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I think the exact quote by Atkinson on June 19th is "We believe that this person may be a trusted person in the neighborhood or in the community. [It] might be someone ... that had reason to be here, that had reason to come across the family, all those kind of things we still believe,"

Look what Dinse had to say about the kidnapper the same day (June 19th) Police Chief Rick Dinse told reporters that detectives and FBI agents still believed the intruder, who reportedly abducted the teenager in the early morning hours of June 5, had ties to the community and may not have taken the girl out of the area.

"We believe that this abductor is still reachable and very well could still be in the state of Utah," Dinse declared during a news conference.

"Because of what we know about the case, which has grown in the last week, we believe we need to focus on the areas we have talked about before -- (people) around the house, people who had access to the house," Dinse said. "We have gotten more information and we are even more convinced that we are doing the right thing and will eventually locate this person."

Keywords the police used here are he(the kidnapper) may and might. I think the police were stressing to not exclude anyone at that point(even people like trusted teachers etc). I'm not even sure they knew about Moul and the Jeep at that point. I believe they said that to get the community looking at anyone, even trusted people who may have had an interest in Elizabeth to send in tips to the police. The police were by no means excluding non trusted strangers or cons in the community or outside the community or were they saying they knew the kidnapper was definately a trusted person in the community (evidence the Dinse quotes).