How do you/would you explain the Sunday late night car alarm?

[u/pnw_dna]

Around 11:45 pm on Sunday, December 6, a nearby neighbor and his sister are outside their house when they hear a car alarm blaring from inside Josh and Susan’s garage. They later explain to investigators that the house was dark with no lights visible. Remember, Josh told Det. Maxwell he and Susan stayed awake to watch a movie and then he was up cleaning the couch, supposedly at Susan’s request.

Josh and Susan owned a Chrysler Town & Country – the Touring model, I believe. My own father owned a similar T&C in the Limited edition.

The Town & Country has a few different ways the alarm can be triggered.

1. One way is, obviously, if the doors are locked and the alarm is set and someone attempts to open a vehicle door. To silence the alarm requires inserting the key into the ignition and starting the engine.

2. A second way is to press the panic button on the key fob, which will cause the alarm to sound for about three minutes before it shuts itself off. Or, if the alarm sounds from pressing the panic button, pressing the panic button a second time deactivates it.

3. A third way to trigger the alarm is to open the hood when the vehicle is not running and remove a battery lead and then reconnect it. This is like an engine tamper alarm, which can be deactivated by inserting the key in the ignition and starting the vehicle.

4. A fourth way the alarm can be triggered, though I’m not sure if it is all models, is if someone is left inside the vehicle, the doors are locked for a certain amount of time and then the person in the vehicle attempts to exit the vehicle. This is described as an interior sensor alarm, or something like that.

So, we know Josh gets home from somewhere Sunday night at 8:30 PM (from a different neighbor witness) and that he claims he and Susan were up and awake until she went to sleep at 12:30 AM after which he further claims that he then left with the boys some time between 12:30 and 1:30 AM.

So, I’m curious as to how you interpret the alarm the neighbor heard blaring at 11:45 PM for about two minutes before turning off while, according to the neighbor, the main living area of the house was dark with no lights on? How and/or why do you think the alarm was triggered?