NEW YORK (PIX11) -- Half a century has passed, and the man who murdered his entire family is dead, but the diabolically haunting story his murders inspired is very much alive.
Generations of young people remember the Amityville Horror as the greatest ghost story of all time.
It was shortly after 3 a.m. on Nov. 13, 1974, when shots rang out in the home at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, Long Island.
In a matter of minutes, Ron DeFeo Jr. slaughtered his entire family as they slept, his mother, father, two sisters, and two brothers. After suggesting they were victims of a mob hit, DeFeo, the 23-year-old lone survivor of the family, was offered police protection.
Laura DiDio, an Amityville historian, said, "His alibi kept changing very quickly but when detectives finally broke him, he said it all happened so fast he couldn't stop."
That prompted the late demonologist Lorraine Warren to claim, "Ron DeFeo was demonically influenced in committing that horrible crime."
Years back, I interviewed DeFeo's defense attorney and asked, "Was Ronnie possessed?"
"No, he was insane," was the response I got.
The jury never bought the insanity defense and he was found guilty and sentenced to six consecutive 25 life terms. He died in prison three years ago.
A year after the murders, George and Kathy Lutz bought the beautiful colonial house and moved in with their children. 28 days later, they fled in horror.
"What drove them out was a culmination of events that had happened over the past month," DiDio recalled. "Green slime, black tar out of the faucets and sinks. They had changes in personality."
Their tale inspired Jay Anson's book The Amityville Horror. Then the movie, another movie, and another book. The story never ends.
DiDio understands, "People just love a good ghost story."
Is the Amityville story a horror or a hoax?
According to Defeo’s lawyer, the story was concocted with the Lutzs over dinner and wine. “About three bottles of wine," he said, adding, "Each bottle made it a better story.”
In 1979, I got to spend a night in that house in Amityville accompanied by demonologists, clairvoyants, and psychics.
At 3:15 a.m. Lorraine Warren and I sat in a dark candlelit room that supposedly had the strongest demonic presence. I felt nothing unusual, but she proclaimed it was the “closest to hell she ever wants to get.”
In one of his letters to me from prison, Defeo declared the Amityville story was a hoax and all about money and said he was angry he was cut out of the lucrative book and movie deal.
Over the past five decades, multiple families have lived in the beautiful colonial house on Ocean Avenue. None has reported any occult happenings. But believers still flock there each year to see that house and its story that has become a cottage industry… a ghost story that will endure for generations to come.
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