What a Hundred Hours Revealed About Don Studey's Green Hollow

Criminal defense attorney Bob Motta spent sixteen months doing what he does in every case — looking for the lie. He had over a hundred hours of phone conversations with Lucy Studey-McKiddy, the woman who alleges her father Don Studey was the Green Hollow Killer, responsible for the deaths of dozens of women buried in wells near Thurman, Iowa. He drove to Green Hollow. He watched the FBI dig. 

He interviewed dozens of locals. And through all of it, he was cross-examining Lucy's story the same way he'd cross-examine a witness on the stand. Her accounts were repetitive but never changed — the same stories, the same details, always consistent. Meanwhile her sister Susan was texting Bob throughout, insisting their father was strict but not a killer. Retired FBI Special Agent Robin Drake weighs in with the behavioral analysis — Lucy's trauma responses are real, and her childhood outcry gives her credibility significant weight. 

But Robin flags that trauma can produce memory exaggeration, and the statistical rarity of serial killers involving family in their operations makes Lucy's account an outlier worth noting. The biggest gap in the case — no families of missing persons have come forward, and database searches haven't produced matches. Lucy derived her estimate of fifty alleged victims from a calculation of roughly two per year over twenty-five years. 

Bob also reveals a lead that still haunts him — Lucy's claim that a car with a body inside was buried on the Studey side of the property, in a location that could be searched without dealing with the mystery wells. 

The Paramount+ documentary My Killer Father is streaming now. Part three of the conversation.

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This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.

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