The phrase is familiar to many thanks to the famous horror film. Many are accustomed to thinking that it is completely based on real events, but this is not entirely true.
The true story that took place in the small town of Amityville is truly horrific - a young man named Rony Dafoe killed his entire family. A 23-year-old guy early in the morning in cold blood shot his father, mother and four brothers and sisters with a gun, and then went to work.
Upon his return, Roni became terrified, running to a nearby bar and shouting that his entire family had been killed. However, later the investigation was able to find out that the man himself committed the crime.
At first he denied it and did not give any evidence, but later he finally confessed to his crime. Rony Defoe received six life sentences, and the sentence could not be commuted despite the fact that his lawyers argued that he was mentally ill.
Defoe himself claimed that some sinister voices ordered him to end the lives of all family members.
This was the end of the real story that took place in Amityville in a house on Ocean Street.
The Lutz Family
About a year later, another family named Lutz moved into the terrible house, and a month later they escaped from the “hellish place.” The couple claimed that the ominous house exudes fetid odors, mucus flows down the walls, and sounds of crying and screams appear.
They could not live long in such conditions, and therefore they left and left the house empty. These stories began the story that formed the basis of the novel of the same name and several horror films.
The Lutz couple went to lawyer Roni Defoe Weber to talk about what was happening in the house. So they hoped that they could help the guy - the court should have commuted the punishment, since there really was an evil spirit in the house. However, these tricks did not lead to anything; Defoe remained in prison with the same term.
It turned out that this was not the couple’s only goal. Most of all they wanted to gain fame and money, and therefore began to actively tell their story of living in a house on Okeanicheskaya Street.
Journalists willingly believed their words; they even invited mediums and psychics into the house. They all unanimously insisted that an evil spirit had settled in the house and was poisoning the lives of all its residents.
Based on all these sensations, the Lutz couple gained wide fame, and in addition to it a considerable monetary fortune.
Deception
Many years later, having decided to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the terrible story, journalists came to the famous house. They decided to interview the current residents and find out how they live in the cursed place.
To everyone’s surprise, the new residents settled here a long time ago, and their lives were peaceful and calm. There were no sounds, mucus or smells, did not manifest itself in any way. Previous residents noted the same thing.
Then the journalists went to lawyer Weber and decided to ask him what was the matter. It was then that the truth appeared - it turned out that the Lutz spouses had deliberately come up with all these terrible details in order to gain fame and money.
So, completely different people were able to earn a lot of money from the tragic story of a maddened killer and his dead family.
Amityville LegendsToday at the Roadside Bar we will listen to the legends of Amityville, a small quiet town about thirty kilometers from New York.
A beautiful small town, old houses, well-groomed lawns, parks - everything a person needs for a calm, comfortable life.
Bloody murders, the fact of the most famous case of ghost possession in American history, an exorcist who was defeated in a battle with spirits and the curse of murdered Indians - this is also Amityville.
Amityville is a creepy story that took place in a large, beautiful mansion at 112 Ocean Avenue.
One fine morning, a young man named Ronald De Feo, the eldest son in a large and close-knit family, opened a closet, selected a .35-caliber Marlin shotgun suitable for bear hunting from a large collection of weapons, loaded it and headed to his parents' bedroom.
Before you start reading this story and plunge into the chilling horror of those events, look around.
I hope it’s late in the evening for you and you’re completely alone in the house?
Alone?
Are you sure?
The inhabitants of the mansion at 112 Ocean Avenue also thought so, but what happened?
Besides them, there was something else living in the house and this “something” killed them all.
What happened there?
We will have to look for the answer to this in the distant past.
In the territory that is now called Long Island (New York), in 1644 there were very difficult relations between English and Dutch settlers and Indian tribes. The parties could not agree on how to evaluate the position of the Massapequa Indians, whose leader Takapausha claimed that the lands occupied by the Dutch colony were handed over to them for use, and not sold forever.
In the end, the Dutch decided that it was time to end this problem once and for all. They remembered Captain John Underhill, a famous cutthroat whom the Indians feared like fire.
There were reasons for this: several years ago, in the war with the Pequot tribe, Underhill took part in the massacre of the redskins. 400 Indians were burned alive for daring to leave a settlement near the Mystic River without permission.
After some time, John Underhill moved to the island (Long Island) and made a lot of effort, making it clear that if he was well paid, he would take on this case and solve the Massapequa problem.
He was a very cruel man. He didn’t consider the Indians to be people at all, so he didn’t see anything special in the murders of the Redskins.
The Whites paid him well, and Captain Jonah Underhill earned the money in full.
First, he staged demonstrative torture and execution of seven Indians, whom he accused of stealing pigs. Then he lured and killed about twenty Indians (their remains were buried in a mass grave at Fort Neck).
(When a road was paved at the Fort Neck site a year later, the ground was still red. The bones of 24 people were discovered; the remaining victims were never found.)
But what is the connection between the murdered Indians at Fort Neck and the events in Amiteville?
The Indian burial ground was located just a mile from 112 Ocean Avenue.
After Ronald DeFeo shot and killed his entire family, he claimed that he was possessed by the spirit of an Indian chief, who forced him to kill.
The story of Amityville began on November 13, 1974, and it began with a murder.
The Defeo family - parents Ronald and Louise and their children - were shot dead in their own beds.
Ronald Defeo Sr. was killed with two shots.
Louise Defeo survived her husband by only a few seconds - she was shot dead next.
After that, the killer left the parents' bedroom on the second floor of the house and headed to the children's room.
The boys Mark and John were shot at point-blank range.
12-year-old Mark died instantly. 9-year-old John was less fortunate - his spinal cord was broken.
Two girls - 13-year-old Alison and 18-year-old Dawn - were shot in the head.
Ronald DeFeo Jr., the only survivor of the massacre, was arrested on suspicion of murder.
On November 19, 1975, Ronald DeFeo Jr. was found guilty of six murders and received a life prison sentence for each of them. It was clear that he would never be released.
So, the family murder case was over and justice was served?
How to say…
There are a lot of questions left in the case.
The most important of them is the motive of the crime.
Yes, Ronald didn’t love his father, but why did he kill his mother, whom he had defended so many times before from his father’s beatings? Why did he kill his brothers and sisters? Neighbors and family acquaintances claimed that Ronald was very attached to little Allison and his younger brother John. Meanwhile, it was these two who suffered a terrible death at his hands.
There was something else too.
None of the family members tried to defend themselves or flee. Meanwhile, the shooting continued for more than 10 minutes. At first, the investigation had a theory that Ronald had given sleeping pills to his relatives, but the examination gave a clearly negative result.
According to the manufacturer, a 35-caliber carbine of the Marlin brand makes such a roar when fired that it can be heard at a distance of about a kilometer. Meanwhile, not only the victims themselves, but also numerous neighbors, whose houses are located 50 meters from Defeo, did not hear anything!
The investigation put forward a version that the walls of the house acted as a muffler, but it did not stand up to criticism.
And finally, the strangest thing: all six dead were found in the same position - face down. There was no evidence that the killer had changed the position of his victims. It turns out that a moment before death they were all sleeping with their faces to the ground?
All this was very strange and answers to these questions were never received.
Be that as it may, the killer went to prison, the dead were buried, and the house was put up for sale.
The history of the house, of course, scared off buyers, but still, there were those who bought it.
A certain George Lutz and his wife Katie agreed to buy the house, which became an Amityville legend - the house was sold for almost nothing.
(By the way, George and Katie did not hide the history of the house from the children. They asked them if they would agree to sleep in the same rooms where sleeping people were shot a year ago. The children (they were then 4, 7 and 9 years old) were not frightened by this circumstance ).
On December 18, 1975, they moved into a new home with two sons, a little daughter and a dog.
And very quickly their dream house turned into a real nightmare that is difficult to even imagine.
They lived in this house for only four weeks, after which they left the mansion in a panic, leaving all their belongings there.
Now is the time to watch the trailer for the Amityville movie, just to know what it's all about.
George, the head of the family, although he did not believe in otherworldly forces, still hedged his bets. Just in case, he invited a Catholic priest to bless the house. Father Ralph Pecoraro responded to the request with understanding.
The consecration went smoothly. Father Pecoraro went around all the rooms, sprinkled them with holy water and said the required prayers. Nothing caused him any concern except for one room on the second floor - it was the bedroom in which little Mark and John Defeo died.
It was there that something happened that forced the holy father to flee Amityville in panic, without even explaining to the owners of the house the reason for his behavior.
All he had time to say was urgent advice not to turn this room into a bedroom.
The Lutz family had just begun to settle into their new home when the horror of Amiteville made itself felt. First, the floorboards in the house began to creak and doors slam on their own. An unbearable smell of decaying meat appeared, which was impossible to get rid of. At night, someone’s footsteps could be clearly heard on the stairs, and one day green mucus suddenly began to ooze down the walls of the rooms.
But what was much more alarming to George and Katie was that their four-year-old daughter Maisie suddenly had an imaginary friend named Jodie, with whom she constantly talked. No one except Macy saw this girl, who supposedly also lived in this house. Macie chatted with her, played with her, and one day told her mother that Jodie had told her: Macie and her parents would have to live in this house for the rest of their lives.
Soon after this, something else happened.
One night, Kathy Lutz is face down. (All members of the Lutz family, as soon as they moved into a new house, began to sleep in the same position - face down.) Suddenly, Katie's body rose above the bed and began to slowly rotate in the air right up to the ceiling. George woke up immediately, but he could not move his arm or leg. Katie's levitation continued for several minutes.
The next morning, George called Father Pecoraro and told him what had happened. Ralph Pecoraro took the story for granted and was surprised by only one thing: why had they not yet left this damned place?
George himself understood that they had made a mistake by buying the damned house.
He decided to leave the mansion with his family as soon as possible - and the house seemed to understand this.
Whispers, footsteps and laughter were heard in the rooms, and the air first warmed up and then cooled down and the house turned into a giant refrigerator.
But the Lutz family, having temporarily moved to Katie’s mother, who lived nearby in another city, were not yet planning to part with the house on Ocean Avenue.
They wanted the house to be cleansed of spirits and ghosts.
To do this, George contacted the Warren spouses, Ed and Lorraine, the most famous ghost hunters in America.
The fashionable pair of psychics arrived with much fanfare, accompanied by a Channel 5 television news crew and the president of the American Society for Paranormal Research.
(By the way, remember the legend about the cursed paintings and the painting by Bill Stoneham?
http://community.livejournal.com/americanlegends/18856.html
Ed and Lorraine Warren also appeared there: they offered their services to perform an exorcism ritual - according to them, the picture was infused with evil spirits. In addition, the Warren couple took part in the exorcism of spirits from the Smurl house in Pennsylvania. In general, they were present at almost all the sensational incomprehensible and mystical cases, offering their services as exorcists and exorcists, but, in my opinion, these “exorcists” are just clever scammers who skillfully take advantage of the situation for their advertising. Soon we will listen to another story about an exorcism and a story about the Warrens, then you can draw your own conclusions).
The results of the session turned out to be terrifying: Lorraine and Ed, as befits professionals, experienced the monstrous influence of “evil forces” (!), and the uninitiated news channel host Marvin Scott was carried out of the house in an unconscious state.
There was no benefit from this visit.
After the Warrens, 7 more famous psychics visited the house. According to the unanimous opinion, evil was so deeply rooted in this building that the only way out could be a full-fledged exorcism session, which, as we know, is associated with great danger to the life of the exorcizing priest himself.
The owner of the damned house did not dare to carry out such an experiment, and in March the Lutzes returned the mansion to the bank.
There has long been controversy surrounding the described history of Amityville. Many are sure that it is fictitious from beginning to end.
Ronald DeFeo's lawyer, William Weber, admitted that, together with the Lutz family, he "created this terrible story over a bottle of wine." The house was never haunted; the terrible events that the Lutzes talked about were fictitious from beginning to end. Weber planned to use ghost stories as a mitigating factor for his client, Ron DeFeo.
They are said to have been inspired to write the Amityville ghost story by another fictional story, "The Exorcist," which appeared in December 1973. Stories about demons and ghosts were in the public eye just as the Lutzes allegedly began making up their own story about demonic activity a year or two later.
Whether this is so is unknown
There is too much independent evidence to support the Lutzes' story to suggest that they made it all up or fabricated it themselves.
The local story alone about the extermination of Indians and mass graves is enough to believe that this is not a clean matter and, perhaps, the Lutz family got off easy...
Well, and a little more Amityville for a healthy, sound sleep. :)
The Amityville Horror is a fatal Amityville mansion built in 1924, located in southern New York at 112 Ocean Avenue. For 50 years of its existence, this building did not stand out among many others. The house gained its ominous fame thanks to egregious and cruel events that formed the basis of many famous works of fiction and documentary.
On the morning of November 13, 1974, the Defeo family was exterminated in this house. Parents and their children were shot dead in their own beds. Ronald DeFeo Sr. was killed by two shots. Louise Defeo survived her husband by only a few seconds - she was shot dead next. After this, the killer left the parents' bedroom on the second floor of the house and headed to the children's room. The boys Mark and John were shot at point-blank range. 12-year-old Mark died instantly, and 9-year-old John was less fortunate - his spinal cord was broken. Two girls - 13-year-old Alison and 18-year-old Dawn - were shot in the head. Ronald DeFeo Jr., the only survivor of the massacre, was arrested on suspicion of murder.
On November 19, 1975, Ronald DeFeo Jr. was found guilty of murdering 6 people and was sentenced to 150 years in prison. Despite the fact that the killer is forever behind bars, many unknowns remain in this case, including the motive for the crime.
Why did Ronald kill his mother, whom he had defended so many times before from his father’s beatings? Why did he kill his brothers and sisters? Neighbors and friends of the family claimed that Ronald was very attached to little Alison and his younger brother John.
Another strange fact was that none of the family members tried to defend themselves or escape, although loud shots from a hard drive were heard in the house with some frequency for about 5 minutes. All the dead lay face down, as if chained to the floor by an unknown force. The investigation concluded that the bodies did not roll over, and a blood test of the victims revealed no traces of sleeping pills.
To understand the essence of what is happening, let's go back to 1644. In the area that is now called Long Island, there were very difficult relations between the Dutch settlers and the Indian tribes. The cause of the conflicts was the territory on which the Dutch colony was located. Takapausha, chief of the Massapequa Indians, argued that these lands were leased to the colony for use, and not given away permanently. Opponents held a completely opposite opinion.
Every day the situation only worsened and the Dutch decided to put an end to this dispute. For a good reward, this problem was entrusted to Captain John Underhill, who was followed on his heels by the bloody glory of a cruel and fearless thug. Since he did not consider the Redskins to be people at all, the Indians feared him like fire.
First, John and his squad caught seven Indians, whom they subjected to sophisticated methods, accusing the unfortunates of stealing pigs. Then he lured and killed about twenty more Indians into a trap. Their bodies were buried in a mass grave at Fort Neck.
When a road was laid at the Fort Neck site a year later, which ran next to the mass grave, they decided to move those buried to another place. The remains of 24 people were recovered from the ground. Considering that the Indians were far from the first to be buried here, there was a noticeable shortage of bones, but they were never found.
How does this relate to the events that unfolded in the Amityville house? The old Indian burial place was located a mile from the mansion, and according to Ronald’s testimony, the spirit of the Indian ordered him to kill all his relatives. After everything that happened, the damned mansion was put up for sale, but the story didn’t end there...
A little later, George Lutz and his wife Katie purchased this house at a very low price. Unlike other buyers, the history of this place did not scare them at all.
On December 18, 1975, they moved into a new home with two sons, a small daughter and a dog. But inexplicable sounds at night, the constant smell of rotting meat and other mystical phenomena forced the Lutz family to flee the mansion exactly 4 weeks later, leaving all their belongings in it. Who owns the Amityville horror now is unknown.
Amityville murder scene photo
In the city of Amityville in 1974, an emergency occurred. On November 13, the entire Defeo family was killed at 112 Ocean Avenue. The parents were shot while sleeping in bed, and two sons and two daughters were also shot with them. Their eldest son Ronald remained unharmed; he was arrested, convicted and imprisoned.
Newspaper article about events in Amityville
What was suspicious was that all the bodies were lying face down on the beds, as if something was holding them while they were being shot. The children were not awakened by gunshots from previous murders, although a rifle is a fairly noisy weapon. After the tragedy, the house was not sold for a long time. The previously quiet area of Long Island was shocked by the horrific massacre. In 1975, the Lutz family moved into the house. The husband, wife and three children said that their abode was Hell's house. As if the demons that pushed Ronald Jr. to kill were not heard by him, but were actually in the house. The new owners called the church minister to bless the house, but something threw him away, leaving blisters on his hands, and he heard a cry of “Get out!”
Less than a month later, the family could not stand it any longer and fled without taking anything with them. The public quickly learned of the horrors that tormented them.
Life of the Defeo family
As we have already described above, police officers found the Defeo family shot in the house - six people sleeping peacefully in their bed. Ronald and Louise, sons Mark and John and daughters Dawn and Allison. Their son Ronald Jr. was unharmed. Police determined the murders were committed around 3:00 a.m. with a .35 caliber Marlin rifle. The Defoe family was well known; their children studied with their neighbors at the Amityville school. Neighbors watched in horror as police took away Ronald Jr., who was later tried and accused of killing all six family members.
DeFeo family
The three-story Dutch colonist's house at 112 Ocean Avenue was near the river and had quite a lot in it. The American dream has come true: a beautiful house, a big family, wealth. But Ronald DeFeo was angry, prone to rages. He often threatened both Louise and his children. Ronald Jr. often suffered because of his father's bad mood. The boy grew fat and his friends made fun of him. His father humiliated him at home. As Ronald Jr. grew up, he became stronger and no longer tolerated his father's bullying. At the age of 17, under the influence of some drugs, he got involved in petty theft. He was later kicked out of school for drug use. His behavior was unstable and there were outbursts of psychosis. Having a hot temper, he participated in fist fighting matches. Even the father noticed that his son's aggressive behavior was abnormal.
The father and his wife Louise wanted to take the young man to a psychiatrist, but he refused help. They indulged their son in every possible way so as not to cause an outburst of anger and to calm him down. At age 14, he was given $14,000 for a cruise on the Amityville River. As soon as the teenager asked for money, they immediately gave it to him. In the family, Ronald Jr. was allowed everything; he was given a job at a car dealership, where he came only for a salary. The son's disputes with his father became more frequent and more dangerous. One day, when Defeo's parents had an argument, the son took a shotgun, went downstairs and shot at his father, but missed. Ronald Sr. froze, and his son seemed not at all bothered by the fact that he had almost shot his father. Shortly before the family's murder, their relationship deteriorated. Unsatisfied with his earnings, the son planned a robbery with his friend. The father exposed his deception, and the son decided to take revenge. When the police questioned the son, he became aggressive and enraged. The father already knew that Ronald Jr. had stolen the money. The police asked their son to help them identify the thief, but he refused. The father demanded an answer as to why he did not want to help the authorities. They fought again, but that was not the end.
House at 112 Ocean Avenue
November 13 was a wonderful quiet night. The entire DeFeo family went to bed, except for Ronald Jr., who sat thoughtfully in his room. He decided to solve all his problems once and for all. Armed with a .35 caliber Marlin rifle, he purposefully walked towards his parents' bedroom. He first killed his father with two shots in the back. The first bullet tore the kidneys and exited the chest, the next shot through the neck. He also shot his mother twice. The shots tore through her chest and lungs. Then Ronald Jr. went to his little brothers. It looks like the shots didn't wake them up.
Standing between the beds in the boys' room, he shot each of them at point-blank range. Mark died immediately, John's spinal cord was severed, he twitched for a few seconds, then fell silent. He then shot the Donne and Allison sisters in the head. It all happened at 3:00 am, in less than fifteen minutes. Ronald killed his entire family in cold blood, then collected their bloody clothes and weapons, wrapped them in a pillowcase, got into his car and drove to Brooklyn, throwing the contents down the drain. After that, he calmly went to work.
Photographs taken in the house during the investigation
He later said himself: “If I had not killed my family, they would have killed me. When the weapon was in my hand, there was no doubt who I was. I'm God".
At trial, the lawyer tried to prove Ronald Jr.'s insanity. He claimed that he heard the voices of demons. He was examined by forensic psychiatrist Harold Zolan. He determined that although DeFeo was using heroin and LSD, he was aware of what he was doing that night. He was convicted of second-degree murder in November 1975. He is now serving six 25 year sentences in Green Haven Prison, all of his appeals have been rejected, and he will remain there for life.
Photos of Ronald DeFeo after his arrest
Many people continue to have questions:
- How could the children not hear the first shots?
- Why were the dead lying face down?
- Why didn't the neighbors hear the shots of a powerful rifle?
It was assumed that Ronald had planned everything in advance and slipped drugs into the food during lunch. It was believed that the house muffled the sounds of gunfire, but many who were in the house later reported that street noise could be clearly heard from inside. Although the sound of such a rifle can be heard a mile away, the neighbors heard only DeFeo's dog barking that night. Ronald continues to change his testimony, which is unlikely to shed light on those terrible events.
Police remove dead bodies from house
Arrested Ronald DeFeo
Realtors warned the Lutz family about a terrible murder, but the young family could not resist buying a house in a prestigious area. They hoped that all the troubles that frightened them in the new house would disappear as soon as the priest consecrated the house. But on the way, the hood of the priest’s car flew open, breaking his window. The right door opened and the car stalled. The priest asked for help. The windshield wipers were flying back and forth like crazy and wouldn't stop.
March 7, 2018, 12:19Amityville. The name of this small town thirty kilometers from New York is known not only in the USA, but also far beyond the borders of America. But the prestigious area “for the rich” was not made famous by a successful billionaire or a prominent scientist. Amityville became famous for the Hight Hopes mansion - the sinister house where American assassin Ronald DeFeo killed his family.
This bloody story, which destroyed the calm life of the quiet town of Amityville, occurred back in the 70s of the twentieth century. Since then, the three-story mansion has become a favorite place to visit for tourists who love the horror genre, as well as various psychics, mediums, and clairvoyants seeking to confirm rumors about supernatural manifestations in this house.
The killer, Ronald DeFeo Jr., is still alive today. While in prison, he gave interviews more than once, giving the most unexpected versions of the events of that November night. The crime itself, which Ronald Defeo committed, managed to become an “urban legend”, overgrown with rumors, speculation and “new facts and versions that have emerged.” Interest in the “scary” house in Amityville continues unabated also because the bloody story became the basis for a book and the plot of several feature films. Now that several decades have passed, the conjectures of writers and directors are firmly intertwined with the official facts of the investigation into the murder of the Defeo family. So who was Ronald DeFeo (Jr.)? Could he have committed the murder of several people alone? And what events preceded the fact that Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot his entire family with a rifle he owned in November 1974?
Defeo's parents
Ronald's future parents were an outwardly beautiful couple, even though they belonged to different “classes of society.” Mother, Louise Mary Brigante, came from the family of a successful businessman and dreamed of a career in the modeling business. The young beauty was not even twenty years old when she met her peer Ronald Joseph DeFeo (senior). The decision to get married caused a protest among Louise's parents, who completely interrupted communication with their daughter and son-in-law. “The ice melted” only when, on September 26, 1951, the young couple had their first child, Ronald Defeo Jr. After the birth of her grandson, Louise's father, Michael Brigante, hired Ronald Sr. to work for his company, and later, a few years later, helped the DeFeo family purchase a house in prestigious Amityville.
Childhood in Brooklyn
It is a very common opinion that it was childhood and parents that primarily influenced how the future “famous” killer Ronald Defeo grew up. His biography begins in Brooklyn, not the richest New York area. The first years of the life of Ronald Defeo Jr. can hardly be called cloudless and happy. According to the testimony of relatives and friends of the Defeo family, the education that the father applied to his eldest son amounted to severe beatings for any offense. Louise could not or did not want to change anything in relation to father and son; according to rumors, Defeo Sr. beat her too.
Constant stress and abuse from his father took a toll on Ronald's appearance and health, both physical and mental. The boy was withdrawn and also suffered from excess weight.
School and classmates
As often happens, Ronald Defeo, who was beaten at home, also became the target of attacks from other children at school. At first the boy was teased; because of his excess weight, his classmates gave him the nickname “pork chop.” It is not known whether DeFeo had friends in elementary school. The bullying and attacks on Ronald continued for several years. Everything changed when teenager Ronald not only grew up and became stronger, but also became interested in drugs. Now he has become a “problem” for those around him.
Butch and amphetamines
The drugs taken by high school student Ronald DeFeo made the teenager aggressive. Sometimes he had real fits of furious rage. Of course, no one dared to tease him with the “chop” anymore, especially since drug addiction made him thin. The teenager, now nicknamed Butch, is no longer a victim. He fought back against Ronald Sr.'s aggressive behavior. The slightest reason was enough to start a real fist fight with my father. Then the parents turned to a psychiatrist for advice in order to somehow curb the aggressive and uncontrollable Butch. A visit to the doctor did not produce results - Ronald Jr. abruptly refused the help of a psychiatrist. The family had to find a new way to manage the drug-addicted teenager - money. The younger Defeo regularly received expensive gifts and money “for expenses” from his father. Relatives often recalled a simply “royal” gift to a fourteen-year-old son from a “loving father” - a motor boat, which cost decent money for that time, about fifteen thousand dollars. Children of the Defeo family Despite family problems and the rude aggressive behavior of Defeo Sr., four more children were born in the family: two daughters, Dawn Teresa (1956) and Allison Louise (1961) and sons Mark Gregory (1962) and John Matthew (1965) .
The killer himself, Ronald DeFeo Jr., while already serving a prison sentence, stated in an interview that not only he, but also his younger sister Dawn had problems with his parents. Her father’s harsh “educational methods” applied to her too. In addition, apparently, Down Teresa also inherited the difficult temper of Ronald Sr. Butch claims that his sister hated their father so much that she once even threatened him with a kitchen knife during an argument. Later, all four children of the Defeo family, along with their parents, would be shot dead. But it is the death of Butch's siblings that is the most controversial. According to close friends and relatives, the children were quite friendly - everyone noticed the affection that “difficult teenager” Ronald Defeo felt for the younger ones.
Prestigious Amityville
The move to the town of Amityville, a quiet place for wealthy families, was preceded by several events that were atypical for the Defeo family life. Tired of beatings and her husband's explosive temper, Louise Brigante decided to leave after the birth of her fourth child, Mark Gregory. This forced Ronald Sr. to change his attitude towards his wife somewhat. To win Louise back, DeFeo even wrote a song for her, which was later sung and recorded for the album by Joe Williams, a popular jazzman at the time. After reconciliation, the couple exchanged their old house in Brooklyn for the three-story High Hopes mansion in the town of Amityville. Their fifth and last child was born there.
Their outwardly decent life was now overshadowed by the behavior of their first-born Defeo Jr. Finally addicted to drugs, seventeen-year-old Butch dropped out of school, and his relationship with his father became worse day by day. Things increasingly came to a showdown with fists. Even Ronald's employment at his grandfather's Buick car manufacturing company, where his father already worked, did not save the situation. Butch carried out simple assignments, and sometimes did not appear in the office for several days. Ronald DeFeo had outrageous behavior outside the family home. The young man developed many unpleasant “hobbies” besides drugs: buying firearms, promiscuous relationships with women, petty theft. The latter is more than strange, because Butch didn’t really need money - his father continued to support him, giving Ronald $500 weekly.
The last year of the Defeo family
The events of the last months of the life of the Defeo family, before the bloody November night of 1974, seemed to foreshadow a terrible outcome. Defeo Jr.'s passion for weapons and hunting began to pose a real danger to others. Even his friends recall times when he would “jokingly” aim at someone. One day, Ronald took his parents at gunpoint to stop a quarrel that had started between them, and pulled the trigger. The shot that time did not happen only by accident; the gun misfired. A week before the shooting of the family in the Hight Hopes mansion, Ronald, who did not hesitate to take and spend family money from the house, committed a crime, embezzling money from the company where he worked. When DeFeo Jr. was tasked with taking a large sum, more than 20 thousand, to the bank, Butch simply “didn’t deliver the money,” saying that he had been robbed. Despite refusing to help investigate the “robbery,” the police found out that Butch and his friend had embezzled the money. Ronald again did not receive any punishment for this offense, but this infuriated the elder Defeo. Father and son had a big fight, with Ronald Sr. shouting that “the devil is behind” Ronald, to which the son threatened to kill his parent, calling him a “fat freak.” These words were then often heard in court by the prosecution. Murder and investigation The Defeo family (parents and four younger children) were brutally murdered on the night of November 13, 1974. Friends and colleagues who saw Ronald that day recall that his day went almost as usual. He arrived at work unusually early, but explained this by the fact that he suffered from insomnia and decided to leave early, leaving the house around 4 am. Then Butch acted as if nothing had happened. He called home several times throughout the day to find out why his father didn't show up for work. And at the same time I was very “surprised” that they didn’t answer calls at home. Butch spent the evening having fun with his friends, as usual, drinking alcohol and drugs. After the “party,” Ronald went to the family mansion, but soon ran to Henry’s Bar, located on the corner of the street, a few meters from the house, shouting that his entire family had been shot. Police officers searching the house that evening found six dead bodies lying in their beds. Both parents were shot twice with a Marlin 336C hunting rifle, and each child was killed with one shot. The following seemed strange: all the bodies were lying on their stomachs, dressed in pajamas. None of them woke up or tried to get up, run away or hide. Initially, detectives decided that all family members were given sleeping pills, but the examination did not confirm this version.
Versions of the crime
At the very beginning of the investigation into the brutal murder of members of the Defeo family, police detectives did not even consider the eldest son as a suspect. After a brief interrogation in the kitchen of the mansion, Ronald was taken under police protection as a valuable witness. Of course, for neighbors and all acquaintances, hostility, almost enmity, between father and son was not a secret. But all the witnesses confirmed that Defeo treated the rest of the family members, especially the younger children, very warmly and with love. For this reason, it seemed so incredible that a young man could commit such a crime. Thanks primarily to Ronald's testimony, detectives now have a suspect. He became a close friend of Ronald Sr., who even lived for some time in the Amityville family mansion, an American of Italian descent named Louis Falini. Butch stated that his father helped Falini, who was a member of the local mafia, to hide the stolen valuables in the basement of Defeo’s house. The police had a version that the Italian shot the entire family as witnesses. But after a thorough inspection of the house, an unexpected find appeared - a box from a Marlin 336C rifle belonging to Butch. Having come under suspicion, Ronald changed his testimony about that terrible night. He claimed that Louis Falini and an unknown mafia accomplice woke him up at about four in the morning and, threatening him with a pistol, took a rifle, with which they killed all members of the family. After they left, Butch said, he destroyed the evidence in desperation, getting rid of the shell casings and weapons. The last version was completely implausible and raised many questions that Butch could not answer. The detectives conducting the investigation no longer had any doubt that it was Ronald DeFeo who killed his family. And soon Butch himself confessed. The killer told in detail how he single-handedly shot first his parents and then his sisters and brothers with his rifle, washed himself thoroughly, washing away traces of blood, how he hid all the evidence, the rifle, shell casings and clothes stained with blood, drowning everything in a Brooklyn sewer.
Ronald's trial
Despite the confession of the killer, all the details of the crime took quite a long time to establish; the trial began almost a year after the murder, on September 14. The main argument that Butch’s lawyer relied on was the statement about the killer’s insanity - Ronald claimed that he was ordered to shoot his relatives by “voices” that he heard in his own head. But after an examination by a forensic psychiatrist, it was concluded that despite a mild disorder and drug addiction, Defeo was completely sane. After this, neither cooperation with the investigation nor words about repentance and regret helped Ronald. Ronald Joseph DeFeo Jr. was convicted of the murders of six people and received a total of 150 years in prison, 25 for each victim. All subsequent petitions for the release of the "famous" killer filed to date have been consistently rejected. Today, Ronald DeFeo Jr. (photo below, 2015) is in Green Heaven (Beekman), one of the correctional institutions in New York State.
Lone psychopath or gang of killers?
Most experts in the field of criminology and just outside researchers of the events of that night in 1874 agree that there are still many unexplained facts in the shooting of the Defeo family. In addition to the fact that during the murder none of the neighbors heard a single shot, and all the children after the shots in the parents’ bedroom did not even try to get out of bed and leave the house, another circumstance was revealed. A specialist hired by Michael Brigante concluded that the Defeo family was shot with at least two guns. This gave rise to the claim that Ronald did not act alone. However, this fact, which emerged during the trial, did not in any way affect the verdict, and Ronald himself made the first statement on this matter only 10 years later. DeFeo Jr. said that Louise Brigante took part in the shooting of the family. This version was rejected as ridiculous. In 2002, the book The Night the DeFeos died was published, the author of which, Rick Osuna, interviewed Ronald. The Amityville story is told here as follows: there were four killers - Ronald, his two friends and Dawn Teresa, and the sister, according to DeFeo, suggested killing the family. And it was she, according to Ronald, who shot the younger children, whom it was not originally planned to kill. Thus, Ronald pleaded guilty to only three deaths - his parents and his “killer sister” Dawn. Ronald provided several controversial evidence in favor of this version. By that time, it was impossible to interview the very friends who allegedly took part in the murder - the first of them died. And the second one was under the witness protection program in a different case.
Amityville urban legend
The following owners of the house in Amityville contributed to the emergence of an aura of mysticism around the history of the Defeo family and the Hight Hopes mansion. Couples Kathy and George Lutz purchased the house almost a year after the crime. Within a month, the Lutz family left the mansion in great haste, informing the public about unusual phenomena taking place in Hight Hopes. The bad reputation of the mansion was reinforced by clairvoyants and mediums constantly “conducting research” on the house; they all claimed that paranormal phenomena were constantly occurring at the site of the death of the Defeo family. All this created the mystical urban legend “The Amityville Horror,” which inspired writers and screenwriters to create works in the horror genre. Moreover, the rights to film this story belong to the enterprising George Lutz.
Books and filmography
As already mentioned, the main “character” of the entire story, Defeo Jr., is still alive. He is serving a sentence in prison, has been married three times and willingly gives interviews and puts forward new versions. Despite the negative reputation that Ronald DeFeo has earned, his biography became the subject of the book by Rick Osuna, which was mentioned earlier.
Back in 1977, Jay Anson’s novel “The Amityville Horror” was written, the plot was based on the stories of the Lutz family about the paranormality of the house. The book was a success, but the truly popular story of the Defeo mansion, and with it Ronald himself, was made into film adaptations. The first Amityville Horror film burst onto the big screen in 1979. Afterwards, several films were made - sequels, no longer based on “real” terrible events. In fact, only the remake of “Horror,” released in 2005, was able to repeat the success of the first film.
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