Caught Her on Camera

William Becker of Manor Lane, Springs, was the first to call the police, shortly after 11 a.m. on Nov. 18. He was at work at Becker’s Home Service, his hardware store in Montauk, at the time.

Just a day before, in Sag Harbor, Mr. Becker had spent $200 for a home security system called Ring Video Doorbell. He was getting ready to retire, which he has since done, turning the popular store over to his partners.

When the system is installed, it calls the homeowner’s cellphone any time the front doorbell is rung. The homeowner can not only hear and see who is outside but can talk to them as well, through a speaker. Visitors have no way of knowing that the voice they hear is coming over a phone, not from someone in the house.

Mr. Becker tried to install the system when he got home, he said this week, but had trouble mounting it outside the door. “Let me wait until tomorrow,” he thought, and secured it in place with a zip tie. Though it was jerry-rigged, it was active.

Eighteen hours later, his cellphone rang. When he answered it, he saw a woman, who had rung the doorbell, entering his house. He ran the video back and saw her peering into a window, looking back and forth. “She opens up my storm door,” Mr. Becker said. She is then seen turning the handle of the unlocked front door, looking inside for a moment, and going in, closing the door behind her.

Once inside, she is heard turning on either a television or a radio.

Grabbing another phone, Mr. Becker called his house’s landline. The call went into his answering machine. “I can see you,” he shouted, cursing, “You better get out of there.”

The woman, who was wearing a down vest over a blue jacket and blue winter gloves with New York Giants logos, is then seen hurrying out the front door, a hood now pulled up over her head. Once outside, unaware of the nearby surveillance camera, she pulls the hood down — her hair is in a bun — and calmly walks away from the house to a bicycle, which is lying near the street. She is last seen pedaling away down Manor Lane.

There was a mystery about the intruder that perplexed Mr. Becker, and police as well. “She had to walk right by the dining room table,” he said, where there was an open box with cash in it, from a small fresh-egg sideline that he runs. “My son started it. Then he moved to Rochester.” Since then, Mr. Becker has been putting $15 or $20 egg money into the box every day. “She had to see it,” he said.

About half an hour before the woman rang his bell, police later learned, she had allegedly entered another Springs residence. In that case, a neighbor, Elheme Kastrati, confronted the stranger she saw going door to door, then going into a house at 28 7th Street. That house has a surveillance system in place as well, and the homeowner, Lisa Eggert, called police a week later.

On Jan. 13, police sent out a photo of the unknown woman, taken from Mr. Becker’s video. Within an hour, Detective Sgt. Greg Schaeffer said last Thursday, they received a tip that Emma K. Bernier was the one they were looking for.

Detectives went to speak with Ms. Bernier, and she agreed to go to police headquarters, where she reportedly told them that “I only went into a couple of houses, looking for pills.” Once inside, she apparently headed straight for the bathroom medicine cabinets.

Based in part on that admission, she was charged with two felony counts of burglary.

She was arraigned the next day before East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky. Rudy Migliore, Jr., an assistant district attorney, told the court his office was asking that bail be set at $5,000.

“I do question the voluntariness of the statement she made to police,” said her Legal Aid Society lawyer, Brian Francese, adding that Ms. Bernier, 34, is a lifelong resident of East Hampton. He asked for bail of $500.

“This is not the first time this young defendant has been before the court,” Justice Tekulsky said, citing a misdemeanor conviction for driving while intoxicated and another, at the violation level, for driving with ability impaired, as well as several arrests on vehicular-law issues. He set bail at the amount requested by the D.A.’s office. It was posted later that day.

According to Detective Schaeffer, Ms. Bernier’s targets were random, chosen only for an unlocked front door. She is due back in court on Feb. 4.