On the night of November 13, 1974, The DeFeo family had dinner and went to sleep, unaware of the fact that they just had their last meal. Just when they fell asleep, Ronald J. DeFeo Jr. picked up his shotgun, loaded with a .35 Marlin rifle, and shot everyone in the house. A bullet each for the siblings and 2 for the parents. Thus began the story of Amityville Horror House.
Amityville House & DeFoe Family
The DeFoe family moved into the Amityville house in 1965, the three-story rambling Dutch colonial was a gift from Louise’s father. The DeFoe was a happy family of seven people in the house with 2 parents, 3 boys, and 2 girls.
The DeFoe family was on the surface a happy successful family but few knew that behind closed doors it wasn’t a cheesecake for the parents to raise Ronald J. DeFeo Jr. a.k.a “Butch”, Butch was aggressive in nature.
Butch had often fought with his mother and in an attempt to solve the problems his parents placed him into psychiatric care, but this proved futile as he did not cooperate with the counselors.
To keep their son stable Ronald and Lousie agreed to almost everything he wanted and started throwing money on him, but this also did not end well for the parents as Butch started spending his money on LSD and heroin and this behavior did not stop and on the evening of November 13 he shot his whole family at once.
Butch raced into his favorite local bar Henry’s and shouted please help me, I think my mother and father are shot, taking his words his friends raced to 112 Ocean Avenue and what they discovered was far from horrifying.
The lifeless bodies of Louise and Ronald DeFoe were sprawled on their bed, soon they found out the bodies of the children, all six of the family members had been shot dead while they slept.
Butch was the suspect and when questioned he answered that mafia hitman Louis Fellini was responsible for the killings and kept up the claim through many hours of questioning.
Butch was arrested and charged with 6 life terms for the killings and continues to protest his innocence. Butch has been constantly changing his statement of what happened on the night.
Here are some of the stories told by Notorious liar Butch.
- The mafic hitman Louis Fellini killed the family, but in fact, he was out of town during that time.
- A demon has possessed his soul and told him to kill his family.
- His latest claim is that his sister Dawn carried out the murders so he killed her.
After the murders, the house was put for sale and during the summer of 1975 the Lutz Family, George, his wife Kathy and her three children fell in love with the house when they first saw it and lucky Lutz family even got the house for $80,000.
Lutz Family
The Lutz family was the first one to move in the Amityville Horror house after the murders, after buying the house for $80k which they originally thought was worth $30,000 more.
Although they had the house blessed before moving in and apparently when blessing one room upstairs the priest did not like the energy of the room and heard a male voice shout “get out”.
The priest, however, did not tell the family about this but warned them that the felt a bad presence in the room and advised them not to use this as a bedroom.
I’d jump up and down and yell whoopee if any of those things happen while I’m in the house.
Kathy Lutz
As soon as the family moved in strange things started to happen like cold spots appearing in the house and the house would fill with swarms while no other house on the street would, any guess where the fly would appear?
Exactly in the room where the priest felt an evil presence.
The Demonic hour in Amityville House
Everyone in the house would wake up at 3:15 every morning, which is exactly the time when the murder took place.
While shooting for the film “Amityville Horror House“, Ryan Reynolds told in an interview that everyone would wake up at 3:15 but he rather believed it to be a subconscious thing, as the artist read the script and they were thinking about the time 3:15 and would wake up at the time.
The hour between 3 and 4 is considered as demonic/witching hour due to the fact that creatures such as witches, demons, and ghosts are thought to appear and to be at their most powerful.
The Ghostly encounters in Amityville Horror House
George Lutz told in an interview that Kathy, his wife turned into an old woman one night while sitting next to him and the effect took 3 to 4 hours to took off. The residents would report green slime coming out and objects would fly across rooms and the kid’s bed would levitate on their own.
The youngest child Missy made an imaginary angel friend Jodi, Jodi could change shape and size often presenting as large pig.
The incidents kept happening inside the Amityville Horror House and resulted in the Lutz family not going out and calling their friends in so that they can feel safe with more people in the house, but their friends also reported hearing strange voices and unexplained noises around the house.
One night George woke up with the sound of the marching band when he went to take a look at what was happening he saw all the furniture on one side of the room.
Lutz family’s last night at the Amityville Horror House
George and the family had no idea about the night being their last night at this house, as they all went to sleep but then George saw Kathy lifted up in the air from the bed and the dog started running in a circle and throwing up. George claims that he heard the beds banging against each other in their kid’s room.
The family had enough and they moved out the next morning leaving most of their belonging behind.
After the Lutz family left the house famous paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren and others came in to investigate the house and found the Amityville house to be haunted.
Was it a hoax?
Some people believed that it was a hoax created by the Lutz family so that they can gain some profit from the story and can sell their book better. But the Lutz family earned a marginal profit over the book and movie later created.
18 movies have been made and no movie has the clue of what happened or what has happened in Amityville Horror House? It is somewhat director’s mind or the scriptwriter trying something new every time, the paranormal activities happened in the house made it one of the most haunted houses out here, real or not but it seems out the fascination with the house and events keeps growing over time and forever leave up wondering what really happened during the Lutz’s stay there.
Ronald DeFeo Dies At 69
Ronald DeFeo, aged 69, died at Albany Medical center on 15th March 2021, where he was taken from prison on Feb. 2 in New York’s Catskill Mountains, the state Department of Corrections and Community Services said. The cause of death is still unknown. DeFeo was serving a sentence of 25 years to life in the 1974 killings of his family, in Amityville.
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