Iowa woman claims her dad was a serial killer and forced her to dispose of over 70 bodies 

Police opened an investigation after an Iowa woman claimed that her father was a serial killer that forced her to help him dispose of over 70 bodies. 

Lucy Studey said her father, Donald Dean Studey killed 50 to 70 women over the course of 30 years. If such claims are true, it would mean Study was one of the most prolific known serial killers in American History, according to Newsweek. 

Lucy also said that her dad forced her and her sibling to help him move the bodies of his victims and bury them near a well on their property. 

“He would just tell us we had to go to the well, and I knew what that meant,” Studey reportedly said, according to Newsweek.

Her father would dump the bodies into the 90-to-100-foot well, and then make the siblings pile dirt and lye on top, she added. 

“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 continued.

After Lucy revealed her shocking story, authorities sent cadaver dogs to the location she identified and got “hits,” indicating that there could be decomposing bodies buried in the area, said Fremont County Sheriff Kevin Aistrope.  

“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 Register. “We’ve got to have more proof than that.”

However, Aistrope said the “hits” from the dogs give her story credibility and authorities are setting up “a game plan” to proceed with the investigation. The next steps would involve the use of sonar and then digging to search for human remains. 

Donald Studey is suspected of luring women, mostly sex workers from Omaha, Nebraska, and bringing them to his farmland to kill them. Studey had a criminal history as a drug and gun runner, according to Lucy. He died in March 2013 at the age of 75.