I totally see where you’re coming from. But I have to disagree. Open source sleuthing is key and huge! Maybe other methods could have found this guy and put him on a sleuthers radar. Could that have helped? We don’t know for sure. But, for instance, we could have searched all property owners within certain radius, compared to sketch, sleuthed a little social media and been bothered enough to call a tip in.
The key to me is to keep from wasting time of LE, keep from dragging innocent people through the mud publicly, and refine my methods. We are kidding ourselves if we think any local agency has the time, budget, manpower to do what many sleuths do.