It's of course easy for anyone to say in retrospect how obvious it should have been now that we know, to a large extent, what really happened. When looking at everything that was know to LE back then however, it does raise a lot of questions as to how and why they did certain things. This is why the podcast is still important at this point. Examining these things after the case has been solved is raising my eyebrows higher than ever before.
If LE knew about the Paynseville attacks, knew Heinrich was one of the few people who were suspected of committing them, believed that Heinrich was responsible for Jared's assault (which they did), and even half suspected that Jared's case and Jacob's were related, then it seems remarkable that they wouldn't remain more focused on him, even after his arrest and release. If you don't have enough to pin him, you keep working at it and keep digging ... especially in the absence of any other credible suspects. When your gut is screaming "this is the guy," you don't move on to other things just because you can't charge him with the crime. You do everything under the law to "harass" and put pressure on him.
If SO many resources went into searching for Jacob, why wouldn't you comb the remote/rural lands around where such a suspect lives? Sure it's a long shot, but those are the types of avenues that investigators are supposed to go down. Had they even searched within a two mile radius of his apartment there's a chance they would have discovered the site, but there would be even more of a chance that this type of activity would have spooked Heinrich. They had all of the legal/political resources they needed in the beginning to make these types of things happen. I would have also searched around the area where Jared was assaulted. It's all a needle in the haystack type of approach but you at least make the effort to engage in these types of methods when there is such a plausible suspect.
If they wanted to dedicate personnel to handling the plethora of remote tips coming in from all around the country/world that's fine. In fact, it would be negligible not to do so. But these types of things rarely pan out. They are the longest of long shots, and the types of case where such leads would be applicable are the ones that are so rarely solved. When you have a big, juicy suspect with at least a couple of big red arrows pointing at him, you need to keep just as many resources devoted to exhausting every possible tactic.
Having said all of that, there are clearly a lot of things that went on behind the scenes, including the politics of all of this both within LE and in general, that caused divisions in the directions this case should take. Again, that is why efforts such as the podcast are still so important. I'm looking forward to it's conclusions, and to the continued discussions about this investigation.
