From the The case of Donald Dean Studey series An Iowa woman claims her father was a killer and dozens of victims are buried outside Omaha. Will renewed interest from Hollywood filmmakers result in new leads? ERIC FERKENHOFF Public Service Journalism Team Oct 30, 2024 Listen now and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS Feed | SoundStack | All Of Our Podcasts “I won't name names, but there's several people that we talked to — all offering different accounts over the years. There's really no consistent, steady story from witness to witness to witness to give us any legs to stand on and any credibility for us to go do anything further than what we've already done.” So what would it take to reopen a case? “Credible witnesses, physical evidence,” he said. McKiddy said she has heard the allegations that she is a sick woman and a liar — from coworkers, old friends, family and strangers on the street — or on social media, where the family fights over which side is true. “I don't care,” McKiddy said. “I'm not here to convince total strangers that are not involved in my investigation whether or not I'm telling the truth. I'm here to recover bodies and provide the victims' families with closure. If I can heal from my childhood and be able to live peacefully in my own skin, then that's a bonus." Lucy McKiddy walks on her family's former property, Saturday, Oct. 12, in rural Fremont County near Thurman, Iowa. JUSTIN WAN, LINCOLN JOURNAL STAR Vivid account finds some believers Earlier this month and two years since her claims initially made global news, McKiddy toured the vast and hilly landscape with a Lee Enterprises reporter and a photographer. As she walked along the gravel road leading to her family’s former property, stretching about five acres but looking onto Smith’s more sprawling 420 acres, McKiddy said good and bad memories and emotions flooded her. She would point to a bridge or an empty lot where fond memories occurred. Just as quickly she would spot scenes where she said terrible crimes happened, including one area off the road where she claims her father’s associate burned a body before Studey put it in a well. Or another where she says she recalled her father terribly beating her after he was called to her school when McKiddy, then a child, told school leaders about her father’s alleged crimes. And McKiddy laughed as she told the story of the Goat of Green Hollow, a legend that scared nearby residents away from the land — a fear that Studey allegedly took advantage of by dressing up as a goat-human hybrid, armed, to frighten away strangers. The story of a goatman terrorizing people who came upon the land became both fascinating and frightening to locals, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity after the DCI shut down all communication with the media. Another law enforcement official put it this way: “I wish there was some credibility to her or it. When it was four or five bodies, I thought, ‘well, that’s possible.’ When it got to be 70-some bodies, I knew better.” People around town, according to an official who grew up in the area and with the story, “said there was a monster in there. And of course, there was the Goat of Green Hollow. In Green Hollow, they had all kinds of freaky, and of course we went there (as teenagers) because we were stupid.” One of the officials said people in law enforcement believe parts of McKiddy’s account. “We all believed it was probably partially true,” he said, also expressing reservation about how McKiddy’s story has grown over the years. Others believe her too. Mailboxes outside Lucy McKiddy's childhood home are seen on Saturday, Oct. 12, in rural Fremont County near Thurman, Iowa. JUSTIN WAN, LINCOLN JOURNAL STAR ‘I don’t think she’s a pathological liar’ McKiddy’s psychotherapist and hypnotherapist, Lisa Parisien, spoke with a Lee Enterprises reporter with McKiddy’s approval. Parisien said McKiddy suffers from PTSD but also noted she believes McKiddy’s account of Donald Studey. “Considering her childhood, she's incredibly stable,” Parisien said. “She has suffered a lot of trauma. … For people who don’t really know her or understand her, her stories can sound outlandish. (But) I don't think she's a pathological liar. She's very consistent. And she has no motive to make these kinds of stories up because who would want to make these stories up about themselves or their family?” Parisien also questioned those who think McKiddy is doing all of this to gain fame or cash in. “It's been important to her since she was a very young child that those bodies in that well — if there are, which I do believe — be put to rest, that they finally have a proper burial. I think it's really important for people to realize that she has no motive,” since she’s not making money off the documentary and has been threatened or lost work since the allegations became public two years ago. Parisien noted that, as a child, McKiddy would dig into her arms with her fingernails, leaving scars to remember those she claims her father murdered. “She would grab her arm and tell herself, ‘You have to remember this,’” Parisien said. “She has imprinted her memory so clearly and vividly … I believe that's why her memory is so clear. She made an agreement with herself to never forget so she could finally someday tell the story.” ‘I found her credible’ Stewart Fillmore, a 29-year veteran of the FBI who has interviewed McKiddy at length on many occasions, agrees with Parisien and others about the consistency of McKiddy’s story. “I’ve had numerous conversations with Lucy. … When I first started talking to her, just the stories, it just seemed outrageous, really,” Fillmore, who is consulting with the production companies, said in an interview with Lee Enterprises. “But the more that I kind of dug into it, I just started, I found her credible, to be quite honest. The more I listened to her and got more of the details of it, just the way that she could recall things, she was consistent.” Fillmore has never officially investigated the Studey case. But in his experience, he said, he couldn’t understand what kept the 2022 investigation at the Green Hollow scene so narrow, with the investigators’ chief witness — McKiddy — not even present to direct authorities to the exact well where she claims bodies were buried. At the time, the Iowa DCI, which handled communications for the investigation, said they precisely followed McKiddy’s directions to a well that she had led them to before. But McKiddy insisted, then and now, that it was the wrong well that was drilled. “I still think it's a valid case to look into,” Fillmore said. “As many times as I've heard the overall story and asked some probing questions about it, she’s remained consistent, and she admits to things that she doesn’t know.” A worry for Fillmore is that the allegations, if not taken seriously, could blow up on authorities including the FBI. A Green Hollow Road sign in rural Fremont County near Thurman, Iowa is seen on Saturday, Oct. 12. JUSTIN WAN, LINCOLN JOURNAL STAR A body unearthed, conflicting autopsies McKiddy’s hold on her allegations only solidified with the exhumation of her stepmother and the change of the autopsy findings. The body was exhumed in August 2023, paid for by the production companies. And, at the family’s urging, an Omaha pathologist did a second autopsy, changing the findings from suicide to undetermined — an unusual move 40 years after her death on Feb. 8, 1984. The death of Charlotte Studey, 42, initially had been ruled a self-inflicted gunshot wound, saying she was shot at point-blank range. But the August 2023 autopsy showed she suffered the gunshot wound from some distance. The second autopsy, which the Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team has reviewed, suggests it would have been impossible for Charlotte Studey to fire the single shot at herself from a rifle while sitting in the driver’s side of Donald Studey’s car outside her apartment in Omaha. She was 5-feet-2 with arms not long enough to fire the shot, and nothing was found suggesting she used an instrument to trigger the .22 caliber Marlin 60 rifle. The August 2023 autopsy, done by Dr. Erin Linde at the Douglas County Medical Examiner’s Office in Omaha, also noted a history of abuse between Charlotte and Donald Studey and that she had moved out of the residence the couple shared prior to her death. And it noted a possible defensive wound on her right arm, indicating she may have raised it to defend herself. In her 2023 autopsy conclusions, Linde wrote: “While the reported circumstances of death described in the investigative reports and findings described in the original (1984) autopsy would support a manner of suicide; the discrepant verbally provided circumstances, the reported history of domestic violence, the findings from the second autopsy including the indeterminate-range gunshot wound and punctate red-discoloration suggestive of possible stippling on the right arm, and lack of scene and original autopsy photographs raise multiple additional questions regarding the circumstances of death and original autopsy findings …Therefore, the manner of death in this case would be best classified as undetermined.” The change to “undetermined” stops short of classifying the death as a homicide, and Linde notes in her report that she was at a disadvantage in reviewing the case because key police documents, including original autopsy and crime scene photos, from the case have gone missing. Linde could not be reached by Lee Enterprises for comment despite several messages. Charlotte Studey’s daughters claim a coverup by Omaha investigators, and are fighting in court to get access to the files. But Omaha police say the Studey evidence was likely purged after so many decades and changes to how they catalog evidence. “She never got the justice she should have gotten since he never went to jail (for this) like he should have,” said another of Charlotte Studey’s daughters, Dawn Schultz. “We don't understand how he was so untouchable.” Recalling their life with Donald Studey, the sisters said the beatings of their mom and of the children were brutal. Punches to the face, kicks with boots to the gut and belt-buckle lashings. The third daughter, Charlotte Harris, who said she remembers the gold teeth kept in a jewelry box, added: “I don't see why they can't give the family the answers that they need,” by releasing investigative and original autopsy details to the family. A rural Fremont County highway near Thurman, Iowa is seen on Saturday, Oct. 12. JUSTIN WAN, LINCOLN JOURNAL STAR ‘One of the lucky ones’ Charlotte Studey was one of two wives of Donald Studey who allegedly died by suicide. Lucy Studey, McKiddy’s mother and namesake, died of a hanging in a small closet off the family home’s kitchen outside of Denver on Jan. 17, 1970. But investigators found a bloodied scene and evidence of a beating when they showed up at the home. The closet was so small that her knees could touch the ground, according to reports from family members, including Kepler, who saw the house at the time — a year after McKiddy was born. Now, an investigator with a Colorado coroner’s office has agreed to review all new material and put fresh eyes on the Lucy Studey case to see if it was, in fact, a suicide. That second look, which could reopen the case — or simply confirm the original ruling of suicide — has not been completed. Barbara Rich was another past wife of Donald Studey. Their daughter echoed that Studey was a violent man whose rage could turn on in an instant. “He was a very scary man and he exuded that,” said Rich’s daughter, Marilyn Hill, McKiddy’s half-sister. “I just felt like he was evil personified.” Among other things, Hill said her mother suffered terrible beatings and was sexually assaulted by Donald Studey in front of Hill and other children. A fourth woman, Donald Studey’s girlfriend Anna Tordoff, died in July 2006 after reportedly overdosing on medication, but Kepler and McKiddy believe something more sinister occurred. “She called me and said if anything happened to me, it was Donnie,” McKiddy claims Tordoff told her. “She said, ‘It was not suicide. You don’t really know your dad.’” Donald Studey had four wives, and he talked about marriage with one of his girlfriends, a woman named Beth who gave birth to Donald Studey’s first-known child when they were teenagers, Beth said. Beth, who asked not to be fully identified, alleged that Donald Studey tried on at least one occasion to kill her, chasing her while she was pregnant and on foot through lawns in his speeding car. As Beth ran and tried to evade the car, Studey would throw the car into reverse and try again, she said. Another time, Donald Studey allegedly walked up with a gun to the driver’s side of Beth’s car, with the former couple’s son next to her and threatened to harm her. “I guess I was one of the lucky ones,” Beth said in the interview, saying Studey stalked her after the relationship ended. “I probably would have been No. 1 in that mess.” Up next: Witnesses to Donald Studey’s allegedly murderous life have come forward. They include his sister and a man who says he carried a body for Studey up toward a well on the sprawling property. In this Series