The Real Amityville Horror Part 1

Amityville, New York

Amityville is a suburb of the Town of Babylon in Suffolk County, New York. It sits along the south shore of Long Island. The US Census Bureau states that the village has a total area of 2.5 square miles, and of that, .4 of that is water. So, some quick maths tells us that the small village is actually around 15% water. The population, as of the 2010 (newest one available with Amityville info), is around 9500 people, meaning that there are around 4500 people per square mile. The small area is served by three elementary schools alongside 1 middle and high school.

The land around Amityville was a big draw for settlers back in the olden days, because there were marshy wetlands. In those wetlands, salt hay grew plentifully, which the people harvested and used to feed their livestock. This led to the area being broken up into several small farms, and the salt hay would be grown as a crop and sold to other settlers nearby. Amityville itself kinda started as a commercial center of sorts. There were mills there in the late 1800s to early 1900s, which mostly expanded into other ventures. Some transformed into different retail locations for various provisions, while others became family restaurants or bakeries. These changes sparked interest from neighboring communities, and very quickly, Amityville became the place that people went to do their shopping.

As time went on, Amityville became one of those small beach towns in the Northeast where people went for vacations. It was a place where the rich and famous began to purchase and build their summer homes. At one point, Al Capone stayed in Amityville. It feels like every story that takes place in the early to mid 1900s, Al Capone either had a house in or passed through the town where it happened. Guy was all over the place. But from all accounts, the craziest thing that happened while Capone was there was the occasional neighborhood baseball game that was played in his front yard.

Probably the most recognizable name to come out of Amityville is Alec Baldwin. While Baldwin was born there, he spent much of his early life and was raised in nearby Massapequa. While there have been a handful of professional athletes and musicians to come out of Amityville, De La Soul is likely the only one you would have heard of. The hip hop trio formed in Amityville in the late 80s and for three decades has continued to put out music or contribute to other artists. Their debut album, “3 Feet High and Rising” has been referred to as a hip hop masterpiece. For several years, the group’s music wasn’t available on any streaming platforms, because the members refused to sign off after learning they would only receive 10% of the earnings from streams, while the record label would receive the rest. Their music wouldn’t be available to stream until March of 2023, after their record label had been bought out, and they eventually gained the rights back to all their music. Although, it was overshadowed by the passing of one of the members, David Jolicoeur (Joe-Le-kerr) Aka: Trugoy (Pronounced just like it looks, True-goy) The Dove, just two weeks before due to heart failure.
Butttt, let’s be honest. When you hear Amityville, it’s not likely that you think of Al Capone, Alec Baldwin, or De La Soul… you think of the Amityville Horror. To really get into the story, let’s first talk about where it all took place, the Amityville House.

The Amityville House

The Amityville house sits at 112 Ocean Avenue, and is probably the most famous house in Long Island. (I looked it up, and no, the Yellowcard song is not about Amityville, it’s about Ocean Ave in Jacksonville, where the band was formed.) The house is a three story Dutch Colonial which was built for a couple, the Moynahans, who purchased the land from the Ireland family, one of the founding families of Amityville. The Irelands were one of those families we mentioned who had initially had a mill in the area, but then they started a tavern and bakery. They had tons of land in the area.

After buying the land, the Moynahans had to remove a small cabin / shack that was on the property before they hired a local builder, who built the five bedroom, four bathroom home. The property remained in the Moynahan family until 1960, when their daughter sold it to John and Mary Riley. The Riley’s lived in the house for five years before it was sold to Ron and Louise DeFeo in June of 1965.

As we will discuss, the DeFeo family met a tragic end nine years later, and about a year after that, the Ocean Ave home was purchased by George and Kathy Lutz; we will go into their story in part two of our Amityville episodes. Less than a month after they moved in, the Lutz family abruptly left the house in the middle of the night.

In 1977, Jim and Barbara Cromarty purchased the home for fifty five thousand dollars, but they were unaware that a book was about to be published detailing what the Lutz family claimed happened to them while they lived there. The book was released, and suddenly their home was at the center of a media firestorm. They were bombarded by unwanted visitors night and day. They tried to change the address of the house, but that did nothing to curb the amount of people who came to see the horror house they read about. The Cromarties did an interview with Newsday where they talked about the experience. They said that they were barely sleeping because people came at all hours. On one occasion, a man stood in their yard at 3AM and played a bugle as loud as he could. On a different night, someone left human excrement on their porch. They couldn’t put out holiday decorations because they all got stolen. Their 14 year old daughter was harassed in school by classmates asking if she saw any ghosts since they moved in.

By December of 1978, the Cromarties decided to sell the home and listed it for sale for one hundred thousand dollars. Then, in July of 1979, The Amityville Horror was released in theaters. This brought a whole new wave of people to Amityville and problems arose that affected the entire community. Ocean Ave would become littered with empty beer bottles, popcorn boxes, and other trash just left all over by people coming to see the house. As the crowds grew, more police officers were required to be in the area, which resulted in more officers being hired and overtime being paid. This proved very costly for the small town. Town officials tried to think of ways to monetize the crowds, by possibly running bus tours or charging admission for people to see the house; these plans were ultimately never approved out of respect for the DeFeo family.

After a while of unsuccessful attempts at selling the property, the Cromarties moved back in. They actually became proactive and tried to change the home’s reputation. They accepted speaking engagements around the New York area and talked about the home’s real history, not just what people saw in a movie. When the book was originally released, it had a subtitle of “a true story” on the cover. In 1982, the Cromarties reached a settlement with the publisher to have that removed from any future printings. And over time, the craziness died down, but it would pick back up when the movie was played on tv, or if anything brought it into the news.

In 1987, they finally sold the house to Peter and Jeanne O’Neill for three hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. The O’Neills made changes, most notably they swapped out what people called the “eye windows” for square ones. They were called the “eye” windows because of how they were shaped, and if the side of the house was a face, the two windows would be where the eyes were. They filled in the in-ground pool that was on the property, and after living there for 10 years, they sold the house for three hundred and ten thousand dollars to Brian Wilson.

Wilson lived there for 13 years and made several improvements to the home and property including adding a second sunroom to the backside. He sold the house for nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The owners after him lived there for six years before selling the house in March of 2017 before selling it for six hundred and five thousand dollars, after originally asking for eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

We go through all of this to illustrate and show you that the house has changed hands several times throughout the years, but none of the owners after the Lutz family experienced anything similar to what they claimed to have suffered.

Meet The DeFeo Family

Ronald Joseph “Big Ronnie” DeFeo was born in November of 1930. He was a slender, handsome young man, and people said that he had a “powerful gaze,” and suave looks. It was his good looks that drew the attention of Louise Marie Brigante. At the time, Ronald Sr. worked at a car dealership, and it is believed that Louise was pursuing a career in modeling. After a brief courtship, the couple married. Louise’s family was not fond of Ronald Sr. at all. In fact, when they got married, Louise’s family cut all ties with her. They would remain estranged until September of 1951, when the couple welcomed their first child, Ronald “Butch” DeFeo Jr. Over the next few years, they would have four additional children, Dawn, Allison, Marc, and John.

The DeFeos lived in an apartment in Brooklyn for several years, pretty much up until John was born. They had likely already outgrown the apartment with two adults and four children, but the addition of John forced them to look for somewhere new. Instead of opting to stay in the city, they looked at the smaller towns along the coast. By this time, Louise’s parents still weren’t Ronnie Sr.’s biggest fans, but they tolerated him. He was actually the manager of a car dealership that his father in law owned. And business was going well, to the point where money wasn’t a grave concern to them. So when they found the house in Amityville right on the water, with a boathouse and plenty of rooms for everyone, it felt like it was meant to be. Buttttt, while money wasn’t really a huge problem for them, a purchase like this was still a bit much for the family to swing. It’s been said from different sources that Louise’s father actually purchased the home for them. It wasn’t an unfamiliar pattern. When something came up and they needed money, they would turn to Louise’s father. At one point, Ronnie Sr. wanted some painted portraits of all the family members, and his father in law footed the bill… which was supposedly around fifty thousand dollars.

When the family moved into the house in Amityville, Ronnie Sr. hung a sign out front that said “High Hopes,” the nickname they used for their new home. One thing we haven’t touched on regarding Louise’s father and of Ronnie Sr himself is their ties to organized crime and the mafia. Ronnie Sr had an uncle who was a known accomplice and associate of the Genovese crime family. Louise’s father was a known associate of Carlo Gambino, the head of the Gambino crime family. Now, this is also an area (New York / New Jersey) and a time (60s and 70s) when having “mob connections” was basically a right of passage for teenage and young adult boys / men. People who grew up in that area and time will say that everyone they knew had some kind of connection to the mob, but it was always “my cousin’s cousin, or my uncle’s friend’s butcher.” There was a lot of talk, but not much proof in a lot of these cases.

So, we have this nice family who moved from the city, who might possibly have connections to organized crime in some fashion. While the family was known and well liked by others in the town, there was something that kept them all on edge. Ronald Sr. had a bad temper. And it probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone listening, but most of the time, when he flew off the handle the targets were either Louise or the children.

Ronald Jr. was the target many times. He was the first born boy, so he had higher expectations placed upon his shoulders from the start. When he was younger, Butch wasn’t the most popular kid in school or their neighborhood. He was sullen and withdrawn. He was overweight, something that put a target on his back amongst his classmates and peers. He often got beat up, much to Ronald Sr.’s dismay. He always told Butch that he needed to fight back and stick up for himself…. But when Butch would try to do that at home, Ronald Sr. would unleash on him. Sr. didn’t tolerate any type of back talk at home, but demanded that Butch stick up for himself at school.

As time passed, Butch grew more into himself. He became bigger and much of the childhood weight while also putting on muscle. The childhood shouting matches with his father would quickly give way to physical altercations. Some described it like a tinderbox. It would take barely anything for the father and son to be going at each other. But, even Ronald Sr, shithead that he was, could tell that Butch had more going on than just typical teenage / father son problems. He saw that he himself could be driven to anger easily, but sometimes, all it took to work Butch up was a sideways glance. He and Louise talked with a psychiatrist, and began to make Butch go. These meetings were short lived though, because Butch never took them seriously and took what was described as a passive-aggressive approach with his therapist. He rejected any notion from anyone that he needed help and refused any help when it was offered.

Ronald Sr. and Louise weren’t equipped to handle Butch or his aggression, so they fell into a habit of just giving Butch whatever he asked for. When he was 14, they gave him a fourteen thousand dollar speedboat that he could use to cruise up and down the Amityville River, which ran right behind their house. When he asked for money, they gave it to him with few questions. When he didn’t feel like asking for money, Butch just took whatever he needed or wanted.

When Butch was 17, he was forced to leave the parochial school he attended. By this time, he was already using hardcore drugs including heroin, LSD, and speed. He was involving himself in petty crimes as well, mostly stealing things. His violent outbursts started to occur more frequently outside the home too. One story people tell is that he and some buddies were out hunting when Butch just picked up his rifle and pointed it at one of his friends that he had known for years. He held it there as the boy’s face ran pale. The friend ran away and later that day when the group caught back up with him Butch simply asked him why he left the group so soon.

When Butch turned 18, he was given a “job” at his grandfather’s Buick dealership. Later, Butch himself described it as a “gravy” job. Basically nothing was expected of him. He didn’t even have to show up for work and he was still given a cash stipend at the end of every week. He used this money on things for his car, which his parents paid for, or for drugs and booze. The violence at home was still ever present too. One night, Ronald Sr. and Louise were fighting, and it was particularly bad. Butch went up to his room and grabbed his gun and loaded it while racing down to where his parents were fighting. Without hesitation, he burst in and reportedly said “Leave that woman alone. I’m going to kill you, you fat F***! This is it.” He then raised the gun to his father’s head and pulled the trigger. The gun malfunctioned and didn’t go off. Mother and father froze and watched as Butch simply lowered the gun and casually walked out of the room. Friends of the family said that after this incident, Ronald Sr. had changed, and the family started to attend church more regularly.

Things at the car dealership took a turn in the weeks before the family’s slaying. In the past, Butch had been given the responsibility of taking cash and checks to the bank and depositing them. It wasn’t something he did regularly, but on occasion. He began to be upset with the money he was paid for “working” at the dealership, and devised a plan involving these deposits. He was given eighteen hundred dollars in cash and around twenty thousand dollars in checks for deposit. He had arranged for an accomplice to rob him of this deposit on the way to the bank.

On the day of the “robbery,” Butch and an accomplice from the dealership left and didn’t return for two hours. When they got back, they said that they had been robbed at gunpoint. Sr. was at the dealership when Butch got back and exploded on the staff member who sent Butch with the money in the first place. Obviously, the police were called, but when they got there, Butch refused to cooperate with them. He didn’t give them any type of description of the robber, he became tense and combative. After a little while, they suspected he was lying and when Butch began to put that together, he started to act enraged. He was banging his fists on the hood of one of the cars on the lot. After a little while, the police backed off of their questioning. A few days later, they asked butch if he could come and take a look at some mugshots of people who could have possibly had something to do with the robbery. He initially agreed, but later canceled. This enraged Ronald Sr. who had really already come to his own conclusion regarding his son and the “robbery.”

When Sr. learned that Butch canceled, he confronted him at the dealership. This argument didn’t come to blows, but Sr. said to his son “You’ve got the devil on your back.” Butch replied “You fat prick. I’ll kill you,” before jumping into his car and speeding off.

DeFeo Murders and Butch’s Arrest

On a mid-November morning in 1974, Butch showed up to work like he would have done any other day. He hung out for a bit, and called home several times throughout the morning. Something odd that morning was that his father never showed up for work. When Ronald Sr. never showed up, Butch began to act as if he were bored and had nothing to do, and by noon, he left the dealership. He called his girlfriend and told her that he was leaving work early and that he wanted to stop by and see her. On his way to her house, while driving he had passed by a friend, Bobby Kelske, and the two stopped and chatted briefly. Around 1:30 PM he got to her house. While there, he just casually dropped into the conversation that he had been trying to call his house and no one answered, but it was weird because all of the family cars were in the driveway. He then used her phone to call and … there was no answer.

He and his girlfriend went to Massapequa and did some shopping in the afternoon before going to Bobby’s house. Again he was like, “There was no answer at my house even though it appears that everyone is there… so weird, huh?” Then he immediately asked Bobby if he was going out later, and Bobby told him he was going to lay down for a bit, but would be at a local bar, Henry’s, around six that evening.

Butch spent the rest of the afternoon visiting with friends, drinking a little… and doing a little heroin. Around six, he met Bobby at Henry’s bar and they hung out for a bit. While there, Butch kept talking about how odd it was that no one was answering the phone and that he would probably have to break a window to get into the house, which was nearby Henry’s bar. With that, Butch left the bar and went home.. Within a few minutes, he returned to the bar. He was frazzled and agitated and said “Bob, you gotta help me. Someone shot my mother and father!”

Bobby, Butch, and a few other patrons from the bar all piled into Butch’s car and drove to the DeFeo house, which was like a block or two away. Not long after, a 911 call was placed. While we don’t have the audio from the call, we have a transcript. One of the men, Joey Yeswit, made the call.

At this point, he’s talked to the operator a bit and has given his name and the operator is asking for a phone number, which Joey didn’t know. He was calling from within the DeFeo home. After telling the operator that everyone was dead, he was transferred to the police…

Man: “I don’t know what happened. Kid come running in the bar. He says everybody in the family was killed, and we came down here.”
Operator: “Hold on a second, Sir.”
(Police Officer now takes over call)
Police Officer: “Hello.”
Man: “Hello.”
Police Officer: “What’s your name?”
Man: “My name is Joe Yeswit.”
Police Officer: “George Edwards?”
Man: “Joe Yeswit.”
Police Officer: “How do you spell it?”
Man: “What? I just … How many times do I have to tell you? Y-E-S-W-I-T.”
Police Officer: “Where’re you at?”
Man: “I’m on Ocean Avenue.
Police Officer: “What number?”
Man: “I don’t have a number here. There’s no number on the phone. “
Police Officer: “What number on the house?”
Man: “I don’t even know that.”
Police Officer: “Where’re you at? Ocean Avenue and what?”
Man: “In Amityville. Call up the Amityville Police and have someone come down here. They know the family.”
Police Officer: “Amityville.”
Man: “Yeah, Amityville.”
Police Officer: “Okay. Now, tell me what’s wrong.”
Man: “I don’t know. Guy come running in the bar. Guy come running in the bar and said there — his mother and father are shot. We ran down to his house and everybody in the house is shot. I don’t know how long, you know. So, uh . . .”
Police Officer: “Uh, what’s the add … what’s the address of the house?”
Man: “Uh, hold on. Let me go look up the number. All right. Hold on. One-twelve Ocean Avenue, Amityville.”
Police Officer: “Is that Amityville or North Amityville?”
Man: “Amityville. Right on … south of Merrick Road.”
Police Officer: “Is it right in the village limits?”
Man: “It’s in the village limits, yeah.”
Police Officer: “Eh, okay, what’s your phone number?”
Man: “I don’t even have one. There’s no number on the phone. “
Police Officer: “All right, where’re you calling from? Public phone?”
Man: “No, I’m calling right from the house, because I don’t see a number on the phone.”
Police Officer: “You’re at the house itself?”
Man: “Yeah.”
Police Officer: “How many bodies are there?”
Man: “I think, uh, I don’t know — uh, I think they said four.”
Police Officer: “There’s four?”
Man: “Yeah.”
Police Officer: “All right, you stay right there at the house, and I’ll call the Amityville Village P.D., and they’ll come down.”

The police arrived promptly, as you can imagine, this was out of the ordinary for the sleepy town by the water. As the first officer arrived on the scene, a small group of men were on the front lawn. Butch was among them, sobbing uncontrollably. He told the officer that his mother and father were dead. The officer went into the house and went upstairs where he discovered Ronald Sr. and Louise. Then he found Marc and John DeFeo. He made his way downstairs where Butch was at the kitchen table still sobbing. Butch told him that he also had two sisters. By this time another officer arrived and the two of them found Dawn and Allison’s room, where they were deceased.

Ronald Sr, Louise, Dawn, Allison, Marc, and John were all dead. They had all been shot with a .35 caliber lever action Marlin 336C Rifle. Butch’s siblings had all been killed by a single gunshot, while his parents were shot twice. All the victims were found lying face down in their beds, and evidence found later suggested that Louise and Allison were awake at the time of their deaths.

By seven pm, the neighborhood was flooded with the police and onlookers. Butch was questioned about what could have happened and he told the lead detective that he thought it was Louis Falini, a mafia hitman that Butch claimed held a grudge against his family. Butch was taken to the police station for his own protection, after making the claim of a mafia hit.

Butch gave the police a signed, written statement. He claimed that he was home the previous morning, and was watching a movie, Castle Keep, on tv until around two AM. He claimed that around four AM he had gotten up and was unable to sleep. He walked past a bathroom in the home when he heard a toilet flush, and being unable to fall asleep himself decided to go into work early. He then detailed how he spent the rest of the day, leaving work early, hanging out and shopping with his girlfriend, trying to call home several times throughout the day, going to the bar, before going home and discovering the bodies.

Butch was questioned about why the mafia hitman would want to kill him. He told detectives that Falini had lived with the family for a little while, and when he did, he helped Butch and his father construct a hidden space in the basement where Butch could store a collection of guns. Butch was known to collect firearms, and make money selling them from time to time. Butch claimed that the bad blood formed when Falini criticized some work that he had done at the Buick dealership. During this interview, Butch confessed to being a “casual user” of heroin, and he also confessed to insurance fraud with his father. At one point in the past, Butch had damaged the motor on a boat that the family owned, and instead of paying for a new one, his father asked him to set the boat on fire, so they could just claim the insurance money. Everyone felt like Butch was a cooperating witness, why else would he confess to these crimes if he didn’t have to?

Well, as the investigators kept going over the crime scene, the rooms where the murders took place had been gone over with a fine toothed comb, but Butch’s room had pretty much been given a brief once over. One tech found two gun boxes in Butch’s room and just grabbed them to bring back to the station. One was a box that a Marlin .35 would have come in. At this time, the tech didn’t know what the murder weapon was, but this proved to spark the detectives to look into Butch’s story further. Investigators questioned Bobby, who told them about the fake robbery that Butch had setup earlier. They quickly began to suspect that Butch was playing them and that he was the one they should be looking at. Around 9 AM the next morning, Butch was still at the police station being protected and he was asleep when a detective shook him awake. He asked if they found Falini yet. The detective said that they hadn’t, but he was there to read Butch his rights. Butch protested and said that wasn’t necessary because he was cooperating. He waived his right to counsel claiming to be an innocent witness with nothing to hide.

By this time, the detectives that had been questioning Butch were exhausted and two other detectives stepped in to question him. They immediately zeroed in on his timeline. In his written statement, he said that he was up around four AM and heard the bathroom before going to work early, implying that the murders would have had to happen after he left. But, given that each family member was still in their night clothes and in bed, the detectives began to question his story and pick apart anything they could. Eventually, they got Butch to relent on his claim that he thought the crime took place after he left that morning. The evidence and the bodies suggested that they were killed between two and four AM.

They continued to pounce on any discrepancies they could find in Butch’s written statement. They could physically link to being in the home at the time of the murders, by his own words now. Butch tried to say that he had been in the house when the murders took place, but it was only afterwards that he was in each room. The detectives didn’t buy it. They pointed out the fact that his family was killed with a .35 caliber Marlin rifle, and that butch had an empty box for a .35 caliber Marlin rifle in his room and the rifle was nowhere to be found. They basically laid it out for him and said that there had to be more to it than he was saying, that his own gun was used to kill the family.

Butch’s story changed time and time again. At one point he claimed he was woken up by Falini putting a gun to his head with another man. They then led him room to room and killed his family in front of him. The detectives just let him talk. Eventually Butch talked about picking up the cartridges from the crime scene and they questioned why he did that if, as he claimed, he didn’t know that his gun had been used. Why was he cleaning up the crime scene? Butch didn’t respond to the question, but they kept letting him talk. Finally, fed up with all the changing stories, they asked him straight forward, “It didn’t happen that way, did it?” Butch told them to give him a minute as he put his head in his hands. They pushed and asked if Falini and the other man were ever there. Butch told them no. He said it all started so fast and that once he started, he just couldn’t stop. He told them that he took a shower and redressed after the murders. He told them where he drove and discarded his blood stained clothes, the murder weapon, and expelled cartridges before going to work that morning.

End Of Part 1