That initial withdrawal was reversed once Jared's case was seen as a strong connection, a top sketch artist was flown in from Washington, D.C. to develop a better sketch to be shown to the public, and additional agents were assigned to pursue the leads generated from that sketch.
And what about this recognition of the sketch with tip to the F.B.I. that I found in your very informative book?
[bold emphasis is mine]
Terry Bailey*(alias) was walking along a street in downtown Virginia, Minnesota one afternoon in January 1990, when he noticed a poster hanging on a store window. Bailey recognized the man in the poster immediately, and asked himself, “Why is there a poster of Duane Hart hanging in the window?”
Bailey recognized the eyes in the hand-sketched poster, and there was no doubt in his mind that Hart was the man depicted . Bailey’s recalled a time more than twenty-five years earlier, in 1963, when he was a teenager living in Paynesville, Minnesota. He was at the skating rink when two eleven or twelve-year-old boys asked him for his help. An older boy tried to coerce them into going off with him to perform sexual favors.
Bailey approached the older boy, whom he later learned was Duane Hart, and asked him to leave the younger boys alone. Bailey and Hart went outside to discuss the problem in the alley behind the rink. According to Bailey, Hart then grabbed Bailey’s jacket, pulled it up over his head, wrapped it tightly and started beating on Bailey. Stunned, Bailey fell to the ground, and then Hart pounced on top of Bailey. Bailey was a strong and well-coached wrestler, and once the two boys were on the ground, he quickly gained the upper hand. He removed his boot and struck Hart several times on the forehead with the metal horseshoe cleat on the bottom of the boot. Bailey hit Hart hard enough to draw blood, so the injury probably left a scar on Hart’s forehead. More importantly, Bailey was able to get away from Hart and run home.
Bailey said that a short time later he told a Paynesville police officer about his encounter with Hart. He said the police officer told him that Hart was a bad person, and he should stay away from him. Twenty-five years later, Bailey found himself staring at the store window. He wondered why Hart’s face was shown on the poster, in 1990, so he approached the window for a closer look. That was when Bailey learned of Jacob Wetterling’s abduction, and he immediately called the FBI and told them his story.
The announcement by the F.B.I. to withdraw, and the actual withdrawal from the JW investigation, completed at the end of January 1990 - coincides 100% with having identified Hart. Notice that from that time onward, no further serious efforts by LE to identify the person shown in the sketch. The F.B.I. publicly announced that Hart's arrest at that time was for crimes not related, but that does not mean that the F.B.I. investigators felt that Hart had nothing to do with the abduction of JW. Quite to the contrary, but when solving a case would reap embarrassment and public scorn upon local LE, then it just doesn't get solved - at least not publicly.
