The Supernatural Murders

by Jonathan Goodman

  Ronnie did not have many school-friends. His personality turned them off, and his attempts to impress them by flashing large wads of dollars did not help. Neither did the two boys he hired as bodyguards, nor his stories about how his father had connections with the Mob.1 Finally, he gave up on school and ‘dropped out’. However, he got a high-school-equivalency diploma, and started working for the automobile agency as a mechanic in 1972. He retained his character-flaws. To avoid quarrels with him, his co-workers always said ‘please’ whenever they asked him to do anything.

  1. As a result of Ronnie Jr’s bragging and lies, an unfair rumour exists to this day that Ronald DeFeo had Mob connections. When the newspapers first covered the crime, they linked Ronald to one Peter DeFeo, a member of the Genovese Crime Family, saying Peter was his father. Ronald’s father was Joseph DeFeo, who was not a gangster.

  On Tuesday, 12 November 1974, Ronald and Ronnie Jr went to work. They seemed amicable enough. The next day, only Ronnie appeared. This did not concern anybody, as the older DeFeo was often away on business. That same Wednesday morning, a neighbour noticed the DeFeos’ station-wagon in the driveway at the time when it was normally used to drive the younger children to school. Being a good neighbour, she minded her own business.

  Ronnie left work between noon and one in the afternoon. He was not seen again for several hours. At four, a man named John Ballo was at Henry’s Bar, half a mile from the DeFeo house, when he saw Ronnie driving past. Ballo invited him in. Ronnie looked dejected; he explained that he had had an argument with his parents and they had thrown him out of the house. He asked Ballo for a loan of $20. Ballo agreed, but said that he had to make a phone-call first. When he returned, Ronnie was gone. But he was reported as returning three times, once (according to the bartender) at five, having his favourite drink, a vodka and 7-Up.

  Ronnie claimed later that he went home, found the house locked, and had to climb through a window to enter. Between 6.15pm and 6.30pm he may have called the police. At about 6.40pm, he returned to the bar, yelling as he entered: ‘My father and mother have been shot.’ Half a dozen men ran from the bar to the DeFeo house, saw dead bodies, and telephoned the emergency number, 911. The Suffolk County Police arrived at 7pm. All of Ronnie Jr’s family were found shot in their respective bedrooms.

  From the start, there were serious cracks in the crime. A neighbour made the astute Sherlockian observation: ‘I don’t see how anybody could have gotten in that house with the DeFeos’ dogs around.’ Despite the noise that so much shooting must have made, few people had heard anything unusual. Five neighbours recalled hearing the barks of Shaggy, the DeFeos’ sheepdog, on Tuesday night; they had not considered that unusual, for Shaggy had a reputation as a barker in the off-hours. Patrick Mellon, the Chief of Detectives for Suffolk County, failed to find traces of any struggle or break-in. A preliminary report from the coroner, at 10pm, estimated that the family had been dead about twenty-four hours. All of the bodies were in sleeping attire, face-down on their beds. Both parents had been shot twice in the head, and the siblings once each in the back. As there was no sign of the murder-weapon, a force of fifty Suffolk County detectives, and a dozen village policemen, started a search of the area, including using a metal-detector in the muddy Amityville Creek at the back of the house. Naturally, Ronnie Jr was closely questioned. As the sole surviving member of the family, he was taken into police custody, ostensibly ‘for his protection’. When Mellon was asked if there were any suspects, he carefully replied: ‘No one has been eliminated.’

  It is obvious that the police were convinced of Ronnie’s guilt from the start, but held their tongues while evidence was gathered against him. Within a few days, they located a .35-calibre Marlin rifle in the creek; the full coroner’s report, released on 18 November, stated that it was the murder-weapon. The investigators reasoned that the victims had been drugged at dinner by Ronnie, probably with a barbiturate, so that they would be asleep while he killed them. According to the police, Ronnie voluntarily confessed that he had killed his brother Mark – but none of the others. Ronnie would insist that the confession was beaten out of him; the attorney representing him at this time mentioned that his body showed bruises caused during questioning. This would become a cornerstone of his defence.

  Many unpleasant facts about Ronnie came out in the first few days … facts that were to be almost submerged under wild surmises by interested parties within three years. He had a police record. In September 1973, he and a friend had stolen an outboard motor; in December, the charge of grand larceny was reduced to petty larceny; Ronnie got one year on probation. In April 1974, after his girlfriend had told the police that he was using drugs, a probation officer had found track-marks on his arm, and subsequent analysis revealed traces of quinine (used to dilute heroin) in his urine. In May 1974, a judge authorised probation officers to check him for drugs: of fifteen urine analyses carried out between May and October, two revealed the presence of quinine. In November 1974, Ronnie and a fellow-worker were given cheques and cash totalling $19,000 to deposit for the automobile dealership. They reported that, while they were still in the auto showroom, they were robbed of the money by a man with a gun. Ronnie must have sounded unconvincing, for, according to the New York Times (17 November), his father was visibly worried by his replies to police questions, and asked the police to be gentle with him.1

  It adds to the poignancy and tragedy of this case that the DeFeos went out of their way to protect Ronnie Jr. When the drug-traces were found, they refused to accept the findings. With more serious charges, the father tried to get the police to ‘go easy’. Notice how the theft of the outboard-motor became a petty larceny charge in December 1973: no doubt the older DeFeo talked to the authorities there too. It is just possible that the parents saw, at last, that they had to face reality. Ronnie’s comment to John Ballo, that he had been thrown out of the house, may have referred to the outcome of a confrontation about the stolen money. After all, the $19,000 came from the family business: stealing it was like biting the protective hand.

  The sole weakness in the prosecution’s homicide case was that no central motive was ever found. The prosecution suggested that Ronnie was seeking a strongbox containing money in the house. I suspect that the $19,000 theft was the final item in a long, long list of sins that broke the familyties. Perhaps he promised to repay the stolen cash so as to save himself from being thrown out or handed over to the police, and then used the temporary respite to make his own plans, however stupid and savage they were. Why he killed his siblings is harder to fathom. To remove witnesses … or rivals for the family estate? As a final act of viciousness towards his parents? Or did he not wish them to survive, despising him?

  1. Charges relating to the theft of the $19,000 were brought against Ronnie Jr and his co-worker, Arthur Belin, on 15 November 1974. By that time, the former had other matters calling for his complete attention.

  A Surfeit of Spirits

  ‘Shooting a Ghost’: a drawing by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne)

  Amityville Revisited

  The house on Ocean Avenue: a recent photograph by Jan Zyniewski

  Defending the ‘Witch-Burners’

  T.H. Matteson’s painting The Trial of George Jacobs (1855). The witnesses against Jacobs included one of his grand-daughters; after he had been hanged, she confessed that she had testified only because other witnesses had blackmailed her.

  Detail of Matteson’s Examination of a Witch (1853) a suspect is searched for ‘witches’ marks’.

  The Ghost of

  Sergeant Davies

  The Clachan of Inverey, circa 1910

  Devils in the Flesh

  Jacques Algarron and Denise Labbé arriving at the court in Blots

  On Monday, 18 November 1974, a grand jury in Riverhead, Suffolk County, brought in an indictment charging Ronnie with six counts of murder in the second degree.1 As though to make the case even more like a modern morality play, at the same time 800 mourners were attending t
he funerals of the slain; many classmates of the three younger children were there, as were two former presidents of the New York City Patrolman’s Benevolent Association, who were friends of the father; the six-mile procession to St Charles Cemetery, Pinelawn, had had an escort of nine Suffolk County motorcycle-policemen.

  Ronnie did not come to trial until the fall of 1975. At a preliminary hearing in September 1975, he claimed that the one-murder confession had been beaten out of him by the police. He admitted to initialling statements and diagrams relating to his dumping of bloodstained clothes and cartridges in a Brooklyn sewer. Already he was demonstrating the crucial weakness in his defence. On the one hand, he was a victim of police brutality; on the other, his statements were true. This schizophrenic defence would lead his court-appointed lawyer, William Weber, to suggest that Ronnie was insane.

  The trial, before State Supreme Court Justice Thomas Stark, took place at Riverhead and lasted seven weeks. There were fifty witnesses and one hundred and fifty pieces of evidence. Testimony was given by convicts who had shared cells with the defendant, neighbours in Amityville, in-laws. Ronnie showed a chilling lack of remorse. He threatened an aunt who testified, as well as Gerald Sullivan, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted. The defence psychiatrist labelled him ‘a paranoid psychotic who could not know it was wrong to kill his family’. The prosecution psychiatrist countered by saying that the defendant had ‘an antisocial personality but could tell if his behaviour was right or wrong’.

  1. In New York State, first-degree murder is reserved for the killing of police officers. It carries (in theory, if not in practice) the death penalty. The highest penalty for second-degree murder is life in prison with no chance of parole.

  According to the New York Times, the defence attorney did not materially help his client’s case: the argumentative technique used by Mr Weber visibly irritated Justice Stark. Mr Weber claimed that Gerald Sullivan had omitted witnesses who would demolish the contention about the strongbox as the motive; he insisted that Ronnie had been denied his ‘Miranda Right’.1 None of this impressed the jury, and it may be wondered if it really impressed Mr Weber. The New York Times quoted him as saying: ‘I’m getting more out of this from the publicity.’

  On 19 November 1975, the jury was charged by Justice Stark. Two days later, they returned a verdict of Guilty on all six counts. On 4 December, the judge sentenced Ronnie to life imprisonment. Weber made a much-publicised but unsuccessful appeal. The legal process may have occupied too long a while, but justice was finally done.

  That is the undoubtedly true story that shook up Amityville. It is not, however, the story that made this suburban community world-famous.

  A Man’s Home

  In one of his essays, Edmund Pearson wonders what happened to various criminals after their acquittal or imprisonment. Equally interesting is what has happened to the sites of famous crimes. Ford’s Theatre, after a period of use as a government building, and partial destruction in 1893, has been rebuilt and turned into a memorial to Abraham Lincoln … the home of Lizzie Borden is still a home for someone in Fall River … the house at Hopewell from which the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped is now a reformatory for boys.…

  1. The ‘Miranda Right’ stems from a decision of the Supreme Court in 1966 – basically that a suspect in a crime must be warned by police that he does not have to say anything, that what he says can be used against him, and that he has the right to a lawyer to advise him on his answers to questions.

  In the winter of 1975, a Mr George Lutz needed to find a new home. He was the owner of W.H. Parry, Inc, a surveying company begun by his grandfather, with offices at Syosset, Nassau County. He came from Deer Park, Suffolk County. He was married to Kathleen, née Connors, a divorcee with three children named Chris, Danny and Missy. They also had a dog called Harry. Though George Lutz had been looking for a house priced at around $35,000, he was persuaded to purchase the $80,000 former DeFeo home.

  On Thursday, 18 December 1975, the Lutz family came with their belongings in a U-Haul Trailer – and with five friends who had offered to assist. Shortly after they started moving in, Father Frank Mancuso turned up. He, the local priest, knew Mrs Lutz and her children. She asked him to bless the house. Later on, he would claim that all day he ‘felt funny’. He entered the house, flicked some holy water, and was about to make his blessing when a masculine voice said loudly: ‘Get out!’ Mancuso, alone at the time, finished the benedictions and left. On his way home, he very nearly had an automobile accident. A fellow-priest who accompanied him part of the way home soon afterwards really did have a bad crash. All very unsettling….

  The Lutzes have hardly had time to settle in when unsettling things start happening to them. George Lutz becomes sullen – and also, one surmises, at times rather whiffy, for he refuses to wash for days on end. He lets his hair grow, his unprecedented beard as well – so that (as he learns later) he looks uncannily like Ronnie DeFeo Jr. For no apparent reason, his two stepsons have several fights. Missy says that she has a new friend, a pig named Jodie. One night when George is outside, he sees a pig staring with beady red eyes through Missy’s window. He keeps waking up every night, always dead on 3.15am (which something, or someone, tells him is when the DeFeo murders occurred); he looks at his sleeping wife and notices that she has become a toothless hag; one night she levitates, and he needs all his strength to pull her down. Green slime oozes from certain walls … the bowls of the toilets turn black, and the house-proud Kathleen has to scrub and scrub to get them fairly clean … the basement gives off an overpowering stench of excreta … doors securely locked at night are off their hinges next morning … a brass-band disturbs George every night (whether it is the martial music that wakes him regularly at 3.15 is impossible to determine).

  The Lutzes do not suffer alone. On his way to his wedding, Kathleen’s brother stops at the house to pick up the family; he leaves $1500 in an envelope in his coat, and the envelope disappears. Visitors to the house get the shivers from an unpleasant aura (or ‘karma’, as the aura subsequently gets to be called). When Father Mancuso tries to phone the family, he hears nothing but static. He develops nasty blistering all over his body, and his temperature rises well above the norm. When he puts the family out of his mind, he gets well – but ill again the minute he shows concern for them. Like the basement of the Lutzes’ house, parts of the Father’s house give off a stink.

  George Lutz begins to study the history of the house. He reads the reports on the trial. He learns that the site of the house was once a compound-cum-graveyard for dying or insane Indians; that one of the first white settlers in the area was a man named John Cathum or Ketchem, who had an evil reputation, perhaps at least partly because he hailed from Salem, Massachusetts. Quite by chance, apparently, he uncovers a hidden room, and then hears a rumour that Ronnie Jr used just such a room for animal sacrifices, possibly of pigs. He starts reading up on paranormal experiences and demonology. After learning that haunted houses are often found to be built over open cisterns (by which, according to one theory, evil spirits enter the houses), he happens upon just such an opening under the front steps.

  Father Mancuso, having also considered demonic possession, gets his Bishop to allow the Lutzes to contact specialists in the paranormal. They pick the Psychical Research Institute in Durham, North Carolina – but before the investigators turn up, the family suffers from a nerve-racking localised storm and further experiences of what they are by now convinced are psychic phenomena, and on 14 January 1976, just twenty-eight days after arriving, they flee 112 Ocean Avenue.

  One Man’s Meat

  ‘Poltergeist’ is a German word meaning ‘racketing spirit’. It refers to phenomena in or around a building that cannot be explained by the normal laws of science. A ‘governing intelligence’ is supposed to be evident from certain repeated activities of the poltergeist. There are accounts of such phenomena over the centuries. Making a mockery of the word ‘proof’, evidence questioning the accuracy of
the accounts is ignored, discounted or denied by dedicated believers in the paranormal.

  According to D. Scott Rogo, in The Poltergeist Experience1, the key to the phenomena is ‘PK’ – standing for ‘psychokinesis’, an energy-source emanating from the brain of a person, usually a young one, that is stimulated by sexual restraints or repression imposed by elders. The destructive force often associated with poltergeists is due to ‘emotional revolt’. This force can be limited to stone-throwing or noise-making; but it can get very serious, even life-threatening – sometimes it is manifested in furniture-breakage, sudden fires, or damage to automobile engines.

  The incidents that plagued the Lutzes and Father Mancuso are thought by some to mingle the poltergeist with demonology. The central idea seems to be that whatever caused the Lutzes to move out of 112 Ocean Avenue must have influenced the previous residents – ie it caused Ronnie DeFeo Jr to slaughter his family. In some written accounts of the Lutzes’ experiences, it is mentioned in passing that Ronnie’s lawyer, William Weber, took a deep interest in the theory, and began to fashion an appeal based on the influencing activities of demons on his client, but then, for some reason, decided not to pursue the idea.

  1. Penguin, London, 1979.

  You will have gathered that, so far as demons and things are concerned, I am a sceptic. I certainly don’t feel that everything about our world, let alone any others, is understood, or even that such understanding will be achieved within the next two or three millennia. But, as I have implied, there seem always to be equivocal points in accounts of the paranormal. Accounts of what happened to and in the vicinity of the Lutzes while they were at 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, are peppered with them.