01x03 - The Wells

[bunniefuu]

- We got underneath this tree,

and I said, "sh*t, Don,

this looks like a f*cking graveyard."

He says, it is.

- I finally have a chance to be out in the hills

with the right equipment,

with the right team.

- My specialty is in forensic anthropology.

That's an alert.

- We're death investigators.

[dog growling]

- I wanted to create the crime scene

to see where do the shell casings go?

- I saw my dad slamming that lady's head

into the arm of the couch.

There was no doubt she was dead.

- I am honored that I'm able to tell your mom's story.

- No one's ever gonna convince me

that the bodies aren't out there--

I just haven't found them yet.

- They're not lying. I'm not lying.

- I came up here tonight to defend my family

against your fat little mouth.

- Do you think I like trying to prove that my dad's a criminal

and a m*rder*r and nobody believing me?

- What you've been looking for all these years

is sitting right behind you under the ground.

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

- Police in Western Iowa are searching for any sign

of a serial k*ller.

- ♪ Something's coming

♪ Something's on its way ♪

- The woman claims her late father k*lled

at least women

and used his children to help bury them.

- ♪ Take all the children with floodwaters rolling ♪

♪ Ain't no devil gon' be where we go ♪

[pensive music]

♪ ♪

- Hi. - How you doing?

- Want a picture of this beautiful?

You know, I was named after Marilyn Monroe.

♪ ♪

I hesitated to have this conversation

with anybody because of Lucy.

Because I don't like her.

She told lies about me.

But I need these things to come out

because they're eating me alive.

♪ ♪

I was the seventh of seven children.

I was born a Studey.

And Donald Dean Studey was my brother,

my oldest brother.

My mom was a prost*tute,

and she used to get to town

and go to bars and leave us kids alone.

Don was the only one there.

We were very close.

It was almost like I was his daughter.

He would say, "Little girl,

"I was there when you were born.

I watched you take your first breath."

He loved me.

All my life, he'd been there.

He was kind of like my guardian angel.

When we didn't have money for field trips at school,

Don came up with the money.

When I was dating, he'd tell me,

"That guy's not for you.

I don't want you dating him."

He actually--

When I was--

actually k*lled somebody 'cause of me.

[grim music]

One day, we were coming home.

We stopped to get gas.

And the guy was pumping the gas.

I looked at him, and oh, sh*t.

I put my head down like this, and Don says, "What's wrong?

What is wrong? There's something wrong."

And I said, "That's one of the guys that r*ped me, Don."

He said, "Look at him real good.

Make damn sure that's him."

So he got out of the car and followed the man

to the inside of the gas station.

There was no one else around.

And I could see Don beating him with something.

Got in the cash register and took all the money.

Came back out to the car.

He says, "He'll never r*pe anybody else."

We drove away.

I kept my mouth shut.

Anything Don did, I never told.

I loved him more than anything in this world.

All my life, he'd been there.

- Two.

I know the names, but I can't tell you the names

because my life would be in jeopardy.

- No. No.

I'm on parole.

I gotta be careful.

- I couldn't begin to tell you.

Maybe ?

Didn't bother him.

He was, like, dead inside.

Like Ted Bundy and all these other K*llers,

they were born that way.

k*lling don't bother them.

♪ ♪

One time, he took me up on the hill.

I don't know exactly where it was.

We got underneath this tree, and we were talking.

I looked around and I said, "sh*t, Don,

this looks like a f*cking graveyard."

He says, it is.

Lucy is telling the truth.

I know % in my heart

that if they dug up that well,

they're gonna find out she was right.

♪ ♪

- Today is the day that we excavate, hopefully, two wells.

I'm excited that I finally have a chance to be out in the hills

with the right equipment, a forensic team,

and an excavation team.

[pensive music]

The property owner is a man named Sean Smith.

My dad always told us,

"Do not trust a f*cking Smith."

And as a kid, we came across a lot of marijuana

growing on Smith's property.

They had a good-sized operation going.

And my dad took advantage of that.

If Smith would have never touched the land,

I could have walked right up to the wells again.

He has bulldozed and destroyed, and nobody has stopped him.

♪ ♪

[engine humming]

- Lucy has badmouthed me and done so much,

so many texts telling me how much she hated me

and how much--bad I was.

All I did was take a dozer, and I made a path

for them to get down there.

- No. - OK.

- The marijuana thing is something we just heard of

since Lucy has brought this up.

My dad was a straight person. I mean, he'd be

the last person in the world to be

anything to do with drugs.

I still think she dealt with stuff

when she was a kid that traumatized her.

I don't think she knows where everything's located,

but I % believe there's something up here.

♪ ♪

- Oh, we're here.

♪ ♪

- This tree that's been cut down,

when I was up here with my dad, I'd lean up against this tree.

The well was here.

This is-- - So this is the spot?

- It's gotta be here. - Good.

OK. Excellent.

It's gonna rain like a cow pissing on a flat rock.

[laughter]

My name is William R. Belcher.

And I'm an associate professor

at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

My specialty is in forensic anthropology.

I've been running excavations for over years.

I think it's gonna be here.

My expectation is that if we find the well

and are able to excavate it safely,

that we will recover human remains.

♪ ♪

- On this particular case with Don Studey,

we contacted different agencies, family members,

old girlfriends to see if, you know,

there was any truth to this.

And they're all like, yes.

Everything added up to this being

a very violent man

who would beat and k*ll

at the drop of a hat.

I'm excited to see what we find.

I've been working on this story for / years,

and there's no resolution,

so maybe we can get to that point.

- OK, let's go to work.

Jojo!

[dog barking]

My name is Jim Peters.

And I have a business known as Samaritan Detection Dogs.

We travel around the Midwest

looking for dead and missing people.

I do believe there are human remains on that land.

I just don't know if they're historic.

Let's go.

There isn't a differentiation in the odor

from somebody that's been dead minutes,

years, or , years.

That's an alert.

[dog growling] No.

That's an alert.

Well... - What'd you find?

- Both dogs had interest

from those root ba*ls

over to the vicinity of that stump,

and really no place else.

- OK.

- Just go dig.

[indistinct chatter]

Being around my dad, you always wondered

when you were gonna die.

My dad is properly buried in a cemetery,

and he doesn't deserve that.

These people do.

In the well that's on the left hill,

there's two women in there.

They're mid- to .

I know they're in there.

I saw them.

[tense music]

- Lucy, where are you going?

- The well that was to the right of my dad's trailer,

I know there's two men in there.

I believe there's a guy named Gordon in that well, too.

I've been trying to tell people about my dad

ever since I could remember.

One time, I went to school and told the teacher.

I was second grade in '.

And she told the principal.

My dad convinced them that it was all a lie,

and it's because my mom died.

He had this whole little speech worked out.

He was pretty convincing.

We made it back to Green Hollow,

and he yanked me out of the car and continued beating me

into the trailer house.

He picked me up off the floor

and had me by the neck.

And he had me against the wall, and he just kept choking me.

I remember hearing, "Dad, Dad, you're k*lling her."

And Gary was on one arm, and Susan was on the other arm

trying to stop Dad.

They broke Dad's hold on me.

And I remember dropping down.

I thought I was dead.

My beatings were mostly when I didn't shut up.

Why didn't I shut up?

♪ ♪

He told me, "There's not a person in that well

that didn't f*cking deserve it."

[pensive music]

♪ ♪

- Basically, what you have, ultimately, in this is,

really, two different cases.

You have the issue of whether Don Studey was a serial k*ller

that preyed on transient women and then disposed of them

in his well

and a guy that, for whatever reason,

gets tired of a particular wife and kills her.

I'm Stewart Fillmore. I'm a retired FBI agent.

I served from to .

I spent my entire career, those years,

doing field investigations.

I was what was called a street agent.

I was asked for my assessment of the police reports,

the original autopsy file,

the second autopsy that had been done.

To me, it's a puzzle to try to solve and visualize,

what is the autopsy, what is it telling you,

and, you know, how does this fit together?

- My name is Dr. Jan Gorniak.

And I'm a board-certified forensic pathologist.

I'm totally independent.

I can read the signs.

But the body is really gonna tell the story.

We are death investigators.

Everything that we do, every case that comes in

is a puzzle.

That's the part I like, and then also

being able to give family answers

to help them understand, you know,

why their loved one has passed.

My passion are suicide deaths.

Those are the ones that are so sudden and so unexpected

that family members sometimes don't want to believe

that's their cause or their manner of death.

So it's important that we tell the story,

and we tell it right.

Family members have a difficult time

accepting their loved one died by their own hands.

- A lot, and that's-- those are those myths,

that women won't use a firearm to k*ll themselves.

Firearms are the number one k*ller,

the method that people use for suicide.

That's number one. Number one.

- The issue with Charlotte--

I mean, the whole reason the police get there

is because Don calls them.

They seem to just take Don Studey's word.

You know, he tells them they had fought.

And she had threatened suicide before.

She had a drinking problem.

She had grabbed her r*fle.

In fact, they end up giving the r*fle back to him

a couple months later.

There wasn't a lot of attention to detail,

that some of the normal procedures that should have

been done weren't done,

like checking previous criminal history.

This was not ever seriously looked at

as anything other than a suicide.

They could have just completely arrived at the scene,

saw this man as the husband.

Everything on the surface looks consistent

with a suicide--

case closed.

So here's a real problem for me.

Some stippling was found on Charlotte's elbow.

This was February in Omaha.

It's gonna be cold.

And she had a jacket on.

If you're wearing a jacket, you're not gonna have

stippling on your arm.

That, to me, is a huge problem.

That further implies that we may be dealing with

a staged crime scene.

Another thing that's somewhat suspicious is,

when Don finds Charlotte, you know,

he doesn't break a window.

And also, we know from the report,

Don Studey drives home.

That just tells me there's not a lot of urgency there.

I'm just gonna go back home and make the call.

So that doesn't add up.

- Yes.

The pages, OK,

that's an enormous FBI file.

This guy was either an arch criminal

of some kind or a longtime criminal

that was involved in so many things

that the FBI ran across that his name

always ended up in reports.

One of the most famous cases in the FBI was John Dillinger.

The FBI brand was built on the fact

that they got Dillinger,

and his file might be

just over , pages.

So my point is that even with one of the most famous cases

that the FBI worked is just a little bit longer

than Donald Studey's case.

Something's going on here,

all these suspicious things about Don Studey.

And then you have this question of either

do you have incompetent police investigation

or a corrupt investigation?

It makes it an even more compelling story.

And I think it's an important one to tell

and to further investigate.

[engine humming]

♪ ♪

There's an overhang.

And that dead white tree has been there forever.

♪ ♪

- I've got him. It was hard.

But, um, this is my well.

You know, I've sat by this well so many times,

and I thought this was gonna be my burial site.

I just want these people up.

Nobody deserves to be thrown in a well and forgotten about.

♪ ♪

But if you don't mind, I'd like to just

spend some time here, Paul, without your camera or you.

OK?

Thank you.

♪ ♪

I used to talk to the people in the well.

And I made them a promise,

that I would bring them up,

that I would make sure that, you know,

people knew about them.

♪ ♪

[eerie music]

♪ ♪

As a kid, I saw my dad slamming a lady's head

into the arm of the couch.

And he was just slamming her. Hard.

And then she just went limp.

♪

Another lady, he k*lled on the living room floor,

he was stomping her head in. Kicking her rib.

She stopped moving.

There was no doubt she was dead.

I feel personally responsible for some of those women.

I could have screamed, yelled, hollered.

I could have tried to force Dad off.

You know, I could have, um--

you know, I'll be honest.

My dad did m*rder on purpose,

but not always.

He--[sighs]

Dad's complicated.

I did love him.

I think you could love and hate someone at the same time.

[bird cawing]

[somber music]

♪ ♪

- I wanted to come here and pay my respects to my father.

He is at peace, so that's one thing I'm thankful for.

♪

Here's my father.

My stepmother used to be here.

But my sister had her-- had her body dug up

for no reason, all for a lie.

May they be together forever.

I know he truly loved her.

♪

He wasn't evil, and he was no m*rder*r.

The truth will come out sooner or later.

I want to prove Lucy wrong.

She's the one that drug me and my family into this mess,

and I want to be the one to get us out of it.

I don't know how to prove what I'm saying is true,

except just to keep talking.

I mean, it's been a nightmare.

♪ ♪

God knows we don't need any more damage done.

You can scour every inch of those grounds.

There is nothing there, nothing whatsoever.

There will be nothing found.

[bird cawing]

[tense music]

♪ ♪

[machinery humming]

♪ ♪

- It's morbid, praying for a bone, you know?

That means somebody died.

♪ ♪

- Lucy, when we were able to identify the sort of oval stain

that we thought it was a pit that was dug,

but it seems to be very ephemeral.

It disappeared.

- OK.

- Right now, I think that the stain has disappeared.

There's nothing here that we could see.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- How'd he get away with it?

Well...

He could convince you of anything.

My brother, Don, was a very strange person.

He's quiet.

He never made jokes. He never laughed.

He studied people.

He's always very smart when it comes to people.

People are scared of him around Bartlett.

My brother, Don, was always violent.

- Yes. Yes.

Do you want to talk about Lucy now?

- So this one day, Pat and I had to go to Denver.

We decided we're gonna surprise Don and Lucy and go see them.

Well, when we pulled up to their house,

there's all kinds of people outside the house.

Oh, what's going on here?

"Oh, my God." Susan grabbed me.

She says, "How did you know?"

I said, "Know what?"

"Lucy k*lled herself last night."

"You're sh1tting me." [chuckles]

I went in the house, and, "Lucy, Don."

I'm looking.

There ain't nobody there.

The kids aren't there.

Something wasn't right.

It looked like they'd been in a fight.

The furniture was toppled.

And there was a god-awful smell,

the smell of death in the kitchen,

because it was in the kitchen closet

where she's hung.

It was--it was like a--

a kitchen storage place for food,

but it had, like, a clothes thing, you know?

Lucy's about the same size as me.

If I had hung in there,

I could have put my feet down

and stopped from hanging.

♪

Don told me what really went down.

The night that happened, they had been out drinking.

That right there told me

Don was not in his right mind.

If Don had alcohol in him, he's a different human being.

And I said, "Donnie,

did you k*ll Lucy?"

He looks at me and says,

"She said she was gonna take my kids and leave,

and I couldn't have that."

♪ ♪

That's exactly what he told me.

I can't begin to tell you

how it hurts me to talk to you

and actually admit to you what he's been accused of,

he really did.

I know he did.

♪ ♪

- When I evaluated all the police reports,

I mean, the one thing that jumped out at me

was the location of the shell casing.

It was found on the seat beside Charlotte,

under her arm.

If this is a suicide, it's unlikely

that empty shell casing could end up on the seat,

much less under her arm.

She's holding it up in this manner, somehow,

that shell casing's going forward.

It's gonna be some fantastic timing

for her to sh**t herself--

that r*fle and her arms are just gonna collapse, OK.

And that shell casing, to have time to go forward,

bounce off something, and then come back

and end up under her arm, beside her,

with the g*n and everything now in her lap.

♪ ♪

So I wanted to recreate the crime scene

to see where the shell casings go.

We couldn't find the exact model car,

but we have one with the almost exact dimensions

And then we have a Model Marlin r*fle

that was found in Charlotte's lap.

♪ ♪

- I was asked to be part of this recreation

because my dimensions of my arm length was--

matched my mother's.

And I'm about her same height.

- OK, what I want you to do is,

maneuver, manipulate that r*fle

- [groans] Yes.

- OK, so that's it.

That's consistent with the wound path.

And what happens if you just absolutely go limp right there?

Everything goes limp.

So it ends up in your lap with your hand under the r*fle.

That's it. - That's how I found her.

- That's the best guess.

This is how we want to now test the ejection

of the shell casings.

I want to now fire up to rounds or so

to see where that shell casing goes each time.

Wh--does it bounce off the dashboard, windshield?

Does it go straight down to the floor?

I'm thinking if we have five shell casings

that ended up on that seat, it's gonna surprise me.

I think our test is gonna reveal

it's not gonna end up there at all.

- We're gonna start-- be firing live rounds.

So there's two people touching this g*n.

Only two people touching this g*n--

That is Stewart and Paul.

- We can sh**t up to rounds here.

It may not take that many to establish, you know,

what we're trying to do.

Ready? - Yeah.

- OK.

Safety's off.

[tense music]

[g*nf*re]

♪ ♪

OK, five rounds.

One went forward in the driver's floor.

The other four went straight down,

bounced off the glove box, straight into the floor.

- So we'll do five more. - Yeah.

- I think it was almost rounds through this g*n.

You know, we did every angle we could think of.

We even pointed the g*n a specific way,

trying to get it to bounce off, like, the windshield,

to go to the seat.

♪

Still, everything went to the floor.

- Well, in a position where reasonably, maybe

the shell casing could end up on the seat,

we could not recreate that.

What we know is in the official report

is inconsistent with this test.

And to me, it's more consistent that this was staged.

[pensive music]

- Hello. Can you hear me?

OK, My mama's name. Marie, Charlotte.

- Dawn. - Dawn. OK.

And hi, I'm Jan. I'm Dr. Gorniak.

So this is a case with-- about your mom.

- Yes.

- So it came in as a suicide, but

it is my opinion that that could not have been

a self-inflicted wound.

I would have ruled this case a homicide from the beginning.

♪ ♪

Based on the wound that she has,

the police reports, and how the weapon was found,

it can't be a suicide.

In order for the weapon to have been in her hands that way,

it had to have been placed there.

- Whew. - Ugh.

- Oh.

- Exhale, exhale.

- [whistles]

- It's OK. It's OK.

- Yeah, sure has.

Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

- You are so welcome.

I personally don't like the word "closure,"

but more of a peace.

both: Yes. - Right?

In our world, we also say, to the living, we owe respect.

To the dead, we owe the truth.

I am honored that I'm able to, you know,

tell your mom's story

the way it should have been told years ago.

- Yes, thank you.

- This is just not a case.

This is somebody's loved one.

And knowing how long it has been

for Charlotte's daughters,

now they're gonna be able to-- to be able to move forward

and to grieve Mom.

♪ ♪

[grim music]

♪ ♪

- We've got a limited amount of time for today.

We haven't found anything here that matches the stories

and the recollection of Lucy.

- Yes.

- Sean, that's where you dug already?

- Yes.

- Do you believe there's a well where you dug?

- No, there's definitely no well there.

- Are there any other wells over there?

- There's another spot I found

that possibly could be something.

I could show you. - All right.

I mean, this is it, Lucy. This is it.

You got one more day. - Yep.

- You want to spend the time on the right hill well.

- Right hill well.

[pensive music]

[engines humming]

♪ ♪

- What is this that we're looking at?

- This is what I call the right hill dry well.

This is the one I walked up to by memory.

- This stick. - Yes.

- OK.

- When we dug in, it was virgin soil all the way.

There was no signs of a well.

- Lucy, I think that if we dig here,

because much of this dirt has been removed,

I don't think we're gonna find anything in this area.

I think that--

- This is the only spot

that we put bodies in and lye in.

Now, Dad did mention

that from there, somewhere up-- there used to be a clearing

over here in the tree line.

- Let's go check this.

- We've got a matter of hours. - OK.

♪ ♪

- It's up this way, just a little farther.

- OK.

Do you think you know where that well is up here?

- All I did-- I found a spot up here.

Right here.

♪ ♪

I say we try it.

- Yeah.

- If your dad did the things you say he did,

it's entirely possible that what you've been looking for

all these years

is sitting right behind you under the ground.

- Let's dig it.

♪ ♪

I have no doubt in my mind about what happened as a child.

What I remember happened.

I'm not a liar.

I didn't hallucinate.

I know what happened.

I do not understand

how you could hurt and k*ll

so many people and leave a path of destruction,

like he did, and get away with it.

♪ ♪

- Nothing? - Mm-mm.

♪ ♪

- No?

I think that we're done here.

In my opinion, we've exhausted everything

that we have right now.

- My life would be so much better

if I could move on.

♪ ♪

Do you think I like living with the memories that I have?

I don't.

Do you think I like trying to prove

that my dad's a criminal and a m*rder*r

and nobody believing me?

It's like,

how many times can you beat your head

against a brick wall over and over and over?

And just, you know,

when do I give up?

- I want to make sure that we're covering all the bases.

We're here till the sun goes down,

so we do have time to dig in this area around this stick.

[thunder rumbling]

- Thank you, everybody, for standing out in the rain,

getting cold, to satisfy my right hill well.

I know that's my right hill well.

♪ ♪

All I wanted was to be on the land

with the right equipment and the right experts.

The FBI never allowed me to be up here.

You know, Smith never allowed me to be up here,

but I'm up here now.

♪ ♪

Smith, you said you would work with us.

You said we'd be up here together

to do the well.

You said you did it for your cows,

but the--the tree line got torn up

and you removed all those trees and stuff--

♪ ♪

I know the bodies are up here,

and I know my well.

♪ ♪

It just would have been easier

if we could have worked together.

- But now I would work with you,

but if you're gonna start this stuff, it's all--

this'll be done.

- You turned what I believe is my right hill well

into a cow pond!

And I've wondered, is that like a middle finger to me?

- You don't know sh*t.

Everything else you've showed has been fake.

- Bullshit!

Bullshit.

I have walked that property line from the start,

and I end up in the same f*cking place.

- You didn't know what you were talking about.

- I hope you can live with yourself

leaving bodies in a well.

♪ ♪

- Right now, I don't see anything here.

- Nothing. This has to be the spot.

But maybe I'm off.

No one's ever gonna convince me that the bodies aren't up here.

I just haven't found them yet.

I don't give a f*ck what people think about me.

I don't care if the world calls me a liar.

I don't care if they call me crazy.

[somber music]

I told them I would get them out of the well.

I just tried to keep a promise,

and all I got was my stepmom, Charlotte, up.

My mom's in the ground. The bodies are still up here.

♪ ♪

- I think that you have kept your promise

in doing the best that you can.

- They're really up here. They are.

♪ ♪

[thunder rumbling]

[pensive music]

♪ ♪

- It's been a few years since I've been up here.

I think I despise Lucy more than I do anybody

in this world.

After the way she's made me and my family suffer

for the last two years,

this needs to end.

I want to face her.

I want to prove to everybody that she's lied

from the very first day.

♪ ♪

- Hi. - Hi, Susan.

- It's nice to see you.

- Where's the so-called hookers, huh?

Where's your bodies at, Lucy?

Oh. [laughs]

There's no bodies up here, you dumb cow.

- You can call me every name in the book, Susan.

- Oh. Let me guess. - It doesn't matter to me.

- Oh, I know. Isn't that weird, though?

Growing up, you and Dad were the best of friends, remember?

- We were never the best of friends.

- Oh, yes, you were. "Oh, Daddy. Oh"--he loved--

- Do not tell me-- - He loved--

- That Dad and I were friends.

- He loved you, and you know it!

- I came up here to get the bodies and defend...

- And I came out-- - My allegations!

- I came up here tonight to defend my family

against your fat little mouth.

- Well, what about, "Oh, Dad was never a*usive"?

- What, you mean getting hit with the belt is abuse, Lucy?

- It was more than a-- - It was more--

- It was more than a belt.

- It was common back then!

- It was more than a belt, Susan.

- Oh. Oh, boo-hoo.

A lot of kids get hit with a belt.

- So a lot of kids get picked up and choked

by the throat until they pass out

and have to stutter for six months?

- If I remember right, you were screaming like a freight train.

The whole world against poor, poor Lucy.

- What about the women you called b*mbos?

- They left alive.

- Some did. - Oh, some did?

You know that for a fact? - Some did.

- We never carried bags of lye to the well?

- No, we did not. - Not one?

- Nope.

- You'll never admit it anyway.

- You've had / f*cking years to look for these bodies.

- I haven't been up in the hills for / years!

I came up here to get the bodies.

- Go back to Florida, and leave the rest of us alone.

- I'm going to prove that Dad k*lled our mom...

- Oh.

- And k*lled Charlotte and k*lled Anna Tordoff.

- You're a liar! - I don't give a f*ck

what you think I am, Susan! - Liar, liar, liar, liar, liar.

You're a liar. - How many lies have you told?

Why don't you stop... - How many lies have you told?

- Covering for Dad... - How many lies--

- And f*cking tell the truth for once in your life?

- Somebody better get in between us

because I'm about ready to deck her.

I said before I decked her, I would walk away and leave.

I'm leaving. - No.

I want you to talk to the girls.

- Nick, let's go.

- I'm gonna leave.

And you're gonna talk to Dawn, Marie, and Charlotte.

You come over here and talk to them.

- Dawn, Marie, and Charlotte, OK.

No, there's nothing to talk about.

I'm not gonna criticize my father.

If you guys want to talk to me,

you guys do it outside of us having an audience, OK?

Is that what this is all about? - No!

- To put on a show for you guys?

- No, we came up here to spread some of mom's ashes

in Green Hollow because she loved this place.

- Yes, I know she did. - That's why we came up here.

- This could have been confronted outside the cameras.

You keep Lucy away.

- It's been a long time. - It's been a long time.

- Yeah, it's years. - Yeah.

- We haven't seen each other since the funeral.

- I really don't understand why all this happened.

This was supposedly the big dig of the century for Lucy.

No bodies are found.

I think that basically clears my father.

- That has nothing to do, though,

with our mom and your mom.

- Yeah.

- All I remember is, my door was shut,

but she went stomping past my door.

I could hear her footsteps stomping.

I saw no g*n.

I did hear Charlotte say those words.

All I heard was, "f*ck you.

I'm gonna k*ll myself the way your wife did."

And she took off out the door.

My dad was home all that night.

The next morning, he goes, "Girls, wake up.

Charlotte's dead."

- She did not k*ll herself.

- That's what you say.

That's not what I say.

- Susan, I did see good in your dad, and I seen bad.

Don't you look at me because you know damn well

what I'm talking about.

- And, you know, I know damn well about your mom, too.

Spill my dad's secrets, and I'll spill

some of your mother's, too.

I lived with her, too.

- I know your dad had a good side,

and I know your dad had a bad side.

- And so'd your mother. - Yes, exactly.

We all do.

- You guys are missing the point.

You guys are trying to get me to criticize my father.

- Susan, do you remember when he beat her so bad,

he put her in the hospital and almost k*lled her?

- If you guys are gonna say that my dad--

my dad k*lled Charlotte, we're done.

- But I never said that. - But we never said that.

- Now, did I?

You're the one that goes on the defense.

- You're the one who keeps doing that.

We're just asking questions.

We're trying to remember things.

- What do you expect out of me?

You're not gonna get anything out of me.

This whole story was about to people buried in wells.

That's what it's about.

It's not about-- it's not entirely about

my mom and your mom.

You wanna talk about our mothers?

We do it privately.

I only came up to clear my father's name.

That's it.

Goodbye.

- Bye.

- Well, she doesn't wanna talk on camera

because she knows that something will get said

that will make her look bad.

- Yeah.

[tense music]

- I couldn't stay there any longer.

I've been right the entire time.

I could tell Lucy was upset that nothing was found.

- What we witnessed living with him--

I'm sorry.

- We've seen him in action.

We seen you kids get beat.

And, I mean, he didn't just beat you with the belt.

- No.

- It was not just like a couple slaps with that belt.

He beat you till sometimes they were bleeding.

- Mm-hmm.

- He'd have you on the floor kicking and punching you.

- And then pick you up and throw you across the floor.

- Grab your hair and slam your head against everything

he could find.

- That's why we came forward, Lucy.

Truly.

[grim music]

- When we were first approached about doing this documentary...

- We were hesitant, very hesitant,

because we didn't want to revisit all the pain

and the anguish and the sorrow

of what we lived through.

- The reason we felt like we needed to come forward

was to help Lucy, to show people

that she's probably right.

- Even if Susan won't admit that my dad k*lled people

and put them in the well,

she does know that he k*lled our mom,

he k*lled our stepmom,

and he probably k*lled Anna.

- Oh, God, yes.

She's doing what Dad trained us to do.

- Why do you guys keep believing a pathological liar?

Her story is all about revenge for abuse.

Oh, you better believe he beat the sh*t out of us.

But no, that's not why we made "Newsweek."

We made it over to people,

not over my mother and my stepmother.

Where's the f*cking bodies?

[thunder booms]

- I think I believe that

Lucy has seen something.

I think that there are probably human remains

out here on this farm.

It's not an easy task to try to find them.

Memory is ephemeral.

So something happened. She saw something.

And right now, I don't know what that is.

- Maybes are littered everywhere in the story, right?

Anything could have happened.

Or nothing happened.

♪ ♪

- There are a lot more things on Lucy's side

than there are against Lucy right now.

There are a lot of people who have come forward.

They're not lying.

I'm not lying.

- I think Susan probably

doesn't admit it happened because

psychologically, I don't think she probably can.

If my father had done that,

I would do everything in the world not to remember.

♪ ♪

- Everybody's capable of k*lling.

But you can't prove my father k*lled anybody.

♪ ♪

- Not about my dad.

- In Bartlett, Iowa, at four years old?

k*ll?

♪ ♪

- It's tough dealing with this family

because I keep going back to this,

is if any of it's true--

and I'm--there's morsels of it that would have to be true--

it's scary.

♪ ♪

- There's always two sides to a story.

Somewhere in the middle is the truth.

Will you ever know

% what happened?

♪ ♪

- Don't you think if there was to hookers,

we would have reported it?

♪ ♪

My dad was innocent.

♪

- Murdering dozens of women.

♪

- [wheezes]

♪ ♪

- In a well.

[The Kossoy Sisters' "In the Pines"]

It'd be in a well.

♪ ♪

- ♪ In the pines, in the pines ♪

♪ Where the sun never shines ♪

♪ Shivered where the cold winds blow ♪

♪ In the pines, in the pines ♪

♪ In the cold, lonesome pines ♪

♪ Shivered where the cold winds blow ♪

♪ Little girl, little girl ♪

♪ Where'd you stay last night? ♪

♪ Not even your mother knows ♪

♪ I stayed in the pines ♪

♪ Where the sun never shines ♪

♪ Shivered where the cold winds blow ♪