The investigation into a daughter’s claims that her father killed and then buried bodies in wells on about 400 acres of farmland near Omaha suffered a setback after no additional wells were found during a recent forensic dig.
With crews – commissioned by a documentary production crew – still searching for the wells, forensic anthropologists haven’t fully been able to test the veracity of Lucy Studey-McKiddy’s claims that the rural hillside, located about 40 miles from Omaha, was used as a burial ground for her father’s alleged victims.
The most recent dig lasted five full days in late May, with a reporter and photographer for Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team on site.
Cadaver dogs also sniffed out the potential for human remains in several areas, and ground-penetrating radar was used to check for potential wells. There were hits by the dogs and seeming detections by the radar operators of something underground at one site. But after a search by a forensics team, including shoveling down a few feet and scraping the land, there was no sign of an anomaly in the soil to indicate the presence of wells.
But the hillside isn’t the only place a documentary production crew and family of the now-deceased father, Donald Dean Studey, are digging for additional answers.
Of particular interest is the death of one of Donald Studey’s wives, who allegedly died of suicide but whose manner of death recently was reclassified as undetermined. Now, a Los Angeles production company working on a documentary about the case says they have compelling evidence that Charlotte Studey was murdered by her husband. They believe her death should be ruled a homicide.
No official change in the manner of death has yet occurred. But a legal battle between Omaha police and Charlotte Studey’s three daughters continues, with the family fighting in court to get initial police and investigative reports unsealed. They hope to force Omaha police to reopen her case as a homicide investigation.
As that process plays out, no one involved in the dig – daughter Studey-McKiddy, 56, the current landowner, forensic anthropologists and archaeologists, and the production company – has given up on Studey-McKiddy’s story that bodies are buried in wells on the property.
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The dig
“Lucy believes that something happened on that property,” said William Belcher, a former Department of Defense forensic anthropologist and archaeologist now teaching at the University of Nebraska.
Belcher ran the recent five-day digging effort.
“Just from an archeological standpoint, where we looked, we didn't find anything overall,” he said. “But that doesn't mean there's nothing out there in places that we didn't look.”
Studey-McKiddy moved from Florida to Council Bluffs, Iowa, just outside of Omaha, to push the investigation further. She said she is hoping to continue working with Belcher and landowner Sean Smith to check for wells in other areas, and she has also been working on her own to locate potential witnesses to her father's alleged killings.
There is no current timetable for further digs, but Smith, Belcher and Studey-McKiddy have agreed to continue the effort together and notify law enforcement should something be found.
It is known that the property had many dry and wet wells since the area, Green Hollow, used to be the site of homes for poorer residents.
The only well that the team of Belcher and his five students located was the same wet well that the FBI and the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation excavated and core-drilled in December 2022. That dig revealed no conclusive evidence.
“I have to admit, I got taken down a few notches the week that we were up in the hills because I thought the FBI and DCI were a bunch of idiots,” Studey-McKiddy said. “I thought it would be easier to dig a well. Now I understand what the hell they were up against.”
To do another dig, Belcher and his team would need to gather as much historical information about the property, including locations of the wells – some of which could have eroded over the years – and better pinpoint where to look.
As it was, they were relying on Studey-McKiddy’s memory of where she says she used to walk as a child and teenager to roam the hills, visit the wells and go along mushroom trails.
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‘I Know I’m Right’
And what of that memory?
“Memory is ephemeral, and Lucy's trying to remember something that's at least 40 years ago that she observed as a child,” Belcher said. “Helping your father or doing these kinds of things would certainly be something where you may be traumatized, and you actually maybe remember some of the details. But memory is pretty foggy at times, and one of the things I thought she was trying to do was to correlate her memory of something that was 40 years ago with what she's seen on the ground now in that area.”
To aid in the recent dig, Studey-McKiddy walked the land from the fence line of where her father’s smaller property used to be to a fallen tree.
“I think my well is right here,” Lucy Studey-McKiddy said during the dig. Moving her arms circularly, she continued, “I think I’m right on it, right around here.”
But her directions didn’t lead digging crews to any new findings.
Similar scenes unfolded at several other areas on Smith’s property, including in the second area near a ravine where a circular, seemingly wet spot showed up in the soil about the diameter of a well.
Again, nothing was found as the crews used heavy machinery to shove aside a wide swath of dirt and get to a point where they could level off the ground, measure it and inspect the spot.
Studey-McKiddy, after another effort and another, acknowledged her memory could be off – but only by a matter of feet, she said. And with no maps and no geolocation of the wells on the property, and the time to dig – five days – running out, Belcher’s team was leaning on the inexact science of her memory to possibly pinpoint a correct location.
“I know I’m right,” about the remains being on the property, she said.
Opposing claims
While the number of bodies Lucy has claimed are on the property has gone up over the years, much of what she says has been consistent. While visiting the site in 2022, she commented to reporters that there could be 50 to 70 bodies in the area. But she says she only physically saw the remains of two men and two women — images she says she can’t get out of her head.
“There’s been plenty of times I just want to leave, that I want to give up and leave. But I’ve tried to move on with my life, and it just isn’t the best thing,” Studey-McKiddy said following the recent dig. “This is like a cancer that eats you from the inside-out. If you try to ignore it, it just grows.”
One of her sisters, Susan Studey, has vigorously denied Studey-McKiddy’s allegations about her father, but Susan Studey does admit that he was violent and abusive.
Studey-McKiddy is backed by some other members of her family, who have told Lee Enterprises that they witnessed severe abuse by Donald Studey, including sexual abuse, against family members and his former wives and girlfriends.
Her late aunt, Marilyn Kepler, wrote a journal about her family and described killings throughout the country by Studey. Kepler also told Lee Enterprises last year, before her death, that her brother would take her up by the wells, where she noticed beer cans or bottles littering the area. She said she commented to Studey that the area looked like a graveyard. He simply replied that it was, Kepler told Lee Enterprises.
The interest in Studey-McKiddy’s story has only grown with time, with news stations and other media outlets in the U.S. and globally covering the story. The matter has also generated much debate on Facebook, podcasts and other media.
The chief production company – This is Just a Test Media, working with Bullish Content – financed the dig. Belcher and his team of graduate and doctoral students were hired daily to perform the search. Smith, who also believes something terrible happened on the land, was compensated for the use of his property.
“We didn't find the wells," said Aengus James, principal of This is Just a Test Media. "Sadly, there's no resolution on the wells."
But, he said, "We have spoken to multiple people who have told us that Don Studey admitted to burying bodies on that property, and we believe there’s little doubt that there are people buried there. The question is, where are they? It’s a large property.”
Was Donald Dean Studey a killer?
The documentary will go beyond the wells, focusing more on the family and into allegations that Studey, who died at 75 in 2013, murdered scores of people across the country, and particularly allegations that he killed perhaps three of his former wives. Two allegedly died by suicide, and a third allegedly accidentally overdosed on medication.
“My entire focus is documenting the story. A big part of the story is following the evidence and investigating wherever it goes,” James told the Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team.
James said he and his production team have evidence – not yet publicly reported – that backs his assertion Studey was indeed a killer.
The interest in Charlotte Studey’s death has only grown. She died at age 42 of a single gunshot to the head in Omaha in 1984.
Her death, initially ruled a suicide, was reexamined by pathologist Dr. Erin Linde in 2023 after her body was exhumed. Linde, based on police testimony and other evidence, including that she had just left Studey and that he was abusive, changed the official manner of death from suicide to undetermined.
“We have a lot still to do,“ James said. “I know Charlotte's death certificate was changed to from suicide to undetermined. We believe it should be named a homicide...I’m not a mathematician, but what are the odds of having three wives that all died under mysterious circumstances and two that looked like suicides? I believe there’s little doubt that Don Studey murdered multiple women.”
Part of Lee Enterprises’ investigation has yielded some clues, though, pointing at why Charlotte Studey’s three daughters have been fighting Omaha police in court to see police records from the initial investigation of their mother’s death to get some form of closure. All three say they never bought into the findings that her death was a suicide.
To the daughters, it’s simple: Charlotte Studey was shot at close range by Donald Studey in his car outside her Omaha basement studio apartment, where she was staying after moving out of Studey’s home due to years of physical and sexual abuse.
Omaha Police Department reports disputed by family
Charlotte Studey’s three daughters took the Omaha Police Department to court seeking access to initial and follow-up investigative reports from their mother’s death in early February 1984. The OPD sought to get the records sealed. But the department never explained why investigators who originally said the records couldn’t be found suddenly wanted the documents hidden from the public and family.
The OPD won in Douglas County court, and the records remain sealed. But reports were read to the family by Omaha detectives to the three daughters.
The daughters told Lee Enterprises that what was read to them by police showed a sloppy initial investigation, full of errors – including Charlotte Studey’s name, age and inconsistencies over the days she fought with Donald Studey, the day she died and the time she died.
The car she was found in belonged to her husband, who had a known history of violence including against Charlotte Studey. But the car was never impounded or inventoried for evidence, according to reports read to the family. Studey-McKiddy said the car was immediately returned to Donald Studey.
There were also things in the report that didn’t make sense to the family, including the shell casing’s location in the car, where the gun was found and the fact that her mother was just 5-feet-2 but nothing was located or documented that could have been used to trigger the rifle.
If new material surfaces that convinces Linde to change Charlotte Studey’s manner of death to homicide, that finding could prompt a new investigation by Omaha police and potentially agencies like the DCI and the FBI.
Soon after an FBI and DCI dig in December 2022, the case was closed by Iowa and federal investigators. But some in county government, including sheriff’s deputies, and landowner Smith still believe there’s at least some truth to what Studey-McKiddy claims about her father.
Evidence of a murder by Studey could not only reopen Charlotte Studey’s death case but possibly a death case involving another wife, Lucy Studey. She is the mother of Lucy Studey-McKiddy. She allegedly hung herself in a small closet in their home outside of Denver. But her body is buried in Omaha.
The alleged suicide occurred after a bloody fight with Donald Studey in 1970.
“I’m hoping that my stepmom Charlotte’s death certificate finally gets changed to homicide so I can also exhume my mom Lucy,” Studey-McKiddy said. “I want to prove that she didn't commit suicide either. My father stated for decades that he didn't mean to kill my mom. He said he either choked her too hard or too long.”
Back at the dig site, Charlotte’s three daughters visited with their mother’s ashes in hopes of getting some closure while the court battle over investigative records continues with the OPD. They spread them along areas on the property, including the mushroom trails Charlotte Studey used to love to hike.
“Mom absolutely loved Green Hollow, " said one of the daughters, Charlotte Harris. “I mean, she really did. She was such an outdoorsy person. She loved to hike and mushroom hunt and just be outside. That was her joy. So it warmed my heart so much. There's peace there.”
But for daughter Dawn Schultz, the records and manner of death are also key.
“Yes, a little bit of peace,” with the spreading of the ashes, she said. “I won't get full closure until they change it to homicide, and I'm not going to stop until they do.”