To answer your question, the police might not have known any equipment was missing. The couple that was murder back in 1990, at first the police did not know anything was missing. Right after the murder, ATC publicly announce that he (the murder) was not on the trail and the trail was safe to be on. It wasn’t until a couple of days later when some former thru-hikers showed up to help the police out. The police in their defense are not all long distance hikers and are not familiar with what most hikers would carry and what would be missing.
Wolf