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Halloween Special - The Amityville Horror

28 October

Mugshot of Ronald DeFeo Jr.
The supposed "demon boy", photograph taken at a séance in the Amityville house
The photo of the shell casings discussed on the episode.

This week we're discussing the case of the DeFeo family, who were murdered in their house which later became famous for alleged paranormal activities in the book The Amityville Horror. Joe talks about when he called the police, Sandra confesses to stealing a plastic lawn mower and guest Lee talks about a demon pig named Jodie.

Our extra special guest Lee has his own podcasts that can be found on soundcloud. Sadist Filth and Failure To Communicate.

Lee got his information from:

  • The Night the DeFeos Died: Reinvestigating the Amityville Murders, by Ric Osuna. This is also where the photos of the shell casings and the "demon boy" comes from.

Joe got his information from:

Sandra got her information from:

Audio transcript

Midweek Murders contains graphic and explicit content, listener discretion is advised.

My role is mansplaining science.

Yeah, yeah. And also mansplaining other things. [Laughter]

You're foreign. I don't know what you understand.

Oh! I have an immigrant question, speaking of which...

See! These pop up so often that I'm like: "does she know what a potato peeler is? Of course she knows what a potato peeler is, she's scandinavian".

My question is, where does the phrase "Bob's your uncle" come from? I know what it means, but where does it come from?

Somebody's whose uncle was Bob? [Laughter] I don't even know what it means. It just means good, right?

It means like: "gets the job done", kind of, doesn't it? Or...

I guess, yeah.

Yeah, I don't know its origins, I'm not an entomologist. Etymologist, sorry. Entomologist is someone who studies insects.

Yeah. I knew that as well. Should we start?

How do you know what entomologist and etymologist are, but you don't know what potato peeler is?

The only word that I can spell a hundred percent of the time, every time, is dyslexic. Which...

That's pretty good going, because that's a nice bastardisation of Greek and Latin.

Yeah, there's weird letters in it.

[Music]

It's Wednesday, which means that it's time to talk about crime. You're listening to Midweek Murders and I'm your host Sandra.

I'm your host Joe, and we've got a new member!

Oh my god! True crime aficionado Lee Popey. Hello!

Hi. I was gonna try to leave it as long as possible and then wait, and then be like: "do you want me speak now?" as you were speaking. But we're on the clock.

That is true.

I mean that's pretty much how all of our unedited introductions go.

Yeah. Okay, so Lee is our best pal Jo's boyfriend. So it's a bit weird that we don't have Jo on the show but...

A separate Jo from the Joe that's on the show, I'd like to point out.

Yes, and also, Lee is more of a true crime fan I'm assuming?

Thaaaaan?

Than Jo. Than both Jo's.

Oh definitely. Yeah she hates...

Than both of us, yeah.

She hates it when I try to commit true crimes.

How many have you got away with so far?

I stole a really good kinder egg, like when I was younger.

I once stole a plastic grass cutter that my neighbor had. My neighbor was a dick, and then I stole her plastic toy grass clipper. Walked all the way to my house with it and then got extreme anxiety. I was like six years old. I was like: "I can't believe I've done this horrible thing".

I'm very confused. Do they not have lawn mowers where you come from?

Yeah, a lawn mower. It was a plastic lawn mower.

Oh. I see, I see. Was it one of those ones that had like balls that jumped around on the top of it?

I have no idea, I can't remember it. I only remember the severity of my crime. And the anguish it cost me. Okay. This week we're doing another halloween special and the case that we're going to talk about is the Amityville Horror. I got my information from wikipedia, truTV.com, by Douglas B. Lynott, The New York Times, by Pranay Gupte and amityvillemurders.com.

I have so many that I don't remember any of them.

Okay. The sources are gonna be on our website: midweekmurders.netlify.app.

I also have a book called "the night the DeFeos died", by Ric Osuna. It looks like tuna but instead of a T it's an O and an S. I don't know what that name is.

Osuna. We can just assuma...[Laughter]

Oh good lord, this is gonna be a long night.

Okay. So on the 13th of November 1970, Ronald "Butch" DeFeo junior entered Henry's Bar in Amityville Long Island at approximately 6.30 p.m and shouted: "you got to help me, I think my mother and father are shot". Isn't that a bit weird to say: "my mother and father"? I get bullied in Sweden because I called my mom and dad "mother and father" and they're like that's so weird. Isn't that weird? Maybe it wasn't in the 1970s.

Maybe not. And shootings aren't that weird there either in America. [Laughter]

Butch and a small group of people went to his home address at 112 Ocean Avenue, not far away from where the bar was, and at 6.35 a 9-1-1 call is made. Joe Jeswit is the one who made the phone call, and the operator asked Joe: "what's the problem sir?". He answered: "it's a shooting". The operator says: "there's a shooting? Anybody hurt?".

The ones that got shot would be my first thought.

Oh shit, wait. I got a pop-up from Zoom.

It said that you have unlimited minutes now.

Yeah.

Well that's good, we're gonna need them. [Laughter]

And then it says: "what's the problem sir?", Joe says: "it's a shooting". Operator says: "there's a shooting? Anybody hurt?, Joe says: "huh?". "Anybody hurt?", "yeah it's uh... everybody's dead", "what do you mean everybody's dead?". "I don't know what happened, kid come running into the bar, he says everybody in the family was killed and we came down here". And in some sources it says that Joe Jeswit is his friend, but I'm guessing he's not, because he says: "some kid" or "kid come running into the bar" kind of sounds like they don't know each other.

I think they know of each other from the bar, it sounds like he frequented that place a lot.

Yeah. So he guesses there are four shot people in the house, but when the police arrives they find six murder victims. Ronald DeFeo Sr. (44) and Louise DeFeo (42); and four of the DeFeo children: Dawn (18), Allison (13), Marc (12), and John Matthew 9 years old. They had been shot with a .35 calibre Marlin rifle. The parents were shot twice, and the children were killed with a single shot. So a bit of background to why this might have happened is that Ronald DeFeo Sr had come into some money working at his father-in-law’s Buick dealership and the family had moved into the large house by the Amityville river. But Ronald Sr was abusive towards his family, and the abuse had taken it’s toll on Ronald Jr, or Butch as I'm hereby gonna call him because it's a bit confusing with both Ronalds, who as a teenager would no longer be easy victim as he had grown into a bigger man and would fight back. To try to control the sons temper, the DeFeo parents tried to buy Butch’s obedience which often didn’t work, and then I said: "surprise, surprise!". At the age of 17 he was no longer allowed to attend school as his drug problem had become apparent. He would often use heroin and LSD and had at a party pointed a loaded rifle at a friend of his. This friend just left the party and then the next day he was like: "why did you leave the party so soon?", he was like: "you pointed a loaded gun at me. Duh".

And he's like: "it's America" and he said: "oh yeah".

"Fair enough, no hard feelings mate".

I like this anti-american stuff because the Russian bots will fucking lap it up man. [Laughter]

We have mostly American listeners now, but we're probably not gonna...

Not anymore, no.

Vote Biden.

So Butch got a job at his grandfathers Buick dealership but rarely turned up to do any work, and would still get paid every week. At one point his parents had an argument during which Butch came into the room, pointed a rifle at his father and said “Leave that woman alone. I'm going to kill you, you fat fuck! This is it". He proceeded to pull the trigger, at which the gun miraculously malfunctioned, and Butch just calmly walked out of the room. Nobody called the police.

It was also at this point that Ronald found God.

Oh yeah.

What?

Ronald senior. Yeah, seriously. This is in a couple of sources. He attributes this point as him becoming religious and finding God, because obviously he was staring death down the barrel of a gun, literally. Like totally literally. And was saved, so it must have been God's will, obviously.

So two weeks before the murders, Butch was supposed to deposit a large check from the car dealership at the bank, but chose to stage a robbing. In which he pretended to get robbed by a friend who he then split the money with.

Smart.

His father knew that Butch had stolen the money, and called the police. The police questioned Butch, who was a right prick about the whole thing, I said. There was a lot of information...

Was that a quote in The New York Times?

No, I just summarised it because there's a lot of like: "oh, he fought this, he did that, he was..."

Sounds like an 1800's gentleman, "he was a right prick I said".

Bly Manor.

"Tally ho, what, what. Now let's move on".

Oh god. Speaking of Bly Manor, the lady that's supposed to be the gardener but old...

Yeah, the narrator. She sounds like Dick Van Dyke, "well alright, I know it's not my story to tell, right. But..."

Even I could tell...

"But I'm gonna do it anyway".

Oh god. Right prick about the whole thing. So on the Friday before the murders he was supposed to go to the police station to look at mug-shots in order to help solving the in air quotes, robbery, but he didn’t show up. This lead to another argument between him and his father, at which Butch again threatened to kill him. Which was witnessed by the people at the car dealership, I'm guessing.

I'm starting to think Butch might have some issues.

Yeah? Oh ja, maybe. So the day before the murders, Butch dosed the family dinner with barbiturates. In the early morning on the 14th of November, around three o'clock, Butch went into his parents room and shot his father two times. His mother woke up, at which point he proceeded to shoot her as well, two times. After that he went into the room of his two younger brothers and shot them both in the head. The rest of the family had still not woken up, and this might or might not be true. He then went to his sisters bedroom, at which point Allison had woken up, he shot her and then shot his other sister Dawn.

Just as a light spoiler for things to come, a lot of what you just said is completely inaccurate.

Is it though?

Yeah, I have the book in front of me which has the crime scene photos and the little brother was definitely not shot in the head.

No it was Dawn that was shot in the head.

Oh sorry, yeah.

Also, I'm glad that you said about that he drug their things, because I'm sure Joe as the like man who knows the science might tell you that that is completely false and that they weren't drugged.

I'm not sure what they weren't though.

I can tell you what happened, but I just want to hear what you guys are saying first.

On Wikipedia it says that they were, and then I also found an article from 1974 which said that they were. I couldn't find...

Whereas I found an article that said... That directly quoted the autopsy report, basically the tox report came back clean. There was nothing that shouldn't have been in their systems at time of death.

Okay. The thing is, I really looked, I couldn't find the autopsy reports. So I'm not sure, but I'm not sure that he didn't either.

It's possible that he used a sedative type drug that would have had a short half-life which, for the non-scientific listeners, is basically the time it takes in the body for the drug dosage to reduce by half. So if he had given them something that has a short half-life, then it could have cleared their system by the time the autopsy was conducted. But as soon as they died, all of the metabolic pathways that would have been responsible for breaking down the drugs would have stopped. So even if he was using something with a short half-life, you still would have expected to find something in there at time of death, if you're expecting that drug to work to keep them asleep while he rampages around the house.

But for example, would it be possible that he as he said in his confession, the first one, that he drugged them at dinner time the day before and at three o'clock in the morning most of that would have worn off?

Yeah. But then, without any drug circulating in their system to keep them asleep, the report of the rifle would have woken the other family members. And to put it in perspective, the gun shot can be heard within a mile radius.

It woke the dog up that was outside. Because I think this is how he got convicted, because he let the dog out and then brought the dog back in and they were like: "well it's premeditated if you did that".

And also that's the only thing the neighbours reported hearing, was the barking of the dog. So after the first gunshot the dog would be going, which could have masked the rest of the gunshots. But this is one of the unsolved mysteries of the whole case, is how the whole family stayed where they were in their beds, in situ, while whoever murdered them...

Except for Allison...

No, except for Dawn.

Dawn was the one who wasn't in her bed.

No, Dawn was the only one that wasn't murdered in her bed.

Okay and Allison... I read like several different reports on this and Allison was said to have woken up. So they knew that Allison was shot in the head like staring at the barrel.

I don't think Allison was shot in the head.

She was shot in the head.

Okay, then it still would have been in bed.

Yeah, maybe yeah. She could have been shot in the bed, but they said that the two people who they could conclude definitely were awake during this, was the mother and Allison.

Did either of you come across the second gun in the reports?

Yeah. I guess we'll get to it, but maybe we should do it now. Some people said that there might have been a second gun, because of the fact that most of the people were asleep.

Well, I don't know if it showed up in the autopsy that the mother, particularly, would have had a bullet in her from a pistol and not from a rifle.

They said that all of the eight gunshots were from the same rifle, except for one which they couldn't conclude definitely, because it was too damaged.

Interestingly when this went to court, to prosecute Butch, the prosecution said definitively that all eight bullets were from the same weapon. The ballistics expert was 100% sure, beyond any reasonable doubt, that all of these bullets came from the same gun. The prosecution debated that, they weren't convinced. So they didn't rule out the possibility of a second weapon being used...No sorry, the defence. The prosecution were 100% sure it was all from the same rifle.

Yeah. I looked far and wide for the autopsy report, couldn't find it.

You are not going to be able to find it, because Amityville police will not let anyone get their hands on it.

Okay, okay.

Because they may or may not be super fucking corrupt.

Ooooh. Well, there were differing reports about the crime scene photos, I didn't look at them myself. I don't want to, I don't think.

I'm looking at them now and they're not nice to look at. But the crime scene photos that are in this book back up the story that's in this book quite heavily.

Okay, because what I could discern from all the differing reports was that the only ones that they could prove were awake was the mother and Allison. Dawn I've heard differing reports about, but she might have been asleep, but she wasn't placed...

Did you watch any of the documentaries or just read the stuff?

I did not watch the documentaries because I heard... The guy, his name was Katzenbach, no?

That rings a bell. The lawyer?

No. I don't know what he is, but he's made three documentaries about the case and people are saying that he is not to be trusted. At all.

If it's Jeffrey Katzenberg, I'm fairly certain, I might be wrong about this. That he was the lawyer of Ronald DeFeo and then he, with the Lutz's, sat down and wrote the book The Amityville Horror.

No that was Waber, wasn't it? Or Webber?

Oh yeah.

Maybe, yeah.

You're right in that there was definitely...The defence lawyer, over multiple bottles of wine, came up with the whole haunting story.

Because in a few of the documentaries, they're all pretty set on that Ronnie did everything. And then there is another documentary that I saw where Ronnie said that an angel with black hands handed him the gun. The quote-unquote angel was not an angel, it was a his older sister Dawn wearing gloves because she didn't want her fingerprints on the gun.

I think we're skipping a bit ahead now.

Yeah.

Wait, I have another question about the forensics.

Hold on, let me put on my monocle.

If they were drugged, and the drug wasn't like enough to be in their system at the point where the autopsy was made, would the children be more susceptible to that than the parents?

Yes. So a lot of sedatives will work determined on the size of the person. So if he gave the same dose to his entire family, you'd find that the children would be asleep faster, deeper, and for longer than the parents would.

Yeah. So hypothetically, because it's reported in the confession, in the newspaper at the time and on Wikipedia, they might have been drugged?

I'm not convinced.

I know the answer, I know that they weren't drugged. I'm just flicking through the book now to see if there's pictures of Ronnie DeFeo after he gave his quote-unquote confession, because he was horrifically beaten by the police. Because they made up loads of stuff, there was more than one killer and there was four people involved and only one of them went to prison for it.

The thing that they could prove is that before going to the bar, or, before going to work. Sorry. Butch showered, trimmed his beard, got dressed and collected his blood-soaked clothing along with the rifle and put the evidence in a pillowcase. He then drove to Brooklyn where his place of work was, the car dealership, and disposed of the pillowcase in a storm drain. After which he showed up to work and clocked in at 6 am. At work he made a big show about calling the house several times and commented several times about nobody answering. He then left work at noon and went to his girlfriend's house and continued the charade there, by calling his house and commenting again on nobody answering. Then he and his girlfriend went to Butch's friend's Bobby's house, where butch repeated the same scene of calling his house and then commenting on nobody answering. He proceeded to hang out with his friends, they took heroin and then went to the bar, where he said that he was going home as his repeated calls had been met with no answer. He returned to the bar a couple of minutes after, so I'm guessing like 10 minutes or more maybe, shouting for help. And now we're at the start of the story again. When the police showed up at the house Butch was sobbing, and told them that Louis Falini, a mob hitman, had done the murders. Because he said that Louis Falini had been living with them for a while, and he knew that they had like money and stuff hidden in the basement, stuff like that. After which he casually asked the police how to go about collecting life insurance. The police believed Butch's story at first, but then after finding the rifle boxes and getting information about the staged robbery they began to suspect Butch of being the murderer. Butch had also stated that he had heard his brother, and seen his brother's wheelchair outside of the toilet, at 4.00 a.m. And the detectives who knew that the family had been sleeping while shot, and also that the time of death had been around three a.m, didn't believe that the crimes had happened after Butch left for work. So then after many lies about being threatened by Falini and some other dude, the police pressed him on the details that didn't add up. Press him on the details might have been physical if I'm getting your photo thing right?

Yeah, I mean there's also there was a second gun. In the confession Butch says it wasn't a second gun but there was a second gun, which is where the confusion comes from. So the girlfriend of Butch, he actually married her in prison, her name was Geraldine.

No, that's another girlfriend.

Well he's married to someone called Geraldine and through her they managed to get hold of the court documents, which they have in here, which have massive chunks of stuff that are redacted. And he has spoken to Ronnie himself about the story and the story that Butch tells matches up with the crime scene photos. One very specific one is the door to the bedroom of the parents is covered in blood, but if they were shot in bed, how was their blood spatter on the other side of the room?

Okay.

And it's because he wasn't in bed when he was shot.

Who? The father?

The father, yeah.

I'm not sure about the second gun, because they did link up all of the bullets to one gun.

Ah. But they didn't. Like Joe was saying, other people were saying... I don't think this matches up. And also, the police lied a lot and have redacted a lot of the stuff in that... Like they just put black lines through loads of the evidence because they wanted to nail this guy and just get it over and done with. Because they were lazy 70s police officers.

Yeah. I would agree that it was only the prosecution team at court that said that there was only one weapon involved.

Okay.

The defense team tried to argue that not all of the bullets came from the same gun, but obviously the prosecution managed to convince the jury enough to say that it was all from one weapon.

I would say, I'm quite sure that Butch did it. Not that I'm 100% sure that he was alone doing it, but I'm 100% sure that he was involved.

Oh he was involved, definitely. Like if the book is correct, which is from Butch and crime scene photos and testimonies and all the stuff of the night. If it is, he a hundred percent killed his mom and his dad but he did not kill the rest of his family members, minus Dawn. And that's why she wasn't in bed and why she was also shot at such close range.

Well I'm not 100% sure that Dawn had anything to do with it either, because I feel like that is placing blame on the victim.

No, there's evidence to say that Dawn could have been involved.

I know about the gun powder.

Well yeah, the gun powder to start with. On her hands and on her nightgown, of unexploded gunpowder. The house was under surveillance, and this wasn't admissible evidence in court...

Oh she was seen with the black gloves on, right? Walking to the basement?

Yeah. The police were concerned that Butch was smuggling drugs, or dealing drugs or had sincere involvement with drugs, which obviously he did because he was getting shit-faced more and more often.

When the police said they saw it, did they see her carrying the gun? I can't remember.

Apparently they saw her getting into a car with the gun and disposing of it in the location where it was found. The police that were staking out the house saw Dawn in a hooded like parka coat with gloves on, walking into the house. Which matches the description that Butch gave of this spirit that visited him while he was high off his tits. They then saw Dawn leaving the house with the rifle, getting into a car and driving, I think, to a place called north point.

That's the water, like where they dropped the gun in the water?

Yeah. It's a dock, basically. Which is where they recovered the Marlin rifle. So the theory is: she went in and killed the parents because of the abuse that the whole family were under. Then either like lost her mind or whatever, and killed the younger siblings. The plan between Dawn and Butch was to only kill the parents which is why, when she returned after disposing of the gun, Butch killed her. Which also explains why she wasn't in bed. That's supported by the scenes of crimes officers finding blood spatter on floorboards and skirting boards outside of her bedroom and why her headboard behind her bed was completely clean, but basically, her head was destroyed. It also supports the theory of the defense lawyers that multiple weapons were included, because she would have had to have been killed by a different weapon by Butch because she had already disposed of the rifle that she used to kill the rest of the family.

Was she placed on a bed after she was killed?

Yes. She was recovered from her bed, but that wasn't her site of death.

No, okay. That, I read about. She was shot behind her left ear, no? I read...

I'm flipping through the book now to see if the autopsy things are in it. It shows where their bodies were positioned when they were found, but I don't think it shows their autopsy stuff in here. But yeah, she was shot at point blank range with that rifle, so.

She was shot with the rifle?

Yeah, she didn't dispose of the rifle. Ronnie disposed of the rifle. So the version I have is that Butch, Dawn, Bobby and somebody called Argie... Basically, Butch and Dawn wanted to get rid of the parents, they'd had had fucking enough. Like, they were sick of their shit. Dawn was just like: "you're a fucking pussy, you're never gonna do anything about it" and then she left and came back with the rifle and was wearing black gloves and was like: "let's just kill them now". And then they hatched the plan, and the plan was that Butch was gonna go kill the family... Sorry, the mum and the dad. And while he was doing this, Dawn went to the brothers and was just like: "you're gonna hear some noise but just fucking stay in bed. Whatever you do, do not leave your room". Before he went into his parents room he went into Allison's room, because Butch's favorite sister was Allison, and he said to Allison: "stay in your room, whatever you do. There's a burglar in the house and if you hear any noise, just stay in your room". And then Butch and Bobby went into the parents room, shot the dad in the back which woke him up and didn't kill him, the mum sat upright and was like: "oh my god". And apparently, Butch was like: "I've had it with her" and just shot her. The dad gets out of bed and runs at him and he shoots him dead in the hallway, which is why there's blood splatter up the door and on the wall, and he falls down dead. While this is happening, Bobby fires his gun at the mum, and then Ronnie like slaps it out of his hand and is like: "what are you doing?! That's my mum. Leave it". Bobby freaks out and runs away...

And this is the same friend that he then went to after work, before going to the pub?

Yeah. Bobby freaked out and ran away. Because the plan was to get the kids out of the house and take them to the grandparents, and say that there'd been a robbery and and someone's been hurt. So he was like: "I'm gonna go get Bobby. You deal with the kids". And he's running around trying to find Bobby, and then Argie appears in a car and he's like: "mate, your sister's gone nuts. She pointed a gun at my head". And then fired into the ceiling of his car, and there's a bullet hole in the car. And he's like: "she's gone nuts. You need to deal with that". So he left Bobby and went back to the house. He spoke to his brothers and was like: "stay in bed, stay in bed". One of them was desperate for a piss, the one that had a broken leg, Johnny. And he was just like: "piss the bed or piss in a can", and he's like: "I'm not going to piss the bed". So he had to run downstairs, empty a can of coffee for him, come back up, give it to him to piss in, get rid of it. Checked on his younger sister. And then Dawn was playing her music really loudly upstairs and singing, and she'd clearly taken drugs. And he went up there and was just like: "you need to sober up. You have to get the kids and you have to take them to the grandparents. Remember the plan". Then he ran back downstairs and tried to move his dad back into the bed, but realized he couldn't lift him by himself. So he had to go find Bobby. So he ran out, managed to come across Bobby, brought him back to the house. But then when they went into the house he checked on his brothers and saw that they were dead. And then he checked on his sister and saw that she was dead. And he ran upstairs to see Dawn, was like: "what the hell did you do!", and she was just like: "oh, it's just easier this way, if we just do it this way". He allegedly wrestled her, because she pulled the gun on him, and in the wrestling fired the gun at point blank range into her head. He managed to get Bobby to help him move the body into the bed. And Bobby had dropped his gun in the blood of his dad. And then he took it with him, and some of his clothes, to get rid of. He was like: "take your clothes, take the gun and burn them. Get fucking rid of them". Then he got rid of Bobby. Then he got rid of his clothes, and did the cutting of his beard, and had a shower and stuff. And then he left. And then realized that he had left the fucking gun behind. So he went back and got the gun and took it and chucked it in that river.

But they did find the rifle in the storm drain?

No. They found his clothes in the storm drain. The rifle was found in... By.. At north point in the the dock. You wouldn't be able to hide a rifle in a pillow case, it's too small. It'd just be a fucking rifle sticking out of a bit of fabric. You'd be like: "there's a rifle over there!".

Yeah.

The rifle was chucked in the river.

Okay. But if... Wait. [Laughter] So Butch said that he was on heroin at the police investigation, the police like beatings and stuff?

Yeah.

Mescaline.

Okay. And Dawn's autopsy said that she wasn't on drugs? No?

I don't actually know. Joe, do you know?

I don't know. I can only assume that because she was deceased, she was included in the general "there was no unusual toxicology" to the autopsy report.

I'm not sure about this either.

Well the thing is, it's like... Like I said, it matches the crime scene photos. And obviously the little brother is not shot in the head, he's shot in the back. We also have to take into account that in many years since Ronnie DeFeo junior, who is still alive, has said multiple different stories. Including, when the fucking Amityville horror happened, that a ghost made him do it.

Yeah. Which I think is lies, obviously.

Oh definitely, yeah.

I thought that was the most plausible one. [Laughter]

But also that he has blamed it first on his mother, and then he blamed it on Dawn.

Just to let you know, so I've just found a page that has a picture of what was found in the sewer and it's like bullet casings, the boxes for the bullets, and the case for the rifle.

Okay.

Yeah. Which was like a leather case, so you could fold it out.

Okay, yeah. And the box of the rifle was found at the crime scene? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

In the house. So the rifle wasn't in the pillowcase, no.

No, the rifle was in the river.

Yeah. But he did pick up the shell casings?

Yes.

Yes.

Smart.

Yeah, but how smart, I don't know. The bullets were still there, even though you say that it's bullets from two different guns. I'm not sure.

Well, possibly. But also, leaving the shell cases is irrefutable evidence, so...

I just found another picture in here, which is like... There's a hairbrush on the floor, which Ronnie claimed Dawn had thrown at Bobby. And unless they'd shown him crime scene photos, how the fuck did he know that brush was there?

How many gun shells was in that pillowcase?

Here we go. I can see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine shell casings.

So they're saying that the parents were shot twice...

Ooooooh. There should only be eight!

Well, listen. I can see, with my eyes, that there's nine of them. [Laughter]

Are they definitely only the casing and not the whole shell?

It's really hard to tell from the photo, because there's like a strap over them. So some of them are covered with the strap, so I can't see if it's the complete thing.

Oh, they've got a strap on. I get it.

If there are eight shell casings, or nine, that would point to the single gun theory?

Yeah.

Not necessellery.

Necessellery. [Laughter]

I'm sending you the picture of that right now. Not the crime... Not the bloody crime scene photos, but of the... What they found in the sewer. On your instagram. So you can see for yourself what I mean.

I can count nine.

So you've got two eyes.

I have two eyes! [Laughter] I think that this theory about Dawn being one of the perpetrators is a bit hard for me to swallow, because she's dead. And I feel like there's been countless accounts of people killing their family. It's mostly men.

I mean it's very similar to that guy who killed his whole family instead of getting a divorce.

Yeah. They mostly blame other people in the family, especially women. And I feel like, he has also tried to blame his mother for the death of the children, for the siblings.

He also has said, and he's quoted in this book as saying, it's her fault anyway because she allowed the husband to be that much of an asshole.

Yeah.

But he blames her, even not for the physical shooting, but he blames her for it anyway.

Yeah. But he also tried to blame the physical shooting on his mother. And I feel like, while I can understand the anger of that, the resentment. He was a giant twat who didn't show up for work, and got paid for work. They bought him a boat for fucks sake. And he's like: "oh, but abuse cannot be bought for money", I get that. But I wouldn't necessarily want to believe, and that might be my own bias...

I mean it's fair enough. And also, he has changed his story so many times. But we could all conclusively agree that the ghost stuff was made up. [Laughter]

Speaking of the ghost stuff, I have some notes about the ghost stuff that I thought was funny.

Go for it.

Do we want to do that? Okay.

The ghost stuff is the best bit.

So George and Kathy Lutz moved into the house in 1976. And some of the claims from them are that a porcelain lion lept from the corner of the room and bit George in the ankle. George also saw a vision of Ronnie DeFeo, his head floating in the cellar, who is not dead. George and Kathy said that they saw the burnt impression of a demonic hooded figure in the fireplace. Kathy apparently levitated above their bed, and saw herself as an elderly woman. The toilets was backed up with black smelly ooze, which I feel like is my normal stool. [Laughter]

No, no, no. No, wait. On that one, it wasn't that the toilets were backed up with smelly ooze, it was that the porcelain of the toilet turned black.

Which would be better for the stains, I guess. But. And also, the walls of the house were covered with green slime, which I'm like: "who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!".

So one of the things you listed there was that Kathy had a vision of herself as an old lady. She died of a disease that made her age really quickly.

That's not true.

Is it not true? She died of emphysema, but it made her look like she had aged loads apparently.

There is no documented history of what was formerly called emphysema, is now called chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, causing premature aging. Basically, COPD is a buildup of mucus, or whatever, in your lungs. Which just causes chronic coughing. It can be terminal, you can die from it. But this was one of the things where one of the psychics that investigated the house was like: "oh, yes! Kathy Lutz, she saw herself in mirror and saw herself old and then she died of a disease that made her old". No she didn't, she died of a chronic lung condition that has no medical background in premature aging, at all.

A notable psychic that did go into the house, or two of them, were the Warrens. Aka the people from The Conjuring. And also, my favorite thing is that the little girl of the Lutzes...

Oh! Is it the demon pig?!

She had, allegedly, an invisible friend that was a demon pig.

Yeah.

And there's a bit in a movie, that as a child traumatized me, where the mum comes into the room and just before she walks in the rocking chair is rocking and as she walks in the room it stops. And she's like: "oh, what are you doing?" to the daughter sitting up. She's like: "oh mom, you just scared Jodie", and she's like: "oh yeah? Where did Jodie go?, and she's like: "oh, she went out the window", and then the mum goes to the window to shut it and sees these eyes staring back at her. So this little girl would draw pictures of Jodie, it looks like a pig. That's where they got the... It looked like a pig. Because but we all know what children drawings looks like, it's not quite right. That was shown to a neighbor and the neighbor was like: "oh, that's Jodie", and they were like: "how do you know that?", and he's like: "oh, that's the fat cat that lives on the street". Which makes sense, because cat's eyes are reflective. So that potentially could have happened. I feel like there was some potential creepy stuff that did happen, and then they just... When they had that drinking session with that fucking guy, they just made up a load of shit.

I can corroborate that with what I read, in that it was widely known that this particular persian cat would sit on that windowsill and look in at the window. And because it was a fat cat it was nicknamed "the pig".

The chonker. [Laughter]

So I think the little girl would have obviously heard people referring to it as "the pig", it would have stuck in her subconscious, and that's where the whole drawing and haunting came from.

There's a bit in the film where George is coming back to the house and looks up and just sees a giant pig monster in the window.

Apparently there's a hundred and sixteen errors in the book, that this guy...

Is it in the original book? The hardback cover has more errors than the softback because they fixed some of them when they did the second releasing.

One of my favorite of the errors in the book, other than the demon pig, is that George Lutz claimed that there were mysterious hoof marks in the snow. Someone just like googled, or whatever the alternative was in the 70's. Went to the library, I don't know, whatever.

Microfiche. [Laughter]

On AltaVista. Do you remember that search engine?

No. I remember AlltheWeb.

AltaVista was the best for porn. Anyway. So, yeah, the hoof marks in the snow on that particular day that George reported them. There was no snow that whole week.

Beautiful. One of my favorite ones was that the priest, when he drove home after being told to get out, that the bonnet of his car opened and like went over the windshield and it caused him to crash. But that model of car that he drives, the bonnet opens the other way. [Laughter] That was mentioned as well, because they said that they had flies in there and unseasonable things. Allegedly, something I saw, they were like: "yeah it was a fucking crime scene and they'd left all the windows shut and like the heating on". Like...

Yeah. The heating was left on, and obviously the crime scene wasn't reported for 24 hours afterwards or something like that. So that's like the perfect opportunity for maggots and flies to be created. And then while the Lutz's were sitting down with the lawyer, Weber, they were like: "oh, yeah. A swarm of flies in some of the bedrooms. Yeah. That's a really good idea". The other thing is the slime. So George and Kathy obviously said that their walls were dripping..

Oh wait! I know what it is. Is it the fingerprint stuff?

Exactly. It's the fingerprint powder that would have been used by the forensics teams, that again, came through in this drunken wine session with the lawyer. They just... They picked up on these tiny little things and just went crazy with them.

I love that it was like: "oh, they moved in and then they stayed there for like 28 days and then they never went back", and it's like: "why would they lie?". And it's like, because they made millions when they sold the book.

Actually, when they sold the book they only made three hundred thousand.

I mean, that's still probably quite a lot.

Yeah. I mean, 1970's money, 300 000 is a hell of a lot. The author of the book made millions.

Yeah.

But the contract that they signed with him, they got a raw deal on. Which I feel like, just serves them right.

Yeah, good! You're fucking cashing in on a literal tragedy.

Yeah. And then another one... Oooooh she's back.

Speaking of green slime, I had...

Have you been here since then?

Yeah.

Oh. You came back stealthy.

I had mushroom and asparagus risotto for dinner, my pee did not smell nice.

You got black porcelain now. [Laughter]

My other favorite debunkings of the haunting was that they claimed a window would slam shut.

Yeah.

When there was nobody near it and there was like no wind, it would just randomly slam shut whenever someone entered the room. And then some surveyors went in and found that the frame of the window wasn't constructed properly, and neither was the wall that the window was sitting in. So when you walked into a certain spot in the room you stood on a floorboard which sunk a little bit, which had enough of an impact to tilt the frame of the window like a degree, which was enough to slam shut the window.

Yeah.

And they they proved it. Like they lifted up the window, stood in that spot and "bang!" down went the window.

I've just sent Sandra a picture, which is my favorite picture from the quote-unquote seance that they took there. Which is just a fucking picture of a...

Oh yeah! The demon boy, is what it's called.

I think it's a person potentially wearing glasses looking at the camera as the flash goes off.

Yes! Yes, I've seen this picture and so many people are like: "well this is irrefutable evidence that it's haunted. There were no children in the house at the time that we did the seance, and you can clearly see this is a child with demonic glowing eyes". If you actually zoom in on a high quality resolution of that picture, which appreciably isn't that easy to find because it was taken in the 70's, you can see the frames of his glasses.

Yeah. You can, yeah.

And that a person is kneeling down. This is a member of the media that was there for the seance to record it. It's just a random man. Who's wearing glasses.

I will give props to The Conjuring 2, which is a film that sucks so fucking bad, but in the opening where they're in the Amityville house and the ghosts have those glowing eyes. I really appreciate that a bit. I've always thought that you could see the glasses. Like obviously that house still stands...

Yeah.

It's a real pain in the ass for people who live there. So they've had to alter the front of the house so that it doesn't look like... It doesn't have the iconic windows anymore because they've altered it.

Yeah.

But it's still at 112 Ocean Avenue Amityville New York. So it's not like it's hard to find.

No.

They changed the address.

Yeah, yeah.

But like, still. It's the in the same spot.

It's in the same location.

Oh we've changed the address, so the house next to it is 111, and then it goes 111 B and then it's like... [Laughter]

113.

This looks like that really famous house.

Did you read the dead Indian chief?

Yeah, that's not true either. [Laughter]

It was buried on an ancient Indian burial ground, and then someone was like: "but they don't bury them next to water, though". That's like their whole thing.

The other thing was they spoke to the Montaukett tribe, which are the natives that are closest to that region, and they were like: "we've got no burial ground in Amityville. We've never had a burial ground in Amityville, and capturing people's souls and using them as a vessel to cause evil is not within our philosophy. So it's definitely not us". And then the Shinnecock tribe, which are like 70 miles away but also the second closest. The house was built in 1924, so for a Native American tribal chief to have been buried in that plot of land needed to have happened like relatively early. In 1658 two-thirds of the Shinnecock tribe's population were wiped out by smallpox.

Oh yeah. But where did they fall dead, ey? All on 112 B Ocean Avenue. [Laughter]

All 111 B, C Drive.

Can you imagine if it was like: 111 Ocean Avenue, 113 Ocean Avenue and 112 J.F.K Drive. I can't find it! [Laughter]

I'm completely lost!

This is a bit not funny, but I thought it was quite funny. On the 911 call, the whole call is just them trying to figure out what his name is. And then they were like: "where is it?", he was like: "this road", they were like: "where is that?", he was like: "this is the fucking road!".

I was gonna say, the one you were saying earlier when he called up and he's like: "there's been a shooting", "there's been a shooting?", "yeah. There has been a shooting". And then: "they've all been shot", "what do you mean all have been shot?".

"Is anyone harmed?", "Yes! It's a fucking shooting! I opened with that!". [Laughter]

That's just like a third, or like a fourth, of the phone call. The whole phone call is just him being more and more annoyed by them not listening.

I had a similar situation. I had to call the police once because I got jumped with a friend of mine by like 13 or 14, 13 or 14 year olds.

Wait, and you were...

That was a Nick Helm joke.

Wait, and you kind of were in that age?

Yeah, like a year older. But there was like, way more of them. So I called the police, I was like: "me and my friend have been jumped, we're being attacked". I managed to escape, obviously, because I'm super fast. [Laughter]

"My friend has been jumped!". [Laughter]

"I ran away. I'm fine, don't worry about me". [Laughter] I was like: "I'm in Market Square in Hemel Hempstead town center", and they were like: "where's that?", I'm like: "this is the geographical location, I can't give you any more details on this unless you want like longitude and latitude. Like Market Square Hemel Hempstead town center". And they're like: "I can't put that in the system. I don't know where that is", I'm like: "I'm a hundred meters away from the police station! In the time it's taken me to tell you where my fucking address was, I could have just ran to the fucking police station! Send me some local fucking police!".

Why didn't you run to the police?

Because obviously, I ran in the opposite direction...

Oh, smart.

...to the knife shop. [Laughter] Good times, good times.

Do you need to sign out, Lee?

Yeah. I should probably go, I've gotta...

Good luck with your new job.

Thank you very much. All right, well thanks for having me on here.

Oh, thank you for coming on!

It's been a fucking pleasure bruv.

I know it's not my story to tell, but oh... [Laughter]

I had a ruddy good time telling it! [Laughter]

All right guys.

All right. Bye bye!

Sleep well treacle.

Bye!

Is he gone? [Laughter]

Yeah. It's just me and you now. Okay, should we say goodbye to the listeners? Thank you so much for listening to Midweek Murderers, we'll see you next week. Goodbye!

Bye bye bye.

[Music]

Topics
  • Ronald DeFeo Jr.
  • The DeFeo family murders
  • The Amityville Horror
  • the truth about the amityville horror
  • The Amityville Horror debunked
  • the demon pig Jodie
  • paranormal activity
  • hauntings explained by science
  • The Night the DeFeos Died
  • The Real Amityville Horror
  • Amityville murders
  • Butch DeFeo
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