Is that tabloid article you are quoting saying that a 12 year old girl, who alleged after the abduction that she'd seen a man before the abduction, is now saying, 13 years later, that she is convinced she recognizes that man?!! That 12 year old who is now 25 must have remarkable powers of observation and photographic memory!
The whole 'witnesses say they saw a suspicious man' has almost no importance to solving the crime, IMO, because none of those witnesses saw these people while the crime was being committed. It's one thing to witness and describe someone you saw during the crime, that will be both a memorable sighting and a genuinely possible perp.
But to have just randomly observed people, who were just normally going about their day, as one does every minute of every day that you are outdoors, and then only after the abduction, to start thinking 'oh, maybe that was suspicious', then try to remember what the person looked like? And for anyone to trust that as a genuine memory that can possibly solve a crime? IMO really not anything you can rely on.