In the summer of 1992, a 14-year-old girl named Tracy Pickett vanished, leaving a void in the lives of her loved ones that has yet to be filled. On August 11, 1992, Tracy, a resident of Joplin, Missouri, received permission from her mother to spend the night at a friend's house in the nearby town of Webb City. Her mother, Glenda 'Kay' Blaser, agreed, believing her daughter would be under parental supervision.
However, the friend was living on her own, and a party took place at the residence that evening. The following day, August 12, 1992, Tracy was reported missing and has not been seen or heard from since. At the time of her disappearance, she was described as a white female with blonde hair and brown eyes, standing at 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighing 115 pounds. She was last seen wearing a pink t-shirt and cut-off jeans. Tracy had a scar on her lower lip from a dog bite and an unfinished, hand-drawn tattoo of an X-shaped cross on her left breast.
The circumstances surrounding Tracy's disappearance are deeply troubling. During the party on August 11, a man identified as Lowell Andrew Billy, who went by the name 'Al,' was reportedly paying an uncomfortable amount of attention to Tracy. Witnesses stated that he offered Tracy a ride from Webb City to her home in Joplin so she could change her clothes, with the understanding that he would bring her back to her friend's house afterward. He was driving a distinctive black van with two sunroofs, louvered side windows, and Oklahoma license plates; some witnesses also reported seeing a gun inside the vehicle. The next morning, Tracy's mother received two strange messages on her answering machine from an unidentified female voice, stating that Tracy was on her way home to change clothes. However, Tracy never arrived. When her mother went to the friend's apartment, she found Tracy's shoes in the closet, but her daughter was gone. Neighbors later reported hearing a young girl screaming, 'Get away from me! Leave me alone!' in a nearby alley on the morning of August 12.
The investigation into Tracy's disappearance quickly focused on Lowell Andrew Billy. A week after she went missing, authorities located and interviewed him, by which point he had already left the state. Billy claimed he had dropped Tracy off in front of a pawnshop in downtown Joplin, but investigators found no evidence to corroborate his story. A witness reported seeing a man matching Billy's description cleaning out a similar van near Carthage, Missouri, around noon on the day Tracy disappeared, but this could not be definitively linked to him. A year after Tracy vanished, Billy was charged and later convicted in Oklahoma for the kidnapping, rape, and forcible sodomy of another woman, for which he was sentenced to seven years in prison. He has since been released and was later incarcerated for failing to register as a sex offender. While authorities consider him the prime suspect in Tracy's case, a lack of evidence has prevented them from filing charges against him in connection with her disappearance. Police believe that Tracy was murdered. Over the years, numerous leads have been followed, and searches have been conducted, including the partial draining of a mining pit in 2005 and the search of several ponds in 2018, but these efforts have yielded no clues as to Tracy's whereabouts. The Joplin Police Department continues to investigate her case, and her mother still holds out hope for answers.Last Seen: Aug 12, 1992
