Amityville an Origin Story. BBC iPlayer, Directed by Jack Riccobono.

Amityville an Origin Story. BBC iPlayer, Directed by Jack Riccobono.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m001vdxj/amityville-an-origin-story(link is external)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001vdxn/amityville-an-origin-story-series-1-2-the-crime(link is external)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001vdxq/amityville-an-origin-story-series-1-3-the-big-time(link is external)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001vdxs/amityville-an-origin-story-series-1-4-the-feedback-loop(link is external)

I watch and listen to a lot of Uncanny on BBC. Tim Robbins with his tales of the ghosts, the paranormal and UFOs has hooked into the zeitgeist, with spin-off series growing like magic mushrooms. Amityville is part of the big three or four that took terror up a gear, from the horror of films like Dracula, which were mere pinpricks in the late sixties and seventies. The others were Rosemary’s Baby. Then one of the biggest box-office films of all time (blog about his later) The Exorcist. Then The Omen. I remember these vividly although I saw none of them on the big screen at the La Scala. Like most of you I could tell you some garbled version of the plot or story with spinning heads. Less so with Amityville. Unlike the others it was panned by leading American film critics such as Roger Ebert. I can’t remember the plot because there really isn’t one other than a family move into a haunted house and move out again 28 days later. Tim Robbins always challenges us viewers with that toothy grin—you’d just like to punch—are you on Team Believer or Team Sceptic?  

Well, I’m in both teams, while recognising our starting positon is usually our finishing positon. I do that numbers thing. If 99.99999% of cases are a total swizzle. Then 0.000001% aren’t. And if there are billions of unexplainable occurrences happening…well, you get my point. I drift.

I’m also a fan of Occam’s razor. When rationalists or believers in the paranormal add in too many qualifying clauses that spooks me. Just put up or shut up but don’t ghost me.

Amityville would never worry me. It’s in America for a start and to finish. A seemingly haunted house that has spawned eighteen follow-up films that has got progressively worse. The Conjuring defied the logic of sales of spawny devil’s shite and held up at the box office. Why?

Origin story is quite simple. Ronnie DeFeo shot his mum and dad and his brothers and sisters in their house in Ocean Drive. What those of the paranormal bent keep returning to isn’t so much his crime—that’s been established—but why he did it (motive) and how nobody heard the eight gunshots, one after the other, as he went from room to room killing his family with a rifle.

Mad? Bad? Or Sad?

Ronnie DeFeo was a junkie that had a stash of opiates. He was later diagnosed with having a sociopathic and psychopathic personality. The same kind of personality as George Lutz or the moron’s moron Trump. What does that tell us about his story and the narratives that followed about being possessed and the house he lived in being haunted? He thought it was hooey. But you tell me? Little doubt your starting possession will be your finishing positon.

Unleash the Beastie! https://bit.ly/bannkie(link is external)

Notes.

Series 1:1 The Haunting.

In 1975, when George and Kathy Lutz move into their suburban dream home, a cascade of terrifying, unexplainable events drive them out in just 28 days. Those closest to the terror share their stories. 

Jean Paul Sartre. Hell is other people.

6^th March 1976. Home film.

James Brolin. Margaret Kidder. Movie tagline. For God’s sake, get out!

relative. ‘People forgot after what happened here. The true horror of what actually happened.’

I lost a whole family in one night. And I couldn’t bring them back.’ 

News report. ‘A young man murdered in cold blood, his father, mother, four brother and sisters. Each in bed. A bullet in the back of the head’.

Because voices told him to do it.

I’m Christopher Cortino  formerly called Christopher Ludz. Cathy’s son. Amytiville is called a horror. A true story? And what really happened to me is more traumatic. And it is something I’d like to have just forgotten about.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t about to do that. Now it’s time to set that record straight.

My mum had divorced my real dad when I was about 5. Mum was Irish. My dad was Italian. Danny was first. I was second. Then came my younger sister, Melissa.

After our divorce, mum used to work as a waitress. George used to come in and sit at her section. He was fond of her.

One night, her car wouldn’t start. George turned up as a hero, with his Harley. Next thing, they sold their house and moved into the Amityville house.

Choppers and Harley.

He as a black belt in jujitsu and started us in classes, learning how to fight. Defend yourself. It was all new. A man that was there and kind to us.

Mum liked him. That was that.

It was when I was a kid. Looking around. Different areas to explore.

There were a lot of flies there. On the second floor. In the sewing room. There were times when you’d feel a chill.

Then I remember the awkward moment when we were down in the basement. Mom and George were there. And I remember asking ‘Is this were they hid the bodies?’

And I remember George looking at Mom. Mom looking at George and them looking at me. And nobody answered the question.

George was into this new thing. I didn’t know anything about it. It was new to me anyway. It was called transcendental meditation.

[Beatles in India with holy man Shangra (something)

He would sit on the floor in a weird positon, palms open. Say these sounds. He got my mom into it.

I don’t think she had anything to do with it, prior to them getting together.

It was a pretty regular thing they did. And they’d want time to do it and we’d be quiet. And whether it was up in our own rooms or outside, I recall them wanting time to meditate.

That was my introduction to Transcendental Meditation.

And he had me doing it with him.

What George was doing wasn’t on any list. He would have caused a haunting in any home. He was giving it possession.

George had a change in his demeanour. He no longer went into work. He’d just sit around in the boathouse. Obsessed with his boats.  

George’s temperament changed. Quick to become pissed off. That was scary.

Father (Ray) Pecorard

We asked him to come back and bless the house again, which he refused to do, which shattered us. We didn’t know why he didn’t (wouldn’t) come back.

I saw this figure in the hall. It was like a shadow, with no legs. It was coming towards me and I was terrified.

We could tell the police things about the murders that were never released to the public. Certain odours. We knew who was shot. Where they were shot. What position they were in.

I remember them asking us to open all the windows (his parents). They were trying to do their own exorcism. They were saying prayers. That’s when the incident with Danny’s hand happened. (Window shut down and smashed his hand).

***

Voice of Kathy Lutz

I was practicing TM. And one of the times, during meditation, something reached out and took hold of my hand. And my only description of it was the touch of a woman. Simply because you could feel a softness, but you knew an inner strength was involved.

George Lutz (filmed)

I found myself waking up at 3.15am for no reason at all. We found out later from the police, something that had never been released, that’s when the murders took place.

I thought she was kidding when she reiterated it again. And, I believed her.

(son) she was so concerned she told me about it. They put it down to being overtired and moving in.

Then we moved in a week before Christmas, 1975. We were very anxious to get set up for Christmas. We had a lot of company in the following week.

 

 

112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville.

Carol Severio. Lutz family friend. The house was gorgeous. Before they left they asked me if I felt anything. I don’t know why, but there was something that made me feel strange. That’s when they showed me the bullet holes.

Headline: Butch de Feo (jnr) Suffock County. LI Slayings. Son Safeguarded.

When  George told me that, he was actually laughing. He did not believe there was anything in this house (which meant a cheaper deal) which would stop him from buying it.

The house was on the market for $100 000. We made an offer of $80 000 and it was accepted. And we moved into this beautiful 4000 square foot home. (3 stories). On the water with a heated pool. Full basement. Garage. We thought we were home.

After George married Kathy, they were very happy. He was very good with the kids. Especially the boys. I think Danny was nine, Christopher was seven, and Missy was five. She was adorable. All the kids were really nice.

Kathy was a very good mother. Very sweet. Innocent. A beautiful, beautiful person.

And at the weekend, there were lots of people going to help them move their stuff into the house.

December 1975 My ex-husband and I were going to go to the house to help them move in.

When we got to the house, I just became violently sick. I got very dizzy. I felt very nauseous. I told my husband, I can’t go in there. And I felt that I was going to pass out, sitting outside in the car.

George and Cathy wanted to have a house-warming party. And it was just the same thing. I never made it out of the apartment (her apartment). I never made it out the door. It was just the same thing. Unbelievable.

George did say that he was an ex-marine and he’d served in Vietnam. There was something he didn’t want to talk about.

And too many of my friends. The ones that did come back. They were not the same.

George didn’t want to give up on the house. He got involved in looking up land usage, to see if there was any kind of connection in the past to things that happened on the property.

George and Cathy felt something was let loose in the house.

I do believe in the paranormal. So maybe there were ghost children in the house.  Maybe that’s what Missy was talking to.

***

George and Cathy were young parents.

Voice of George Lutz. We were so happy to get this house. We really wanted to live there. There was such a desire on our part to move in and be a family there.

The real estate man told us after we toured the house; this is the house the de FEOs were killed in. And news stories that had been a year earlier. We talked about it, at length, as a family (really? The children are under ten). We asked the kids and told them, you’re going to have the same bedrooms those kids had and were killed here. Is that going to be a problem?  They were all fine with it. [hmm? In other words, they went along with what their parents wanted]. It wasn’t a snap decision by any means.

Film. The Amityville Horror, 1979. Estate agent opening the front door. ‘You’ll see what a beauty this is.’ 

‘There’s nothing like it on the market. Not at this price!’

Joe Vetter, friend of George Lutz.

Hey, he said. You ride a motorcycle?

Yeh. Harley Davidson.

So do I.

He said his parents (grandparents?) owned a surveying company. And he was now running the company which gave him time to run and hang out on the Harley Davidson. (cf Easy Rider]

Lots of guys were chopping their motorcycles. Extended front ends. High handle bars. Lots of chrome (circa 1973)? CHOPPERs (bikes> cycles#]

And I run with a lot of guys that had bikes like that.

And that’s the group, I introduced George to. We just took him into the group, as if he was one of the guys.

George told me he bought the house for $80 000 and had to furnish it. Bought some of the furniture from the de Feo estate. Eg. Dresser 1974 Dawn de Feo’s room was her dresser. Used the same bedframe and bed in Missy’s room.

When he first saw the house, there was still some blood in some of the rooms and some of the furniture.

Kept  the desk.

It was kinda strange.

George and Cathy came to my house. They were scared. He said the temperature was like a furnace or really cold.

***

Series 1:2 The Crime.

A year before the Lutzes move into 112 Ocean Ave, the DeFeo family is found shot to death under strange circumstances in the same house. The lone survivor, Ronnie DeFeo Jr, is accused of murder, but mob ties and paranormal theories cloud the case. 

Gloria Gangitano, De Feo family friend.

They reminded me of Charles Manson. Maybe they thought they’d get away with it. That it wasn’t him. It was a ghost that did it.

I said if anyone could haunt a house, it’s him.

1974

The phone rang. We were having supper or finishing and I said, I wonder what’s wrong now. And somebody said, All the de Feos were killed or gone and I thought, ‘Oh, was there an explosion in the house, what could I think of the whole family’. Then they told me. ‘No, they were shot.’ Them I think I said, ‘Butchy!’

Picture: Ronnie ‘Butch’ DeFoe (jnr) [he does, with his beard, look like Charles Manson#]

Michael Brigiante, father of Louise Defeo. Mrs Defeo’s father was at the wake with a gun, because he was maybe involved in something and he didn’t know if anybody was going to come. I don’t know what he expected.

Paula Uruburu Friend of Dawn DeFeo. My sister came home from school that day. I was probably watching Dark Shadows on the television. Then the five o’clock news came on. And then when we saw it, I said ‘Mom, Mom, there’s been a murder in Amityville.’ Then when we saw the whole thing unfolding. And we’re rush home from school to see what was on the news. There was no other way to find out.

 The day of the funeral, you couldn’t hear a pin drop. They bring in six coffins. And there’s this procession. One after the other. And it was the first time I said ‘Dawn is in one of those boxes’. Somebody I knew. It was so unreal to watch.

Mr Defeo’s physical size and his manner matcher perfectly. I remember one time asking my mother. ‘Mr Defeo, is he the Mafia?’ We were aware of  things. And my mother saying ‘I don’t know’. It was simply a presence when he stepped into space, like a made guy.

There was a moment in the mid to late 70s, when there was an appreciation of Indian culture. I remember a group on indigenous people went and occupied Alcatraz claiming this is our territory.

And there was this moment of acknowledging what happened to indigenous people. All of this… (meant) the idea this could be a story…Indian burial ground…that’s creepy too. And that got thrown into the mix with all the possible reasons why the house was haunted.  

You wouldn’t want to live there, but we kinda forgot about it until we heard the story about the Lutz family moving in.

***

Tommy Maher, friend of Ronnie DeFeo jnr.

I don’t even want to talk about it, to be honest. I have a couple of things to say and let them know things they don’t know.

13 September 1974. That’s the last time I saw him.

>>?1974, in Henry’s (bar). That’s the last time I saw him. Playing craps on the pool table. He was in and out three or four times, which was alright. It was totally normal for him. And Ronnie had come back from the bar and said, ‘The Mob just killed my father.’

I was just thinking. Poor guy. Especially being with him that day. Being with him, the whole day, long. And I’d gone home. And saw it on the news that night. I was stunned. It wasn’t real.

Mr Defeo worked at the Buick place in Brooklyn. Their grandfather owned it.

Ronnie, he worked with  his family.

Ronnie and his dad were at a constant battle with each other. Cause Ronnie wanted to do what he wanted to do. He was a wiseass. He didn’t listen. Didn’t play by the rules. Went where he wanted. Went home when he wanted.

That’s no something you play with. The least you know, the better you are.

I didn’t believe it. I mean, 2 weeks before that he was telling me he was so proud of his younger brother making the Massive ...Football team. And then you go shooting him  in the back, while he’s sleeping in his bed?

It just seemed impossible.

Why would Ronnie confess to that? there’s only a couple of possibilities in your mind. That’s he’s scared to death. Or the cops beat it out of him. (Newpaper headline. Ronnie said he cops beat it out of him). Or he was threatened.

In your mind, you try and unwind this puzzle. A lot of it didn’t make sense. 

***

Picture of Ronnie deFoe (snr)     

***

I moved from Brooklyn. The De Feos moved from Brooklyn. There yard was straight across from ours. They had this sign in their yard ‘High Hopes’.

Suburbia. Where 50% of the American population had moved.

13^th Novemeber 1974. 3.15am.

Joel Martin, News Director RBAB  Radio. I was the first reporter on the scene. No miracle. I lived the closest.

We get there and there’s a crowd of people. And I ask “What’s happened?”

And we’re told a whole family has been murdered.

And I said, “Oh, my God!”

I spoke to some kids (introduced myself)

And they said, ‘Are you the crazy guy that does show about flying saucers on RBAB?’

And I said, ‘Sure as heck’. And they tell me the dog started to bark between 3 and 3.30 sometimes. They’d hounds. They don’t bark as much as bay.

Six members of the family shot dead. Well, there was one member of the family left.

They said, ‘Who?’

Ronnie. Ronnie de Feo, the sole surviving son.

 

***

News headline: Six in Amityville Family Found at Home.

It was a very surreal scene. It almost felt you were in some science-fiction/horror movie. And everybody was very quiet. People were dead quiet. And as I’m standing there, I see them bringing out one of the dead children. They accidentally dropped him. They dropped him on the ground. And when they put him back on the tarp when covering him again, for a moment, you could see the bullet hole.

People went wheeeee. All gasped. Cause it was just hearbreaking.

News headline. 14^th November 1974, ‘Find 6 in Family Shot to Death’.

Each in bed. A bullet to the back of the head.

Patrick Mellon, Suffolk County Chief of Detectives. Found, in their bed. Shot and killed. Ronald DeFeo (snr) wife Louise,  Alison, Marc, John Matthew, [5?] who’s missing? Dawn. Six shot in two separate floors of the house.

How were they killed and nobody moving from their beds? [loud noise> gunshots?#]

Ronnie is being safeguarded by the Suffolk County Police Department at this time.

Reporter: why ‘safeguarded?’

Because six members of his family are dead, and we don’t know why and he’s the sole surviving member…

Is he a suspect?

He’s not a suspect at this time.

***

 

Carol Beamer: Friend of Dawn Defeo.  I just remember the warmth. They’d the family photographs up in the hall on the stairs. There was Alison (younger). Then there was Dawn. Marc (older than) John Matthew. Mother, Louise. Ronnie Jr, with his dad, Ronnie Snr.

Dawn was in my class in 8^th grade. She really had a special place in my heart. I had an instance where I fell down the stairs in the school. And she was the only person that came to my aid. We became fast friends.   

18^th November 1974 (funeral)

I do remember, when they’re all in their caskets. And my parents basically had to carry me through. It was just devastating. 

Ronald DeFeo jnr. I’d never raise my hands to my father. He was the best friend I ever had. No matter what I’d done he’d bail me out.

My mother and me, we were very close. My two sisters and me, we got along excellently. My two younger brothers, Mark and John, we were very  close too. You know we used to go fishing. You know we were really a close family.

It’s a shame what happened, but it happened.

I was using a lot of heroin back then. I was getting blackouts but didn’t realise it. I went upstairs. And what happened was like a nightmare. I’m looking at my mother and father dead. My sisters and…I got scared. Ran out the house. Got in my car and brought my friends back to the  house. They all went in the house and I stood outside.

 I was really, really, out of it. I remember the LeRon rifle. I thought I’d shot her in the neck, but I’d shot her in the head and another live round of ammunition, ejected from the chamber. When it ejected, another one went in. And I thought I’d shot her in the neck but I’d shot her in the head. And I said my god, but it happened so fast. I never even knew what I did.

Mr Weber said these people, the Lutzes have bought your house. You do know them through somebody else. We can use them and make money. That’s how the haunted house nonsense started.

***

 

The Exorcist $193 000 000

Everybody went to see this.

Dennis Rafferty, Detective Suffolk County Police Department.

At that time I was brought in to interview Ronnie Defeo. We had established he was in the house. He continued to change his story. At that time I had investigated about 50 other murder cases. And, in talking to Defeo, it was obvious he was deceiving us. 

As a suspect, he continually denied any involvement in the case, but he displayed angry feelings towards his parents and his family situation. He said when he saw his brother get shot, he could see his leg twitching. It was at that point we decided he was definitely at the scene of the crime. And did admit, he hated his mother and his father.

We decide to interrogate him.

Drawing by Ronnie Defeo (jnr).

He told us, he’d thrown the gun in the Great South Bay. And with the assistance of the marine division, the recovered the murder weapon, a 35 calibre Marler(?)

He also told us, he buried some bloody clothing in a street sewer in Queens, New York City. That only the killer would have known where it was. We recovered that bloody evidence.

Reporter on site: One question about this crime that hasn’t been answered. The question of motive? Ronald Defeo jnr stood to gain about $250 000 from the death of his family. They say they’re not ruling that out as a possibility. And it will be one of the questions considered by the grand jury this week.

***

Herman Race, Private Investigator.  This is the house where 6 murders took place in September 74. As you know I got involved.

Michael Brigante, who was the grandfather of the deceased, personally asked me to make an investigation to determine what really happened on the night of the murders?

It’s almost, and I say almost, inconceivable that the sound wouldn’t wake somebody.

However, if there was somebody there to pacify the children

(‘Lie down on your stomach. I don’t want to see your face.’)

That it probably happened that way. They did go back to sleep. Until they to met their demise.

 

Michael Race, retired Homicide Detective. My father was Herman Race, he became a police officer, detective, Sergeant,

 

Did you hear the expression crime pays? It pays very well. So he became a private investigator. Did a lot of criminal work. One of the cases he got involved with was with the Columbo family. 

Where was you? What was the actual cause? If you can actually find out what the motive was? And that’s what Michael Brigante was trying to do. One person killing your entire family? It wasn’t normal. Did he have clarity in what he was doing? I think he did. He went from room to room and executed his entire family. It’s impossible to do this whole thing by yourself. Even with a split personality, you can’t be on two floors (at once)?

Someone had to help him. The question is, who?

How did all these people sleep? One person shot and nobody wakes up. I used to go deer hunting with that same rifle. It’s loud. And I believe it only holds six rounds. So if you fire more than six, you as the suspect, have to reload it. It’s not like shooting a pistol.

It’s a lever action. The echo effect is tremendous.

No one wakes up? What does that tell you?

It wasn’t Ronnie Jnr by himself.   

Proving it, was a whole different ball game. When they made the arrest, the game was over.

William Weber, Defense Attorney for Ronnie Defoe Jnr. You’re talking about the crime of the century as far as I’m concerned. I have no explanation why Ronnie killed his family. If, after all, he did.

How a boy that loved his mother and adored and idolised his two younger brothers, could do such a thing. To me it was an act of insanity.

You’ve eight expertly placed bullets by a man an optometrist has described as almost legally blind.

 

***

Ellen Stark, daughter of Judge Stark, DeFeo trial. It just really caught my attention, he talked about the manner of them being killed. He talked about Ronnie going from room to room and shooting everybody. That kinda stuck in my memory. That was just horrifying, an entire family had been murdered.

The DeFeo trial took place in the Fall of 1975. My father thought it was a strong legal team on both sides. William Weber was a very accomplished defense lawyer. And William Sullivan was a very accomplished prosecutor. I think my father had respect for both lawyers.

Attorney, Gerard Sulivan. Ronnie DeFeo is in my view, evil incarnate. I’ve prosecuted for ten years and many murders among them. There has never been in my experience, from what I know in the New York crime area, there’s never been as far as I know, the dimensions of evil as Ronnie DeFeo.

There were 2 psychiatrists both of whom examined DeFeo. One was for the prosecution. One was for the defense.

Both testified that they believed Ronnie DeFeo had shot and killed his entire family.

It was just a question of to what degree he understood what he was doing.

Dr Harold Zolan, Psychiatrist for the Prosecution, argued DeFeo had an anti-social personality.  And because he collected evidence and flung it in a storm-drain in Brooklyn meant he knew perfectly well he knew what he was doing.

Dr Daniel Schwartz  He was so psychotic he was not criminally responsible. He was a young man, from all we know, never learned how to control his emotions in a reasonable way. Was filled with murderous thoughts and paranoids ideas he was meant to be killed. And there came a time in his life when he felt he had to kill others “lest he be killed”.

Underlying cause?

He grew up with a violent man, in a house of violence.

Hans Holzer, author and parapsychologist: Do you think he was the recipient of the extraordinary influences in the house?

Schwartz: I don’t know. I have an open mind about things like this. I just don’t know.

Nobody was drugged. Nobody heard any shots. And to this day, all the clever lawyers. And all the police officers, have no answer to this. Because they’re just not qualified to understand it (implication, I am).

Iroquois tribe. Indian chief (skeleton) partially emerged on a horse at the start of the century during a rain storm. Several skeletons on Ocean avenue in a good state of preservation.

Alexandra Holzer paranormal investigator. My father was born in Vienna, Austria.  He became a sceptic journalist on his own.

Hans Hoolzer. First book, called The Ghost Hunter. When that book became very successful (odd occurrence’s and happenings). That became the work. He published over 145 titles.

My father was a very serious man. What happened with spirit photography. Something was entering the frame and clogging it up.

We know when there’s a murder, a trapped ghost will step inside the frame. We know from science there’s a science to everything?

When I think about the Amityville murders, what was so odd about this case, was that nobody heard the guns go off. When you go out to Long Island, the houses are kinda close to each other. Especially on that street. All the shots go off. Bang, bang, bang…No lights go on in the houses either side? Nobody hears anything.

My father read about the story in the New York Times. And he wanted to know what was going on there. His theory was that in a moment of possession, no sound will travel beyond the walls in that house.

He was given access not once but twice to Ronnie DeFeo. He wanted to talk to the murderer himself.

Hypnotises him. > ‘You are 20 years old. When you first moved into Amityville…’ Tapes. ‘Did you feel anything at all about the atmosphere in the house?’

Voice of Ronnie DeFeo. ‘When I first moved in,  you’d hear noises of things moving about at night. Like someone walking around. Pipes banging. All those strange noises.’

Did you tell anybody about it?

Yeh, all my family. They thought they were walking around too.

You didn’t see anybody?

No. Also you’d hear screaming. But there wasn’t nobody screaming.

And did you ever see objects move by themselves?

I never saw things move, but there was things moved.

Did your family report anything unusual to you in that way?

I recall my mother of somebody saying they saw something.

You think they saw a ghost?

They said the devil.

My father’s experiences were always true. The mediums or psychics he’d work with. They have the ability to see, hear, feel, to receive a lot of information that can be really scary at times. And it’s handed down by generations. That’s the Holzer method.

Ethel Johnston Meyers was one of the mediums he liked to work with. She was actually formally an opera singer. Very quiet and frail. Then her voice would kinda drop down an octave.  Like a male voice coming through (mimics her) ‘I’m feeling…’

He brought Ethel to the house in Amityville. And they started doing a tour of the house. My father described as, even when you were driving up to the house, you felt a very strong presence there. They started to take the Polaroid photos. And something is entering frame and clogging it up. There were other Polaroid shots were you’ll see the bullet holes. Around the bullet hole, is what’s called a ‘halo glow’. Which is this residual energy when we leave them. Which was my father believe, the spirit energy showing you, in this moment, we’re still here. There’s no botching. No fakery. It’s heartbreaking because we know what those bullets did.

Ethel went into a trance. She allows whoever or whatever to take over her body. Her throat would choke up and she’d be choking because the spirit was trying to enter her and communicate.

My father really pulled together a picture of an angry man from the past that had certain believes and structures that this was the land they live on. That was very specific because now we were getting information about why he was there.

Could he have possibly influence somebody like Ronnie DeFeo out of anger and spite? And my father believed so.

There’s a lot to be said about bad happenings on land. And we have a home or barn. And somebody keeps dying. Or there’s a murder. Or death is all around us. There’s something negative going on there. And I refer to it as a ‘vortex’ (theory). Negative energies coming in and out and wreaking havoc.  [wreaking and wrecking]

He felt that the environment Ronnie DeFeo was growing up in, they move into this house, the abuse that was going on. It made them prime suspects to be taken over by this angry Indian chief.

The area developed over 100 years. It’s a booming fishing town. And when you put in the negative energy of the DeFeo family for instance, Yes, these things can happen, but it’s almost from an ancient energy, if you will. Like an ancient evil.

To me, I look at it like a murder. Then the lingering energies that were there at the end. Whoever stayed around. Unfortunately.

My father had big balls. He said what he said. And people don’t like it when people speak the truth.

 

***  

Seth Purdy, Amityville Historical Society. The only story I heard about an Indian being buried in that area was South of that area you’re discussing. And it was said they’d discovered the skeleton and skull of an Indian chief. Indicating it was a chief because it was in a standing position.

What happened to the skeleton?

I don’t know.

 

***

***

Ethel recorded.

Whoever lives here is going to be the victim of,uh, an anger.

Was this a long time ago?

Yes. But they still linger. This has been a sacred place.

What sort of things have happened?

Violence…or death. The Indian force takes over an individual. Usually a male.     

What will the male do under those circumstances?

Anything the Indian desires him to do.

***

Erik Davis Author and Cultural Scholar.

Part of our condition as human beings in there are anomalous experiences, whether we want to acknowledge them or not. They just keep on happening. And what we see in the seventies was parapsychologists had good technology. They were recording things. 

Truth or Hoax? They turn to science. It has to be more than just myth.

***

Judge Thomas Stark.  

About half way through his examination, Mr Weber,  asked him. ‘Ronnie, did you kill your father’. He answered. ‘Yes sir, I killed them all, before they could kill me.’

Transcript: “I had to do it”.

“I was hearing voices”.

“I heard voices all the time”.

He (Ronnie) decided right from the beginning to employ an insanity defense and he started right from the beginning, in the jail. And he started to appear that he was insane and the correction officers should write down his conduct.

Within six minutes the members of the jury came in and convicted him of the six murders.

***

 

Series 1:3, The Big Time.

After paranormal trailblazers Ed and Lorraine Warren 'confirm' a demonic presence at 112 Ocean Ave, the Lutz family turns their 'true story' into a hit book and film. Fame comes at a heavy cost when they are accused of perpetrating a massive hoax. 

George Lutz. Look, we’re not going to be interviewed about this. You can do what you can with the tapes (they made). We’ve done it once. And we’re not going to relive this. We done it for the tapes.

Jay Anzon. Author. We talked to the priest. So we had a chronology, within that framework. 28 days. I was convinced there are many things out there, many people can’t explain. I sincerely believe they took place.

$22 million.

William Chavez, Religious Studies lecturer, UC, Santa Barba.

Rosmary’s Baby. The Exoricst. The Omen.  The Unholy Trinity. All three, Satanism and the occult as an attack on the American family.

Not only do you need some transcendental force. You need some male patriarchy to come in and save the day.  

1.4. The Feedback Loop. The success of the Amityville Horror reinvents the haunted house for a new generation, spawning sequels, conspiracy theories and a rabid fandom. But as George Lutz's secret past is revealed, the human toll and absurd legacy of Amityville come into focus

George Lutz and his wife, Kathy, go on world tour to promote the book. His stepchildren as put in a Catholic orphanage.

They pass a lie-detector test.

Kathy, ‘It’s very hard to live a lie. Just to make a few dollars. No.’

George Lutz. ‘Our parents sold us out for $275 a head to be depicted in the film’. (3 kids)  George became obsessed with this money-making venture from this Amityville story. And he felt it was fine to add fiction to it. But I know what happened. You don’t get to play it off that you were like a hero to the family. When you’re a perpetrator.

In my closet there was a panel that revealed an area behind the wall. That was an area where Ronnie Defeo would have hid the things he was trying to hide from his parents. Looking in there, there was two bags of capsules. Pills. Exactly what kind they were until I questioned George way later in life. He was really surprised I remembered. He said they were

 

Methaqualone(link is external)

 

Psychoactive pharmaceutical

Methaqualone is a hypnotic sedative. It was sold under the brand names Quaalude and Sopor among others, which contained 300 mg of methaqualone, and sold as a combination drug under the brand name Mandrax, which contained 250 mg methaqualone and 25 mg diphenhydramine within the same tablet, mostly in Europe. Commercial production of methaqualone was halted in the mid-1980s due to widespread abuse and addictiveness. Wikipedia(link is external)

So I don’t know about Quaaludes and how they react on the body. But I do know this, George had a very different change in his demeanour. He no longer went into work. He was no longer doing personal care. He became obsessed with just sitting around the fire. And obsessed with his boats and his boat house. So to me, that sounds like a drug binge.

John J Jones. Amityville 2, the sequel.

Voice of Geore Lutz. We spent all the money on hiring Jones and reinterviewing all those involved and telling the stories.

Christopher Quaratino. Mom because ill (separated from George).  I took up residence with her and started to give her help. 13/10/46—17/8/2004 After her death I decided to change my name back.  So for several years I got associated with not being associated with that story  any more.

Then one day I got a phone call. George was getting ready to make another movie. Then I heard the movie was about the Lutz son, killing him by telepathy, 25 years later. So I did whatever I could to make him stop what he was doing. I took to the internet. Amityville.com became available. I scooped it up. He sued me for what he said was a trademark violation. I can’t say I actually stopped it. But I was making as much ruckus about it as I could.

Enough resonates with this story to continue making it real.

Ed and Lorraine Warren (demonologists) They made a career for themselves out of our story. Years later I found out they had been the creative consultants on the movies after the initial movies.  I didn’t find that to be genuine.

People attached themselves to this in one way or the other. Jay Anzon (for example) as the author, made big money on it. Last I know he made $16 million on it.

I believe there’s 16 sequels with the name Amityville attached and nobody gives a shit.

George Lutz (2003)  Yes, there’ll be an authorised sequel. The Amityville Horror, 25 years later.

Why is it, a lot of people want to cling to this story?

Hanz Holzer. Partially because they’ve fantasies they believe in. Partially because there’s money to be made. 

The Conjuring (based on the Warrens) pulled in $136 million in 2013 in the US and terrified audiences worldwide.

Ronnie DeFeo. 26/9/51—12/3/2021 My family get killed. The haunted house, everything is fiction. Fiction.

TK Young, Father Ray’s secretary.

Father Ralph (Ray) Pecoraro My grandmother was the secretary to Father Ray. One of his first cases was George’s first marriage.  He just had a bad intuition over time. There’s something there, but I just don’t know what it is.

The annulment documents do reveal things about George’s past that have never been realised. The perspective from the therapist is interesting because he has the perspective from George and his first wife. 

And she defined her role as being ‘a maid in the office and in the home. He never allowed me to open my mouth’.

He proudly used terms like ‘I got her trained’.  To defiantly state his position in their marriage.

Therapist: ‘His (George’s) expansive attitude seemed to conceal a very frightened individual who was most insecure concerning his role as a male and husband.’

George has effectively extorted money. She invested all of her savings and he refused to all her name to appear on the documents of the house.

There is evidence he abused her several times. Apparently she required medical assistance for injuries developed by George.

Dr Francis C. Bauer. ‘I am able to state at the time of his marriage George Lutz was suffering from a severe personality disorder.’

This would be diagnosed as antisocial personality.

His callousness and selfishness is typical of the sociopathic or antisocial personality.

I’m shocked he can be that much of a chameleon. He hid it so well.

Dr Jeniffer Sweeton Forensic Psychologist

Psychopathic personalities have a blatant disregard for the right of others. These are people who do not show empathy or remorse. Often times seen as manipulative. So they might present differently or say different things or shift facts, when they’re talking to different people.

Interviewed by Dr Hodge (psychiatrist) Ronnie DeFeo in 2006. He seems to be experience an anti-social disorder, but more manipulative.

Sometimes they offer an excuse for violent or abusive behaviour. [eg] The devil made me do it. Or I was possessed at the time. Or even undergo exorcisms. As in the case of the Lutz family stepfather. So that can be a way bit puzzling. How do we interpret that?

The answer is we’re not totally sure.

The Amityville trope of the Indian burial ground is the first time it was used (cf cliched Stephen King’s Pet Cemetary (that’s why they never buried anyone out there).

Shea Vassar, Citizen of the Cherokee Nation.

The idea that if a place is built on an Indian burial ground it is more haunted. Or evil. Or inspire something really dreadful to happen. And yes, the shinnecock indian nation exists on Long Island. They would venture to the area of the Amityville house, for mostly hunting. But it wasn’t really part of their traditional land.

The Indian burial ground in movies is such a cliché. But they love that shit. They eat it up.

[eg The Shining~]

Does there have to be some kind of evil to justify why we took this land? (ie white genocidal maniacs).

What really happened was we joined in the story. A kind of feedback loop.