I wonder if this is the right question! One can't find where she is if we can't work out what happened to her. I must say I'm finding forum frustrating. Some people are getting so tied up in semantics or tiny details or interpretations, it's like the ranks closing in the community itself. Logic is being somewhat obscured (Deliberately?)
I don't think the police said this in the statement randomly, or as a way to give up. It's always better to work with what you already actually know to be true.
Regarding questions about the weather the day I was in York - not sure, I was indoors for most of it. During the day it seemed grey and then it was cold, clear night. I didn't have a scarf and felt a chill. Wide-gait man (rucksack guy) doesn't appear to have the same sensitivity to cold. But then some pub drinkers don't make sense in their clothing. Unjacketed young men in terrible short sleeved shirts to avoid the cost of a cloak room in clubs made no practical but at least some financial sense in the 1990s. Here they could have worn heavier coats but chose not to. They were either on pub crawls (more likely than nightclubs, going by the belly on the first one) or spending time indoors or on/in transport - a car, as has been mentioned? The trouble is, people mentions vehicles and then you find it's a reflection in a bus shelter of a dumpster truck or something. I don't know which car people have referred to. All I'm saying is it's either someone local who hasn't far to walk between work and home, from pub to pub, or is maybe in vehicle. Guy in white jacket looks like he's in conspicuous, look-at-me white jacket for a reason? As I say, possibly drugs or a club aesthetic? He wants to be seen, but he other guy doesn't? But what doesn't tally for me is how the guy in the 'check' shirt with the rucksack has no hood or hat on, is in possibly his local area and obviously holds back for a reason. If he was known to people in the area, surely he would hide himself if he had done something wrong? If he's not known, why would he hide from white jacket guy? Either he knows him, or they know each other purely from an earlier occasion that day or night? So many guesses. There are so many possibilities, this is probably futile as we actually know so little.