If LE believes this is a stranger abduction, resulting from hitchhiking for example, what use would they have for the tapes from DP show, I wonder.
While I give stranger/outsider abduction about a twenty percent possibility, I watch LE and feel they are not operating under this theory at all, IMO. Not because of the DP tapes, but just overall. I think they did indeed want to find that man (since found) in case he had seen something but I can't help feeling that the something they wondered if he saw had to do with MR.
I know LE can get tunnel vision. But I also remind myself that they must know more than we do. (Although unlike some, I do not believe they know a whole lot, just suspicions, IMO). Also they way they recently said something like putting the pieces together, something like that, and that they have lots of little bits of evidence makes me almost convinced that those bits would have to involve MR, only because it seems unlikely they have "lots" of anything that would point to some unknown person.
ETA I also recall DH defending MR quite vigorously early on. She seemed more his friend than ER's. Something changed for her.