Newly released records have intensified scrutiny surrounding the fire at Le Constellation, not because of what investigators were able to review, but because of what they were not. According to documents and interviews connected to the case, the property was equipped with fourteen surveillance cameras. Nine of those cameras were located in the basement, a part of the building investigators have repeatedly described as central to understanding the timeline of the fire. Despite this extensive camera network, the only material handed over during questioning consisted of eleven screenshots, all reportedly chosen and provided by Jacques Moretti. These screenshots were captured roughly five minutes before the fire began. None of them include footage of the moment the fire was sparked, nor do they show anything in the moments immediately after, leaving a five-minute blind spot that investigators have been unable to resolve eight months into the inquiry.
The surveillance system at Le Constellation had been installed to record continuously. Under normal circumstances, such a system would show the movement of people through hallways, staircases, and basement access points; any unexpected activity or unusual objects appearing in the frame; changes in lighting; shadows; or environmental cues like smoke or sparks. Yet investigators received only still images, frozen fragments that reveal almost nothing about the critical moments when the fire actually ignited. The absence of video raises natural but serious questions about whether the recording system malfunctioned, failed, or was disabled, or whether the footage exists but was withheld for reasons not publicly known.
During questioning, Moretti did not present any explanation that has been made public about why only screenshots were available. Screenshots are not created automatically; they must be manually captured. This means someone had to deliberately select which moments to preserve. The screenshots provided do not represent all fourteen cameras. They do not reflect the full layout of the property. They include no motion, no sound, no context for what may have been happening in the basement, where most of the system’s coverage was concentrated. In the eyes of investigators, this is more than a simple gap. It is an entire missing chapter of the story.
The significance of the missing footage is heightened by the fact that fires often have clear visual precursors before ignition becomes visible to the human eye. Video can reveal faint glows from electrical faults, small flickers in corners, unusual patterns of movement, or sudden changes in temperature that distort the image. Without continuous footage, investigators lose the ability to determine whether the fire began naturally, mechanically, or under circumstances that would require further examination. The absence of this material forces investigators to rely on secondary evidence—burn patterns, physical damage, witness testimony, and the reliability of the statements provided by those with access to the surveillance system. But secondary evidence can rarely replace the clarity of video footage, especially when video was supposedly recorded but never produced.
The timeline provided in the screenshots also raises key questions. All eleven images were reportedly taken approximately five minutes before the fire. That precise gap—neither an hour nor a second, but exactly five minutes before the ignition—creates a narrow window in which investigators must operate without visual confirmation. The fire itself appears to have begun shortly after the timestamps seen on the screenshots. In an investigation where seconds can matter, missing minutes become an enormous obstacle. Investigators must reconstruct what they cannot see by interviewing those who were present, reviewing the physical remains of the scene, and comparing statements to whatever data can be recovered from the digital system that once stored the recordings.
Some investigators privately noted that if the cameras had failed or malfunctioned, there would typically be logs showing when recording stopped or when errors occurred. It is also common for modern systems to store backups or fragmented copies of footage that can sometimes be recovered by digital forensics even if manually deleted. Because none of this has been confirmed publicly, questions remain about whether any attempt was made to recover deleted or corrupted data, or whether the recording unit was examined for evidence of tampering, formatting, or power interruptions. These questions remain significant because when footage is missing from a system that should have recorded continuously, investigators must determine whether the absence is the result of a technical problem or a human decision.
The basement cameras, which make up nine of the fourteen total units, are particularly important. Basements in buildings like Le Constellation typically house electrical panels, heating equipment, tools, storage rooms, and other elements that can either cause or accelerate a fire. If any movement occurred in the basement shortly before the fire, video footage would have captured it. If any object was brought in or removed, if any fuse sparked, if any unauthorized access occurred, the cameras would have revealed it. Without the footage, investigators can only speculate about what those cameras would have shown. The screenshots provided include only a few basement angles, none of which appear to show activity and all of which predate the fire by the same five-minute margin.
Investigators are also assessing whether the loss of footage has legal or evidentiary implications. Surveillance video is often considered one of the most reliable forms of evidence precisely because it cannot be selectively interpreted. Stills, however, can hide more than they reveal. Without continuous footage, it becomes difficult to validate whether the screenshots are complete, whether they are in chronological order, or whether their timestamps reflect reality. Metadata embedded in the images may help determine how and when they were captured, but metadata alone rarely replaces the evidentiary value of uninterrupted video. Screenshots may confirm that certain areas were empty in the minutes prior to the fire, but they cannot prove whether something happened afterward.
The disappearance of the footage has forced investigators to rely on witness testimony. Statements suggest that the cameras had been functioning normally earlier that day. Others recall seeing lights on in the basement, though none of those accounts can be corroborated without video. The fire itself destroyed parts of the structure, but according to records, the recording system was not located in the section directly affected by the flames, raising more questions about why it failed to produce the footage expected.
Eight months later, the investigation still has not recovered the missing video. The question has now grown beyond the fire’s cause and into a broader inquiry: what happened to the surveillance recordings from all fourteen cameras? Why were only eleven screenshots provided, and why were none of them taken during the most crucial period? If the video once existed, how did it vanish? And if it never existed at all, why not, given that the system was designed to record continuously?
The investigation continues, and the missing footage remains one of the most significant unresolved elements. Without it, the story of what happened inside Le Constellation in the final minutes before the fire is incomplete. Investigators may eventually reach conclusions based on physical evidence and testimony, but until the original video is found or definitively proven unrecoverable, the case will remain defined as much by what is missing as by what has been discovered.
