What Don Studey's Green Hollow Search Missed in Three Days

About this episode

Bob Motta discusses his investigation into the Green Hollow case and the search conducted by federal agencies.

He wasn't invited. He drove six hours anyway. And he ended up closer to the Green Hollow dig than most of the local cops who were actually assigned to be there. Criminal defense attorney Bob Motta had spent months investigating the allegations that Donald Dean Studey — the alleged Green Hollow Killer — buried dozens of women in wells on a remote Iowa property near Thurman in Fremont County. He'd been on the phone with Lucy Studey-McKiddy for over a hundred hours, vetting her story, probing for inconsistencies, trying to figure out if she was telling the truth. When word came that federal agencies were moving on the property, Bob got in a rental car that happened to look exactly like an unmarked police vehicle and drove straight to Green Hollow. He arrived in the middle of the night. He drove into the hollow in pitch darkness. He started going live on TikTok — and by the next morning, every local deputy in the area had seen his videos. He got waved past a checkpoint by a deputy who thought he was law enforcement. The sheriff confronted him. And Bob talked his way onto the fence line where he could watch the FBI, the Iowa DCI, and the Fremont County Sheriff's Office core-drill into…

People in this episode

Host: Tony Brueski

Guest: Bob Motta

Topics covered

• investigation
• true crime
• missing persons
• law enforcement
• Green Hollow
• criminal defense

Keywords

• Green Hollow
• Bob Motta
• Donald Dean Studey
• Lucy Studey-McKiddy
• Fremont County
• investigation
• true crime

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: FBI, Iowa DCI, Fremont County Sheriff's Office

Places: Green Hollow, Iowa, Thurman, Fremont County

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