suggest: this was not a crime of opportunity.

What we still don't know

The source who confirmed the different-date image declined to specify what day it was taken, citing the active investigation. Whatever data the FBI and Google accessed from the Nest system has not been made public. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Guthrie, the mother of "Today" host Savannah Guthrie, vanished from her Tucson home under circumstances that have produced more questions than answers at every turn. The tension between what the unnamed source confirmed and what the sheriff's department will acknowledge publicly is itself a data point. Law enforcement agencies that are fully aligned don't contradict each other through the press.

The gap that matters

There are two possibilities here. Either the source is wrong and the PCSD is correct that the different-date claim is baseless speculation, or investigators know more than they are willing to say publicly, and the sheriff is holding the line to protect an active case. The latter happens routinely in high-profile investigations. It wouldn't be unusual. It wouldn't be nefarious.

But it would mean that someone methodically targeted an 84-year-old woman in her own home, scouted the property in advance, disabled her security system in the early morning hours, and disappeared with her. That's not a random crime. That's a plan executed by someone who believed they could get away with it.

Anyone with information is asked to dial 1-800-CALL-FBI. Someone out there knows something. The cameras caught more than the suspect intended.