IA IA - Daughter Alleges Father (Donald Studey) is Serial Killer - Searches Yielded No Evidence - Thurman

[Curiosa20]

Could one of our members please put your research skills to work looking for an old newspaper clipping that indicated a Donald Studey/Study was actually jailed in Wyoming long ago- for writing a check without funds.
I was distracted when I saw it the other day and cannot find it now. It was in the 70’s or 80’s.

Thanking you in advance.

 

[UnapologeticallyAspie]

You were in the thick of it!

Thank you so much for getting ’Into The Thick of It’ stuck in my head. :[]

 

[Curiosa20]

So he was still alive when Lyric & Elizabeth were murdered.
Forgive me as this may have been mentioned. I'm just seeing this thread and am only on page one but the girls came to my mind right away.

Who are those girls?
I wonder of he continued after the 1990’s when his kids were certainly not still living with him. In fact, they would have been grown by mid 1980’s, right? Were the step children younger and living there? I assume they were his last wife’s kids.

And what happened to the trophy gold teeth he saved per his daughter?

 

[UnapologeticallyAspie]

Yes. That’s all the women that fit the profile from 70’s- 1999. There are several others in their late 40’s or older I did not include. There were a few from early 2000’s but I didn’t list them, either.
Until we have more details it is just too vast; I wouldn't know where to end. And many purported victims may be from other states. Then there’s the two men Lucy mentioned..
Only 3-4 in Nebraska which surprised me, in general and because Lucy said Omaha was a source site. Missouri’s Missing persons page looks like a don’t ever go out at night or alone kind of place.

What age were the men?
Does anyone know?

 

[airportwoman]

Who are those girls?
I wonder of he continued after the 1990’s when his kids were certainly not still living with him. In fact, they would have been grown by mid 1980’s, right? Were the step children younger and living there? I assume they were his last wife’s kids.

And what happened to the trophy gold teeth he saved per his daughter?

Lyric Cook and Elizabeth Collins lived on the diagonal-opposite side of Iowa, so I doubt he had anything to do with their murders. I'd say that if they lived in the same area; both girls had parents who were heavily involved with drugs, and I believe their disappearance and deaths had something to do with that, most likely that they saw something they weren't supposed to, and whoever did it was afraid they would tell somebody else.

Lyric Cook and Elizabeth Collins | Iowa Cold Cases

Lyric Cook, 10, and her cousin, Elizabeth Collins, 8, disappeared from Evansdale, IA, July 13, 2012. Their remains were found Dec. 5, 2012 in Bremer County, IA.

iowacoldcases.org

 

[Curiosa20]

There was in the 80’s, right off I-80 in Council Bluffs on the same exit one would take to get to the dog track. I worked at the Happy Chef across the street from it. Don’t judge! Lol!

@sgmet- do you remember when the dog track shut down? DDS must have been a patron there. And the no tell motel? Surely some locals must have had encounters with him. Was there a bar there, too?

 

[Curiosa20]

What age were the men?
Does anyone know?

Darn. Lucy didn’t say!

 

[airportwoman]

Here is some information about well-plugging protocols. It sounds like the biggest concern is for groundwater contamination, although danger to people and livestock is also an issue, and that when property is transferred, wells do not have to be plugged, but they do have to be disclosed.

Well Plugging

 

[Curiosa20]

Iowa court records show Donald Studey had a history of arrests for mostly minor crimes, including a 1994 charge of assault with intent to cause serious injury. He pleaded guilty to a reduced criminal mischief charge. Newsweekreported he’d served prison time for petit larceny in the 1950s and was arrested on drunk driving in Omaha in 1989. The sheriff said officers were wary of Donald Studey, telling the publication he’d routinely been in trouble with authorities, and that they never visited his trailer alone.

Woman's Claim That Her Dad Killed 70 Has TikTok Obsessed

Cadaver dogs located possible human remains on an Iowa property where Lucy Studey claims her father murdered dozens of people. Her sister says it’s a lie.

www.rollingstone.com

 

[Curiosa20]

Green Hollow Road is where Donald lived and the well is up in the hills.

"We found the well and people that she has said might know something. We've contacted them and got their statements. We here in the last week or so, we did take a couple of cadaver dogs up there and yes, they indicate it," Fremont County Sheriff Kevin Aistrope said.

'We'd hear stories about bodies in a well': Could a serial killer have lived in southwest Iowa?

Could a serial killer have been murdering in Southwest Iowa? A woman from Fremont County claims her father murdered dozens of women, burying them in a well.

www.3newsnow.com

 

[Curiosa20]

Hmm.
Lucy allegedly reported only 5 murders last year.
Maybe she just helped dispose of 5?

The woman’s claims in 2021 were similarly chilling, with details about how she watched her father and two others carry a body from the trunk of a vehicle, and her suspicion that her dad sexually assaulted and killed a 15-year-old girl, the Register reported.

Iowa serial killer fears: Woman behind murder claims gave police conflicting details in 2021, report says | Fox News

Woman claims father killed 50 to 70 victims, made kids help move their bodies, report says

www.foxnews.com

Edited to add copy

 

[Curiosa20]

Lucy Studey said she first started telling people about what she accuses her father of doing in second or third grade, telling her story to teachers, principals and priests. She said some advised it was better for family secrets to remain within the family.
She said over the years, she would call law enforcement in Iowa and Nebraska, but her stories were mostly dismissed as the imaginings of a young child: she was a preteen then. Officials have never explained why investigations were not carried out.

Aistrope said that about 10 years ago Lucy Studey had called the sheriff's office to report her allegations and a deputy went to look for the well. The deputy was unable to find it. Then, Fremont County Sheriff's Deputy Mike Wake got the call early last year and that was when investigators started taking Lucy Studey's claims seriously.
Wake, along with others in the department, had grown up hearing the stories about an erratic, often violent and inebriated Studey, a slight man who bet and lost frequently and who regularly started fights.

FBI joining hunt for alleged Iowa serial killer's burial ground

The FBI is joining local and state authorities in rural Iowa to determine next steps for an investigation into allegations a now-deceased man killed scores.

www.newsweek.com

 

[KKinMA]

Could one of our members please put your research skills to work looking for an old newspaper clipping that indicated a Donald Studey/Study was actually jailed in Wyoming long ago- for writing a check without funds.
I was distracted when I saw it the other day and cannot find it now. It was in the 70’s or 80’s.

Thanking you in advance.

Attached what I could find

 

[sgmet]

@sgmet- do you remember when the dog track shut down? DDS must have been a patron there. And the no tell motel? Surely some locals must have had encounters with him. Was there a bar there, too?

The dog track added slot machines in the mid 90's, converted to a full casino, and changed ownership. But I believe the dog track continued operation through 2015. It was a busy place... When the dog track opened in 1986 the gambling age was 18. The drinking age had just switched from 19 to 21, but anybody already 19 was grandfathered in. That's worth pointing out because I was going to school in Council Bluffs at the time, and looking back it's almost unimaginable how much debauchery I got myself into at such a young age. I should have been in rehab before I was even 21.

The dog races were seasonal, something like May through mid December. The parties and the bars were of course year round. Plenty of illegal bookies if you wanted to bet sports, drugs were readily available, strip clubs, everything. Cruising was big at the time, up and down Broadway in Council Bluffs or cross the river and cruise Dodge Street in Omaha. Downtown Omaha was considered the seedy part of town. It was pretty common knowledge at the time that you could find street prostitutes at 17th and Farnam, but in reality the sex workers were all over the place. And yes, several "no-tell motel" options.

I'm sure locals could have had encounters with him, but out of the thousands and thousands of people I encountered there 35 years ago I surely wouldn't remember even if he was somebody I encountered daily.

Is it possible that somebody could have gone missing and nobody noticed? Absolutely. I guess technically I never had a place of my own, I was always "staying with" somebody. I'd take off with no notice and stay with other people. Almost a commune type of thing, people just come and go. Looking back it's hard to imagine living like that, but I certainly did. And so did a lot of other people.

 

[bkr5]

Greetings. I have some familiarity with this area, more so on the NE side of the MO River. Donald D Studey did time in the Nebraska State Penitentiary for 18 months (April 1963) for check fraud. Seems that was a common crime he commited across many states. He also may have been in the service sometime right out of high school; where he was visiting family in Nebraska City, Nebraska in the early 50's, quoted: "home on furlough". In the 1963 court conviction, the judge chastised him for being a poor father and provider, and described him as a "drifter". He had a borther/cousin/etc. living in Gillette, WY by the name of John Studey. Yes, he inherited the land, his father Ira, owned it previous to that. The Study family is rather extensive and has been in the area since at least the 1850's.

As goes wells, it is not uncommon to confuse a well and a cistern; both can have very wide openings. There are hand-dug wells, and there are also "sand point" wells (these are too narrow an opening for our purposes here). Sand point wells are more like our modern wells, and generally employ a windmill, pump, etc, to extract water. In any case, 100 feet for a well isn't particularly deep for a sandpoint, but hand-dug---that's pretty deep--it would be very very challenging to excavate. In the case of this well, I was under the impression that it was at the edge of the property line on the east side of the parcel (The parcel is irregular shaped). Looking at a 1950's aerial photo; it does appear a farmstead/outbuildings stood in the general area of the trailer.

I would venture a guess that it is a very old well, and likely belonging to a one-time homestead that is no longer there. This area is called the Loess Hills, because the hills are comprised mostly of Loess. This soil is fairly compact and is wind-blown in origin, and can be kind-of be "cut away", it has very little rock and gravel typically. As goes the culture of the area, it is important to remember that relatively few people live in Fremont county. Families have been there for generations. If you decide to go after someone as a serial killer, you better be 100% sure, because everyone will know you made the accusation. If you are wrong, it will stay with you for life. Why? Because there are so few people there, and so much intermarriage, that you will be a social pariah forever. Why not just move then? Because, most of the people there are attached to the land (often times inherited) for agricultural purposes, etc. Generally, you'd be asking people to move away from their source of income and families---so I think that it is possible that something could go on unabated.

I don't know about the 50 to 70 number, but I can say that Omaha has a very long history of organized crime and prostitution, but by the time of the 1960's and on, crime and prostitution was far less "organized". Assuming he did this, and was active in the 1960/70/80's, I would think it wasn't just sex workers, but others as well.

 

[Curiosa20]

Attached what I could find

Thank you so much!!

 

[NewGirl78]

If you look down that road though you'll see several houses. In Iowa rural houses might get water from a rural water association, but those usually don't cover very very sparsely populated areas like that. Especially with no agricultural water needs. I'd be willing to bet that every single one of those residences gets their water from a well and none of them are documented.

Related concern - most private wells aren't tested either. This area had some insane flooding in 2019, in 2016 too. When wells get flooded they can get contaminated.

I read somewhere that the well is actually behind the house on a Neighbor’s property or on the edge of the former Studey property. I pulled up the county property line map and also looked at google maps to try and estimate it’s location. It could also be an old livestock well or an even older well given the history of that area. I live in this area and it is heavily wooded and it also consist of Bluffs and flat pasture areas. If this story is true there is difficult terrain to search in addition to the well. I would assume that the well is on the higher ground behind the property which looks more like a pasture area. Hoping someone can look at these images and estimate where a well might be located.

 

[NewGirl78]

If you look down that road though you'll see several houses. In Iowa rural houses might get water from a rural water association, but those usually don't cover very very sparsely populated areas like that. Especially with no agricultural water needs. I'd be willing to bet that every single one of those residences gets their water from a well and none of them are documented.

Related concern - most private wells aren't tested either. This area had some insane flooding in 2019, in 2016 too. When wells get flooded they can get contaminated.

I read somewhere that the well is actually behind the house on a Neighbor’s property or on the edge of the former Studey property. I pulled up the county property line map and also looked at google maps to try and estimate it’s location. It could also be an old livestock well or an even older well given the history of that area. I live in this area and it is heavily wooded and it also consist of Bluffs and flat pasture areas. If this story is true there is difficult terrain to search in addition to the well. I would assume that the well is on the higher ground behind the property which looks more like a pasture area. Hoping someone can look at these images and estimate where a well might be located.

 

[airportwoman]

The dog track added slot machines in the mid 90's, converted to a full casino, and changed ownership. But I believe the dog track continued operation through 2015. It was a busy place... When the dog track opened in 1986 the gambling age was 18. The drinking age had just switched from 19 to 21, but anybody already 19 was grandfathered in. That's worth pointing out because I was going to school in Council Bluffs at the time, and looking back it's almost unimaginable how much debauchery I got myself into at such a young age. I should have been in rehab before I was even 21.

The dog races were seasonal, something like May through mid December. The parties and the bars were of course year round. Plenty of illegal bookies if you wanted to bet sports, drugs were readily available, strip clubs, everything. Cruising was big at the time, up and down Broadway in Council Bluffs or cross the river and cruise Dodge Street in Omaha. Downtown Omaha was considered the seedy part of town. It was pretty common knowledge at the time that you could find street prostitutes at 17th and Farnam, but in reality the sex workers were all over the place. And yes, several "no-tell motel" options.

I'm sure locals could have had encounters with him, but out of the thousands and thousands of people I encountered there 35 years ago I surely wouldn't remember even if he was somebody I encountered daily.

Is it possible that somebody could have gone missing and nobody noticed? Absolutely. I guess technically I never had a place of my own, I was always "staying with" somebody. I'd take off with no notice and stay with other people. Almost a commune type of thing, people just come and go. Looking back it's hard to imagine living like that, but I certainly did. And so did a lot of other people.

Long story made short: I almost ended up at Creighton University in the early 1990s, and I've always heard that school is not in the best neighborhood, and hasn't been for many years. (I was wait-listed at my #1 choice, and then my name came up on the list and I went there instead.)

I had to pay a $300 deposit to hold my place at the school, and to this day I consider it some of the best money I ever spent.

 

[airportwoman]

Greetings. I have some familiarity with this area, more so on the NE side of the MO River. Donald D Studey did time in the Nebraska State Penitentiary for 18 months (April 1963) for check fraud. Seems that was a common crime he commited across many states. He also may have been in the service sometime right out of high school; where he was visiting family in Nebraska City, Nebraska in the early 50's, quoted: "home on furlough". In the 1963 court conviction, the judge chastised him for being a poor father and provider, and described him as a "drifter". He had a borther/cousin/etc. living in Gillette, WY by the name of John Studey. Yes, he inherited the land, his father Ira, owned it previous to that. The Study family is rather extensive and has been in the area since at least the 1850's.

(snipped)

I don't know about the 50 to 70 number, but I can say that Omaha has a very long history of organized crime and prostitution, but by the time of the 1960's and on, crime and prostitution was far less "organized". Assuming he did this, and was active in the 1960/70/80's, I would think it wasn't just sex workers, but others as well.

This post reminded me of the Ray and Faye Copeland case, from rural Missouri in the 1980s and 1990s. He "sourced" his victims from the Kansas City area. (One wonders if these two ever crossed paths, although AFAIK all of the Copeland's victims were men.)