HARRIS COUNTY, TX (KPRC/CNN) - Topper Rigney gets all the love and care you would expect for a 4-month-old and then some.
He’s constantly in the arms or within eyesight of his parents, Ellen and Nathan, thanks to a network of Nest cameras.
“My husband laughed. He called it my CCTV because I would have the Nest cam pulled up on the iPad over there and then the little audio monitor right next to it so I could see him from every angle,” Ellen Rigney explained.
Above Topper’s crib are two cameras with audio and the only voice they ever transmitted was his, until late Monday night.
“I said, 'Hey, what is this, what’s going on?’ We hear it again and two beeping, it’s the noise it makes, and then we heard sexual expletives being said in his room,” Ellen Rigney said. “So, we throw on the light in our room. He turned that camera on and told us, said ‘Turn off the light.’ And then said, ‘I’m going to kidnap your baby – I’m in your baby’s room.’”
You can imagine the terror and just how fast dad raced upstairs only to find Topper safe and sound, which is when mom remembered a story about WiFi camera hacking.
"I kept telling him, I'm like, 'He's not in here, someone's hacking this,'" Ellen Rigney recalled.
They shut it down fast and called police, terrified, relieved and determined to warn anyone who would listen by posting the story online.
"I didn't know what to think. It was the most frightening. It's a voice that I will never forget, unnerving and unsettling,” Ellen Rigney said. “You have something that's supposed to make you feel better. And instead, it makes you feel the opposite, makes you feel invaded and uncomfortable."
The family has thrown out the WiFi cameras -- and is only using an offline, closed-circuit camera now.
There was a similar story in the area in 2015.
A nanny said a man hacked into the baby monitor of the child she was caring for and talked about what she was doing inside the house.
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