A now-deceased Iowa serial killer of women was exposed by his own daughter who alleged that her late father killed nearly 50 to 70 women over the course of three decades.
Following her revelations, authorities in Thurman – Iowa launched an investigation. The woman namely Lucy Studey claimed that she helped bury dead bodies on the family’s Iowa property.
Lucy Studey told Newsweek that her late dad Donald Dean Studey, who died in 2013 at age 75, killed 50 to 70 women, most of whom were sex workers, over the course of three decades.
She alleges that as a child, she and her siblings were forced to help him dispose of the bodies in a well near Thurman, Iowa.
“I know where the bodies are buried,” Lucy told the outlet. “He would just tell us we had to go to the well, and I knew what that meant.”
Lucy alleges Donald would stab, shoot or strike the heads of his victims inside a trailer on their property.
After the alleged killings, she said they would transport the bodies to the area of the well, via wheelbarrow during the hotter months and toboggan in the winter. They would then cover them with dirt and lye, according to the outlet.
“Every time I went to the well or into the hills, I didn’t think I was coming down. I thought he would kill me because I wouldn’t keep my mouth shut,” she said.
Speaking with KETV-TV Monday, Fremont County Sheriff Kevin Aistrope said Lucy’s claims are being investigated. Sheriff Aistrope said that they don’t know the exact crime scene nor they have found victims or bodies yet.
“According to the dogs, this is a very large burial site,” he said.
According to Newsweek, two cadaver dogs detected the scent of human remains across four different sites on the property on Friday.
The dogs’ handler Jim Peters told the outlet that there is the odor of human decomposition in the area. “More work needs to be done to confirm that…I feel pretty good about what I saw from the dogs, but I’m not going to hang my hat on that.”
According to the Des Moines Register, authorities first began investigating Lucy’s claims in 2021, after she contacted the sheriff’s office at least twice.
She allegedly told authorities her dad, who died in 2013, would hunt for his victims some 40 miles away in the Omaha, Neb., area, and murder “five or six” women per year, before dumping their bodies in or around the 90-foot-deep well on their Iowa property.
“If we had had 70 missing persons from Omaha-Council Bluffs, we would have picked up on that. So, if there is 70 people, they’re not all from here,” Aistrope told the paper.
Newsweek reports that over the years, Lucy tried to alert teachers, church leaders, and law enforcement. But her claims were not investigated by authorities.
“No one would listen to me,” Lucy said, per the outlet. “The teacher said family matters should be handled as a family, and law enforcement has said they couldn’t trust the memory of a child. I was just a kid then, but I remember it all.”
The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation is assisting in the investigation.
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