"Said incompetence" is referring to the type of incompetence that I described, which is to the level that they can't take a photo of a man in front of height markings or that they can't mark heights on the walls properly. Not just any level of incompetence.

I never said "a few minutes away" is inaccurate, I said it was not really helpful, because that applies to the entire suspect pool. That's not even circumstantial.

The population was large enough when the details we had of the suspect did not give us much to work with, as previously alluded to (and there's more reasons why as well), especially when there were far better competitors for POI. RA admitting to being there that day isn't helpful when it wasn't known (as far as we know) during the first 6 years of investigation, which is the time period we're critiquing. Taking that line of reasoning to its extreme, that's like saying "How could they not have caught Ted Bundy the day after his first murder? He literally confessed to it when they caught him!" Which is obviously ridiculous.