Iowa officials are investigating a woman’s claims that her late father was a serial killer who may have been responsible for the deaths of 70 women.
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Lucy Studey, daughter of Donald Dean Studey, said that her father murdered “five or six” women a year over several decades, according to Fremont County Sheriff Kevin Aistrope, per the Des Moines Register.
She told officials that the bodies were buried in and around an abandoned well on their rural 5-acre property, about 40 miles from Omaha, Nebraska. The women he killed were mostly prostitutes and runaways, she said.
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Aistrope said his office began looking into Lucy Studey’s claims in 2021 after she filed at least a second allegation that there were bodies of women on the property where her father lived until his death in 2013.
The sheriff said officers spent much of last year trying to get permission from the current owners to conduct searches of the property and the well. Aistrope said that excavating the well, which was 90 feet deep, would be a “major undertaking.”
However, two cadaver dogs and investigators went to the site on Oct. 21 of this year and had “hits,” Aistrope said, which indicates the possible existence of decomposing remains in the area near the well.
“She’s got a hell of a story, but we don’t have any proof of anything other than we had a cadaver dog hit,” Aistrope told the outlet. “We’ve got to have more proof than that.”
He added that it’s possible the women came from several regions, not just the Omaha-Council Bluffs area, as they would have picked up on 70 women going missing.
“So if there is 70 people, they’re not all from here,” Aistrope said.
The Fremont County Sheriff’s Office asked the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation for assistance, but the DCI declined to comment on the investigation as it is in the early stages. Omaha police said they are aware of the case and will offer expertise, increasing their participation as more information is learned.
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Donald Dean Studey lived under multiple assumed names and made his living smuggling guns and drugs, according to Lucy Studey. He had a history of arrests as well, court records show.
