Watch Now: Latest search for missing Welch girls’ remains ends without significant finds

Busick has said Pennington told him the girls’ bodies were buried in a root cellar, but Busick later recanted and said Pennington only talked of having filled in a root cellar, Stansill said.

Picher, which lies within the EPA’s Tar Creek Superfund Site, is now a ghost town, with residents and property owners having been bought out in the early 2000s because of lead and zinc contamination and the potential for cave-ins into abandoned mines.

Stansill said he will regroup — reinterview former property owners who lived next to Pennington — and possibly bring them to the site and search the area of 627 and 629 Ottawa St. again, “maybe as soon as next week.”

Stansill’s search was the latest in at least 25 searches for the girls’ remains in Ottawa County and Grand Lake.

Lorene Bible, Lauria’s mother, said she remains hopeful.

“It’s like all the other searches,” Bible said. “You come; you hope you find something. (What) we have done today, we can check it off our list (that the girls) were not here.”

Bible said Stansill and Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation Agent Tammy Ferrari have proved that they will exhaust all efforts.

“For them to say, ‘We may not be totally sure we’re done,’ we’ll come back,” she said.