True Crime All The Time - The Amityville Murders

Episode Date: October 30, 2017

In a TCATT first, for our Halloween episodes we're combining True Crime All The Time and True Crime All The Time Unsolved. This episode of True Crime All The Time deals with the DeFeo Murders that took place in Amityville, NY. The TCATT Unsolved episode follows up with the resulting haunting that was alleged to have taken place in the same house to the next owner.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the details of the DeFeo murders. Many people are familiar with the Amityville Horror but not everyone is familiar with the mass murder that happened in that house prior. Ronald "Butch" DeFeo Jr. murder his entire family. Did he hear voices that compelled him to commit the murders? Did George and Kathy Lutz who would buy the house after the murders experience the same demonic forces that cause Butch to kill?You can support the show by going to patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for merchandise and contact information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

And welcome to episode 51 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson. Gibby, what's going on today, man? Hey, man, I'm feeling good. Feeling good. How about feeling ghoul? Feeling ghoul.

Yeah, because, you know, Halloween coming up. You're feeling ghoul. Feeling ghoulish. Yeah, a little spooky. Grusome. It is a little spooky, man. We're doing our Halloween episode. I know it.

It's come out, this will come out Halloween Eve. No, it won't. Come out Halloween Eve Eve. Yes, it will. Yeah, so happy Halloween Eve Eve Eve. And if your name's Eve, then happy Halloween Eve, Eve, Eve, Eve. Ev.

So let's do our Patreon shoutouts. We have Angela Reynolds, Donna. Donna. Just Donna. Just Donna. Just good old Donna. Oh, Donna. That's Furgy.

That's Furgy. We have Susan. Suzanne Robertson. You're not going to sing to Susanna to just serenading whoever? What do you want me do? Oh, Susanna? Nah, they're not. We had Lindsay Kane, Jeanette Rifkin.

Joel's sister. I don't think it's Joel's sister. But she did come out at our highest level. We appreciate that. So we do appreciate that. We had Beatrice Vasquez, Leanne Seeley, Rory Lee, all the way from Ireland. Yeah, he's probably a Notre Dame fan, too. You think?

I don't know, odds are favorable. Man, that's a cool Irish name, Rory. Rory. I just looking out in the fields, man. Dude, your accents are freaking horrible, aren't they? It started out wanting to be Irish, and I think it flipped over to Jamaican towards the end. I don't know. I mean, you're drinking a red stripe in one hand.

I don't know what you're doing, right? Yeah, I'll, yeah, put the Genas down. Geinness? Ginnis. Geinus. It's too early for this stuff to start happening. Maybe you shouldn't have started drinking at 2 o'clock. Oh, man.

It's going to be a rough one, folks. Buckle in. Sorry in advance. So let's go back to the vault. So this week, Gibbs, I picked Kurt Rzinski. Yeah, Zensky. Yeah, I did. Are you telling me, yes, I did?

Mr. Zensky. Ruzzynski. Oh, you just, do you like Zensky? Does he go by Zensky? Yeah, it's his nickname. Nick, name. Nick, and you know what? We appreciate Kurt, been with us a long time.

Yeah, good guy. And last week, we picked Janet Harp, out of the vault and what does Janet do this week? Yeah, she's always amazing us. She ups her patronage to the highest level. See? I mean, been with us forever and just then goes and does that. Thank you, Janet. Everybody's amazing, right? From our new Patreon supporters, the people have been with us forever, our Facebook followers, our Twitter followers. Even the guy that cut me off on my way over here. He's awesome. He's a good guy. He flipped him to bird, as you were saying. True Crime all the Something.

Got my little K bar out, waved it in the air. Our Instagram followers, we're just seeing so much more in the way of social media from, you know, people retweeting. And let's keep that going. It really helps us get the word out. Let's do a mega tweet. A megatweet? What's that?

I don't know. But we're going to make it happen. Knowing you, you'll do it with a gif. I like gifts. You're the king of gifts. I do. I like them. All right, got to give a huge shout out to Maggie for her writing and research on this episode.

Yeah, Maggie. Yeah, Maggie. She's awesome. And Gibby, we have to talk for a second about you coming on criminology for our very last episode on The Zodiac. Yeah. We're doing kind of like a pop culture, books, movies. Smoothies? Smoothies.

Yeah. And you can't have any type of episode about movies unless you have Gibby. Well, I am a book of knowledge. A book of knowledge about movies. Movies. A movie. officiantonato. Yeah.

Mr. Robato. I was going to say that. So if anybody wants to hear Gibby, it's the last episode of criminology as far as season one, wrapping up the Zodiac. Gibby's his, he's on fire. I solved it. Well, that's true. And he solves it. Everybody's been, what's the big 50 years?

And I took me, what, 20 minutes? Yeah, 20 minutes. And he solved it. It's done deal. No need to. And it's good because it was the last episode. Save your money. Don't buy the book.

Just come listen to that. Yeah. Gibbs, you're ready to get into this episode of True Crime All Time? No, I'm out, man. You're out? All right. Gibbs is out. We can't even start.

Yeah, no, I'm excited, man. I am too, because we're doing something different, right? So you and I were sitting around talking. It's Halloween. What are we going to do? What can we do that we haven't done before? And what we came up with was to do a crossover between True Crime All Time and True Crime All Time and True Crime All Time Unsolved.

And we picked the Amityville horror. We did. So in this. episode of True Crime All Time, we're going to walk through the murders, the Amityville murders, and then we're going to cover the haunting and the pop culture, the books, the movies, everything that went along with it after these murders took place. You know, someone right now just said, I didn't know those were real. I thought it was just a movie.

What, the murders? Yeah. I think there are a lot of people actually. Yeah. That don't know that there's something horrible that happened. real. They just got excited. They're like, now, hey, now they're in. And I'm in. I've got to really listen to this one. I got to hear what they're going to say. This is W.O.R. New York. Stay tuned for in conversation.

First is bulletin from the W.O.R. Newsroom. Six members of one family have been found shot to death in their night clothes in their expensive home in Amityville, Long Island. The only available information at this moment, according to the Amityville Village Police, is that the victims have been identified as members of the Defeo family. They were found by a 23-year-old son, Ronald Defeo, who is believed to be the only surviving member of the family. Six members of the family found shot to death in their home in Amityville, Long Island. We will have further details on the 11 o'clock news.

So original newscast from back in the day of when these murders took place to kind of get us in the mood, get us in the time frame of what we're talking about. That was 1974. But we got to start off talking about Ronald DeFaio Jr. Also went by the name Butch. He was born on September 26, 1951, born in Brooklyn, New York. So Brooklyn Boy. Brooklyn Boy.

He was the oldest of the children born to Ronald Sr. and Louise DeFoeo. And Ronald Sr. was a car salesman who did very well for himself. The Defeo family was comfortably middle class, probably upper middle class, I would say. You know, he made a good living, was able to provide for his family. And it was in 1965 that he bought a house located at 112 Ocean Boulevard. This was in Amityville, New York, on Long Island. Very nice suburban community. And Ronald Senior had worked very hard to give his family their slice of the American pie, the American Dream,

whatever you want to call it, Gibbs. Well, just call it American Dream because after watching American Pie? Yeah, you're right. There was some stuff done to that pie that was not so... American? Tasteful. But Ronald Sr. was not without his fault. He was very controlling.

He liked to exert his authority, and it was said that he and his wife, had a lot of very heated arguments and he was tough on the children and it just so happened that Butch being the oldest was usually the target of his father's abuse and he at some point he kind of grew accustomed to that. I mean, he was the one that was taking the brunt of his father's ways or abusive ways, I should say. The family punching bag. Yeah, I think that's kind of how it became. But you know, Butch as a child, he was made fun of at school. He was overweight, which it must have been only as a child because as he gets older, he's not. I was a husky boy when I was little.

Husky? That's what we called it. A little husky now. Because I'm not husky. You're husky. I'm hunky. It's a fine line between husky and hunky. Chunk of hunk.

Isn't that the piece of chocolate bar or something? the chunk of hunk, wrapped up in a little old wrapper chunk? Chunk, isn't it? Oh, I don't know. I don't buy it. Hell, I don't know. I thought you were talking about the little kid from the Goonies. Oh, yeah, I remember him too.

Hey, you guys. That's the guy that messed up. What are you talking about? Goonies, the guy that they unchained. Hey, you guys. Anyway, I didn't want to get you off track, but, no, I was called Husky. You'd buy your jeans from Sears back in the day. and they had a brand called Huskies for us bigger lads.

I don't even know where to go with that. Huskies. Huskies. Oh my gosh. Yeah. At least I don't wear that stuff you wear, man. The skin tight. I don't know what...

I forget what they're called. You're trying to burn me, Dewe. And you can't even get it out. I can't. I don't know what those skin tight things are called. Skin tight. I haven't worn anything skin tight in my life. Thank goodness. Nobody wants to see that. Thank goodness, man. Let's get back to this DeFrio.

Did you just say DeFrio? DeFrio? Defeo? Yeah. Since you derailed us? I'm sorry. But now, you're getting back to Butch, it was said that he was overweight, and because of that, he kept to himself. So not only was, I guess you'd call it getting bullied at home, but he was also getting bullied at school. Man, and we know kids could be rough. Kids can be rough. Kids can be. rough and we also know what happens when kids get bullied. You know, they at some point, there's only so much you can take and they tend to lash out in different ways. Some extremely violent, some not so violent, but it can happen. It can be very violent.

Yeah, unfortunately, most of them lash out later in life instead of at that time. Yeah, maybe it's just because it's been bottled up for so long. There's only so long it can before it has to come out. I don't know. I mean, it varies person to person, right? But the one thing we know, Gibbs, is nothing good comes from bullying. It's the only bad things that can come from it. Yeah, don't do it.

Don't do it. It's not cool. But But Butch, later on in life, would have a much different outlook on his father. My father was my best friend in many, many ways. No matter of what I did. And the truth of the matter is, most of the time, I was always wrong. I was always in trouble. matter of what I did, he was always there for me to bail me out.

So in that clip, you can hear him talk about his father in almost, I mean, reverent tones, you know, saying his dad was always there for him, was always bailing him out. But I don't know, Gibbs. I think, you know, this is much later in life, and I think he's reflecting back. This is not how he felt as a child. No, I think he's just saying that hard love was okay. He's just saying that he deserved the hard love that he got. And I think maybe his dad really was there for him, did bail him out of a bunch of stuff.

We'll talk about some of it. But he was also very tough on him. So as you called it, hard love. Yeah. And back in that time, there was a lot of that going around. I think a lot of people would call it tough love. But if you want to call it hard love. Well, you like hard love.

But back then it was tough or hard love. So he's getting bullied as a kid. And as Butch grows older, he's. He starts to fight back against his dad and against the people that were bullying him, teasing him. Like we said, as he grows up, does he get a little bit more physically able to fight back? Or is it just that he couldn't keep it inside anymore? He reached a breaking point and he said, enough's enough. I'm not going to take it anymore.

I don't know the answer to it. I'm just asking questions. Yeah, I think eventually you have enough and you make certain. changes in your life and you push back. Or in extreme cases, people snap. Yeah. And that can result in disastrous consequences. It's not good for the other person on the other side of you. But his family was worried about Butch. They thought he had, you know, some problems. So much so that they end up taking him to a psychiatrist, but he refused to see this doctor. You know, he didn't think he needed any help at all. No way was he going to see a psychiatrist. So they couldn't get him.

to do that, but the family thought that they could possibly help him in another way. And what they decide to do Gibbs is basically bribe him into acting right. So they're showering him with money. They're showering him with presents in the hopes that that's going to make him happy. And if he's happy, then he's not going to lash out against all the people around him. And we're not just talking about a little bit of cash. are there. We're talking about a speedboat. Now, keep in mind, this is the 1970s. Wow. They bought him a speedboat that cost $14,000. 1970? Yeah, how much would that cost today? Oh, shit, $100,000. Easy. No. No. I would say, I would say a speedboat from $14,000, $15,000 speedboat in the 70s. Yeah, it'd be easy, $40,000. I would go with that. Yeah, depending on what size it was, you know, 19 foot or

30-footer. Boy, you just jumped from 19 all the way to 30, huh? Well. You got any sizes in between? Yeah, I was looking at you and I was thinking small, then I went to me and I thought larger. Husky. Yeah. You'd get him a husky speed boat?

Yeah, get him a husky. Now, I just wanted to see what Nostradamus would come up with as far as his money conversion in this episode. Yeah, well, you know, I'm pretty much there. You're pretty much there, all right? You're kind of a cross between Nostradamus and Warren Buffett. That's where I put you on the scale. That's high praise, too, man. With a little side of gomer pile.

With the, yeah, that's not bad. That's the perfect trifecta. I think you were thinking it. You just didn't say it. A little bit of sling blade, maybe. Sling blade. I have to watch it. I haven't seen it.

You haven't seen sling blade? No. Oh, then that's not going to be near as funny to you. No, everybody else is laughing, I guess. No, I don't know if they will. So they're bribing Butch. They're giving them all of these expensive toys. They're giving him money.

But he's not changing his ways. Right. you can't you can't buy somebody into changing behavior i shouldn't say you couldn't do it it's it's it's and it would be temporary anyway right i mean you you it might change their behavior just for a short period of time but you know that with with your own kids i'm sure anybody that has kids you buy them something they're happy yeah for whatever period of time that is but if they're having behavioral problems, that's going to be temporary. And if that kid really knows how to play the game, it could be dangerous for you because

they're going to give you a little bit of happiness and then back off and then you're going to feel like you need to up your game. And, you know, they could do, they come out quite well. Well, it doesn't. There's no way that it gets to the underlying problem, right? A speedboat is not going to fix the underlying problem of whatever issues you're going through. It's just not going do it. Yeah. The other problem is that, you know, Butch ends up becoming addicted to heroin. He's using LSD. This is all by the time he's 17 years old. That's not a good combination. Either one of those on its own is bad enough. Yeah, I would think so. But using both heroin and LSD? Some major tripping. That's a, that's a bad combo. He ends up getting kicked out of school for violent behavior.

but this doesn't stop the Defeo family from trying to win Butch over. So he's not doing well. He's got kicked out of school. He's on drugs. He's being violent. And they're still trying to reward him or bribe him or whatever you want to call it. When Butch turned 18 years old, he was given a job working at the car dealership that his grandfather owned.

But think about that, Gibbs. 18 years old, you're given a cushy job. at your family's car dealership, wouldn't you have liked that? I would like it, but just because you work for your family doesn't mean it's cushy. Well, it is for Butch, I should have said. Okay. Not in every situation. Right.

But we're talking about Butch Defeo. And, you know, this is a job that a lot of people would have liked to have had. He's given the job because he's family. But he wasn't expected to actually put in the work that the job require. And again, this is letting him. him do whatever he wants and actually rewarding him for what I would call bad behavior. You're not helping people out, I don't think, by doing that. But I mean, getting back to your point, Gibbs, in a normal situation, just because you work into family business, you're still expected

to work. And in a lot of cases, you're probably expected to work harder, right? Family often comes down on you a little bit harder or expects a little bit more from you. Yeah, most would. In most situations, his dad, Butch's dad, is giving him money every week, whether he even shows up to work or not, whether he does the job or not when he's there. He's his full shenanigans. Shenanigans. That's right. He's just getting paid for not doing anything. Collecting the check.

Yeah, he's just there to collect a check. And he spent every dime he got. So, you know, he's buying a new car. He's using all this money that his parents are giving him to buy drugs, alcohol. and even guns. He starts to get into guns. And this is not going to turn out well the fact that Butch Defeo starts to buy guns. You know, there was a story about him taking a hunting trip with a friend.

And for whatever reason, I don't know if they got in a fight, but he actually threatened this guy, his buddy, said he was going to shoot him. He didn't. But then later on acted like he never made that threat. There was one instance where Butch and his dad got into a fight. and he actually tried to shoot his dad with the 12 gauge. Wow. Shotgun.

They're in the middle of this fight. He put the gun up to his dad, pulled the trigger. It didn't go off. That's a freaking miracle. Yeah, it's a miracle for his dad at that point. You don't play rushing roulette with a shotgun. No, there's no coming back from that. No.

He's lucky. So the gun doesn't go off. His dad is shocked. I mean, anybody would be shocked. If somebody put a gun up to you, pulled the trigger, and it didn't go off. So in the middle of this fight after that happened, his dad walks away. Like I said, he's shocked, he's in shock, he can't believe that Butch pulled a gun on him and actually tried to shoot him.

Yeah, actually pulled the trigger. So we talked about Butch working at this car a lot and he's not happy at the amount that he's being paid. He thinks he's being underpaid for all of this amazing work that he's doing, which by all accounts was nothing. And because of this, he starts to embezzle money from his. own grandfather. So not good enough that he's getting paid to basically do nothing. Do shit. I was going to say. Yeah. Do jack shit. Right. He's stealing money from his own grandfather. Man, that's,

that is low. But he's going to go lower and he's going to decide to try to push the boundary even farther. And he comes up with a plan to acquire more money. And the plan centers around him going to the bank, being sent to the bank to deposit $1,800 in cash and $20,000 in checks. But Butch never does this. Instead, he has a friend rob him and they end up splitting the money. So he has to go back and say, you know, I got robbed. They call the police. The police come.

Butch is acting very strange. He gets violent with the police. He's irritated with them asking him questions. And one of the things that they want to know from, Butch is what did he do in the two hours after the robbery? Because apparently the time that he said he got robbed, there was a two hour period before he came back. That's a problem. Well, police are going to want you to account for that time. Yeah. But I think from the start, they know that Butch is lying. So they're trying to pin him down. They're trying to get him to

say something. And he just gets very upset to the point where he's yelling at police. He's banging on the hood of a car showing how upset he is. Going for the Oscar, huh? Yeah, I think he was. I think he was putting on a show, maybe a combination. He probably was pretty angry because, you know, by everything I, in the research, you can see the guy was violent. Probably a little hyped up.

He had a, he had a very violent streak in him. The police asked Butch to come down to the station. They want him to look at some mugshots to see if he could identify the person that robbed him. And he told the police he would do this. this. He told his daddy was going to do it. But at the last minute, he changed his mind. And he said to his dad, I'm not going. I don't want to do this. And his father got very angry at him because he didn't understand why Butch didn't want to cooperate with the police. Now, I think at this point,

he was starting to draw some conclusions that, you know, either maybe Butch was involved in this, because why was he acting this way? Why didn't he want to cooperate? And this would come out later that Ronald Sr. screamed at his son, you've got the devil on your back. And Butch said back to his father, you fat prick, I'll kill you. Stormed out of the house, got in his car and took off. So Gibbs, his dad might have been a little husky. A little husky. A little husky. Yeah. It's not like there are going to have any father's son picnics anytime soon. Who, Butch and Ronald Sr.? Yeah, it would be the father and dad? I think it would be tough. Yeah. I mean, would you have ever told your dad, You fat prick, I'll kill you.

No, never, ever. I mean, my dad and I got into some stuff. Yeah, I wouldn't say that to my dad. Never physical. I mean, we would argue and things like that, but I would never dream of saying that. No, I wouldn't say that at all. You might say it to you, but. Drop you where you sit.

I would never say that to you, man. One, I'm not husky. You already said you were a husky. No, back in a day. Not now. I'm a lean, mean, slightly oversized. So you're not husky, but you're oversized? I'm not heavy.

Nothing's wrong with heavy, but... No, you just said you were oversized. What's that mean? I'm a little bit... Like you're too big for your britches? No, no, no. I'm just a little, you know, over my desired weight. Big-boned?

You're over your desired weight. I'm going to start using that. I, too, am over my desired weight. You are. Oh, my gosh. All right. We've got to get back to Butch. We can't be talking about how Husky you are this whole episode, man.

You brought it up. Oh, you're the one that said Husky. I never brought it up. Because now we're getting to the early morning hours of Wednesday. Did I say Wednesday? You did. I did, didn't I? Wednesday, November 14th, 1974.

Gibbs was, what, 30 years old? 74? Yeah. I think I was probably turning eight years old. I'm just messing with you. We're in Amityville. It's quiet. Amityville is a.

nice, quiet suburb. It's a nice place. It was quiet, huh? I said quiet twice, didn't it? Yeah. Okay. Just a nice little quiet town. Everybody just whisper. I'm really putting the emphasis on quiet. We're a quiet town. We don't get too worked up about anything. I mean, you're probably talking about birds chirping, you know, maybe some people in their car driving to work. Kind of like Mayberry. Yeah. Yeah. But by the water. Yeah. And no Gomer. And in the Defeo home, everyone is in bed, except for Butch. Butch is away. He's sitting alone in his room, thinking about his life, and it's at that moment that he makes a choice

which is going to devastate the Defeo family. He decides that he's going to deal with his father once and for all, and not just his father, the entire family. Now, Butch had his own room, right? He's the oldest. He had his own room. But it wasn't just because he was the oldest. He was also violent.

He was the scary kid? Yeah. So I didn't think they wanted him bunking with. any of the other kids, but having his own room meant that he could store all of these weapons that he had been buying because he's being thrown money. We talked about that. And nobody would know about it. So he's got a little mini arsenal. Yeah, he's got a little arsenal apparently in his room. And, you know, round three o'clock in the morning, he selects a 35 caliber Marlon rifle, lever action, kind of like what they would use in the old Western movies, right? Lever action

rifle. A little shootout kind of a rifle. I don't know what that is. You know, so you hold it waist, they just park it at their waist. They don't have to put it on their shoulder. Do you have to put any rifle on your shoulder? Well, that's a whole lot easier to have one that you can level action. Really? Because it seems like one I can just pull the trigger would be even easier. Well, back then they probably didn't have the. Yeah, in 74 they did. Yeah, maybe. You don't know. You weren't around. But not in the wild west. Hey, were you around? I was around in 74, barely. Yeah, crawling on in your mama's lap. Exactly.

Oh, I'd just like to see where you're going to go with your lever action story. Now, if you were talking about the old West, I agree. Yeah. Shootout gun. Shootout gun. That's what we're calling it. What would have a shootout. All right, we got to give that to Butch.

He's got this 35 caliber Marlin rifle. And he walks down the hall to his parents' bedroom. And what he's going to say is that he just stood there. He stood in the doorway, watching his parents sleep for just a moment. and he was kind of readying himself for what he was about to do. And then he fired his first shot. And this would be the first of eight shots, eight killing shots that he's going to fire that night.

He first shot his father in the back. The shot ripped through his kidney and exited his chest. The second shot was into his father as well, again in the back. And this one pierced the base of his father's spine and lodged itself in his neck. neck. So imagine that gives, starting at the base of the spine, traveling upwards into the neck. Being that close with a rifle of that caliber, man, not surprised. And as you can imagine, his mom wakes up. You're going to wake up when you hear two rifle shots in a small room. It's going to be unbelievably loud. But as soon as she wakes up,

Butch points the rifle at her. She's got no time to react at all. He fires two shots into his mother while she's still lying there. I mean, she doesn't even. That's the kind of time she has. She doesn't even have time to get up out of bed, do anything. And he shoots her dead with two shots. What a monster. Imagine that. Your mother and father, your mom and dad, you've just killed them both.

And they're laying there in their bed next to each other. It's unimaginable. I mean, the bullets that entered his mom, they shattered her rib cage, caused her right lung to collapse. They bled out and died. They're not going to survive that. But But Butch is not done. He next went to the room of his young.

brothers, John and Mark, he stood directly over them, firing shots into each of these boys. I mean, these were fatal shots. I mean, they tore through internal organs. And Ronnie Butch would later say that Mark never moved at all. But John was twitching as he stood over him. He saw John twitching for a few moments and they figured out that these were some type of spasms because his spinal court had been severed by a bullet. Butch next headed to the room of his sister Allison. You know, Allison was still in grade school closer to the ages of his brothers, John and Mark. And as Butch walked into his sister's room, Allison woke up, looked up at him. This is what would come out later. But he lowered the gun, pointed at her, and pulled the trigger,

killing her instantly. Then he made his way to his sister, Don's room. And Don was older, 18 years old. She was closer, much closer to Butch than the other kids. He aimed the gun at Don's head, pulled the trigger, and the shot blew off the left side of her face. So Gibbs, this was, this was brutal. It was a head shot. It did a lot of damage. And obviously, he killed her instantly. And this is the part that I don't understand Gives. And maybe we need to talk about it for a minute because it was talked about a lot that none of these kids woke up. And you would think hearing multiple gunshots in a house. I mean, what time of night we say?

Like 3 o'clock in the morning, I think. I mean, they could be in REM sleep, you know. You said the other day on a podcast that you're a deep sleeper and can sleep through anything. I am very deep sleeper, but I don't think I would sleep through a freaking right. rifle firing. But you don't know. I don't know. This was always kind of struck me as strange, but from everything you read and all the research, it doesn't appear as though, you know, the kids woke up. There's some talk about the mom waking up, but not the kids. And again, I just, I still find it very strange. I mean, my kids wake up a drop of a hat, but. My mind. They're heavy sleepers.

My son. I'm just telling you what a rifle would sound like with no earplugs, insolves. side of a house. I think I could start a Harley right next to him and he wouldn't wake up. Well, maybe. Now, we talked about that this was around 3 a.m. And it's estimated that it took Butch less than 15 minutes to kill all six of his family members. And apparently the dog, the family dog had been tied up outside to the boat house and had been barking its head off this whole time. But what Butch did next is he cleaned himself up and he decided he had to come up with an alibi. He's got to get away with this, right? Somehow, Gibbs. He takes a shower, did a little light grooming, got dressed like it was a normal day.

You know, hey, I just killed all six members of my family. No big deal. Get up eat my egg McMuffin and go to work? Yeah. He took all the bloody clothes, stuffed them in a pillowcase along with the rifle, threw everything into his car and drove off. And he drove into Brooklyn. And he would later say that he would later say that he, He got rid of all of the evidence, throwing it down a storm drain. So after he gets rid of the evidence, he drives back to Long Island. I mean, he's ready to start his work day. Like you said, Gibbs, at about 6 a.m.

But he didn't stay at work very long. And he tried to call home, even acted shocked with his fellow coworkers that his dad never showed up for work. So Butch leaves work around noon. And before he left, he called his girlfriend to say, you know what? I'm done. I'm going to go home. today, but he also said he's going to stop and see her. He made a bunch of stops. He stopped

to talk to her friend before even going to his girlfriend's house. He gets to her house around 1.30 p.m. making a big deal about the fact that, you know what? My dad didn't show up for work. I've called home a few times. I've not been able to get a hold of anyone. He even used his girlfriend's phone just to show that he was trying to call home and that nobody was answering. Butch is doing a pretty good job of acting like nothing's wrong. You know, he took his girlfriend to the mall. They go to another friend's house after that. But he still keeps talking about the fact that, you know what, hey, I can't get a hold of anybody at my house. And he asked his friend if he's going to go out later. And the guy says, you know what? I'll meet you at a bar. This bar was called Henry's around six if you want to go out.

So Butch just kind of hangs out the rest of that whole afternoon. You know, he's going in to see various friends. he's drinking. He's shooting heroin, by the way. And at six o'clock, he goes to meet his friend at the bar, Henry's. Butch is still acting worried about the fact that he can't get a hold of anybody at his house. But he hasn't tried to go to his house, Gibbs. He's been worried since that morning. His dad didn't show up for work. And he could just easily drove home and checked it out. Yeah. But it's six o'clock in the evening now. And all he's done is try to call and just talk about how worried he is about. it, but he doesn't do the obvious thing, which is drive home and see what the hell's going on. But it's after a little bit of time at the bar with his friend that he says, you know what?

I got to go. I got to go check on my family. I'm worried about him. And he's not gone very long. He bolts back into Henry's. He's acting like he's in shock. And he's telling his friend that he needs help because someone shot his mom and dad. So he takes his friend and some other folks from the bar.

they get into a car, they drive to his parents' house. And I keep in mind how long it's been since his parents have been shot at this point in time. And it's actually his friend that runs into the house. He sees the body of Butch's dead parents in their room. And of course, Butch is acting like, you know, he's all broken up about what's happened. Another one of his friends called the police and they got there in about 10 minutes. And as the police get there, you know, they see all these people on the lawn. And Butch says to him, my mother and father are dead.

And, you know, the police would say that he seemed to be sobbing. And I don't think at that point they thought it was an act. I mean, they really thought that he was broken up. So the police go in the house. They go upstairs. They find the bodies. They find his parents. They find the brothers.

And they call back to police headquarters. Butch is still crying. He's all broken up. And he tells the officer that he also had two sisters. They hadn't found them. the sisters. So they rush back upstairs after another officer arrived and the two officers find the bodies of his sisters. But what was said Gibbs was that there was so much blood around the bodies of Allison and Dawn. Police couldn't even tell that they'd been shot. It was just a mess of

blood. Just from that one shot each, huh? And we talked about Amityville. And we're going to talk about a lot more on unsolved. But this is a village. I mean, this isn't even a town. This is the village of Amityville. It's very small. People are freaking out that something like this could happen where they live. The police are there. They're trying to investigate.

They're asking Butch what happened or, you know, who could have done it. And it's during this initial questioning that Butch tells police that it's probably a man named Louis Felini. Because as Butch put it, this man had a grudge against the family. from a dispute that happened a few years prior to this. So Gibbs, apparently this Fellini guy was either in the mob, connected to the mob or something, and police were really worried

because they thought if this had anything to do with the mob, they had to take Butch to the police station to keep him safe. Because if this guy just took out his whole family, he's coming back for Butch. You want to finish a job? Yeah. Well, any good hitman would.

I mean, you contract out, You contract for the full job. You don't just contract out and do half of a job. You don't get paid for half the work. I believe you. Yeah. Do it all or you don't get paid from what I hear. From what you hear.

I know you have a good work ethic. I don't know what all that extends to, but. I always succeed in my task and succeed. Always get the job done. Exceed and succeed. So at the police station, Butch makes a written statement. Gives us to the cops and he says he had been at home,

stayed up till a little past 2 a.m. watching a movie. He said he didn't go to bed until 4 a.m. Walked upstairs past his brother's bedroom by the bathroom and said that he heard a toilet flush. So he thought it, you know, he knew somebody was in there. And from there, he said he wasn't able to sleep. So he went to work early. Well, you're not going to be able to sleep a whole lot, Gibbs. If you don't go to bed until 4 o'clock and you got to be at the car dealership at 6 or whatever time. It could be any time.

You're not planning on sleeping a whole lot anyway. He said he worked. Then he saw his girlfriend. Then he saw some other friends. And again, he told the police, you know, hey, I tried to call a bunch of times. No one answered the phone. Well, of course they never answered the phone because everybody's dead. Butch knows this.

But he's playing it up for police. And he claims that when he came to check on his family, he entered the house and he ended up finding the bodies of his parents. And this is when he left. He went to the bar. told everybody in the bar, and one of his friends called the police. I mean, that's Butch's story. But he goes on to talk about this Louis Fellini, that he had actually lived with the family,

with the Defeo family for a short period of time, and that he helped his dad, Ronald Sr., create a hiding space in the basement that was filled with gems and money. So that's pretty interesting, right, Gibbs? You got a basement full of gems and money? It's kind of cool. I had a neighbor once that had a big walk-in safe in their basement with actual safe door. Like a bank vault? Yeah.

Really? Absolutely, yeah. What do you keep in there? Got money and collectibles and guns. Rare artifacts. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, it was a pretty nice...

Bodies? Pretty nice safe. That would be. Yeah. How do you get a safe like a bank vault into your basement? I don't know, but he had it. And you almost have to lower that son of a bitch down in. before you build it while it was being built i would think yeah it was nice it's a good story man i like

it's true it's a true story yeah i didn't think you were making it up yeah i didn't we're not here to make stuff up it's true it's true we had uh my dad thought he was being smart and so we had this big void at space in the one house we were in where you walked in the for your you could go left down one hallway go right and then you had the back hallway so basically you had the square that kind of went, had hallways all the way around it. And you're using your finger right now to try to illustrate your story? Yeah. So it was basically just kind of used as a coat closet.

So he put a solid door on it. And when they put the door on it and he put dead bolts on it and everything, that's what he used for his safe. But when they put the door on, they put the hinges facing the outside. On the outside. So you can take a screwdriver. So my brother, yeah, my older brother would just pop the hinges off and, you know. Work it and the door would open it.

You know, it was great. Yeah. That's pretty funny, actually. So if we wanted to get the keys to his, you know, old antique car, you know, Corvette, that's all we had to do. That's actually a funny story. He was thinking ahead. Thinking ahead. So Butch is talking to the police and, you know, he's telling him about this so-called mobster.

But But Butch is also talking about the fact that, you know, he used heroin. He even told the police he set his dad's boat on fire for his dad. He's a talker. So he could collect. insurance money. Oh, good. He answered all their questions and, you know, at the time, he didn't seem like a suspect to please. Now, he might have been suspect. I think he'd have to be a suspect. I mean, you're only a survivor out of your family? No, no, I think he was a suspect. It's obviously why they were questioning him, but he's answering all their questions. He's being pretty open

about the fact that he does drugs. He shoots heroin. He's committed insurance fraud on behalf of of his dad, but he hasn't said he's murdered him. But it's not going to take long because the police find something that that changes their minds pretty quick. They found some boxes which had held guns. And one of them was marked as a 35 caliber Marlin, which we knew was the murder weapon. Police didn't know it yet, but they held onto the boxes just in case. They do find out that Butch was kind of overboard with this gun collecting.

And then they find out about the fake robbery. We talked about that, the $1,800 in cash, the $20,000 in checks. And at one point, they're talking to Butch again, the police are. And he asked them if they had found this guy Fellini. This is the guy that he's trying to pin the murders on. But at this point, they're pretty sure Butch is involved. And they read him his rights. You know, he's arguing with the cops saying, you know, you don't need to read me my rights.

I wasn't involved. I don't even need a lawyer because I'm just a witness. I got nothing to hide. But there's a lot more questioning of Butch and his story starts to fall apart more and more as the questioning goes on. And they're starting to hone in on the time when the crime happened, when these murders occurred. But during additional questioning, the story that Butch was telling, it starts to fall apart more and more. I mean, he just, he can't keep it consistent. and eventually he breaks.

And the police were able to get out of him that the crime happened sometime between 2 and 4 a.m. He tells them that he was there during the murders, but he only went into the bedrooms after the murders had already occurred. Because at this point, he's saying that Louis Felini had forced him to watch the murders, that the mobster or this mob-connected guy

had made him sit there and watch every single one of, his family members die. But he's still trying to say he didn't have anything to do with it. He didn't kill his family. But he does implicate himself when he talks about getting rid of the evidence. Because he actually says that, you know, hey, I took the evidence. I put it in a pillowcase. I dropped it in the storm drain. And the police are going along with this pretending to believe what he's saying that he was forced to do this, right? He didn't kill him. But maybe he's an accomplice. He's an accomplice. or he was forced to do this by this Fellini guy,

but they're wearing him down, wearing him down, and he finally cracks all the way. And he ends up confessing to all six murders. And he says this, Gibbs, once he started to kill his family, he just couldn't stop. It was almost like maybe he only wanted to kill his father because that was the person that he was very upset with, maybe.

But once he started, he couldn't stop. He had to kill all six. Only one person had access to a handgun between my mother and father. He never got a chance to get it. She did. So everybody else was offenses. As far as I'm concerned, really, everybody was offensive. Because I got to them before they got to me.

So there you can hear... Al Pacino? Al Pacino. It does sound like a little bit like Al Pacino. He did. Whoa! Whoa! You can hear Ronnie Butch Defeo, in his own words, say that he killed his family, but what does he say, Gibbs? I got them before they could get to me. But at the same time,

he's saying they were all defenseless. He's all over the map there, man. I don't understand it. But he goes on trial almost a year after the murders occurred, and this was on October 14th, 1975. And the only real question of the trial is what was Butch's mental state at the time of the murders, you know, was he insane or should he spend the rest of his life behind bars? Morning, Defeo appeared for arraignment at the first district court in Hoppog, where he was ordered held without bail. As his standard practice in a multiple murder case, he was arraigned in only one of the killings, that of his 12-year-old brother Mark. The court agreed to let a physician treat Defeo for injuries to his face, but it refused to allow a psychiatric

examination for him, which have been requested by the defense. Well, based upon my conversation this morning with the defendant Ronald Defeo and based upon the nature of the charge and that he's alleged to have taken the lives of six months morning. I don't think he presently understands the nature of the proceedings and I don't think he can therefore properly assist in his defense. Now what was your... Simon says he'll continue trying to get the psychiatric examination for his client and he has not ruled out the possibility that he may enter a of insanity. The case is expected to go to the grand jury on Monday. At that time, the district attorney will enter evidence in all six murders. So in that clip, you could hear Defeo's attorney,

and his attorney does try to get the case thrown out first on the grounds that Butch had been denied the right to a lawyer right before the police took his confession. He also said that the confession was obtained under duress because the police were abusing him, while he was being questioned, and all of those claims were thrown out. And in the end, the attorney had to resort to the idea that he would defend Butch under the grounds of being legally insane when he killed his family. And this is important, Gibbs. I mean, it's really going to tie into our unsolved episode because Butch is going to get on

the stand and he's going to tell the jury that he was hearing voices. and these voices were telling him to kill his family. The house made him do it? It's definitely going to tie in to the Amityville horror. There's no doubt about it. But But Butch gave all kinds of conflicting stories about what happened that night. The night his family was killed. And there were points where he almost reveled in or had acted like he enjoyed killing his family.

You know, he said things like, I believe it felt very good. That was a quote. Another quote was, I remember feeling very good. I don't think that's things you want to say on the stand. No, it's not going to help your case. It's not going to go in your favor. So the prosecution, they had a psychiatrist who said that Butch suffered from antisocial personality disorder. But this meant that Butch knew what he was doing when he killed his family.

He wasn't insane. He was motivated by a self-centered attitude, is what they said. But in the end, he's found guilty of six counts of second degree murder. This happened on November 21st, 1975. He received six consecutive life sentences, and he was sent to the Green Haven Correctional Facility in Beekman, New York. And all of his appeals over the years for parole have been turned down. But just like what we're going to talk about on Unsolved Gibbs with the Amityville horror,

you know, there's all kinds of conflicting information on that. there's a lot of people that think that a lot of that stuff was a hoax and we're going to get into all that. But just like that, there's a lot of controversy around these murders because, you know, number one, all the victims were found lying on their stomachs face down. No signs of struggle. Toxicology showed no drugs in the victim's systems. They hadn't been drugged. So what I'm getting at here is six people murdered in the span of, let's say, 15 minutes, all of them found face down. That seems odd. And I think to investigators, it did seem odd.

In the trial gives both the prosecution and the defense agreed on the fact that there was no silencer used in these killing. And there was a test done, an experiment conducted on a 35 caliber Marlin rifle. And it was found that it was so loud that the gunshot, just a single gunshot, would have been so loud that it could be heard from almost a mile away. So imagine being in a house or a room. Again, I don't want to harp on it, but it would be deafening. Yeah, so, I mean, I get the point what they're saying, you know, after the two shots to

the dad, and then especially the two shots to the mom, but the two shots to the dad, the mom didn't get out of bed, none of the kids got out of bed. She did wake up. Waking up, one thing, actually getting out of bed. But you would think if it woke the mom up and then you'd, you'd think. Two shots later. That's what, yeah. The girls and the boys didn't get up.

Nobody? The mom, I think I understand because I think the theory there was it woke her up. It was loud. But he turned the gun on her so fast. She didn't really have time to do in it. She didn't even have time to sit up, I don't think. But while all that was going on, none of the kids woke up. I mean, you can make a case for a kid, maybe two kids were heavy sleepers, but all four

of them heavy sleepers that they didn't get up. Even one of the first law enforcement people that made it to the scene, to this day, continues to say that he finds it very hard to believe that Ronnie Defeo Jr. could have committed all six of the murders without a single family member waking up and somebody trying to get out, right? Being shot maybe running down a hall, trying to get out of that house. But I think the other interesting thing is if they're all laying face down, maybe they did. wake up. Maybe he made them laid back down and face down because he didn't want to look at him in the face when he shot him. Well, and that's a theory. That's a theory. I mean, one of the things that we haven't talked about is all of these rooms weren't even on the same floor. He had to travel to multiple floors of this house while committing these murders. I think it just adds an extra element to it when you're talking about timing. How did he do it? Why did nobody wake up?

Yeah, I mean, it's just interesting. It was a big Dutch colonial house and you shoot two people in one room and somehow you're able to get up to multiple floor to the other rooms and kill, but nobody ever wakes up. And like you said, that was extremely loud rifle. So it's not just that. So police are doing interviews. They're canvassing the neighborhood. They couldn't find a single neighbor that had heard the shots.

And this wasn't like some house all by itself. I mean, it was in a neighborhood. Not a single neighbor said they heard a shot, but they did report hearing the Defeo dog barking. So riddle me that, man. I mean, to me, that is just- You say riddle me that? I did. I didn't say,

Batman, but- Riddle me that? I did say riddle me that. It's very strange. You know, I don't know, I'm not saying this guy didn't kill his whole family, but I do want to talk about some of the possible theories that are out there that have been suggested because I think they're interesting. You know, there's a lot of theories about this not being one person, that he didn't do it by himself.

And that's interesting and interresting. Interresting and interesting. Which one did I say? I think you said interresting. With a T or without? Without. Okay. Sometimes I do that.

Yeah. And the chief medical examiner that did the autopsies, he actually testified at trial that he didn't think it was possible. He did not think it was possible that one person could have committed. committed the crimes the way that it was laid out. So his mom and dad, his two brothers and 13 year old Allison were all on the second floor. But his sister, Dawn, her bedroom was on the third floor. Right. So he had to ascend some stairs to get to her room. She was the last one to be killed. And this is where a lot of the controversy comes in. So seven shots are fired from this rifle. He makes his way up to

Don's room. She hasn't heard a single one of them. Right. This is the big question. We know she wasn't drugged. Toxicol as you showed that. When she's found like the others, she's on her stomach, face down. So she didn't try to get up. She wasn't trying to flee. She wasn't even trying to hide. Right? She wasn't found in a closet. Nothing like that. No, I kind of think maybe somebody made them lay face down. No, I know. I think that is one of your theories. Yeah. And I don't think it's a bad theory. I mean, most people don't sleep on their stomach. Do you know that for in fact? It's a sort of scientific fact. Is it? Are you a scientist? It's a SSF. Sort of scientific fact. Yeah. Or a G. G.S.F. Gibi scientific fact.

That's probably more like it. No, I think you're probably right. There's more back sleepers, but I think a lot of people sleep on their stomach, dude. I don't think you have that. I think it's weird that the whole family slept on their stomach. That is strange. I give you that. So I think 100% out of six people, that's a little strange. You know, I mean, just go on to your neighbor's house one time at night and see how many are sleeping on their stomach. I haven't done as much in-depth, hands-on research into that area as you have.

It's easy to do. I just, I haven't done it. These houses that you, back in this neighborhood you live in, the back door, the builder use those really easy latches on those back doors. A little credit card in your end, man. I believe you. I hear. I always believe you. But getting back to Don, and this is, it's kind of hard to talk about because Don was killed. Right? She's a victim. Yeah, absolutely. But we wouldn't be telling the whole

story if we didn't talk about the fact that there are people that actually believe that Don was involved. Yeah, she played a part in it. That she played a part in these murder. And, and I hate to talk about a victim like that, but it's out there. It's, you can't get away from it. Now, part of that is because Butch de Feo has said over the years that Don took part in the killings. Now, Butch Defeo is also told umpteen different versions of a number of these stories. But he's actually been somewhat consistent in this part. And most of the versions, they center around the same set of facts, which is that, you know, he murdered his mother and father, didn't care about him, was upset with him, one to see him

die. But then he shifts the blame to Don for killing the children, Mark, John, and Allison. And according to him, according to his stories, it's after finding out that she had killed the children, Butch says he killed Dawn in a struggle to get the rifle away from her. So this is kind of the story that he stuck to. But Gibbs, I mean, there is some evidence that I'm not going to say it supports the theory, but it definitely makes people want to. wonder about it. There's some people that think that Dawn was not killed in her bed, like the others, that she was killed somewhere else and then placed in her bed face down. I mean, she had a huge head wound and they did find apparently brain matter and blood on her pillow, her bed clothes and her

nightgown. But she had this white headboard. And there's a lot of people that point to the fact that None of this was on the white headboard, even though her head was inches away from it. So how could somebody take this massive shot from a rifle to the head? And have no spatter? Have no spatter on the headboard, which is probably what, six, eight inches from your head? Yeah. You would think you'd have something on it. So, I mean, that is interesting.

It's something that you have to talk about. So I think they take that lack of blood, brain matter, whatever you want to call. it on the headboard as, you know, an indication that she probably was not shot right there in the bed. Now, I'm not a forensic scientist, so I can't speak to the validity of that, but as a layperson, when you hear that, you think, oh, that kind of makes some sense. Forensic science for dummies. Yeah. We've read that. We have read that. Yeah. It's about as far as we go. There's also speculation around some unburnt gunshot residue that was found on Don's body. And there are some people that think this means that she may have handled a firearm that night or ammunition, but there was

an expert witness for the prosecution at trial that explained this as resulting from muzzle flash when Don was shot. This gunshot residue came out, landed on her, and that's how they explained it. But just as Butch has claimed that his sister was involved this way, that in that story, He has also told the story that his sister, Don, killed their father and that his mother got so upset that she ended up killing all of his siblings. And then Butch killed his mom. And that seems like a kind of a very strange, twisted turn of events. And then he goes on to say that he took the blame for the whole thing because he didn't want to say anything bad about his mom. Now, in 2012, someone doing a documentary, they actually hired an underwater archaq.

They were doing a documentary. Yeah. And they hired an archivologist. So they were doing a documentary and they hired an archela. A son of a batcha. Why would you try to say it twice? I'm going to say it a third time now. So in 2012 they were trying to, in 2012 they did a documentary and they actually hired

a underwater archaeologist. Hercules, Hercules. Hercules. So they actually found a gun in the canal. behind the house. That's interesting. It is interesting because when they eventually cleaned it off, you could see the trigger and the handle.

And they turned it over to the crime lab. So they try to run forensics on it. And they try to say that, you know, there was multiple shooters. You know, I think it comes back to Don was one on the shooters. So what do you think? If they thought that this was Don's gun or this was a gun that Don used? Yeah, this is the gun. She used.

But they couldn't prove anything by that point. No, they couldn't. And what are they going to do anyway? Besides, if they're going to say that she was involved with him, well, she's very dead. And they're not going to reduce his prison time based off of that. There's nobody to bring to trial. But it's, you know, again, it's just another theory out there. And there's lots of them.

And again, there's more stories from Butch. You know, he's got stories that talk about the fact that his grand, he was worried that his grandfather and uncle were going to kill him because they were part of the Genoves' crime family. Yeah. If he said certain things. I mean, it's just, he's got so many stories. You know, in 1990, apparently he filed some type of motion to have his conviction vacated. And at this point, he said his sister Don had fled the house with some unknown man after

they killed his family. And Butch said that he only killed Don because they got in a fight when he was trying to take the gun away from her. They're very similar to this other story. but now she's somehow run out of the house with some unknown man, apparently in this story. Mafiosa. You know, if the mafia was involved, I have a feeling that they would have took care of him, too. Oh, yeah, of course.

I mean, they're not just going to leave him. They're not going to kill six people and leave him. No, they're going to do it. You know, back then they did things. They cleaned up their stuff easy. Well, you don't have to look much farther than the episode on the Iceman. Yeah, the Iceman. Man, that's the kind of guys that they hired to do their stuff.

And that guy took care of business. He did. It was like episode two. That was episode two. But I think Gibbs, one of the biggest problems with the multiple gunmen scenario. And I say gunmen, but, you know, let's say Butch and Don or Butch and somebody else or whoever, Don and somebody else. Because we've heard all kinds of different stories is, you know, there was a lot of testimony from ballistic. experts at the trial.

And their testimony was that all of the wounds to the six victims were made with the same firearm, this 35 caliber Marlin. So if you take that type of testimony as the truth, maybe that's where Butch got some of his theories, right? That he had to wrestle the gun away from Don. Don got the gun, killed certain members. And as he was wrestling with her, the gun went off and she did. died. That's my assumption. This is where he's getting these theories because he was at trial.

He heard the testimony. Well, in fact, he knows that all the gunshots came from the same gun. So it's pretty likely that he's crafting his stories around the evidence. But either way, man, six people lost their lives at night. Yeah. A whole family was destroyed. Devastation. Devastation. Butch is going to die in prison. So that is the case of the defecive. Feo murders. And it's really only the beginning of what is an even bigger story when you get into who buys the house next and what happens to them. Right. And that's the basis for the books and the movies. But you got to tune into true crime all the time unsolved. It's out right now. Here are the rest of the story. Kind of turned out to be a pretty big franchise actually. It really did. I mean,

they made a bunch of them. I won't say they were all good. But books, movies. Movies, documentaries. Documentaries. There is a host of documentaries. There's a few documentaries out there as well. All good. Yeah. Some on NextFix.

Some on Netflix. Riku, as you would say, Slingblade. I don't know. You can find them on all your favorite devices. Get your flash stick out. Flame. You called it a flame stick. It's a fire stick.

It's not even a flash stick. Flame. Smoke. It's a stick. All right. it gives. Before we end this, we got, we got a few voicemails. So let's do those. Hi, Mike. Hi, Gibby. This is Jamie calling from Grand Rapids, Michigan. I just wanted to tell you, I really enjoy all the podcast. True Crime all the time. True crime all the time. Unolved. Criminology. If you're not listening to all three of these, TikTok.

But listen, I was actually at CrimeCon 2017, the inaugural. And I'm kicking myself for coming up and saying hello to you guys. I am, it was a little intimidating with the right word, a little overwhelming to look down podcasts row and think, they're all here. They're really all here. But next year, 2018 is already bought and paid for. I am determined to come up and say hello to you guys. But I just really wanted to thank you very much for what you do.

I think it's not only important to understand what happened in these crimes, but more importantly, you know, these victims were people and they were somebody, somebody. So it's always good to focus back on that sometime during the podcast and you do a great job with that. So again, thanks so much. And I look forward to meeting you again in 2018. You guys have a fabulous week. Thank you. Bye.

Tick-Tock. Great voicemail from Jamie. Can't believe Gibbs that she didn't come up and talk to us. We sat there and stared right at her. I know. Is she coming up here? I remember leaning over to you and saying, there's Jamie. I was like, is she going to come up or not?

I can't believe she's not. coming up to talk to us from grand rapids man home home of the amway corporation is that true i bet yeah i've been i've been to i've been to grand rapids it's actually a very nice town are you selling amway on the side no no no no it's a good way to go door to door them um but uh it's a good cover it's a good cover no it's a beautiful town that's what i remember when i was there yeah next time you know come see us are we going 2018 yeah we're going are you committing us yeah i just assumed You knew we were going. Nashville, man.

I love Nashville. Yeah. I'm going to wear a belt buckle and a cowboy hat and do some line dancing. Okay. Get your front road seat now, folks. Hi, Mike. Hi, Givie. My name is Laura and I live in Bath, Pennsylvania.

I just had an idea for a podcast. I first moved to Allentown, which is a few minutes away from Bath here, back in 1990. And I remember there was a lot of talk about a serial rapist who terrorized Allentown for a little bit. I remember being a little kid and terrified. Later, they found out who it was, Harvey Robinson. And I just thought that would be something interesting to cover. Anyway, love the show. Listen almost every day.

I hope you have a great day and keep your own. Time-checking. Another great voicemail from Laura. I know. And I want her to be my voice on my alarm on my phone. She's got a nice calming voice. I want her to do like, hey, Gibby, you need to get up. Dude, I can't.

I need somebody like yelling at me. Get up! Yeah, I don't need. I need that soothing. No, dude, I would just roll over and go back to bed. But I'm surprised you didn't break out to a little Allentown music. I actually thought about it. I don't know.

I thought about it. Great voicemail, though. Yeah, no, it was. We appreciate it, Laura. Hey, Mike. Hey, Gibby. This is Rosie. I am from Northern Ireland, but living in Sydney.

I'm sat on my balcony. It's about 10 a.m. And I've just finished listening to the Richard Chase podcast. I couldn't help but think how horrific it was. So I've come out onto the balcony to listen to the brood song and try and shake it off. Guys, what you do is amazing. You are my ultimate and favorite podcast. I love everything that you do.

And I love the way that you don't shy away. from some of the really horrific stuff that goes on in some of the cases that you look at. However, I am sometimes worried for you both that perhaps you experience something called vicarious trauma. And it's a trauma by proxy that you can experience when you've been listening to horrific events and stories that some other people have to endure. I wanted to just make sure that you guys know about vicarious trauma and that you guys engage all the time with self-care. I want to make sure that you look after each other

and that you look after yourself and that you do things that are fun in an attempt to work as an antidote with some of the podcasts and the horrors that you go through when you're researching them I'm sure it's really important that you look after yourself because that is how you stay safe and how you keep your own time ticking thanks for everything guys you absolutely rock wow rosy she has she does a much better accent than you do Gibbs well she's real oh okay from you know I was just saying it's much better than yours. I do like accents. But what's amazing is, you know, you can tell Rosie really cares about us, man.

She wants to make sure we're okay. Yeah, it was really sweet. Now, what she's saying is really true. I mean, the stuff that we're researching and it's brutal because we're doing a lot more research, obviously, than comes out. Oh, yeah. In the podcast. I mean, we're looking at pictures that. Yeah, we see things that you just can't unsee.

Yeah. And I will say. that, and I don't know what this says about me, hopefully it's nothing too bad, but it maybe doesn't affect me as much as it does you Gibbs, which you said, that's true? Oh, absolutely. I think you're more affected by the research. Big time. I mean, we both have to do our cleansing rituals.

Yeah. But I think to Rosie's point, we are trying to take care. I mean, I think we're aware of it. Oh, we're aware of it. Yeah. So I think we're trying to take care of ourselves, but we appreciate it. Try not to get desensitize. Yeah, it's just amazing the level of care in that voicemail.

It was awesome. Yeah, appreciate it. All right, everyone, that's it for another episode of true crime all the time, the Defeo murders. But don't forget, this is leading us into true crime all time unsolved. We're going to touch on all facets of the Amityville horror, the haunting, the Lutz family, the house itself. We're going to talk about that.

What happens after the Lutz is? There's a lot. There's a lot to unravel there. Oh, by the way, and keep the voicemails coming. Yeah, definitely. We love the voicemail. 867309. Yeah, is that how you get there?

That's the voicemail number. 8675309. So for Mike. And Gibby. Stay safe and keep your own time ticking.