Going West: True Crime - The Amityville Murders // 251

Episode Date: November 9, 2022

In November of 1974, a 23-year-old man ran into a bar on Long Island and exclaimed to the patrons that his mother and father had been murdered, only for them to find that his entire family had been massacred in their picturesque colonial-style house. With motives ranging from a mob hit to demonic possession, this investigation took the small coastal village of Amityville for a terrifying ride. This is the story of the DeFeo Massacre, also known as the Amityville Murders. BONUS EPISODES patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES 1. Newsday: https://www.newspapers.com/image/710071492/?terms=ronald%20defeo%20jr&match=1 2. The Journal News: https://www.newspapers.com/image/162751335/?terms=amityville%20murder&match=1 3. Newsday: https://www.newspapers.com/image/162751335/?terms=amityville%20murder&match=1 4. Interview with Ronald DeFeo Jr.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcoyXIxKiz4 5. The Black Grimoire Blog: https://the-black-grimoire-blog.tumblr.com/post/10618544227/the-amityville-murders-amityville-long-island 6. Zillow: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/108-Ocean-Ave-Amityville-NY-11701/32596605_zpid/ 7. Amityville Murders: https://amityvillemurders.com/the-defeos/the-defoe-family.html 8. The Real Thing by Joe Williams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkQ8cm26SsQ 9. Seequent: https://www.seequent.com/amityville-weapon-resurfaces/ 10. All That's Interesting: https://allthatsinteresting.com/amityville-murders 11. Medium: https://medium.com/crimebeat/the-horror-of-amityville-a05929e962ab Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on True Crime fans, I'm your host Tee. And I'm your host Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Thank you everybody for tuning into this episode of Going West. And thank you to Justin for recommending this infamous case and Justin didn't just recommend this case but he also suggested a fabulous idea and that idea was to cover the Amityville murders on going west and then cover the hauntings that came after them on our other show of the dark parts.

So tune in this Thursday for the hauntings that came after these killings that like The Murders helped inspire the film the Amnival Horror, the original 1979 version and the 2005 remake featuring Every Man's Man Crush Ryan Reynolds. That's right. And all those sequels as well.

And of course, the book which came before the movies, that will be on episode 24 of The Dark Parts hosted by Heathen Ey. Yes, please tune into that episode and also I just have to say Ryan Reynolds is such a babe. I gotta put that out there on the airwaves. I know you love him. Yeah, yeah he's amazing. So please tune into that one and also thank you again for listening to this episode. Let's get right into it. This is episode 251 of Going West. So let's get into it. In November of 1974, a twin ofyear-old man ran into a bar on Long Island and explained to the patrons that his mother and father had been murdered. Only for them to find that his entire family had been massacred in their picturesque colonial-style house.

With motives ranging from a mob hit to demonic possession, this investigation took the small coastal village of Amnibil for a terrifying ride. This is the story of the DeFail Massacre, also known as the Amityville murders. Ronald Joseph DeFail Jr was born on Septemberth, 1951 in Brooklyn, New York. And he frequently went by the nicknames Butch or Ronnie. So we're going to call him Ronnie mostly because his father was also named Ronald. So we're not trying to confuse you guys. Yeah, I also heard that his dad was called Big Ronnie.

So I don't know. That's even more confusing. It's more confusing I guess. So we're just, we'll just call his father Ronald and him. Yeah, we're calling his dad Ronald senior and then we're calling him Ronnie. We could have called him butch too,

but I feel like butch is too far from his original name for this to make sense. So yeah, anyway, it's not trying to confuse you guys, but speaking of his dad, so his dad was Ronald DeFaeo, senior and then his mom was Louise DeFaeo. And they were just 19 and 20 years old at the time that he was born, though they didn't

just stop at him, but instead decided to grow the family and give Ronnie four siblings. Younger sisters Don and Allison and younger brothers Mark and John, so there's five siblings total. Louise's father, Michael Burgantie, owned a Buick dealership in Brooklyn, and so the family was very well off, and so well off, in fact, that Ronnie remembers that he had a $100,000 trust waiting for him

upon his grandmother's death. When Luis and Ronald Sr. got married, Ronald Sr. went to work for his father-in-law at the car dealership as the auto service manager. In 1965, the DeFails, enjoying their success at the family business, purchased a sprawling family home in the suburbs. The infamous DeFail Massacre House is well known now by its Dutch colonial style and A-frame silhouette,

which is an image you may already have if you've heard this story before, or seen any of the movies or TV shows associated with the story. But if not, as always, we will post photos on our socials. And to describe it better, it was built in 1924, so about, I don't know what, 40 years before they moved in. Yeah. And the house boasted five bedrooms, three bathrooms, and three floors. It also featured a swimming pool, a detached boat house with a second garage, and a boat dock. It backed right onto the water of the South Oyster Bay, which feeds into the Atlantic Ocean. And the house was located in Amanyville, which is a village on Long Island, New York, only about an hour from Manhattan. The family purchased the home for just $75,000, which is worth over 10 times more now.

At a price increase of 842 percent due to inflation, the house is now worth precisely $76685.71, but in 2010 it actually sold for almost a million dollars. The home was located at 1-1-2 Ocean Avenue in Amanyville, but the address was eventually changed to a different street number because of all the bad publicity about the defail murders. And a fun fact, the movie Jaws took place on fictional Amity Island, which is said to be based on Amityville, New York, although it was actually filmed on Martha's Vineyard.

Neighbors called the family close and pretty tight-knit and remembered the defails as loving and supportive parents. But for all their wealth and influence in the community, Ronnie remembered his family as extremely troubled. He himself would be the first to admit that he was a bit of a problem child. He was remembered in the community as, quote, antisocial, and in his words, he said, I was crazy back then. Many family members and friends remember Ronald Sr. being irritable and hot tempered, and being the oldest Ronnie Boer the brunt of that.

Louise's brother, Michael Berghanti Jr. said quote, we were all sitting down in the basement watching TV and I don't know, the boy had done something. All of the sudden he stood up the father and pushed the boy this way into the wall. The boy banged his head or part of his shoulder or something. In an interview after his sentencing, Ronnie said quote, my whole life I've been getting beatings from my father. And it wasn't just focused on him. Ronnie claims that he remembered his father pushing his mother down the stairs while holding a laundry basket when they were having an argument. Which could have killed her in itself.

Yeah, so it seems like Ronnie, uh, senior is a bit of an asshole. So Ronnie was also overweight, sorry, Ronnie, Jr. was also overweight as a child and he was bullied as a result of this. Classmates were called a wild child in a troublemaker and said that he had trouble finding a school that could handle him and that he was expelled multiple times. And I also read that his classmates, Ronnie's classmates, would actually like when they were making fun of him, they would call him the blob and pork chop.

Fuck bullies. Which is so messed up. So sad. So Ronnie started working as a teenager. His parents hoping that it would teach him a little bit of responsibility. But he was accused of theft in every position that he held. One report claimed that when he was working

as a delivery man for a local business, he would pocket the money when clients would pay him and cash and then tell his boss that they wanted to charge it to their accounts. But to this Ronne explained simply quote, What happened was I put the money in the wrong drawer of the cash register because I didn't know any better. So as a teenager he started drinking and smoking which quickly led to hard drug use with his vices being heroin and LSD. He was at a time in a doctor's care for his addiction, and his parents also sought psychiatric care for him, but nothing seemed to help, unfortunately.

And as he tried to break himself out of heroin dependency, he actually turned to crystal meth instead, explaining that the first time he tried to add just 18 in 1969, he knew that he would never go back to any other drug. He lost close to a hundred pounds of weight, and he remembers that he was falling apart, like his hair was turning distraught and his skin was peeling just from all the drugs that he was doing. And according to Ronnie, the rest of his family was not fairing well at this point in time either. He remembers his mother Louise being poised to leave his father at any minute, and that she had been cheating on him with multiple other men.

At the time of her death, Ronnie claims his mother had three boyfriends, an artist, a lawyer, and a beautician who owned a chain of local salons. There were rumors among her friends and acquaintances as well, with one source claiming the couple was so close to divorce that Ronald Senior actually penned a love song for her called The Real Thing in an attempt to like win her back, which was later recorded by Jazz legend Joe Williams. Shortly before her death, Louise was apparently overcome with a sense of impending dread.

And this is really airy because the DeFail family's housekeeper, who was also Louise's close friend, remembered, quote, she wanted to die. She wanted to put her head in the oven. She said to me, I'm preparing you. Something so tragic is going to happen." And to this, Ronnie said, quote, my mother's out of her mind, remembering her saying that at one time the whole family would be better off dead. So seem like she was going through

a lot too, but just so eerie that she said to the housekeeper something so tragic is going to happen. Yeah, that's, you know, very prophetic and also very eerie. Very eerie. So, a friend of the family also remembers quote, it was a crazy house. Someone was always screaming at somebody. Shortly before the murders, Ronald Senior broke a poolstick over Ronnie's head, and Ronnie said later

that he decided then and there to kill his father. So two distinct versions of the family, their public and private personas, were being laid out before the murders even took place. Yeah, it's crazy. I was also reading another article that said that a lot of Ronnie's friends never wanted to go to the Defeo House because there was always somebody was in a fight.

There was always an altercation. Somebody was yelling. Ronnie was being beaten by his dad and so his friends just never wanted to go there. Yeah, we're going to get into that a lot more in this episode too, just all the different things that would go on in this house, which is really sad because it seems like all of these children really struggled with this unsteady house situation and the troubles of their parents that are being put on to them and all the abuse, it's just, it was insane.

Yeah, so years later, in November of 1974, 23-year-old Ronnie claimed that he was no longer using drugs and that he had been trying to get back on his feet Now his father and his grandfather had given him a job at the family Buick dealership in Brooklyn Although he's remembered as an unreliable employee often leaving early showing up late or not showing up at all and I also saw another Quote from an article that basically was talking about how Ronnie like just didn't care about this job. Like he basically told other employees like, hey, my dad owns this place so I can do whatever the hell I want.

On the morning of Wednesday, November 13th, 1974, he reported to work as usual. When Ronald Senior failed to show up, Ronnie told co-workers that he was puzzled and even placed a call to his house, which went unanswered. Yeah, remember that one for later. Yeah, oh yeah, definitely. He then mentioned that he was leaving early to spend time with some friends as well as his girlfriend that afternoon and left for the day around 1pm. He headed to a now closed and now infamous bar in Amityville called Henry's Bar, which was located just a block from the Defeo family home. Now after having several drinks, Ronnie left Henry's bar late that afternoon.

But a little while later, around 6.30pm, Ronnie returned to Henry's, bursting back into the bar, claiming that he had gone home to find his entire family dead. Now other patrons remember him exclaiming, quote, �You got to help me, I think my mother and father are shot. Extremely concerned, a few locals went back to the house with him, and found that tragically, Ronnie was actually correct. Police were called meeting the group of onlookers, including Ronnie himself, at this house. Now the scene that they walked into sent serious shockwaves through the small, idyllic community.

Luis and Ronald Sr., both 43, were in their bed on the second floor, lying face down next to each other with two shots each into their backs. Police surmised based on her position that Luis had started to get out of bed when she had awoken, hearing the shots fired at her husband, and that she had tried to escape, but had been shot in the same manner and placed back into bed. Most of the family had not been woken up during the attack. 13-year-old sister Allison had been shot in the face in her second floor bedroom.

Upon further inspection of her bedroom, the blood stains and the position of the body police had reason to believe that, like Louise, Allison may have been awake at the time of her attack. Now 11-year-old Mark and 9-year-old John were both shot once in the back of their heads and their shared second floor bedroom. 18-year-old Don was found in her bed on the third floor, having been shot once in the back of the head as well. They had all still been in their pajamas and were found in the exact same position. Before that break, we explain that Ronnie's entire family was found dead by him just after

6 p.m. on Wednesday, November 13th, 1974, including his parents and his four siblings who were aged 9, 11, 13, and 18. Now, something interesting that I want to point out since I'm sure some of you are also thinking it is that the sun would have set at around 4, 40 pm that day. So maybe an hour and a half tops before Ronnie found his family dead. So very interesting that they're all in their pajamas and embed sleeping or going to sleep before 6 p.m., which is what Ronnie is kind of claiming.

He's not necessarily saying they were just murdered right before I got there, but he's saying that he woke up and left for work earlier and that they weren't dead. So that would kind of insinuate potentially that they were murdered right before he got home which wouldn't make sense because they're all asleep before six p.m. yeah i yeah i mean it's kind of that's kind of like a a little bit of a

whole in his alibi exactly we're gonna talk about this here soon because we're not the only people who found this suspicious obviously so initially ronnie fane shocked to the police and to the public. He said that he had arrived home around 6 p.m. and he found the front door locked. So he actually had to crawl allegedly through an open window in the house where he says he found his dead parents in their beds. Shocked and panicked, he fled back to Henry's bar to enlist aid from the patrons as he claimed to not know who did this to them or why. But immediately upon inspection of the

crime scene, police found that his story just was not adding up. For one, his family had clearly been deceased for hours, and it seemed strange that he would have only just found them deceased if he had been there before heading to the bar, which is what I mean. Like he's saying that they're dead or that they weren't dead. When he left for the day. He left for the day, but also when he left for the bar at 1 p.m. But somehow they're dead in their pajamas later on, right? It's just his story just was not making sense.

And also very interesting that he made several phone calls from different locations and complained to friends that, oh, I couldn't get a hold of my family. Yeah, and my dad didn't show up for work. It's like, he didn't think this through. So, and of course, this just made him look much more suspicious. So the murder weapon, which was a 35 caliber Marlin brand rifle, was nowhere to be found, but the defaos did have a large collection of guns that police feel that the murder weapon

may have been taken from. Ronnie offered no motive for why someone would kill them, nor did he give an alibi for the time his entire family would have actually been murdered. But he did explain that he thought it was a mob hit, and that they were coming for him next. He claimed that he had reason to believe that he was supposed to be killed the day after Thanksgiving, which was just over a week later. But this wasn't an entirely baseless claim, because a man named Tony Mazeo, whom Ronald Sr. explained was a contract killer with an extensive criminal history, had purchased a Buick from the family's dealership about ten whole years prior to the murders.

Now, Tony and Ronald Sr. had remained friends, and Tony would even visit the family and stay for long weekend sometimes. Around 1970, so about four years before the murders, the men became embroiled in a fight that centered around 19 year old Ronnie. According to friends and family, Tony thought that Ronald Senior was going too easy on him, and that he needed some tough love to straighten him out. Tony apparently said that he was nothing but a troublemaker, and that he needed to learn to stand on his own two feet. The two fought in Lost Touch, and according to Tony, they didn't speak again. Now Ronnie may have been fabricating the mob ties to these particular murders, but he

wasn't wrong about Tony's mafia involvement. Tony Mazeo, also known as Lewis Fellini, had ties to the five families, the nickname for the five major families running the New York City Mafia scene, beginning in 1916 in an peak power in the 1970s and the 1980s. Ronald Sr's uncle, Pete DeFaeo, was also known to have Mafia ties, so Ronnie painted a picture of being caught in the crossfire of a spat between two crime-ridden Mafia dynasties. Ronnie said of Tony Quote, the guy was a leech, he was a weasel, I didn't like him. Ronnie even claimed that Tony Mazeo had called the house the evening of the murders, but it

hung up when a policeman answered. But there was one problem with this theory. Tony Mizzio had been out of the state at the time of the murders, so it was clear that he at least didn't personally commit the crimes himself. In the early morning of November 14th, 1974, after a few hours of questioning. Ronald DeFaillot Jr. broke down and confessed to the murders of his parents and four siblings. Strangely, none of the neighbors had heard gunshots at any point of the day prior, but the gun he had used and the clues he had been wearing during the murders

were later recovered in a storm drain near the house. He recalled eerily, quote, �It all started so fast. Once it started, I just couldn't stop. It went so fast. So here's apparently what really happened. 23-year-old Ronnie committed the murders at about 3.15am on Wednesday, November 13, 1974, before cleaning himself up, showering off, disposing of the evidence, and reporting to work

in the morning as usual. He also claimed that he had been under the influence of heroin at the time, although he had told his friends and family that he had stopped using previously, so I mean it's possible he started using again. But of running to the bar to enlist the help of locals, he said quote, �I had to give them an act and a performance that I could have gotten the Academy Award for. Me running in the bar, all that, I made up all of that. And when I was a kid, I watched a show with my dad and sister really late at night.

It was either on the hauntings or the murders of the story and how they happened at 315 a.m. and how George Lutz, who we're going to talk about a lot when we discuss the house's supposed hauntings, would wake up at 315 every night in that house, which is when the murders occurred, right? That's, you've been reading all about the hunt. That's kind of the thing, is the whole 315 waking up, scary stuff.

Which is what makes the hauntings so eerie because that's apparently when the murders happen. And I have been scarred for life by that. I don't even know why, but I am constantly waking up at 315 am, or right before it. And I have ever since I was a kid and I watched this. So I have this thing where I like,

I have to wait until 3.16 so I know I'm safe. To go back to bed. Yeah, you know that about me. Yeah, yeah, like, yeah, you have to wait like one minute later. Yeah, I swear to be honest, I'm maybe I'm not alone this. Also, when I was a kid, I played the Nancy Drew computer games. Did you ever play those? No, I never played them.

Okay, I mean, that's fair. One of them takes place in this creepy mansion. And if Nancy wakes up at 3.15 a.m., she sees this lady in black. So I think these two things make me so afraid of that time. I don't know. I'm sure I'm not the only one. But I think just that it happened at 3.15. That's such a prominent time in this story.

It just always freaked me out. Yeah, I mean, the combination of both of those things, probably just messed with your mind. But I can't tell you why your internal clock would just be like... On that. I don't know either, I think that makes it scarier for me. Absolutely. Anyways, back to the story. So, after the murders, a shrine for the victims was erected in the front yard of their beautiful home.

The presiding judge called these the most heinous murders committed in Suffolk County since its founding, which was in 1683, so nearly 300 years earlier. Ronnie's criminal trial began the following year in October of 1975, just 11 months later when Ronnie was 24 years old. Now the defense team painted a picture of a young man severely abused by his father, saying quote, it must have been hell for these people living here with this man. But why your siblings? Like, I mean, obviously it sounds like Ronald Sr. did some totally unexcusable things to these kids, particularly Ronnie.

But why not at least leave your innocent siblings out of this? Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Maybe it was to make his story later more believable that, you know, this mob boss came in and killed the entire family. Still, it's like, it just shows that if you're admitting to doing this and you're blaming your abuse, your abuse does not cover the reasoning for murdering your sibling. So it's like, that's just BS to me. No. Obviously, I get it if you want to, I mean, I don't get it, but you know what I mean? I understand more so the parents who were horrible to him throughout his life, but your siblings didn't do anything. So I mean, I'm sure you're going to come up with a different story. Yeah and also I did read that Ronnie actually didn't really like his siblings. He actually called his

two brothers John and Mark fucking pigs and he also called his sister Don a fat bitch who played her music too loud. I literally read that so it's just kind of crazy that, um, you know, maybe that was the motivation, but I honestly truly think it was probably just for his alibi to make the whole story seem more believable. The defense team also claimed that he struggled with drug use because of his difficult upbringing, that he was mentally ill, and that he had killed his family in self-defense because of demonic voices in his head. His defense team even brought in a forensic psychiatrist to assess that he was a paranoid, psychotic, and that he had only killed his parents because he suspected them of killing him first, and that he was not mentally fit enough to understand

the gravity of what he was doing. But the prosecution also brought in a psychiatrist who assessed that Ronnie absolutely suffered from an anti-social disorder, but not so severely that it would conflate what was right and wrong. He argued that Ronnie had been in full control and known exactly what he was doing. He claimed that he was regretful and that the murders were, quote, never supposed to happen. Although Ronnie had confessed to the murders both in police questioning and in court, that didn't stop him from coming up with more theories and continuing to change his story.

Between the Dave the murders and the end of the trial, which took place on November 21, 1975, he claimed the following. The New York Mafia was involved as we explained in that he also named two other mobsters that he believed to be involved. The next one was that he had been at home asleep like everyone else in the family and had a woken to gunshots. He had hidden from the unknown assailant who had broken into the home and later found his entire family dead. Then he said he hadn't actually been home at the time

of the attack, he just happened to stop by on the evening of November 13th to visit and had walked into the crime scene. On different occasions he pinned on a man that he called Mr. De Genaro, but we were unable to find any other information on who this person was, or why he would have been involved. Then he blamed it on one of his friends, Bobby Kelski, who had actually been at Henry's bar the night that Ronnie Burstin asking for help. He also said that he suspected members of his own family were involved. This one was like a widespread theory years later, so we'll get to this

and why he thought that was. Ultimately, the judge and jury didn't buy any of these stories that his lawyers tried to spin in his favor, and Ronald DeFoe Jr. was sentenced to six consecutive 25-year-to-life sentences of second-degree murder. Now, according to Ronnie, his attorney's quote did not know what they were doing, and that quote, the whole thing was a joke. But the end of the trial was only the beginning. Yeah, things just get even more strange from here. So in 1979, five years after the murders and four years after being sentenced, Ronnie again said in an interview

that he had acted alone. Same original story. I'm not an original original, but after his confession. But seven years later in 1986, he implicated his old sister, Dawn, who remember was 18 at the time. Now, according to Ronnie, on the evening of November 12, 1974, mere hours before the murders, 18-year-old Dawn and their father had gotten into a fight so intense that she had chased him around the dining room with a knife, which Ronnie said was a common occurrence.

He believes that this was because Dawn had been like forbidden from going to Florida to visit her boyfriend who had recently moved down there with his mother. There had apparently been a rumor circulating that she was planning on running away with said boyfriend, but Ronnie says that that was untrue and that she just wanted permission to go visit for a while. Totally normal. And alongside this, her parents were instead pressuring her into going to Gibbs College, which Dawn supposedly did not want to go to.

And Ronnie explained, quote, my sister wanted out. He also said that Dawn was experienced with guns and enjoyed shooting them, and that he had even brought one back for her from a trip to California. Ronnie explained that Don initially pulled the gun on him to scare him, but that things quickly got out of hand. In one account that Ronnie gave, he came home to find that she had shot and killed their parents and siblings, and that a confrontation between the two of them followed, and he then shot Don saying quote, when I realized what I did, I was sick.

And in another wild twist on the Don story, he actually claimed that he had a wife and a daughter whom nobody knew about. He said he had met a woman named Geraldine, and that she had given birth to a child on August 21st of that year, and that they had been married on August or so in August, October 17th. So like almost a month before the murders. And he claimed that he had spent most of his time at her house in New Jersey. But as Heath and I were talking about earlier, he said that he had a girlfriend, her name was Sherry. Yeah, yeah. A girlfriend named Sherry. Which people knew, people knew that, but now he's like coming out of the left field saying,

oh yeah, and I was married, nobody knew I had a wife. Oh, and I'm a father. Yeah, but the crazy thing here is that Geraldine was in fact a real person. And one, she said, quote, in 1974, I was not only the wife of Ronald Joseph Butch Defeo Jr. but also the mother of his child. I knew his family and loved them as my own. Part of my life ended when the Defeos were murdered and my husband was accused of committing

this unspeakable crime. After the Defeo murders, I have had to remain silent and hidden, partly out of fear for my children, and partly out of respect for those who went to such great lengths to make sure that I was not unjustly implicated in this crime. The ones closest to the defaos suffered greatly from the tragic murders of their loved ones. Until July 2000, nothing could be said or done about all the lies told about Butch defao, his family and their house. Rich powerful family members made sure of that.

But now that they're dead and my children are grown, it's time to set the record straight. And remember Butch is Ronnie. He's called by both nicknames, but as we know, his real name is Ronald Jr. However, everything that Geraldine said is still disputed because even Ronnie's lawyer had not heard of this mystery family. The two presented a photocopy of their marriage license, but there is no license on file with the state of New Jersey, and the judge that they claim to have signed this certificate said he stopped performing marriages a decade prior.

So that's obviously very weird and seems like they kind of forged this situation. It is really creepy though that they had this photocopy of their license, but then it wasn't filed. Like all these things, it's like they're showing proof, but the proof is not in the pudding, you know? It's like almost like he's making up some crazy weird story out of left field that- But this doesn't help him at all.

Like I was talking, bringing in a wife, a mystery wife, helping anything anyway. So it's like, why would he make this up? I mean, as we're about to get into, there is an alibi that is kind of attached to her, but it still feels weird to kind of come up with this entire scheme of a marriage and a baby just for a really loose alibi.

I don't know, tell us what the alibi was. Yeah, he's playing the long game here. But before we get into this very strange alibi, the two also claim that their daughter was born in New Jersey on August 21st of that year, but there's no birth certificate or record on file of this either. In the version of his story where his wife and child are involved, Ronnie explained that he had been downstairs in the basement with his brother-in-law, Geraldine's brother,

and that they had heard a noise from upstairs. Now when they went to investigate, the only person left alive was his mother. He claimed that after the disagreement that they had had, Don shot Ronald Sr. and Louise retaliated by shooting the children. When Ronnie had discovered this out of rage, he shot his mother. He claimed that Geraldine's brother could corroborate this story, but that they had all been afraid of legal ramifications from the family's mafia ties coming after Ronnie and Geraldine's baby daughter. That's just so complicated, like dawn shot their dad and then Luis retaliated by killing everybody else like that.

How does that make any sense? And then why would Ronnie take responsibility for all of it if he didn't, if two other people did it that were not him they're just happened to be three murders in the house that night was me and my dad and or star me and my sister and my mom so bizarre so that's why we're saying like coming up with this whole fake marriage and child just to have this really wonky story doesn't make any sense so So were they actually married? It's just this whole story is so complicated. Yeah, it makes no sense at all. So in 1992, Ronnie petitioned for a new trial claiming Don had committed three of the murders

and that he hoped to reduce his sentence. And he even claimed that he had a witness to prove this, although he never said who that witness was. Oh, that's kind of weird. Oh, yeah, I've totally got a witness who can like back my story up. Do they exist? Now they don't. Yeah, I don't know who the fuck they are. So he stuck to the story that Don had committed all or some of the murders up until 2007, when he went back to claiming that he actually had no recollection of what had happened that night at all. When questioned in 2014, he went back to his original story, like his original original story, that it had been a mob hit on his family.

So he is like jumping back and forth constantly. All over the place. Ronnie conducted many interviews from prison and was always happy to talk to reporters. And many said that he was like and entertaining subject if you will because he always had like new participants and new people to shift blame on to of course that's that's a perfect story for news reporters like that he's changing his story who is it now so one juror in his initial trial said quote he's he said so many things that after a while,

you began to wonder what was real and what was not real. Now, what many of you probably associate with the story of the defail massacre or the Amityville murders, even more so than the murders themselves are the allegations of paranormal activity that followed. So a little sneak into that. In December of 1975, just over a year after the murders took place,

Kathy and George Lutz and Kathy's three children from a previous marriage moved into the home. Less than a month later, they fled, claiming that a demonic presence had taken over the house. There have been dozens of books and movies released surrounding this fascinating story between paranormal TV shows, true crime TV shows, and many movies, as we mentioned in this episode's intro, as well as the 1977 novel The Amity of a Horror, written by Jay Anson, who died less than three years after the book's release. But again, we're going to cover this story in our next Dark Pertz podcast episode. So tune in over there to hear more in episode 24 on the Amityville Haunting.

So we're going to go into all the details of what is quote unquote true in that story. Versus some of what the books and the movie show which is more fiction or more of like a you know a fictionalized version of the possibly fictional hauntings depending on what you believe. So in 2012 a handgun holster believed to be involved in the defao murders was found in the canal behind the defa house, although the corresponding gun was never actually found. Ronnie always maintained that a 38-calibre gun may have been involved as well, which would

point to the involvement of another person. There were actually traces of gunpowder found on Dawn's dress, indicating that she may have fired a gun that night as well, but this lead was not pursued after Ronnie confessed. There are infinite ways to look at the murders of the Defeo family and at Ronnie as a killer or as a scapegoat, but the most likely scenario remains that Ronnie was the lone shooter in an act of revenge. He later said of his father, quote, When I saw his body getting ready to make a move, I just pulled the trigger. And later added, quote, The man knocked teeth out of my mouth.

How much abuse do you think I was going to take? But there are plenty of people who believe that he's innocent, and that it was a demonic possession, a mob hit, or that Don or someone else was involved. In fact, after his marriage to Geraldine dissolved in 1993, he was married to two more women, Barbara Pucco from 1994 to 1999, and Nisa Burkehalter from 2012 to 2015. Even when Ronnie wasn't vending himself and was admitting involvement, he struggled with how maligned he was.

Saying in one of his interviews, quote, This ain't funny no more. People look in my eyes that I'm possessed or something. I'm sick of all of it. All of his requests to the parole board were denied, but in prison, he had a reputation of being polite, soft-spoken, and a model inmate. On March 12, 2021, Ronald DeFeo Jr. passed away at the age of 69, and strangely, his cause of death has never been released. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West.

Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode, and on Friday we'll have an all new case for you guys to dive into. It could be nothing suspicious at all, but there's just something so off to me about his cause of death not being released. But we'll see one day if it is, and please do not forget to listen to the rest of the Amityville Horror Story in episode 24 of the Dark Parts called The Amityville Hauntings, releasing Thursday November 10th, 2022. So two days after this episode comes out, if you're listening after that,

please go check it out. It's going to be a really fun episode, and we're going to go into all the details. Yeah, make sure you share this story, make sure you share the hauntings, and please subscribe to the dark parts. If you haven't already, we're really trying to get that show to take off because we really, really enjoy talking about these unsolved mysteries and these urban legends. So please share with your friends and family, we'd love that. All right guys, so for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. Thank you. you