THURMAN, Iowa – Sheriff Kevin Aistrope defended suspending the hunt for 50 to 70 bodies of prostitutes, supposedly dumped in a well, after a check of the area in 2007 turned up nothing. Aistrope said he and officers followed through on a tip from Lucy Studey in 2007 that she and brothers and sisters were ordered by their father growing up to dispose of corpses in a well. Besides not finding any evidence in 2007, Aistrope said, the scope of the crime as reported by Studey seemed to be so overwhelming as to stretch credence. “If there is 70 people, they’re not all from here,” Aistrope said. Even if they were from the Omaha-Council Bluffs metroplex 40 miles away, he said, “we would have picked up on that.” According to Studey’s daughter Lucy, there were five or six murders a year over 20 to 30 years.
Aistrope. Since 2008 the Sheriff of Fremont County, population 6,600. Earlier a deputy.