Media Feature of Local Business Owner, Lisa Parisien of A + Academy of Hypnosis

Published article from Did a serial killer bury his victims on a rural Midwest hillside? written for the Globe Gazette about Dundee business owner, Lisa Parisien, LIMHP, LADC, CMT, CHt of A + Academy of Hypnosis, and Intuitive Therapies, LLC. Read published article here, or find the free version below.

Lucy McKiddy stood on a rural hillside about 40 miles from Omaha, Nebraska, thinking of her father and the dozens of bodies she insists he buried there.

Her father, she alleges, was a murderous man who preyed on women and dumped their bodies in wells and along mushroom trails in the remote western Iowa area known as Green Hollow.

Claims made by McKiddy, now living in Council Bluffs, Iowa, were taken seriously enough by the FBI, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and the Fremont County, Iowa, Sheriff’s Department that the agencies spent parts of three days in December 2022 core-drilling at least 85 feet deep into a well on properties spanning some 420 acres. Finding only animal bones, the agencies closed the case.

Allegations detail acts of ‘a lifelong criminal and a murderer’

McKiddy’s story — which has been told to teachers, pastors and law enforcement over 45-plus years — has grown over the nearly two years that she’s been telling it to reporters and on social media.

In initial police reports filed in Fremont County, she stated that there were about 15 bodies in a well. Most of the women, she says, were transients — some whom her father dubbed “bar slushes” — picked up by Studey in nearby Omaha.

She has alleged in subsequent news interviews that her father killed several women a year over many years, as well as a 15-year-old runaway. Most of the women, according to McKiddy, were invited to stay in the home and watch over his four kids, McKiddy said.

McKiddy said she has heard the allegations that she is a sick woman and a liar — from coworkers, old friends, family and strangers on the street — or on social media, where the family fights over which side is true.

“I don't care,” McKiddy said. “I'm not here to convince total strangers that are not involved in my investigation whether or not I'm telling the truth. I'm here to recover bodies and provide the victims' families with closure. If I can heal from my childhood and be able to live peacefully in my own skin, then that's a bonus."

‘I don’t think she’s a pathological liar’

McKiddy’s psychotherapist and hypnotherapist, Lisa Parisien, spoke with a Lee Enterprises reporter with McKiddy’s approval.

Parisien said McKiddy suffers from PTSD but also noted she believes McKiddy’s account of Donald Studey.

“Considering her childhood, she's incredibly stable,” Parisien said. “She has suffered a lot of trauma. … For people who don’t really know her or understand her, her stories can sound outlandish. (But) I don't think she's a pathological liar. She's very consistent. And she has no motive to make these kinds of stories up because who would want to make these stories up about themselves or their family?”

Parisien also questioned those who think McKiddy is doing all of this to gain fame or cash in.

“It's been important to her since she was a very young child that those bodies in that well — if there are, which I do believe — be put to rest, that they finally have a proper burial. I think it's really important for people to realize that she has no motive,” since she’s not making money off the documentary and has been threatened or lost work since the allegations became public two years ago.

Parisien noted that, as a child, McKiddy would dig into her arms with her fingernails, leaving scars to remember those she claims her father murdered.

“She would grab her arm and tell herself, ‘You have to remember this,’” Parisien said. “She has imprinted her memory so clearly and vividly … I believe that's why her memory is so clear. She made an agreement with herself to never forget so she could finally someday tell the story.”

‘I found her credible’

Stewart Fillmore, a 29-year veteran of the FBI who has interviewed McKiddy at length on many occasions, agrees with Parisien and others about the consistency of McKiddy’s story.

A body unearthed, conflicting autopsies

McKiddy’s hold on her allegations only solidified with the exhumation of her stepmother and the change of the autopsy findings.

The body was exhumed in August 2023, paid for by the production companies. And, at the family’s urging, an Omaha pathologist did a second autopsy, changing the findings from suicide to undetermined — an unusual move 40 years after her death on Feb. 8, 1984.

The death of Charlotte Studey, 42, initially had been ruled a self-inflicted gunshot wound, saying she was shot at point-blank range. But the August 2023 autopsy showed she suffered the gunshot wound from some distance.

The second autopsy, which the Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team has reviewed, suggests it would have been impossible for Charlotte Studey to fire the single shot at herself from a rifle while sitting in the driver’s side of Donald Studey’s car outside her apartment in Omaha. She was 5-feet-2 with arms not long enough to fire the shot, and nothing was found suggesting she used an instrument to trigger the .22 caliber Marlin 60 rifle.

The journal by Kepler, a handwritten history of her family titled “The Hollow People,” tells of a horrendous life for the Studeys, filled with abuse, severe beatings of family members and random robbery victims and arsons. Among the victims of Donald Studey’s alleged arsons was Kepler, who claims Studey burned her home following a falling out Studey had with her husband. She and others claimed Studey would burn down homes to collect or steal insurance money.

The 188 pages paint a picture of Studey as a man who murdered with ease and would snap and kill those who upset him. The writings also talk about Studey, who allegedly carried a cut-off and cement-filled pipe with him, committing fatal hits and beatings on people around the country for organized crime.

‘Lucy was telling the truth’

In an interview with a Lee Enterprises investigative reporter, Kepler said “probably 100 or so” murders could have been traced to Studey if he had been or were to be thoroughly investigated.

She also remembers envelopes that Studey had hidden above a refrigerator, which contained photos of targets for hits, their home addresses, ages, phone numbers and where they worked, she says.

“They were hit papers, their information to look somebody up and kill them,” Kepler said, adding that another brother, the late Lou Studey, was nearly killed by Donald Studey because he peeked inside one.

Did he work for organized crime? “No doubt whatsoever. … No doubt,” Kepler said.

Kepler said Studey’s organized crime contact worked out of Sidney, Nebraska.

All of Kepler’s experiences with Donald Studey echo the long-voiced claims of Studey’s daughter, Lucy McKiddy, that Studey was a violent killer.

A body unearthed, conflicting autopsies

McKiddy’s hold on her allegations only solidified with the exhumation of her stepmother and the change of the autopsy findings.

The body was exhumed in August 2023, paid for by the production companies. And, at the family’s urging, an Omaha pathologist did a second autopsy, changing the findings from suicide to undetermined — an unusual move 40 years after her death on Feb. 8, 1984.

The death of Charlotte Studey, 42, initially had been ruled a self-inflicted gunshot wound, saying she was shot at point-blank range. But the August 2023 autopsy showed she suffered the gunshot wound from some distance.

The second autopsy, which the Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team has reviewed, suggests it would have been impossible for Charlotte Studey to fire the single shot at herself from a rifle while sitting in the driver’s side of Donald Studey’s car outside her apartment in Omaha. She was 5-feet-2 with arms not long enough to fire the shot, and nothing was found suggesting she used an instrument to trigger the .22 caliber Marlin 60 rifle.

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.

Next year a documentary will be coming out telling this story and will include Lisa Parisien performing hypnotherapy on the client assisting her in alleviating her trauma.