By Steve Irsay
Court TV

People still report sightings of a young Jacob Wetterling.

Maybe it's the blue eyes, chiseled left dimple or wide smile he's flashing in his fifth-grade school picture, which was distributed on missing posters after he was snatched on a rural Minnesota road. Whatever it is, they are pretty sure they saw the handsome 11-year-old.

"A lot of them don't understand that Jacob is not a little boy anymore," said Det. Pam Jenson, who fields the calls at the Stearns County sheriff's office. "He would be a man."

Jacob Wetterling, 11, in his fifth-grade school picture. To the right, an age-progression showing what he might have looked like at 21.

Jacob was kidnapped at gunpoint on Oct. 22, 1989. He would be 24 now, tall and slender if he takes after his father. That photo of a smiling boy, a mere 5 feet tall and 75 pounds, seems useless today.

But what if you could take that photo, stir it together in a digital computer mix with photos of his parents, and his younger brother, and determine what Jacob would look like now? That is exactly what computer age-progression lets forensic artists do.

The tools of the trade of age-progression, and the related field of facial reconstruction, are deceptively simple: basic computer software, pencils and even modeling clay. But with higher tech identification processes like DNA testing and even retinal scanning becoming more common, the seemingly ordinary products of progression and reconstruction can have some pretty extraordinary results in cold cases.

Michael Reichart of Arlington Heights, Ill., hadn't seen his daughter Alese in almost nine years. She disappeared in 1991, one month after a bitter custody battle ended in a joint agreement. Forensic artists at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children created a computer-enhanced image of Alese, showing what she might look like as a teen. In December 2000, a girl in Arizona recognized the age-progression image as her classmate. Alese was living under a different name in Arizona with her mother, who was arrested for child abduction.