JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) – A search of three ponds in Joplin yielded no new evidence in the case of a 14-year-old Joplin girl who disappeared 26 years ago.

Joplin police and Missouri Department of Natural Resources employees spent about 3.5 hours Wednesday searching the ponds with sonar equipment and ground-penetrating radar.

Police Capt. Larry Swinehart said searchers found no clues to help solve the disappearance of Tracy Pickett, who has been missing since August 1992.

The Joplin Globe reports searchers were acting on new information recently received from a relative of a suspect, who has since died.

Swinehart said the next step will be draining two of the ponds when it gets cooler and searching them by hand.

Pickett disappeared after accepting a ride home from an ex-convict, Lowell Billy.

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JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) – Authorities are searching three ponds in northwest Joplin for the remains of a girl who disappeared in 1992 and is believed to have been murdered.

Joplin police and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources were using sonar equipment to search the ponds for evidence of 14-year-old Tracy Pickett. She disappeared after going to Webb City on Aug. 11, 1992, to stay overnight with a girlfriend.

The Joplin Globe reports a deceased suspect in the girl’s disappearance formerly lived near the ponds.

Police were told the girl accepted a ride home from her friend’s house from the suspect, ex-convict Lowell Billy. He claimed he dropped her off in downtown Joplin but she was never seen again.

No one has ever been charged in the girl’s disappearance.