Photo: Getty Images
A woman is claiming her late father was one of the most prolific serial killers in American history, responsible for the deaths of 50 to 70 women during a span of more than 30 years.
Lucy Studey, who chose to have herself identified publicly, told Newsweek that her father, Donald Dean Studey, who died in 2013 at the age of 75, had her and her siblings help him move the bodies of the female murder victims buried near a well on his property outside Thurman, Iowa.
“I know where the bodies are buried,” Lucy Studey told Newsweek, whose reporters were present at the scene amid a police investigation.
Lucy noted that her father would use a wheelbarrow in the warmer months and a toboggan in the winter to transport the bodies.
"He would just tell us we had to go to the well, and I knew what that meant," Studey said via Newsweek. "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."
Fremont County Sheriff Kevin Aistrope told the Des Moines Register on Monday that Donald Studey is reported to have murdered "five or six" women each year for several decades, according to his daughter.
Aistrope confirmed that two cadaver dogs present at the property had "hits" indicating that decomposed remains could be in the area, but the department still needed more proof.
"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 said via the Des Moines Register. "We've got to have more proof than that."
Aistrope did, however, tell Newsweek that he believed Lucy Studey "100 percent that there's bodies in here" while discussing the investigation at the property owned by Donald Studey during his lifetime.
Authorities initially looked into Donald Studey as a potential serial killer in 2021, but needed to locate the well and get approval from the current owners of the property and neighboring properties before launching searches.