Both those pictures taken of Filomena's window are taken in the lane of oncoming cars. Does anyone have pictures of Filomena's window from cars in the correct lane?
Hello, new poster here. I have been following the break-in line, but the problem I have is that from a car at night it's pretty hard to see anything much, except right in front of you. The contrast makes any unlit areas hard to see, plus you are watching the road, and could only get a glimpse of anyone hanging around or on the cottage.
The same applies for people looking out of apartments, you can see lights, but very little in unlit areas. Not many people are going to be staring out the windows anyway.
The people who would have the best vision and awareness, and time to look into dark valleys are pedestrians, but it's not the sort of road pedestrians would normally walk along.
Generally, AFAICT all entry points to the cottage are well hidden at night, and it would be an easy place to burgle. The question of which is the easiest is subjective and probably impossible to decide without a practical test. If the cottage had been thoroughly cased in advance, with knowledge of the Filomena's faulty shutters, and that most of the occupants were out, then Filomena's window would make a decent challenge.
A person standing on a balcony would only arouse suspicion if the witness knew that the person was not a resident. In contrast, someone climbing an outside wall would strike you as quite unusual, if not suspicious.
Burglars are lazy (otherwise they would get a job), and would take the easiest route.
The less suspicious, and easier route, appears to be the balcony, and this is apparently the choice of entry for practicing burglars, so we should conclude that is the "best" entry. We can't really dispute that, since we don't know how well Rudy may have cased the cottage, nor whether experience had made him more proficient or not.
So I would score this as balcony 2, speculation 0.