Feds amass 612-page file in a case of alleged slayings near Omaha. What does it mean?

The family of Lucy McKiddy is split into two camps.

There are those who firmly believe McKiddy's allegations that her father killed scores of people, mostly women, starting in the 1960s. Then there are those who barrage her with texts and social media messages calling her a rampant liar.

Whichever camp is right, law enforcement investigators took a keen interest in her father, Donald Dean Studey, and his daughter’s allegations against him.

A 612-page FBI file on Studey is being reviewed by the agency before it can be released to the public, according to the FBI’s national office. There is no timeline on when any of the file’s contents may become public.

There’s also one hour and 42 minutes of audio recordings included with the FBI file, still under federal lock and key. Together, according to some FBI experts and retired FBI officials, they hint at a significant amount of investigative work to determine if Studey was involved in criminal activity or killings of the scope alleged by his daughter, Lucy McKiddy, and others.

The file runs from April 2021 through January 2023, roughly covering the time span from the FBI being first alerted to Lucy McKiddy’s allegations against her father – that he murdered dozens of people and buried them on a rolling hillside in western Iowa – and the conclusion of the law enforcement dig in Green Hollow.

McKiddy, 55, says she has told her story to teachers, pastors and law enforcement since she was a child – with some telling her when she was young to keep family matters private. But sometime before early 2021, the Fremont County, Iowa, Sheriff’s Department began taking her seriously. So did the FBI out of the Omaha office, and the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.

All said at the time that McKiddy’s story was not only compelling, but consistent, leading to a dig in a well on the property in December of 2022. That dig, conducted with all the agencies present, focused on a single well – McKiddy, who was not on scene, says it was the wrong well – and the probe turned up nothing but animal bones and debris.

The agencies promptly closed the case.

Lee Enterprises is aware that property owners in the Green Hollow area where the wells and trails are located were interviewed by the DCI and FBI, as was McKiddy, her sisters Susan and Linda Studey, and law enforcement officials involved in the case from the Fremont County, Iowa, Sheriff’s Department.

Also, the DCI, the lead agency in the case, included in their probe Marilyn Kepler, McKiddy’s aunt and Donald Studey’s sister, who believes McKiddy’s claims and backs them up in a 188-page journal that Lee Enterprises has reviewed.

McKiddy’s sister, Susan Studey, says as many as 20 people — most of them relatives — have spoken with the FBI. Most of them, including Susan’s niece, whom Lee Enterprises interviewed, back Susan’s side of the story, she claims.

“My grandpa practically raised me from a newborn into my teenage years,” said Errin, Donald Studey’s granddaughter and the daughter of the late Gary Studey. “He was like a father to me. … I guarantee you, if my grandpa was a serial killer and he did those things that Lucy said, my dad would never have me around him. My dad would be the first one to turn my grandpa in.”

The FBI referred all comments on the past investigation and potential new action to the Iowa DCI.

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If Studey was an informant, as family members like his sister and daughter believe, there could be much more FBI documentation that the public may never see. Informant files — or those on confidential sources — can be exempt from freedom of information requests, even if they are deceased, for security reasons, according to a Department of Justice source.

“A 612-page investigative file would indicate a significant amount of investigative activity,” said Michael Tabman, a retired special agent in charge for the FBI and an author of three books.

“But that does not correlate to the nature or quality of the investigation. Every interview is documented, as is information from any call-in or informant. Results of each surveillance, area search, record checks and other investigative activity is documented. The number of pages may reflect an investigation with negative results, but continuing to follow leads as they come in.”

The file strikes Stewart Fillmore, an author and retired 29-year veteran of the FBI, as “significantly large, quite frankly,” especially considering the relatively short timeframe the 612 pages cover. The timeframe has Fillmore puzzled, knowing well that the FBI documents everything they do and that an excavation was involved.

Fillmore said he has worked on cases involving drug trafficking, murder and other crimes — meticulously writing down everything that happened in what could be four- to five-year cases. And those files didn’t come close to the size of the Donald Studey file, he said.

“If you look at a file like John Dillinger’s, and I have worked on a project (about Dillinger), it’s thousands of pages,” Fillmore said, referring to the infamous gangster of the Great Depression era.

“But that’s what you would expect for somebody like a Dillinger — a known criminal, bank robber and so forth. But with Studey, no one’s really ever heard of this guy. This guy was not a famous criminal, and that is a significantly large file.”

“Any way you look at it, he had the significant interest of the FBI,” Fillmore said.

But there’s also the potential that Studey is just part of a larger case, where he is mentioned many times over, he said.

“The other possibility is that this file is not necessarily just him – in other words, maybe he's not the subject of the entire 600 pages, but that his name is referenced or mentioned in an ongoing investigation into organized crime, into interstate transportation of stolen property, whatever it may be,” Fillmore said. “Still, that’s getting mentioned a lot.”

Whatever is in the file might bring some answers to those whose lives have been upended, first by living with and allegedly suffering much abuse from Studey then the aftermath of the allegations brought by McKiddy and others.

Some members of Studey’s family also demand the release of police files from other agencies, including the DCI, the Omaha Police Department and others who investigated Studey, the deaths of three of his wives and other allegations against him over the decades.

Those Studey relatives interviewed by Lee Enterprises aren’t sure files will ever be released.

Still, the family refuses to give up.

“Through our whole lives, we did not talk about it,” said Charlotte Harris, one of three daughters of Charlotte Studey, whose body was re-autopsied after questions were raised about her alleged suicide. “We were told, you know, just let it go. And we’re not letting it go. We need to find the answers. We need answers for us to get the peace we need.”