Local, state and federal authorities have launched a probe in Iowa after a woman claimed that her father was a serial killer who murdered 50-70 women over the span of 30 years, according to a report from Newsweek. 

Iowa resident Lucy Studey said that her father, Donald Dean Studey, had murdered the woman and had enlisted her and her sibling to help him move the bodies of the women. They are allegedly buried near a well on his property. However, Donald Studey has been dead for the past 10 years. 

Also Read | Who was Alexandria Bell, 15-year-old victim of St. Louis school shooter Orlando Harris?

“We are actively investigating this, and who wouldn’t?”, Fremont County Sheriff Kevin Aistrope told KETV. 

“We have a scene, but we don’t know whether it’s a crime scene. We don’t have victims, bodies. Nothing,” he added. 

Also Read | Eric Weinberg remanded into custody after pleading not guilty to sexual assault

However, Lucy Studey’s older sister, Susan, says that the claims aren’t true.  “My father was not the man she makes him out to be. He was strict, but he
was a protective parent who loved his children … Strict fathers don’t
just turn into serial killers … I’m two years older than Lucy. I think I would know if my father murdered,” she had told Newsweek at the time. 

Aistrope told the Des Moines Register that his department had sent in two sniffer dogs to the area that Lucy Studey had claimed that the bodies are buried. The dogs had found “hits” which might indicate the presence of buried bodies and simultaneously, lend credibility to Studey’s younger daughter’s assertion. 

Also Read | Methodist Dallas Hospital shooting: Two nurses injured, suspect in custody

According to Newsweek, Donald Studey is suspected by law enforcement of luring women, most sex workers from nearby Omaha, Nebraska, to his five-acre farmland before murdering them. Additionally, Lucy Studey told the magazine that he would regularly be drunk and angry and that he would smash or kick in the heads of the women he abducted at a trailer where the family used to stay.