- [Narrator] In the small town of Amityville,
located in Long Island, New York,
stood a stoic house at 112 Ocean Avenue.
For all its beauty and glamor, the house held a dark secret,
one that would soon come to light
in the most terrifying of ways.
What is up, EWU crew?
Today we're diving deep into a case
that inspired dozens of books and movies,
a story full of terror and sleepless nights.
It is the story of an unloved child, murderous intent,
and a paranormal tale that walks the thin line
between fact and fiction.
This is the true story of the Amityville house hauntings.
Let's get into it.
The Amityville haunting is a notorious tale,
one that has been told and retold over and over again.
And whether you believe it or not, it is based in truth.
But to understand the true story,
we must go back to the very beginning.
In 1974, the Amityville house was owned by the DeFeo family.
Ronald DeFeo Sr. and his wife Louise
inhabited the house with their five children,
their eldest, Ronald DeFeo Jr.,
who often went by the nicknames Butch or Ronnie,
Dawn, their 18-year-old daughter, Allison, 13,
and their youngest children, Marc, 12,
and John Matthew, nine.
Up to this point, the family had endured a tumultuous life.
Ronald Sr. was an overbearing man.
He was domineering toward the children,
and as they grew older, they began to fear and loathe him.
Ronnie in particular struggled,
and though he turned to his mother for support,
he found Louise silent on the matter.
Frustrated and angry, Ronnie became a troubled teen.
He turned to drugs and alcohol to help ease the pain,
but his anger never truly subsided.
Ron Sr. and Louise tried to placate Ronnie
with money and gifts,
yet it seemed to only further his outlandish behaviors,
and as the years passed,
he found himself involved with even harder drugs.
Ron Sr. eventually secured him a position
at the dealership where he worked,
and though Ronnie was forever leaving early
and showing up late,
he managed to hold onto the job with the help of his father.
Despite his parents' attempts to calm his frenetic behavior,
Ronnie fell into aggressive habits,
and took to lashing out physically
at the rest of his family.
At one point, he even threatened Ronald Sr. with a gun.
Though no one knew it at the time,
this event would later make the townspeople
question a tragedy yet to come.
It was a chill day on November 14th, 1974,
and at 6:30 in the evening,
the bar crowd was just gathering.
It was to everyone's surprise
when a distraught and screaming Ronnie DeFeo
entered the bar that day.
He claimed that someone had broken into his home,
and he thought his parents were dead.
Those at the bar followed Ronnie back
to the Ocean Avenue house,
and there they made the gruesome discovery of his family.
Every single one of the DeFeos
had been slaughtered in their beds.
In shock and disbelief,
the local police department was called,
but when police finally arrived at the scene,
they didn't look for the intruder
Ronnie claimed had been at the scene.
Instead, they immediately found Ronnie's story
to be suspicious.
As they walked through the house,
they uncovered that every member of the DeFeo family
had been shot while asleep in their beds.
Each one lay on their front,
faces down, hands classed behind their backs.
There was no sign of a struggle,
no evidence of a break-in or of a robbery.
When police confronted Ronnie with this evidence,
his story quickly began to crumble.
He first pointed the finger at mafia hitman Louis Falini.
Then he said his sister Dawn slew the family,
and he himself shot Dawn.
Bit by bit, his story changed, until at last he confessed,
and the truth was revealed.
On the night of November 13th at 3:15 AM,
Ronnie decided he'd had enough.
He calmly climbed out of bed
and grabbed his .35 Marlin rifle.
He crept into his parents' bedroom,
and fired two shots into each of them as they slept.
Then one by one he made his way through his siblings' rooms,
and shot each point blank where they lay.
The carnage took all of 15 minutes.
Once he was done, Ronnie showered, dressed for work,
and stashed all evidence of his crimes in a pillowcase,
which he would later dump into a storm drain
on his way into work.
He continued his charade while at work,
and when his father didn't show up for his shift,
Ronnie pretended to call home to find out why.
In an attempt to secure an alibi,
he told his coworkers and everyone else he met that day
that he couldn't get in touch with his family.
Around noon, he left work.
This was typical behavior for Ronnie,
and no one batted an eye.
The next time anyone saw him,
he was running into the bar, screaming for help.
When police began to interrogate him
to understand why he had committed such a horrific crime,
Ronnie soon broke down.
He was quoted as saying,
"Once I started I just couldn't stop.
It went so fast."
Interestingly, when questioned,
none of the neighbors reported hearing gunshots that night,
only the sound of the DeFeos' dog barking.
Upon inspection of the weapon,
police determined that the barrel of the gun used
wasn't fitted with a silencer,
nor had any sedatives been used on the family.
Both were things they had expected to find.
Ronald DeFeo Jr. Was taken into custody
and charged with six counts of first-degree murder.
DeFeo retained lawyer William Weber as his counsel,
who felt the only choice for defense was to plead insanity.
He claimed that Ronnie heard voices
the night he committed the murders,
voices that told him to kill his entire family.
DeFeo was assessed by psychiatrists,
and while they acknowledged he did suffer
with some form of mental illness,
he was fully aware of what he was doing,
and indeed knew that what he was doing was wrong.
His trial began nearly a year later, in October of 1975.
He would be found guilty on all six counts of murder,
and was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences.
The house at 112 Ocean Avenue remained empty
for 13 months after the brutal murders.
It sat barren and dark,
a haunting reminder of the heinous crimes committed within,
and it seemed that, for a while,
no one would want to live within the Ocean Avenue home.
That is, until George and Kathy Lutz purchased the property
in December of 1975.
28 days later, they would flee the property for their lives.
George and Kathy were newlyweds,
and their blended family was a happy one.
They had purchased a house for themselves
and their three children at a fantastic price,
and despite the many claims
that they were struggling financially,
the two believed they could manage their expenses
and the new mortgage.
At first, everything seemed fine.
But soon after they moved into the home,
all of the family members
would experience troubling paranormal events.
Shortly after settling in,
George started hearing voices
and knocking noises throughout the house.
He claimed that doors would open and slam shut on their own.
Kathy Lutz claimed to find a room that wasn't present
on any of the house plans,
and most disturbingly, the room was painted blood red.
Then came the definitive night,
where things became more terrifying than strange.
At 3:15 AM, George Lutz awoke.
He looked at the clock, his frustration growing.
Every night since they had moved into their new home,
he had awakened at precisely 3:15 AM.
He may not have known it,
but 3:15 AM was the exact time
when Ronald DeFeo Jr. woke up and murdered his family.
George thought that maybe it was the stress of moving,
or maybe he was just struggling to adjust to the new house.
He tried to explain it away with logic,
though it was getting harder all the time.
This night, however, as he rolled over to sleep,
he saw something he could not explain.
George watched as his wife Kathy appeared
to be levitating just over top of the bed.
As shocking as this was to witness,
it was just the beginning of a series of terrifying events
that would befall the Lutz family.
Soon, the hauntings appeared to escalate.
Among the horrors the Lutzes said they experienced
were ghostly shadows inside the home when no one was there,
two of their sons levitating over their beds,
an infestation of flies in the house
in the middle of winter,
green slime that oozed from the walls and keyholes,
the image of a pig with red, glowing eyes
staring at them from a window,
and knives flying off of the kitchen counters by themselves.
The family claimed to smell strange odors
as the days passed,
and said they could feel ice-cold spots
at random throughout the home.
Quickly growing wary of the feeling of being haunted,
George and Kathy decided it was time to bring in
some professional help.
They called a priest, Father Pecoraro,
to come and bless the home.
Father Pecoraro made his way throughout the house,
blessing each room as he went,
but he left in a hurry, before he could finish,
claiming he heard voices telling him to get out.
The priest advised the family
to take a break from the house,
and suggested they go stay with a family member or friend.
At their wit's end, the Lutzes agreed,
and that night they fled the house,
claiming to all who would listen
that they were being haunted by dark forces.
George Lutz declared they had left
because of their concern for their family's safety.
After 28 days living in hell,
they left for a family member's house.
They never returned.
Despite the captivating story the Lutzes told,
many were skeptical.
The Lutzes never went into detail
regarding what dark forces they felt were haunting them,
and when interviewed,
they seemed reluctant to discuss the matter.
There were those that knew the family
that also claimed their story to be an outright lie.
William Weber, their former attorney,
claimed the three of them
had concocted the story together over wine,
and that the entire thing was a fabrication
designed to help the Lutzes get out from beneath
their insurmountable debt.
The Lutzes however, stuck to their story.
They were adamant that the hauntings occurred,
and they went so far as to take a lie detector test
to prove that they were truthful,
which they passed.
Even their children were adamant
that they had been haunted while in the home.
Their son Daniel said
that he had been possessed by a spirit,
and even that his life had been ruined
by living in that house for those 28 dark days.
Eventually, George and Kathy broached a deal with Jay Anson,
the author who would ultimately detail
their experiences in the home.
Although their former attorney William Weber
had initially been involved in getting the Lutzes
to come around to the idea of publishing their story,
when all was said and done,
Weber was cut out of any deals made
for the monetary gain from the story itself.
For his part, Weber said he only wanted to use the story
to get another trial for Ronnie DeFeo.
Although another trial never occurred,
the Lutzes profited considerably from their haunting,
which has brought into question the validity of their tale.
Though George and Kathy have since passed away,
their children remain firm
that they experienced true horrors
at their home on Ocean Avenue.
However, Kathy's son from her previous relationship,
Christopher Quaratino, later added an interesting element
into the story of the haunting.
Quaratino has stated that the hauntings were genuine,
but that they had been brought on
not by occupying the Ocean Avenue house,
but by George Lutz's occult activities.
He described that George had a fascination
with the paranormal,
and knowing that the horrific deaths of the DeFeos
had occurred in the residence,
he attempted to encourage the spirits to manifest.
"I don't know that I'd call it black magic,
but it was a way to call up spirits."
Quaratino described the chanting he heard from George,
and even went so far as to call George the perpetuator
and instigator of the hauntings his family suffered.
Despite the popularity of 112 Ocean Avenue,
you won't find the former DeFeo residence there
if you look for it.
The address was changed from 112 to 108 years ago
in an effort to deter crowds
from gathering on and around the property.
The home has since been owned by several other families,
none of which have claimed to experience
any paranormal activities.
Since the Lutzes went public with their claims,
dozens of other books, articles, and films
have been created based on the events
they said occurred in the home.
The hit movie, "The Amityville Horror,"
which starred James Brolin and Margot Kidder,
was released to wide acclaim in 1979,
and inspired over a dozen movies
with variations of the same story.
And though the story has changed slightly over the years,
the details often remain the same.
What appears most consistent, though,
is that the memory of the haunting may be more terrifying
than the story itself.
So, was the Amityville house really haunted?
We'll leave that for you to decide.