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Her father, she alleges, was a murderous man who preyed on women and dumped their bodies in wells and along mushroom trails in the remote western Iowa area known as Green Hollow.

Claims made by McKiddy, now living in Council Bluffs, Iowa, were taken seriously enough by the FBI, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and the Fremont County, Iowa, Sheriff’s Department that the agencies spent parts of three days in December 2022 core-drilling at least 85 feet deep into a well on properties spanning some 420 acres. Finding only animal bones, the agencies closed the case.

With nothing found, Fremont County got stuck with the bill — about $40,000.

But the high-profile reports that her father, Donald Dean Studey, who died in 2013 at 75, used the property to conceal victims won’t go away quietly.

Since the agencies vacated the property, two Los Angeles-based production companies eying a documentary on the topic have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars and counting, believing that the law enforcement dig may not have gone far enough.

And following that abandoned law enforcement dig, other details in the case have come to light.

The journal of Studey’s sister, Marilyn Kepler — herself now on parole — has surfaced, alleging murders by Studey and ties to organized crime.

With her sentence having been commuted for battery against her boyfriend, Kepler also spoke with a Lee Public Service Journalism Team reporter. She said Studey was her “guardian angel” when they were younger. But as he grew older, she said, her brother grew to be “dead inside,” a “hitman” for the mafia who killed with ease and had “no human compassion whatsoever.”

The body count, Kepler said, could be as high as 100.

Meanwhile, the body of one of Studey’s four wives was exhumed Aug. 10, 2023 — paid for by the production companies — and re-autopsied, with the pathologist writing in her report that the initial findings of suicide didn’t add up.

Kepler says the death of the wife, Charlotte Studey, was a hit carried out by, or ordered by, Donald Studey, while McKiddy and her stepsisters say they’ve never doubted that Donald Studey fatally shot his wife in a car in Omaha.

“I was 15 at the time, and I’ve never believed (it was suicide),” said one of the late wife’s three daughters, Marie McGovern. “The minute I got the call, I'm like, ‘Oh my God, he finally succeeded’
 He just didn't put her in a well.”

McGovern added she recalls frequent savage beatings of her mother by Studey, including one time during which she says she got in between them, prompting Studey to pull his rifle on McGovern as she raced from the home. Police were aware of domestic violence, responding to many calls at the Studey homes.

The FBI, which was part of the original 2022 dig, also has a file on Studey, which the agency confirms has 612 “responsive” pages from April 2021, after McKiddy’s allegations were reported to the FBI, through January of 2023 — a month after the failed dig ended Dec. 9, 2022. Additionally, the FBI has at least one hour, 42 minutes of audio interviews on Studey, the agency confirmed.

The contents of the file remain under review before being released to the public, but McKiddy and her sister, Susan Studey, were among those interviewed. It’s not known if there are older files on Studey maintained by the agency or later entries.

Files on FBI informants — something family members like Kepler and McKiddy believe Studey was — are not subject to freedom of information requests.

Studey had done time in jails across the country, including a stint in Leavenworth federal prison for going AWOL from the military. But he was never charged with any killings, so much of what is alleged against him remains a mystery.

Digging back into the case

With a flurry of new information, a private investigation has been launched, financed by the two Los Angeles production companies whose principals are consulting with forensic specialists and other experts in hopes of doing a wider, more thorough dig on the land and producing a multi-part documentary.

Principals for those companies — This Is Just A Test Media in collaboration with Bullish Content — said they have invested upward of $380,000 and filmed more than 200 hours of footage, including at least 50 hours of interviews.

McKiddy signed a no-money contract with the companies to tell her unscripted story and get them to look into the allegations, according to the companies and McKiddy.

Still, the question stands: Is McKiddy, 55, telling the truth about her father?

Susan Studey and some authorities have cast doubt on her account since initial news of the case broke in October 2022, and the agencies’ dig turned up nothing but a horse or cow bone and debris.

Allegations detail acts of ‘a lifelong criminal and a murderer’

McKiddy’s story — which has been told to teachers, pastors and law enforcement over 45-plus years — has grown over the nearly two years that she’s been telling it to reporters and on social media.

In initial police reports filed in Fremont County, she stated that there were about 15 bodies in a well. Most of the women, she says, were transients — some whom her father dubbed “bar slushes” — picked up by Studey in nearby Omaha.

She has alleged in subsequent news interviews that her father killed several women a year over many years, as well as a 15-year-old runaway. Most of the women, according to McKiddy, were invited to stay in the home and watch over his four kids, McKiddy said.

McKiddy also claims Studey killed a shop owner in a mechanic store where he worked in the 1960s, beating the man to death with a tool after the owner surprised him during a robbery attempt. She says she witnessed Studey stomp the head of a woman and that he robbed and killed people he followed from the former Ak-Sar-Ben Race Track and Coliseum in Omaha.

And she says that her dad was affiliated with organized crime, running guns and drugs in hollowed-out trees from a sawmill in Murray, Nebraska, owned by another of Studey’s sisters, the late Enid “Jean” Lawson. He also would keep the gold teeth or fillings of those he allegedly killed, McKiddy and other relatives told the Lee Enterprises investigative team.

“My dad was a lifelong criminal and a murderer, and I don't need to solve every goddamn thing he did,” McKiddy said. “But if I can get some bodies up out of a well, then I should. 
 My father is dead. I can only offer the victims' families closure and give the victims a proper burial."

So why are the wells in focus?

McKiddy says she recalls how she and her siblings would bring bags of lye, a chemical thought to help decompose remains, for their father to pour into the wells. She said the intent was to hide victims of her father’s killings, and she claims she vividly recalls seeing parts of four bodies — two women and two men — during those times.

After the investigation went quiet, McKiddy moved from Lakeland, Florida, to Council Bluffs, Iowa, to push for another probe at the site of the “correct” wells, some of which she never spoke about to authorities.

McKiddy claims those authorities dug in the wrong well by mistake.

But she said each attempt since she arrived to call the FBI, DCI or other authorities has been met with a hangup.

A separate dig done by property owner Sean Smith used bulldozers and radar to try to locate remains, according to Smith and McKiddy, who passed to Lee Enterprises footage of the failed excavation.

That second dig has changed the landscape of Green Hollow and emptied about 20 feet of land from where 90-foot deep wells are located. McKiddy said in an interview she fears the bulldozers may have pushed out remains.

Smith, who spoke with Lee Enterprises, said the dig was done with a Fremont County sheriff’s deputy present in case any human remains were located.

“We all believed her, I always did,” Smith said, who added that Donald Studey oddly called him out of the blue before Studey died, saying he wanted piping in one of the wells and that Smith might “find bones” because he buried animals in them.

Smith didn’t buy the story.

“I always did believe there was a body in that one,” he said. “I still believe it. I don't believe there's 70 bodies, but I do believe there's something up there,” referring to his land and its 14 wells. McKiddy says records show 28 wells, four of them that no one knows about.

McKiddy is pushing for a more thorough search of the vast property and its wells, which the documentary companies are now planning with Smith on board to access his land. When a new dig would take place is not clear, depending on when the Los Angeles companies can line up the needed experts, including forensic anthropologists. As it stands, they are aiming for winter or sometime in the new year.

'There are no bodies in those hills'

To her detractors, McKiddy’s swelling story is indicative of a mind that took shape during the abuse that she and others suffered at Studey’s hands during childhood.

One of those detractors is her sister, Susan Studey. Another sister has never commented publicly on the case or the attention it has received. A fourth sibling, a son, died by suicide at age 39.

Susan’s story also has shifted. She originally told reporters when the story broke that the only time she saw her father upset was when a man nearly ran over the family’s dog. Her father promptly beat the man in a fight, she said.

Now, Susan acknowledges her father was a kind and loving but struggling man who could snap with anger, was overly strict – particularly when his kids were teenagers – and that he got into fights. But she insists “he was no killer
”

“My dad was an abusive prick, but he was no murderer,” Susan, 57, said, recalling that she had to throw her body over her stepmother to protect her “because he was beating her to a pulp
He beat everybody that he knew. But there are no bodies in those hills. He was not a serial killer; there’s nothing there.”

McGovern echoed that Studey’s mood could turn to rage in an instant.

“It was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” she said. “There was a lot of terrible. And when the terrible came in, it was bad.”

A law enforcement official who was present at the 2022 dig cast some doubt on the credibility of the alleged witnesses who have come forward.

“It’s hard to put a lot of credit to what they say just because they've told so many variations of the stories over the years,” the investigator told Lee Enterprises.

“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."

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.

‘I don’t think she’s a pathological liar’