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The Amityville Horror: Six Murders, 28 Days & a Haunted House · Kat Has Questions: True Crime and Unsolved Mysteries

0:07
Speaker 1: Welcome to Kat Has Questions. Curiosity, stories, and the strange
0:12
Speaker 1: corners of everyday life. Hello, hello. I'm Kat, and this
0:18
Speaker 1: is Kat Has Questions. Since it is spooky season, we're
0:24
Speaker 1: getting into a little bit of ghosty stuff and a
0:27
Speaker 1: little true crimey stuff today. And Amityville has plenty of both.
0:33
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the real murders that happened
0:35
Speaker 1: in this house and then get into the creepy things
0:38
Speaker 1: the next family said had happened in the house. So
0:42
Speaker 1: get cozy, although maybe keep a light on, and let's
0:45
Speaker 1: get into it. George Lutz could hear his children's bed
0:51
Speaker 1: hitting the floor over and over. In the account he
0:55
Speaker 1: would later give ABC News, the sound was coming from
0:58
Speaker 1: above him. He was in bed beside his wife, Kathy.
1:02
Speaker 1: and he wanted to get the children. But he said
1:05
Speaker 1: he couldn't move. Something he couldn't see was holding him there.
1:09
Speaker 1: Later that night, he woke again. This time, it was
1:12
Speaker 1: Kathy who caught his attention. She was floating above the bed.
1:17
Speaker 1: The Lutzes had moved into this house less than a
1:19
Speaker 1: month earlier. They had fallen in love with it. It
1:23
Speaker 1: had rooms for the kids, a boathouse, and the kind
1:26
Speaker 1: of waterfront setting that That makes you start picturing your
1:29
Speaker 1: whole life there before you have even made an offer
1:31
Speaker 1: on the house. They also knew or learned that six
1:35
Speaker 1: people had been murdered inside, but they moved in anyway. Now,
1:41
Speaker 1: George was describing a night when he couldn't reach the children.
1:44
Speaker 1: He couldn't move his own body and couldn't explain what
1:47
Speaker 1: was happening to his wife. By the time the family
1:50
Speaker 1: stopped living there, they had lasted 28 days. So how
1:56
Speaker 1: did a house that somebody named High Hopes become the
1:59
Speaker 1: Amityville Horror? But we need to go 13 months back
2:03
Speaker 1: to answer that question. Before the Lutzes, before the book,
2:08
Speaker 1: before anyone reported red eyes watching them through a window,
2:12
Speaker 1: to November 1974. If you've seen the movies, you probably
2:17
Speaker 1: already have a very specific house in your head. That
2:20
Speaker 1: Dutch colonial with two curved windows near the roof. The
2:24
Speaker 1: ones that make it look like the house has eyes
2:27
Speaker 1: and is looking back at you. Which, really, not a
2:30
Speaker 1: feature I needed at home, but, you know, to each
2:33
Speaker 1: their own. But this story gets complicated fast. Because there
2:38
Speaker 1: are two families. A real murder case. And alleged haunting.
2:43
Speaker 1: That's pretty suspicious. And decades of books and movies that
2:47
Speaker 1: don't always agree with one another. We're going to start
2:50
Speaker 1: with the DeFeo's. Then we'll follow the Lutz's family haunting account.
2:55
Speaker 1: The priest, the flies, Missy's unusual friend, the red room,
3:01
Speaker 1: and the night that we had just opened with. There
3:03
Speaker 1: is one content note this episode includes family violence and
3:07
Speaker 1: the murder of children. I probably won't get into too
3:09
Speaker 1: much graphic description, but it's important to the story. So
3:13
Speaker 1: we're going back to 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville on
3:16
Speaker 1: Long Island in New York. The sign outside the house read,
3:20
Speaker 1: High Hopes. By 1974, the DeFeos had lived in the
3:25
Speaker 1: house for years. Ronald DeFeo Sr. and his wife Louise
3:30
Speaker 1: were both 43, and they had five children. The oldest
3:34
Speaker 1: was Ronald Jr., and to make it easier to keep
3:37
Speaker 1: the two Ronalds straight, we're going to call him what
3:40
Speaker 1: his family and people around him usually did, Butch. He
3:44
Speaker 1: was 23 years old, and he still lived in the house.
3:48
Speaker 1: Then there was Dawn, who was 18. Allison was 13.
3:50
Speaker 1: Mark was 12. and John, the youngest, was nine. Seven
3:56
Speaker 1: people in the household, two parents, two daughters, and three sons.
4:01
Speaker 1: Ronald Sr. worked in the automobile business, and Butch worked
4:05
Speaker 1: at his grandfather's dealership in Brooklyn. Family and work were
4:09
Speaker 1: closely connected. Even as an adult, Butch's job and home
4:13
Speaker 1: life kept him within their family circle. I mean, clearly
4:16
Speaker 1: he lived at home. The house was spacious with a
4:18
Speaker 1: basement and a boathouse outback. Inside, the children's rooms had
4:22
Speaker 1: the things you'd expect to find in a family home.
4:25
Speaker 1: Allison's walls had pink and yellow flowers, and there was
4:28
Speaker 1: a little television on her dresser. A toy monkey sat
4:32
Speaker 1: in Dawn's room. Mark was recovering from a football injury
4:36
Speaker 1: and needed crutches in a wheelchair. Those details are worth
4:40
Speaker 1: remembering as we go through this. These were bedrooms people
4:44
Speaker 1: actually lived in before they became rooms strangers would try
4:47
Speaker 1: to picture. Accounts of the family describe conflict also, particularly
4:53
Speaker 1: between Butch and his father. There were reports of drug use,
4:57
Speaker 1: violent behavior, and abuse in the household. Other people who
5:02
Speaker 1: knew the family described a more ordinary home life. And
5:06
Speaker 1: we'll get into what witnesses said when the investigation reaches
5:09
Speaker 1: that part of the story, but for now, it's November 12, 1974.
5:14
Speaker 1: The DeFeos are at their house on Ocean Avenue, and
5:18
Speaker 1: the evening gives way to night. Sometime in the early
5:22
Speaker 1: hours of Wednesday, November 13th, shots were fired inside the house.
5:27
Speaker 1: The shootings reached several bedrooms. Ronald Sr. and Louise were
5:31
Speaker 1: in their room. The younger boys, Mark and John, shared
5:34
Speaker 1: another room down the hall. Allison had her own room,
5:38
Speaker 1: and Don's was upstairs. Six members of the family were
5:41
Speaker 1: killed in their beds. Ronald Sr. and Louise, Don and Allison,
5:47
Speaker 1: Mark and John. No emergency response came to the house
5:50
Speaker 1: during the shootings. Their deaths wouldn't be discovered for hours.
5:55
Speaker 1: The killings are generally placed around 3 in the morning.
5:58
Speaker 1: There isn't an exact timestamp for each shot or a
6:02
Speaker 1: surviving account from the victims telling us what they heard.
6:06
Speaker 1: A young neighbor would later report waking around that hour
6:08
Speaker 1: because of the DeFeo's dog. But no alarm brought police
6:12
Speaker 1: to the house while the killings were happening. And for
6:15
Speaker 1: most of the next day, nobody outside knew what had
6:18
Speaker 1: happened inside. Morning came, then afternoon, and the six victims
6:24
Speaker 1: remained in their bedrooms. And that's one of the most
6:27
Speaker 1: unsettling parts of this case for me. The crime had
6:29
Speaker 1: already happened, but the people who would respond to it
6:32
Speaker 1: hadn't been called yet. Hours passed with an entire family
6:36
Speaker 1: dead in a house on a residential street. And it
6:39
Speaker 1: wasn't until that evening that someone raised the alarm. At
6:43
Speaker 1: about 6.30 that next evening, Butch went into Henry's bar
6:47
Speaker 1: in Amityville. He told the people there that his parents
6:50
Speaker 1: had been shot and that he needed help. Several men
6:54
Speaker 1: ran back to the house with him, and at that point,
6:56
Speaker 1: what they'd been told was that something had happened to
6:59
Speaker 1: Ronald Sr. and Louise. They hadn't been told that all
7:03
Speaker 1: four of Butch's younger siblings were dead, too. So they
7:07
Speaker 1: went into the house. As the other bedrooms were being checked,
7:10
Speaker 1: the extent of what had happened became clear. There wasn't
7:14
Speaker 1: two victims, it was six. One of the men who
7:17
Speaker 1: came over from the bar with him, Joey Yeswit, called
7:20
Speaker 1: the police. He explained that a man had come into
7:23
Speaker 1: the bar reporting that his mother and father had been
7:25
Speaker 1: shot and that when they went to the house, they
7:28
Speaker 1: found the other family members had been shot as well.
7:32
Speaker 1: The call brought officers to Ocean Avenue. Inside, the victims
7:36
Speaker 1: were lying face down in their beds. They were all
7:40
Speaker 1: in different bedrooms and and nobody had made it out
7:43
Speaker 1: of the house. Which some people found this to be strange,
7:47
Speaker 1: because you would think if six people were being killed,
7:50
Speaker 1: some of the others, like who were killed last, would
7:53
Speaker 1: have woken up when the initial people were killed. But
7:57
Speaker 1: standing outside of the group of six victims was the
8:00
Speaker 1: family's oldest son, and the person who had brought the
8:03
Speaker 1: other people there and had helped set the response in motion.
8:08
Speaker 1: Butch was alive. Now police had to establish what had
8:12
Speaker 1: happened in that house, when it happened, and why one
8:16
Speaker 1: member of the house survived. At the beginning of that investigation,
8:21
Speaker 1: Butch was the person telling them about the discovery. He
8:24
Speaker 1: said he'd returned home that evening, found his parents, and
8:27
Speaker 1: gone to the bar for help. The men from the
8:30
Speaker 1: bar could explain what they'd found after going back with him.
8:33
Speaker 1: But they hadn't been there earlier that day. They couldn't
8:37
Speaker 1: tell investigators who entered the bedroom, who fired the shots.
8:40
Speaker 1: For that, police needed the physical evidence, a timeline, and
8:44
Speaker 1: a much fuller account from Butch. So when investigators first
8:50
Speaker 1: questioned Butch, Butch pointed them toward someone outside the house.
8:55
Speaker 1: He said a mob hitman had killed them. He gave
8:59
Speaker 1: the name Louis Fellini, and Butch claimed there was an
9:03
Speaker 1: old grudge connected to work at the dealership. That explanation
9:08
Speaker 1: gave police a lead to examine... But it also raised
9:11
Speaker 1: a question about Butch's safety. If someone had deliberately killed
9:14
Speaker 1: his parents and all of his siblings, was the surviving
9:17
Speaker 1: son in danger too? He was initially taken into protective custody.
9:23
Speaker 1: So the investigation didn't begin with Butch confessing anything. He
9:27
Speaker 1: was offering an explanation in which somebody else had come
9:31
Speaker 1: after his family. And police were trying to help determine
9:34
Speaker 1: whether that explanation held up. They also needed to know
9:38
Speaker 1: where he had been. Butch's early account put him away
9:41
Speaker 1: from the house when the murders occurred. He said he'd
9:44
Speaker 1: left work early and believed his family had still been
9:47
Speaker 1: alive when he left, which, like, you'd think he would
9:50
Speaker 1: know that. But since the killings had happened early in
9:53
Speaker 1: the morning, that made his departure time very important. It
9:57
Speaker 1: wasn't enough to establish that he'd been seen at work.
10:00
Speaker 1: or around Amityville later. Investigators needed to account for the
10:04
Speaker 1: hours before that. And a theory about a hitman still
10:08
Speaker 1: needed to explain why the person responsible would kill the
10:11
Speaker 1: parents and kill four children but leave Butch alive. And
10:16
Speaker 1: as questioning continued and the house was searched, the investigation
10:20
Speaker 1: began to turn toward him. One of the details described
10:24
Speaker 1: in published accounts of the investigation is an empty box
10:27
Speaker 1: for a. 35 caliber Marlin rifle in Butch's room. The
10:31
Speaker 1: rifle itself was missing. That put a weapon of the
10:35
Speaker 1: relevant type in direct connection with the surviving son. Police
10:40
Speaker 1: now had to account for where it was and whether
10:43
Speaker 1: it was the gun used in the killings. In an
10:46
Speaker 1: empty box wasn't the whole case, But it was something
10:49
Speaker 1: investigators could examine alongside Butch's account of where he had
10:53
Speaker 1: been and who he had thought killed his family. And unfortunately,
10:56
Speaker 1: his account did not stay the same. He initially went
11:00
Speaker 1: from pointing to an outside killer to describing an encounter
11:03
Speaker 1: in which Fellini and another man had held him at
11:06
Speaker 1: gunpoint while they killed the family. So now he's placing
11:08
Speaker 1: himself in the house while the murders are happening, saying
11:12
Speaker 1: he was held at gunpoint. And that changed his own
11:15
Speaker 1: place in the story. The first explanation was, oh, yep,
11:18
Speaker 1: I was at work. Then now he's saying he was
11:21
Speaker 1: in the house while the other people were being killed.
11:24
Speaker 1: And those versions couldn't both describe the morning accurately. Police
11:29
Speaker 1: continued questioning him into November 14th. They were trying to
11:34
Speaker 1: sort out his changing explanations and establish whether there was
11:37
Speaker 1: evidence for the other men he was describing. But by
11:41
Speaker 1: that afternoon, Butch gave them a different answer. He admitted
11:45
Speaker 1: that he had killed his family. the son who had
11:48
Speaker 1: gone to the bar asking for help, was now identifying
11:51
Speaker 1: himself as the shooter. His confession supplied more than an admission.
11:56
Speaker 1: He told investigators where he had disposed of the rifle
11:59
Speaker 1: and concealed other evidence. Those were locations police could check.
12:04
Speaker 1: And this is where the earlier part of Wednesday finally
12:07
Speaker 1: comes into focus. The day hadn't begun for Butch when
12:10
Speaker 1: he returned home and reported finding his parents. According to
12:14
Speaker 1: the account established for trial, He'd already been inside the
12:17
Speaker 1: house when the killings happened. He had used the. 35
12:21
Speaker 1: caliber Marlin lever-action rifle to shoot his parents and four
12:25
Speaker 1: younger siblings in their beds. Afterward, he cleaned up and
12:29
Speaker 1: gathered incriminating items, including clothing and spent cartridge cases, and
12:34
Speaker 1: he threw the rifle into the water at the foot
12:37
Speaker 1: of Ocean Avenue. On the way to Brooklyn, he put
12:40
Speaker 1: other evidence in a storm drain, and then he went
12:42
Speaker 1: to the dealership to work. The people at work weren't
12:45
Speaker 1: seeing someone arrive after learning that his family had been murdered.
12:49
Speaker 1: They were seeing a man who had left the victims
12:51
Speaker 1: behind at home and disposed of the evidence on the
12:54
Speaker 1: way there. Later, he returned to Amityville, and that evening
12:58
Speaker 1: he went to the bar and reported the discovery. The
13:01
Speaker 1: confession changed the meaning of the sequence police had been following.
13:05
Speaker 1: The hours before the emergency call were no longer simply
13:08
Speaker 1: a gap during which Butch had said he'd been elsewhere.
13:12
Speaker 1: They included shootings, the cleanup, the disposal of evidence, and
13:16
Speaker 1: his trip to work. And the men who had gone
13:18
Speaker 1: back to the house with him had been responding to
13:20
Speaker 1: an alarm raised by the person responsible for the crime.
13:24
Speaker 1: Butch was charged with six murders. There would still be
13:28
Speaker 1: arguments over his confession and mental state later on, and
13:31
Speaker 1: his lawyers challenged how he'd been questioned, saying that the
13:34
Speaker 1: interrogation had been prolonged and coercive. Those issues would go
13:38
Speaker 1: before the court. But the account he had now given
13:41
Speaker 1: police was that he had shot his own family, and
13:44
Speaker 1: he had supplied information about where the evidence had gone afterward.
13:48
Speaker 1: So even with the confession, some details of the crime
13:51
Speaker 1: continued to trouble people. All six victims had been found
13:54
Speaker 1: face down in bed, and nobody had escaped. And the
13:58
Speaker 1: shootings took place in different rooms. So how had the
14:02
Speaker 1: gunfire not brought someone out of a bedroom? Why hadn't
14:05
Speaker 1: someone reached a door or tried to call for help
14:08
Speaker 1: or try to run out of the house? Investigators considered
14:12
Speaker 1: whether the family had been drugged. Later accounts of the
14:16
Speaker 1: examination report showed that there was no evidence of sedatives found,
14:21
Speaker 1: and the rifle did not have a silencer, so it
14:23
Speaker 1: wasn't like they just didn't hear it. But there is
14:27
Speaker 1: a limit to what the positions of the bodies can
14:28
Speaker 1: tell us. Being found in bed doesn't establish that someone
14:32
Speaker 1: slept through every earlier shot, or that they had time
14:35
Speaker 1: to understand what was happening and respond. The victims can't
14:39
Speaker 1: describe those moments, so we don't have a complete account
14:42
Speaker 1: of what each person heard or saw. And then the
14:46
Speaker 1: neighbors' report about the dog means we shouldn't turn the
14:50
Speaker 1: absence of an emergency response into a claim that nobody
14:53
Speaker 1: heard anything, because the neighbors claimed that they saw that
14:57
Speaker 1: the dog was tied up on a leash tied to
14:59
Speaker 1: the back door. There are questions that remained part of
15:03
Speaker 1: the public fascination with the case, and they would eventually
15:06
Speaker 1: become attached with the haunting story as well. For the
15:09
Speaker 1: criminal investigation, though, police had a confession, information about concealed evidence,
15:14
Speaker 1: and a case against Butch. The next question was what
15:18
Speaker 1: would happen when the case went to trial. Butch's trial
15:21
Speaker 1: began in October 1975, almost a year after the murders.
15:27
Speaker 1: His attorney was William Weber, and the defense he pursued
15:30
Speaker 1: was insanity. The trial lasted about six weeks. Jurors heard
15:35
Speaker 1: the evidence about the killings, testimony about Butch's behavior in
15:38
Speaker 1: his family relationships, and competing psychiatric opinions. One young witness
15:44
Speaker 1: described seeing Butch and his father in a fistfight shortly
15:47
Speaker 1: before the murders. Other testimony gave a very different impression
15:51
Speaker 1: of the household. Linnea Nonowitz, a cleaning woman who had
15:55
Speaker 1: worked for the family for five years, described normal family
15:58
Speaker 1: relationships during the time she'd spent there. The accounts don't
16:03
Speaker 1: just give the jury one simple portrait of life at
16:05
Speaker 1: high hopes. People had seen different things. And describing conflict
16:10
Speaker 1: in the house didn't, by itself, explain the death of
16:14
Speaker 1: two parents and four children. Butch testified that he had
16:18
Speaker 1: committed the killings himself. He also claimed that he believed
16:21
Speaker 1: his family intended to kill him. And he spoke about
16:24
Speaker 1: hearing voices. The defense was arguing that his mental condition
16:29
Speaker 1: changed his legal responsibility for what he'd done. The prosecution
16:33
Speaker 1: argued that he could be held responsible. And also keep
16:37
Speaker 1: in mind, he cleaned up afterwards. He tried to hide
16:42
Speaker 1: what he had done, so that shows he had enough
16:44
Speaker 1: reason to understand what he had done was wrong. In November,
16:48
Speaker 1: the jury rejected the insanity defense and found him guilty
16:52
Speaker 1: of six counts of second-degree murder. In December, he received
16:56
Speaker 1: six consecutive sentences of 25 years to life. The criminal
17:00
Speaker 1: case had reached a verdict. Ronald Sr., Louise, Don, Allison, Mark,
17:06
Speaker 1: and John were dead. and Butch had been convicted of
17:08
Speaker 1: killing them. But the house was still there. A little
17:14
Speaker 1: over a year had passed since the killings. The bedrooms,
17:18
Speaker 1: the basement, and the boathouse were about to become part
17:20
Speaker 1: of another family's daily life. And the people about to
17:24
Speaker 1: buy the house were George and Kathy Lutz. So we're
17:28
Speaker 1: returning to the family from when we first opened. George
17:33
Speaker 1: and Kathy Lutz had married that summer. Kathy had three
17:37
Speaker 1: children from a previous marriage, Daniel, Christopher, and Melissa, usually
17:41
Speaker 1: called Missy, and they were combining two households and looking
17:44
Speaker 1: for a home for all five of them. The Ocean
17:48
Speaker 1: Avenue house had space, it had waterfront access, it had
17:52
Speaker 1: a boathouse, which was useful to George because he owned
17:55
Speaker 1: a boat. The reported purchase price was $ 80, 000, and this
17:59
Speaker 1: is 1975, I believe. In George's later account, they'd already
18:04
Speaker 1: looked at roughly 50 houses. They weren't walking into Ocean
18:08
Speaker 1: Avenue as their first stop and immediately deciding a boathouse
18:11
Speaker 1: was worth any amount of trouble. Another purchase had fallen
18:15
Speaker 1: through over repairs. Kathy's former home had sold first, so
18:19
Speaker 1: the household and belongings were already being brought together while
18:23
Speaker 1: they were trying to find a place, so they were
18:25
Speaker 1: kind of scrambling. And George explained the appeal in practical terms.
18:30
Speaker 1: Enough room for the combined family, space for their things,
18:34
Speaker 1: and somewhere to keep his boat. He compared the cost
18:37
Speaker 1: with what they were already paying for two homes and docking.
18:41
Speaker 1: That makes the decision a little easier to understand. The
18:45
Speaker 1: house had a very attractive offer because it was cheaper.
18:50
Speaker 1: And the murders weren't a secret that the family had
18:53
Speaker 1: discovered once they moved into the house. They knew when
18:55
Speaker 1: they bought the house. And that fact that they knew
18:59
Speaker 1: is important later. The murders weren't a secret twist that
19:03
Speaker 1: somebody revealed at the first strange noise. The history was
19:07
Speaker 1: already part of the way they understood the rooms. A
19:10
Speaker 1: bedroom could be both the place where you planned to
19:12
Speaker 1: put your child and unfortunately the place where you knew
19:15
Speaker 1: another child had died. However comfortable they initially felt with that,
19:19
Speaker 1: it was information they couldn't unlearn. In later interviews, George
19:23
Speaker 1: described being told about the DeFeos by the real estate agent.
19:27
Speaker 1: He said he and Kathy talked about the history with
19:29
Speaker 1: the children before deciding to buy it. I can definitely
19:33
Speaker 1: understand looking at a beautiful, huge house and telling yourself
19:36
Speaker 1: that a terrible thing happened here, but the danger belonged
19:39
Speaker 1: to the person who committed the crime. Well, I can't
19:42
Speaker 1: understand that because I hate bad vibes in a house,
19:45
Speaker 1: but I can also understand the side of getting to
19:48
Speaker 1: the bedroom doorway and deciding that, you know what? I
19:50
Speaker 1: don't really need this house that much. The Lutzes had
19:52
Speaker 1: made the decision that they felt they could live there.
19:54
Speaker 1: There was also a family detail that the movies blurred.
19:59
Speaker 1: Kathy wasn't a widow whose children had lost their father.
20:02
Speaker 1: She was divorced and the children's biological father was alive.
20:06
Speaker 1: So this was a newly married couple bringing a blended
20:09
Speaker 1: family into a new house. There were already relationships and
20:13
Speaker 1: adjustments to navigate before anybody ever reported anything supernatural. So
20:18
Speaker 1: on December 18th, 1975, they moved in. Like I said,
20:23
Speaker 1: this is about 13 months after everything went down with
20:26
Speaker 1: the DeFeos. The next part follows the haunting account they
20:30
Speaker 1: gave over the next years. Along with incidents associated with
20:34
Speaker 1: Jay Anson's book, The versions don't always agree on the sequence,
20:39
Speaker 1: so we'll follow how the experience is reportedly built rather
20:43
Speaker 1: than assign everyone to a specific night. But the first
20:47
Speaker 1: part of this story involves someone who was brought into
20:50
Speaker 1: the house to make it feel safer. A priest. In
20:54
Speaker 1: the book, he's called Father Mancuso. The priest associated with
20:59
Speaker 1: the real account was Father Ralph Pecoraro, whom George called
21:03
Speaker 1: Father Ray. According to the story, he came while the
21:06
Speaker 1: Lutzes were moving in and began blessing the house. George
21:10
Speaker 1: later explained that the priest was someone he knew, rather
21:13
Speaker 1: than a stranger summoned because the family had already decided
21:17
Speaker 1: the house was haunted. The blessing belonged to the move itself,
21:21
Speaker 1: so it wasn't because of anything nefarious that was going
21:23
Speaker 1: on at that point. There were still belongings being carried in,
21:28
Speaker 1: and this was the day you expect to be figuring
21:30
Speaker 1: out where things go, which box has the towels... and
21:33
Speaker 1: whether everybody can find something to eat. And while that
21:36
Speaker 1: was happening, Father Ray went through the house. Upstairs, he
21:41
Speaker 1: entered a room the family planned to use for sewing.
21:44
Speaker 1: It was unusually cold. Then he heard a deep voice
21:47
Speaker 1: behind him say, get out. In a 1979 television interview
21:53
Speaker 1: presented as The Priest's Account, he described the cold, the voice,
21:58
Speaker 1: and the feeling someone slapped him in the face when
22:01
Speaker 1: no one was there. And also, like, think about why
22:03
Speaker 1: he was in that room to begin with. The blessing
22:06
Speaker 1: was supposed to offer reassurance. And whatever the family knew
22:09
Speaker 1: about the murders, this was the beginning of their life
22:11
Speaker 1: in that house. Instead, the person performing the blessing reportedly
22:16
Speaker 1: encountered a voice telling him to leave. So George later
22:20
Speaker 1: recalled the priest saying he felt something strange in an
22:23
Speaker 1: upstairs bedroom. And when George explained that they were going
22:26
Speaker 1: to use it as a sewing room, the priest said
22:29
Speaker 1: it was good that nobody would be sleeping in there.
22:32
Speaker 1: That warning would give the room a significance it maybe
22:35
Speaker 1: never would have had otherwise. It wasn't just an extra
22:39
Speaker 1: bedroom anymore. It was the room someone had warned him
22:42
Speaker 1: not to sleep in. Accounts also described the priest becoming
22:46
Speaker 1: ill afterward and developing problems with his hands. His involvement
22:51
Speaker 1: would become pretty disputed, and we'll come back to that.
22:55
Speaker 1: The published story didn't leave his experience at the doorway either.
22:59
Speaker 1: It described problems when he tried to reach the family
23:01
Speaker 1: by telephone, Calls interrupted by interference, the warning he wanted
23:06
Speaker 1: to deliver, and then the warnings he wanted to deliver
23:08
Speaker 1: to the family were becoming difficult to communicate. It's another
23:12
Speaker 1: way the story begins closing off reassurance. The family has
23:16
Speaker 1: somebody they can call, somebody who's been inside the house
23:19
Speaker 1: and might understand, you know, when they feel uneasy. But
23:23
Speaker 1: even the call becomes part of the disturbance. Instead of
23:26
Speaker 1: a conversation that settles things, there's another reason to wonder
23:30
Speaker 1: what's happening. But in the family's telling, the blessing certainly
23:34
Speaker 1: didn't put them at ease and it gave them something
23:37
Speaker 1: else to worry about. So the family had a lot
23:41
Speaker 1: of different things that they were reporting going on and
23:43
Speaker 1: what they were feeling. So one thing is that George
23:47
Speaker 1: said he couldn't get warm. This became one of the
23:50
Speaker 1: best known images in this story. George at the fireplace,
23:54
Speaker 1: keeping the fire going while the cold refused to leave
23:57
Speaker 1: him alone. At first, he'd been moving furniture and boxes
24:02
Speaker 1: in the winter, so feeling chilled didn't seem especially remarkable.
24:07
Speaker 1: They moved in the middle of winter. But the family
24:09
Speaker 1: described cold spots inside the house and unpleasant smells that
24:14
Speaker 1: came and went without an obvious source. An upstairs bedroom
24:18
Speaker 1: was cold, and parts of the house felt wrong. The
24:22
Speaker 1: heat didn't seem to provide the comfort George expected. George
24:26
Speaker 1: wasn't describing one like startling encounter and then going back
24:29
Speaker 1: to his routine. The fireplace became a focus of his day,
24:34
Speaker 1: keeping the fire going, staying near it and still feeling wrong.
24:39
Speaker 1: The same man who had wanted a waterfront home for
24:41
Speaker 1: his new family was now spending more and more of
24:44
Speaker 1: his time trying to feel comfortable inside it. And then
24:48
Speaker 1: he started noticing the time. 3.15 in the morning. We
24:52
Speaker 1: all know about the three o'clock witching hour. In George's account,
24:56
Speaker 1: those wake-ups could draw him toward the boathouse, so it
24:59
Speaker 1: wasn't always a matter of looking at the clock and
25:01
Speaker 1: trying to get back to sleep. Sometimes he was going
25:04
Speaker 1: out toward the water to check part of the property
25:06
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night. He said he woke
25:09
Speaker 1: at that hour again and again, almost every day. Eventually,
25:14
Speaker 1: it became connected, in his mind, to the time when
25:17
Speaker 1: the DeFeos had been killed. Waking up in the middle
25:21
Speaker 1: of the night once, yep, that's annoying. but waking up
25:24
Speaker 1: repeatedly at the same time in a house where an
25:26
Speaker 1: entire family was murdered, you would start having a different
25:30
Speaker 1: relationship with the clock. The number became part of the haunting.
25:35
Speaker 1: Before George saw anything, before he heard anything, waking up
25:39
Speaker 1: could already feel like a warning to him. To be
25:43
Speaker 1: fair though, like, I've had different periods where I wake
25:45
Speaker 1: up at 3am and I'm like, I'm not feeling good,
25:47
Speaker 1: the vibes are off, so I get it. But there's
25:51
Speaker 1: obviously more to this story, so... The Lutzes had known
25:54
Speaker 1: the history when they moved in. But knowing that a
25:57
Speaker 1: crime happened in daylight while you're touring the house is
26:01
Speaker 1: one thing, being the only one awake in the middle
26:03
Speaker 1: of the night is entirely another. The house also seemed
26:07
Speaker 1: to be drawing George away from the rest of his life.
26:10
Speaker 1: He was described as becoming withdrawn and spending less time
26:13
Speaker 1: at work. Both he and Kathy later talked about a
26:17
Speaker 1: pole that made them want to stay inside. even as
26:20
Speaker 1: the experiences became more unsettling. So like the more unsettled
26:23
Speaker 1: they felt, the more they like secluded into themselves. And
26:29
Speaker 1: this is a very uncomfortable combination. Feeling that something is wrong,
26:33
Speaker 1: but also feeling reluctant to leave the place where it's happening. Meanwhile,
26:37
Speaker 1: the sewing room that the priest had warned them about
26:40
Speaker 1: reportedly became the setting for another disturbance. The flies. The flies.
26:46
Speaker 1: The flies appeared in the upstairs sewing room. A lot
26:49
Speaker 1: of them. Honestly, every time I think of the flies,
26:51
Speaker 1: I think of, I think it's Scary Movie 2. It's
26:55
Speaker 1: either Scary Movie 2 or 3 when they're like doing
26:58
Speaker 1: a parody of the Amityville Horror. That's literally what I
27:00
Speaker 1: think of. So the published story describes a swarm in
27:03
Speaker 1: the middle of winter, which obviously would be odd because
27:05
Speaker 1: in the winter, typically there aren't flies around your house. Daniel,
27:10
Speaker 1: one of the children, would later recall hundreds of flies
27:13
Speaker 1: as he was carrying boxes into a room. In his account,
27:16
Speaker 1: he tried to kill them with the newspaper, and then
27:19
Speaker 1: he brought his mother to see what had happened, and
27:21
Speaker 1: the dead flies were gone. It's one of the details
27:23
Speaker 1: that makes this story stranger than a simple infestation. A
27:27
Speaker 1: room full of insects is clearly unpleasant, but Daniel said
27:31
Speaker 1: when someone else came to look, they had vanished. And
27:34
Speaker 1: you can picture how frustrating that would feel. Christopher also
27:38
Speaker 1: spoke later about the flies, though he did say the
27:41
Speaker 1: movies exaggerated what had happened and The brothers didn't give
27:44
Speaker 1: identical accounts of scale, but flies remained parts of both versions.
27:50
Speaker 1: And the odd things appearing inside the house weren't limited
27:53
Speaker 1: to insects. George described a strange gelatinous material on the carpet.
28:00
Speaker 1: In an earlier interview, he spoke about green material coming
28:03
Speaker 1: from the walls and floor that became the infamous slime
28:06
Speaker 1: in the Amityville horror story. He also described blackened toilet bowls. So,
28:14
Speaker 1: In one interview, he specifically said that like the bowls
28:16
Speaker 1: themselves began changing color from black water or sludge like
28:20
Speaker 1: filling them. Those details can sound absurd when you list
28:24
Speaker 1: them together. Flies, strange smells, slime like run Nickelodeon, blackened
28:31
Speaker 1: toilet bowls. But inside the family's account, the problem was
28:35
Speaker 1: that the house kept producing something new. They couldn't settle
28:38
Speaker 1: into it because an ordinary room could become the next place.
28:41
Speaker 1: They found something they couldn't explain. And then Missy, their daughter,
28:46
Speaker 1: started talking about a friend. So Missy had an imaginary
28:51
Speaker 1: friend named Jodi. Missy was the youngest child in the family.
28:56
Speaker 1: And according to the haunting account, she had a companion
28:58
Speaker 1: that adults couldn't ordinarily see. But Jodi became attached to
29:05
Speaker 1: a much stranger description. So if you asked Missy what
29:09
Speaker 1: Jodi looked like, she described a pig-like figure with red eyes.
29:14
Speaker 1: An invisible pig was apparently part of settling into their
29:17
Speaker 1: new house now. I would certainly have follow-up questions for
29:20
Speaker 1: my kid if they told me that's what they saw
29:23
Speaker 1: when they were playing with Jodi. In the story associated
29:26
Speaker 1: with Anson's book, George saw a figure near Missy through
29:30
Speaker 1: her upstairs bedroom window. Kathy was also said to have
29:34
Speaker 1: seen red eyes outside the window in the darkness so
29:38
Speaker 1: the thing missy talked about wasn't kind of like staying
29:42
Speaker 1: completely as an imaginary friend the adults were also describing
29:46
Speaker 1: encounters with jody themselves so missy thought jody was her
29:52
Speaker 1: friend and the adults literally were seeing red eyes looking
29:55
Speaker 1: at them from outside The window scene is more specific
29:59
Speaker 1: than just George seeing a pair of eyes in the dark.
30:02
Speaker 1: In the published version, he was coming back from the
30:04
Speaker 1: boathouse and looked up toward Missy's room, and the figure
30:07
Speaker 1: was near his daughter in the room, behind the upstairs glass.
30:12
Speaker 1: So that puts him outside looking in. He could see
30:16
Speaker 1: toward a room in his own house. The published legend
30:19
Speaker 1: also included cloven hoof prints outside in the snow, something
30:23
Speaker 1: that seemed to give this strange companion a physical trace
30:25
Speaker 1: beyond Missy's room. the published story gave Jodi another form
30:29
Speaker 1: as well. Missy could describe the companion as an angel.
30:33
Speaker 1: There was also a scene involving a rocking chair that
30:36
Speaker 1: appeared to move by itself. So the pig-like figure wasn't
30:39
Speaker 1: a fixed creature, I guess, that everybody saw the same way.
30:42
Speaker 1: Jodi could be seen as friendly to Missy, frightening to adults,
30:46
Speaker 1: and associated with movement when nobody seemed to be sitting there.
30:51
Speaker 1: And that kind of slipperiness also became part of the legend.
30:54
Speaker 1: The family just simply couldn't agree, like, okay, this is
30:57
Speaker 1: what Jodi's looking like right now. And now we all
31:01
Speaker 1: know what to look for. It's like Jodi's kind of
31:03
Speaker 1: an enigma. I also want to keep Kathy's reported red
31:07
Speaker 1: eye encounter separate from George's window scene. So they often
31:11
Speaker 1: get compressed into one sighting, but they're different incidents in
31:15
Speaker 1: the telling. So that difference does matter when you reach
31:19
Speaker 1: the question of how many people witnessed what. So Kathy
31:22
Speaker 1: saw red eyes from inside the house when she looked out.
31:25
Speaker 1: George saw red Jodi in the room with Missy when
31:28
Speaker 1: he was standing outside looking up into her bedroom. So
31:32
Speaker 1: the hoofprint claim would later be challenged against weather information.
31:36
Speaker 1: For now, though, it's part of Jodi's lore. The family
31:39
Speaker 1: had begun with feeling cold and having unpleasant smells. Then
31:42
Speaker 1: there were flies, slime, and then things changing when they
31:47
Speaker 1: weren't looking. Now there was an alleged presence with a name.
31:51
Speaker 1: And while they were trying to understand all of that,
31:53
Speaker 1: Kathy made a discovery in the basement. The red room.
31:58
Speaker 1: Behind a bookcase was a small space painted red. George
32:02
Speaker 1: later described Kathy finding it while she was working in
32:04
Speaker 1: the basement. It was like under the stairs and it
32:07
Speaker 1: was cramped enough that you had to crouch to get inside.
32:09
Speaker 1: I'm picturing like Harry Potter's bedroom. They had not been
32:12
Speaker 1: shown this room when they toured the house and the
32:14
Speaker 1: room was red. The name makes it sound like a
32:17
Speaker 1: lot bigger of a space than George actually described it.
32:20
Speaker 1: It wasn't like a sprawling underground chamber. It was small, concealed,
32:24
Speaker 1: and unfamiliar to them. But at this point, finding an
32:28
Speaker 1: unexpected red opening behind a bookcase would be enough to
32:32
Speaker 1: change the afternoon for sure. He said there were odors
32:35
Speaker 1: coming from it that weren't always present. And when they
32:39
Speaker 1: brought their dog Harry down to investigate, Harry backed away
32:42
Speaker 1: and refused to go in. George described it as the
32:46
Speaker 1: only time he remembered the dog cowering. I know once
32:49
Speaker 1: the dog refuses the room, the room becomes much less inviting.
32:52
Speaker 1: And I totally get that. Sometimes if my dog's like
32:54
Speaker 1: Sitting up and looking into a direction in the room,
32:56
Speaker 1: like it looks like they see something, you're like, okay,
32:58
Speaker 1: what is over there? The family had already been noticing
33:01
Speaker 1: things that they couldn't explain, and now there was these
33:04
Speaker 1: hidden spaces that their dog didn't want to go into.
33:08
Speaker 1: Later movies would turn it into something much more sinister,
33:11
Speaker 1: but the Lutz account doesn't need that expansion into unsettling.
33:15
Speaker 1: A small opening, red paint, the dog backing away. I
33:20
Speaker 1: would probably stay out of the red room. Stay out
33:22
Speaker 1: of the red Harry Potter room, but... Upstairs, George was
33:25
Speaker 1: hearing something else. So in later interviews, George would describe
33:31
Speaker 1: an incident lying in bed and hearing the front door slam.
33:35
Speaker 1: He knew that sound. It wasn't a vague noise that
33:37
Speaker 1: he couldn't place. To him, it was unmistakably their front door.
33:40
Speaker 1: So he went downstairs to see who was coming in.
33:44
Speaker 1: But the door was locked. Nothing seemed disturbed. And Harry
33:47
Speaker 1: the dog was asleep beside it. That's the kind of
33:51
Speaker 1: moment that could make you stand there longer than you
33:53
Speaker 1: intended and And kind of make you start questioning yourself.
33:57
Speaker 1: Other times George thought something like a radio had come
34:00
Speaker 1: on downstairs. And then there were nights that the sounds
34:03
Speaker 1: were much stranger. So one thing that the family has
34:07
Speaker 1: described is that they would hear a marching band playing.
34:13
Speaker 1: So music, footsteps, enough noise to make the room below
34:16
Speaker 1: feel occupied. So he would hurry down to find the source.
34:20
Speaker 1: But by the time he reached the landing, halfway down
34:23
Speaker 1: the stairs, it was gone. And once again, Harry the
34:25
Speaker 1: dog would just be asleep. But I'm like, okay, like
34:29
Speaker 1: some of these things, okay, yeah, you wake up at
34:30
Speaker 1: 3 a.m., that's spooky, but like a marching band playing?
34:33
Speaker 1: Who are we? The family also reported doors and windows opening,
34:38
Speaker 1: drawers moving, furniture shifting, and disturbances involving parts of the
34:42
Speaker 1: house itself. The published account included damage to the doors, locks,
34:47
Speaker 1: and a banister. Each new incident made it harder to
34:50
Speaker 1: treat the home as somewhere predictable. You could make a
34:54
Speaker 1: bed and later find it disturbed. You could hear the door,
34:57
Speaker 1: but it would still be locked. George also told interviewer
35:01
Speaker 1: Jeff Belanger about having friends over when they heard footsteps upstairs.
35:05
Speaker 1: The children were supposed to be asleep, so when they
35:08
Speaker 1: went to go check, children were asleep. And that also
35:11
Speaker 1: adds kind of a different scene to the account, that
35:14
Speaker 1: there are people downstairs together hearing these different things. So
35:18
Speaker 1: it's not just like the family saying that. In George's telling,
35:21
Speaker 1: there were other adults there to hear it as well.
35:23
Speaker 1: So that's like a reported shared experience. And although we're
35:26
Speaker 1: hearing it through George's interview rather than separate statements from
35:29
Speaker 1: each guest, I would like these other people to come
35:32
Speaker 1: forward and say like, yeah, we heard that. But their
35:34
Speaker 1: home was beginning to feel like a place where checking
35:36
Speaker 1: what happened didn't necessarily provide an answer. And some of
35:40
Speaker 1: the most frightening claims involved Kathy herself. But before we
35:44
Speaker 1: get into those, there's another attempt to get control of
35:47
Speaker 1: the house that deserves more than just a passing mention.
35:51
Speaker 1: So in the haunting account preserved by the Warrens organization,
35:56
Speaker 1: you ever heard of the names Ed and Lorraine Warren?
35:59
Speaker 1: Anytime something's a little haunted, Ed and Lorraine are going
36:01
Speaker 1: to be knocking on your door. But George and Kathy
36:05
Speaker 1: tried praying through the house themselves. They were trying to
36:07
Speaker 1: kind of get rid of all these bad vibes that
36:09
Speaker 1: they had going. They carried a crucifix. They recited the
36:12
Speaker 1: Lord's prayer. Then they heard voices telling them to stop.
36:17
Speaker 1: The words given in the account are, quote, will you stop?
36:21
Speaker 1: Which I know it's not funny, but just like picturing
36:23
Speaker 1: them trying to pray in the house just being like,
36:24
Speaker 1: like them hearing a voice that says, will you stop?
36:27
Speaker 1: After the priest's reported experience, I think this is one
36:30
Speaker 1: of the more unsettling moments in the story. The family's
36:33
Speaker 1: not just like waiting to see what happens next. They're
36:35
Speaker 1: like trying to do something to fix the problem. And
36:38
Speaker 1: it's not just like a vague interpretation, like it feeling
36:40
Speaker 1: cold or like some bugs or a smell. It's like
36:43
Speaker 1: literally the house telling you to stop. The book also
36:46
Speaker 1: included the discovery of a crucifix that was turned upside down,
36:50
Speaker 1: accompanied by an unpleasant smell. Alongside the warning to the
36:54
Speaker 1: priest that the house gave when he initially tried to
36:56
Speaker 1: bless it, these details helped turn the haunting into a
36:59
Speaker 1: story about a hostile presence rather than a family occasionally
37:04
Speaker 1: glimpsing a departed person. So like It seems more sinister
37:07
Speaker 1: than just, oh, maybe there's some friendly ghosts living in
37:10
Speaker 1: this house. There's a lot of religious imagery in the
37:14
Speaker 1: Amityville legend for exactly that reason. The question becomes whether
37:18
Speaker 1: something in the house is resisting the family's efforts to
37:20
Speaker 1: feel safe there. So circling back to Kathy, because she
37:24
Speaker 1: had a lot of stuff going on with her there,
37:26
Speaker 1: the experiences George described weren't all threatening from the beginning.
37:30
Speaker 1: Kathy would feel like an embrace when nobody was behind her.
37:34
Speaker 1: She'd smell perfume. And at first he said the sensation
37:37
Speaker 1: could be kind of comforting. And that's a very different
37:41
Speaker 1: feeling like being grabbed in the dark versus you might
37:44
Speaker 1: feel like somebody trying to give you a hug. But
37:47
Speaker 1: in the account George gave during a 1980 interview, the
37:50
Speaker 1: touches became harder. He eventually said Kathy would lose consciousness,
37:55
Speaker 1: which is like, okay, she being like, that's, that's concerning.
37:59
Speaker 1: Then there were the claim that her appearance would change.
38:02
Speaker 1: George described waking beside her and seeing her becoming like
38:06
Speaker 1: an elderly woman, gray hair, wrinkles, a face that like
38:10
Speaker 1: didn't look like hers, which is terrifying, but he wasn't
38:13
Speaker 1: describing his wife looking worn out or really tired. We've
38:16
Speaker 1: all been there where we're sleeping in the middle of
38:17
Speaker 1: the night. We aren't looking like ourselves, but he's saying
38:20
Speaker 1: that these transformations where she was like literally a different person.
38:24
Speaker 1: And then this brings us back to the beginning. So
38:27
Speaker 1: in his account to ABC news in 2002, George described
38:31
Speaker 1: a night when he heard the children's beds striking the
38:34
Speaker 1: floor above him. Like the beds were like jumping, if
38:37
Speaker 1: that's the best way to give you a visual of it.
38:40
Speaker 1: He couldn't move to get them, though. He said an
38:43
Speaker 1: unseen force kept him in bed. And then later that night,
38:46
Speaker 1: he woke up and saw Kathy levitating and moving across
38:49
Speaker 1: the bed. George is describing being unable to respond when
38:53
Speaker 1: he thinks that his children need him. And I think
38:56
Speaker 1: that part sticks with people more than a scary image,
38:59
Speaker 1: but a parent hearing something wrong in their child's room
39:02
Speaker 1: and being unable to get there. You could put up
39:04
Speaker 1: with the cold room for a while, but the scale
39:07
Speaker 1: changed by now. Kathy's reported experiences begin with a presence
39:11
Speaker 1: close enough to touch her, and that initial comfort makes
39:15
Speaker 1: the later account more disturbing. It's the same kind of closeness,
39:19
Speaker 1: but now she can no longer count on it to
39:21
Speaker 1: be gentle. By the time this bed incident happened, the
39:25
Speaker 1: Lutzes were nearing the end of their time on Ocean Avenue.
39:29
Speaker 1: So the version most people know is that the family
39:32
Speaker 1: fled after 28 days, leaving clothing, food, furniture behind, just
39:35
Speaker 1: like leaving and never returning. It is a powerful image,
39:40
Speaker 1: a house that they had only recently bought, still full
39:42
Speaker 1: of their belongings, and a family who no longer felt
39:44
Speaker 1: like they could stay there. But in later interviews, George
39:48
Speaker 1: put a slightly different emphasis on the decision. He said
39:52
Speaker 1: the priest suggested that they go somewhere else for a
39:54
Speaker 1: night and get some rest. Kathy's mother's home was an option.
39:58
Speaker 1: They didn't necessarily leave thinking this was the last night
40:01
Speaker 1: we'll ever live here. George just described it as a
40:04
Speaker 1: break that became permanent. The family stopped living at Ocean
40:09
Speaker 1: Avenue in January 1976, roughly four weeks after moving in.
40:14
Speaker 1: The familiar count is 28 days. But according to George,
40:18
Speaker 1: going to another address didn't immediately end the experiences. He
40:23
Speaker 1: said that he and Kathy experienced further levitation at her
40:26
Speaker 1: mother's home, even though they were out of the house.
40:30
Speaker 1: Whatever they believed had been happening to them in the
40:32
Speaker 1: house they think had followed. And that's part of a
40:35
Speaker 1: haunting story where the usual solution falls apart. Just leave
40:38
Speaker 1: the house. So the Lutzes obviously wanted help figuring out
40:45
Speaker 1: how to stop all of this. And as their account
40:48
Speaker 1: reached people outside the family, more people were becoming involved.
40:52
Speaker 1: And among them were Ed and Lorraine Warren. If you
40:56
Speaker 1: know the Warrens from The Conjuring films, these are the
41:00
Speaker 1: same paranormal investigators. They investigated the Amityville house after the
41:04
Speaker 1: Lutzes had left. And their involvement became a major part
41:08
Speaker 1: of the legend. Because they hadn't lived through those 28
41:11
Speaker 1: days with the family. A television reporter, Marvin Scott, was
41:15
Speaker 1: among the people involved in bringing an investigative group into
41:18
Speaker 1: the house. So basically the family left and then this
41:21
Speaker 1: investigative group arrived. So the next phase wasn't simply Ed
41:25
Speaker 1: and Lorraine arriving alone to this empty address. There were
41:29
Speaker 1: other people there to investigate, document, and report on what
41:32
Speaker 1: they believed was happening. In the account preserved by the
41:36
Speaker 1: Warrens organization, Ed went into the basement and used religious provocation.
41:41
Speaker 1: And then he reported being forced to the floor by
41:44
Speaker 1: something he couldn't see. Lorraine described an overwhelming presence and
41:48
Speaker 1: impressions connected to the victims. Now, these are the Warrens'
41:52
Speaker 1: claims about their own visit. And the effect on the
41:55
Speaker 1: story was significant. So now adults outside of the Lutz's
41:58
Speaker 1: family were saying that they entered the house and it
42:01
Speaker 1: had affected them also. Lorraine later told interviewer Jeff Belanger
42:07
Speaker 1: that Amityville had affected their own lives. She said frightening
42:10
Speaker 1: experiences followed them home and while they were traveling. So
42:16
Speaker 1: the idea that the haunting could follow someone wasn't limited
42:19
Speaker 1: to the Lutz's telling. Lorraine also described it that way.
42:22
Speaker 1: But I think we should keep in mind that the Warrens,
42:26
Speaker 1: pretty much anytime something was kind of haunted, they would
42:29
Speaker 1: find their way into the mix and profit off of
42:32
Speaker 1: it as much as they possibly could. So there's also
42:37
Speaker 1: the photograph. The one often called the ghost boy photo,
42:42
Speaker 1: it's a black and white image from a 1976 investigation.
42:45
Speaker 1: You can find this anywhere online if you want to
42:47
Speaker 1: look it up. A figure appears to be looking out
42:50
Speaker 1: from a nearby doorway, and its eyes look unusually bright.
42:54
Speaker 1: The photograph is associated with Gene Campbell's camera work during
42:58
Speaker 1: the investigation, using infrared film. It became publicly familiar through
43:03
Speaker 1: a later appearance on the Merv Griffin Show in 1979.
43:08
Speaker 1: This isn't a picture George took during the family's stay there.
43:12
Speaker 1: It's a picture from the next phase of the story,
43:15
Speaker 1: taken after the household had gone. It gives viewers a
43:19
Speaker 1: very different image from Jodi. The figure looks like a
43:22
Speaker 1: person looking out from an interior doorway, rather than the red-eyed,
43:26
Speaker 1: pig-like presence in the window account. If you've seen it,
43:30
Speaker 1: you know why it circulates. Your attention goes straight to
43:33
Speaker 1: that little face in the doorway. Some people have identified
43:36
Speaker 1: it as the ghost of John DeFeo, the youngest child
43:39
Speaker 1: who was killed in the house. But that identification is disputed.
43:43
Speaker 1: Others have suggested it shows a living person involved in
43:46
Speaker 1: the investigation with the photographic conditions accounting for the appearance
43:51
Speaker 1: of the eyes. Also keep in mind this is, like, what,
43:54
Speaker 1: the 70s or the 80s? So, like, Photoshop wasn't like
43:58
Speaker 1: it is today, clearly. The photograph didn't establish who the
44:02
Speaker 1: figure is, let alone that it's a spirit. But one
44:05
Speaker 1: person proposed as a possible match is the investigator Paul Bartz.
44:10
Speaker 1: That suggestion is worth knowing, but it isn't a confirmed
44:14
Speaker 1: identification either. The point is that a bright-eyed figure in
44:17
Speaker 1: a photograph still needs an explanation of who was present
44:21
Speaker 1: and how the image was made. The name Ghost Boy
44:24
Speaker 1: Photo tends to answer the question before we even get
44:27
Speaker 1: to ask it. By the time this investigation was occurring
44:31
Speaker 1: when the family was already gone... Amityville had all the
44:34
Speaker 1: elements of a story that people would remember. A terrible crime,
44:38
Speaker 1: a house with a distinctive face, a family reporting impossible experiences,
44:44
Speaker 1: and a photograph that seems to offer something you could
44:47
Speaker 1: actually look at. But before the best-selling book reaches readers,
44:52
Speaker 1: the Lutzes still had to decide what to do with
44:54
Speaker 1: the house they owned. So there is a detail about
44:57
Speaker 1: the aftermath that often gets lost in the dramatic exit.
45:00
Speaker 1: George did go back inside that house after they decided
45:03
Speaker 1: to leave. In his 2005 interview with Horror.com, he described
45:07
Speaker 1: returning on Palm Sunday with a parapsychologist, Dr. Heffernan, and
45:12
Speaker 1: a medium. They spent an afternoon at the house, and
45:15
Speaker 1: George said he was told the place had been cleansed
45:18
Speaker 1: and that the sign would be the smell of violets.
45:21
Speaker 1: He smelled flowers, but said they weren't the promised scent,
45:25
Speaker 1: so he didn't come away convinced that the visit had
45:27
Speaker 1: made it safe to return. So he had left, but
45:30
Speaker 1: he was willing to go back with somebody who was
45:32
Speaker 1: offering to help him. And the decision wasn't permanently settled
45:35
Speaker 1: just because the family had spent a night somewhere else.
45:38
Speaker 1: They owned the house. We can't all just up and
45:40
Speaker 1: leave our house and never come back. The belongings were
45:43
Speaker 1: still there. There were practical reasons to want an answer
45:47
Speaker 1: that lets them go home. And in George's telling, this
45:50
Speaker 1: attempt did not provide one. He said his friends went
45:54
Speaker 1: in on Easter Sunday to collect food and clothing for
45:57
Speaker 1: donations to the Salvation Army. An auctioneer later sold belongings,
46:01
Speaker 1: including furniture, tools, and boats. By August, he said the
46:05
Speaker 1: house had been given back to the bank. This is
46:08
Speaker 1: the part after the part we usually hear. 28 Days
46:12
Speaker 1: makes a very compact story. Buying a house, leaving it,
46:16
Speaker 1: trying to get help, and arranging for other people to
46:18
Speaker 1: deal with what you left behind. And eventually, letting the
46:20
Speaker 1: property go takes longer. The family went to California. According
46:24
Speaker 1: to George, they arrived in San Diego on Mother's Day
46:27
Speaker 1: in May of 1976. And Harry went with them. I'm
46:32
Speaker 1: pointing this out because the dog in one of the
46:35
Speaker 1: more upsetting changes in the movies, the 2005 film has
46:41
Speaker 1: George kill him. But George says Harry lived with the
46:44
Speaker 1: family for years after. In the original film, going back
46:48
Speaker 1: for the dog is part of the escape. And George
46:51
Speaker 1: also said they hadn't forgotten Harry in the first place.
46:53
Speaker 1: So all that's kind of just like made up. Harry
46:55
Speaker 1: was along for the ride the whole time. Meanwhile, Other
46:59
Speaker 1: people are trying to shape the account of what the
47:01
Speaker 1: family had experienced. And this brings us to Jay Anson. So,
47:07
Speaker 1: in 1977, Jay Anson published the book, The Amityville Horror,
47:11
Speaker 1: A True Story. And those last three words matter. They
47:16
Speaker 1: told readers that the things they were about to picture
47:19
Speaker 1: had happened to a real family. They're saying it's a
47:22
Speaker 1: true story. Publisher descriptions say Anson worked from about 45
47:27
Speaker 1: hours of recorded recollections that helped him explain where the
47:30
Speaker 1: account came from. But tapes of someone describing an event
47:34
Speaker 1: aren't the same thing as recording of the event itself.
47:38
Speaker 1: This book was a huge success. And keep in mind,
47:42
Speaker 1: the family also made money off of this. In 1979,
47:46
Speaker 1: it became a movie starring James Brolin as George and
47:50
Speaker 1: Margot Kidder as Kathy. And this is where the story
47:53
Speaker 1: starts getting especially hard to untangle. Because the movie gave
47:56
Speaker 1: people scenes they could see. And for a lot of people,
48:00
Speaker 1: that version became Amityville. Remember the priest in the sewing room?
48:06
Speaker 1: The movie famously swarms him with flies, and the priest's
48:09
Speaker 1: reported television account described cold, a voice, and a slap.
48:13
Speaker 1: And the fly attack was a film edition. It was
48:15
Speaker 1: kind of mixing those two stories, like the kids with
48:17
Speaker 1: the flies and the priest. The basement also became far
48:21
Speaker 1: more elaborate and dangerous on screen than the small Harry
48:24
Speaker 1: Potter space that George described. And the 2005 film changed
48:29
Speaker 1: Jodi in a way that can seriously confuse the two families.
48:33
Speaker 1: It presented her as a little girl connected to the
48:36
Speaker 1: DeFeo murders. There was no DeFeo child named Jodi. So
48:42
Speaker 1: they were trying to kind of bridge the two gaps
48:44
Speaker 1: between the families. The blood pouring down the walls is
48:48
Speaker 1: another example image in the movies that does not match
48:52
Speaker 1: the Lutz's description of the strange green material which also
48:56
Speaker 1: like we're side-eyeing that anyways and then the 2005 remake
48:59
Speaker 1: pushed the story in the other direction including portraying George
49:03
Speaker 1: as a threat to his own family and George objected
49:07
Speaker 1: that portrayal obviously there's no established incidents in which the
49:11
Speaker 1: real George Lutz attempted to murder Kathy and the children
49:15
Speaker 1: as depicted in the movie it also changes the shape
49:18
Speaker 1: of the whole story The. film suggests that what happened
49:21
Speaker 1: to the DeFeos is about to happen again through George.
49:24
Speaker 1: And that makes for a frightening plot. But it creates
49:27
Speaker 1: a connection the real evidence hasn't established. So the book
49:31
Speaker 1: and film business also generated legal disputes. A later court
49:35
Speaker 1: case over sequel rights shows how much commercial value became
49:39
Speaker 1: attached to the family's story and even to the name Amityville.
49:43
Speaker 1: A real place had become a title people recognized immediately.
49:47
Speaker 1: And the disagreement over whether any of this had happened
49:50
Speaker 1: because of the lucrativeness, is that a word? Was in
49:56
Speaker 1: big debate. So do you remember William Weber, Butch DeFeo's lawyer?
50:02
Speaker 1: So Butch DeFeo was the one who murdered his family.
50:05
Speaker 1: William Weber was his defense attorney. After the Lutzes, so
50:09
Speaker 1: the other family, the family that was haunted, not murdered,
50:12
Speaker 1: after the Lutzes left the house, they discussed a book
50:15
Speaker 1: project with William Weber. Weber later said the haunting story
50:20
Speaker 1: had been invented together using information about the murder as material.
50:26
Speaker 1: He was quoted in People in 1979 saying, we created
50:30
Speaker 1: this horror story over many bottles of wine. That is
50:34
Speaker 1: a direct accusation of a hoax from someone involved in
50:37
Speaker 1: the early conversations about the telling of the story. The
50:41
Speaker 1: Lutzes have denied fabricating their experiences, and Weber wasn't a
50:45
Speaker 1: stranger who happened to look into the case. As I mentioned,
50:48
Speaker 1: he represented Butch and had been involved in the proposed
50:52
Speaker 1: commercial project on his own. That doesn't make his allegation disappear,
50:57
Speaker 1: but it means we need to understand who was making
51:00
Speaker 1: it and what their involvement had been. Weber had said
51:03
Speaker 1: they created a horror story. The Lutzes said they were
51:06
Speaker 1: trying to tell people what had happened to them. Other
51:09
Speaker 1: challenges focused on details that could be checked outside these conversations.
51:14
Speaker 1: For example, the hoof prints. Investigators Rick Moraine and Peter
51:18
Speaker 1: Jordan checked the snow claim against weather information and disputed
51:23
Speaker 1: whether there was snow available on the ground. So there
51:25
Speaker 1: was no snow on the days that those prints were
51:27
Speaker 1: supposedly occurred in the grass. And like they checked weeks
51:32
Speaker 1: around it and it was like, no, there was no
51:33
Speaker 1: snow to show hoof prints. So there are other discrepancies.
51:37
Speaker 1: Barbara Cromartie, who lived in the house after the Lutzes,
51:41
Speaker 1: told skeptical investigator Joe Nickel that the old hinges, locks
51:45
Speaker 1: and other hardwares remained in place. So, for example, the
51:49
Speaker 1: family saying like, oh, doors are slammed. Things were flying
51:52
Speaker 1: off the hinges. Like nothing was actually broken in the house,
51:56
Speaker 1: according to the person who lived in the house after them.
51:59
Speaker 1: And they were still the original pieces, if that makes sense.
52:02
Speaker 1: So it gives a little bit more credence to them
52:05
Speaker 1: saying later occupants challenging both the experiences and parts of
52:09
Speaker 1: the physical account, like there should be damage to the house.
52:12
Speaker 1: The priest's involvement also became tangled in conflicting descriptions of
52:16
Speaker 1: his contact with the family. The reported television interview is
52:19
Speaker 1: part of the history, but so are disputes about his
52:22
Speaker 1: other statements. Even if you accept his account of a
52:25
Speaker 1: voice during the blessing, it wouldn't automatically verify Jodi, levitation,
52:30
Speaker 1: or every other incident that's in the book. So basically,
52:34
Speaker 1: as far as William Weber stating that it was all
52:38
Speaker 1: made up, the family had been in talks with him
52:42
Speaker 1: to make a book, and then that fell through, and
52:45
Speaker 1: they actually did write the book with Anson. So some
52:47
Speaker 1: people say that William Weber was just salty because... they
52:53
Speaker 1: decided not to do the book with him. And that's
52:55
Speaker 1: why he came out saying that they're phonies where like
52:59
Speaker 1: probably more realistically, they made a lot of it up.
53:02
Speaker 1: So one thing to keep in mind is that there
53:06
Speaker 1: are other people who lived in the house besides George
53:09
Speaker 1: and Kathy. They had three children in the middle of
53:12
Speaker 1: this story. So Daniel returned to his memories in my
53:16
Speaker 1: Amityville horror, the documentary released in theaters in 2013 and,
53:20
Speaker 1: He maintained that he experienced frightening phenomena, including the flies
53:25
Speaker 1: that we talked about earlier, but he also described George
53:28
Speaker 1: as an abusive stepfather. So in Daniel's account, some of
53:31
Speaker 1: the fear inside the family came from a person. Whatever
53:34
Speaker 1: he also believed had happened in the house, though, is
53:36
Speaker 1: part of the story, too. Christopher spoke publicly as well,
53:40
Speaker 1: and he challenged Hollywood's exaggeration while maintaining that there had
53:44
Speaker 1: been unusual experiences with the flies and but he disputed
53:48
Speaker 1: the scale of it that people saw in the movies.
53:52
Speaker 1: Christopher's 2011 interview with the Long Island Press adds another layer.
53:57
Speaker 1: By then, he was using the surname Quarantino, and he
54:01
Speaker 1: described being upset that the new adaptation kept bringing the
54:05
Speaker 1: family's experience back into the public view. He didn't simply
54:09
Speaker 1: endorse George's explanation. He connected the phenomena he believed he
54:12
Speaker 1: had experienced to what he described as George's occult practices.
54:17
Speaker 1: In his interpretation, the problem was associated with George and
54:21
Speaker 1: could follow the family rather than belonging permanently to the building.
54:25
Speaker 1: There were disagreements within the family, too. Christopher describes a
54:29
Speaker 1: falling out with Daniel over the documentary, and he said
54:32
Speaker 1: that Missy, though the youngest, stayed out of that feud.
54:35
Speaker 1: So we don't have one united family statement. delivered decades
54:39
Speaker 1: later with everybody agreeing on the details and what they mean. So,
54:44
Speaker 1: while the Lutzes' story became a book, films, and a
54:47
Speaker 1: continuing argument about whether the haunting happened or not, Butch
54:51
Speaker 1: remained incarcerated for the murders. His explanation didn't stay consistent
54:56
Speaker 1: over the years as we discussed. He also later claimed
55:00
Speaker 1: that Dawn had killed the other members of her family,
55:03
Speaker 1: so his sister, and then that claimed that he'd killed
55:06
Speaker 1: her afterward. And that was a claim from her brother.
55:10
Speaker 1: It did not establish that Dawn had committed the murders.
55:13
Speaker 1: Nobody believes that. And she remained one of the six victims.
55:16
Speaker 1: And his convictions stood. He also challenged his legal representation.
55:21
Speaker 1: In later proceedings, he accused Weber of forcing him into
55:24
Speaker 1: a false defense and being interested in money from a
55:27
Speaker 1: book or film. The court record describes the rejection of
55:31
Speaker 1: his allegations about how Weber handled the defense. It also
55:34
Speaker 1: rejected the claim that Weber had been pursuing commercial rights
55:37
Speaker 1: during the original trial, placing those discussions after the conviction.
55:44
Speaker 1: And that distinction matters when we talk about Weber's later
55:46
Speaker 1: involvement with the Lutzes story. It doesn't make his hoax
55:49
Speaker 1: allegation disappear, but it keeps the timing of those different
55:52
Speaker 1: disputes straight. Butch died in March of 2021 at 69.
55:58
Speaker 1: and the conviction had never been overturned. His changing accounts
56:03
Speaker 1: left people arguing about his motives and the events inside
56:06
Speaker 1: the bedrooms. They didn't replace the verdict with a finding
56:09
Speaker 1: that Dawn or an intruder or some sort of supernatural
56:13
Speaker 1: force had killed the family. So, this is where we
56:17
Speaker 1: come to my questions. Where do I land on Amityville?
56:23
Speaker 1: I also want to hear where you guys land, so
56:24
Speaker 1: please let me know, but... I think we have a
56:27
Speaker 1: much clearer answer about the murders than the hauntings. Butch
56:31
Speaker 1: was convicted of killing his parents and four siblings, and
56:34
Speaker 1: his changing explanation does not erase that. And I do
56:38
Speaker 1: think Butch did it. I don't think he had help
56:40
Speaker 1: from anybody. I believe he does have some type of diagnosis,
56:43
Speaker 1: like antisocial personality or something like that. I can't remember
56:46
Speaker 1: exactly what it is, but I don't necessarily think that
56:51
Speaker 1: he should have gotten insanity because he cleaned up He
56:56
Speaker 1: knew what he did was wrong. So I think that
57:00
Speaker 1: case is pretty much closed. But as far as the haunting,
57:04
Speaker 1: I feel like the way it gets discussed is that
57:06
Speaker 1: there's only two possible answers. Either everything happened exactly as
57:11
Speaker 1: the most dramatic version is told from the movies and
57:13
Speaker 1: the books, or nobody ever felt frightened at all in
57:16
Speaker 1: the house. But I don't think it's that simple that
57:20
Speaker 1: it's one or the other. So I think that the
57:24
Speaker 1: Lutzes possibly knew exaggerated a lot of things, the parents
57:27
Speaker 1: at least. And there's definitely some theories going around that
57:31
Speaker 1: they knew about the house and the murders there and
57:34
Speaker 1: were trying to make money off of it. So they
57:37
Speaker 1: exaggerated it all for books and movies and all of that.
57:40
Speaker 1: And there's some evidence too that they were actually maybe
57:44
Speaker 1: in a little bit of financial trouble, or at least
57:47
Speaker 1: the house that they purchased when they bought the Amityville house,
57:50
Speaker 1: the cost of it was double the price range they
57:54
Speaker 1: had for a house. So even though it was still
57:56
Speaker 1: a great deal on a house, it was still double
57:59
Speaker 1: the price they could afford. So maybe they saw that
58:02
Speaker 1: they could make something of that, but six people were
58:06
Speaker 1: brutally murdered in their house by their family member. So
58:09
Speaker 1: I definitely believe the vibes are off there and I
58:12
Speaker 1: would 100% believe if there was some ghost action going
58:16
Speaker 1: on there. Now, I don't think doors were flying off
58:19
Speaker 1: the hinges and that the devil was yelling at the
58:21
Speaker 1: priest to get out of the house, but where is
58:25
Speaker 1: the house now? The Ocean Avenue house continued to be
58:29
Speaker 1: used as a private home. Its appearance and address has
58:33
Speaker 1: changed over the years. So while the version with the
58:36
Speaker 1: staring window eyes that lived on in books and films
58:40
Speaker 1: and people's memories, does look slightly different nowadays. And it
58:44
Speaker 1: is strange to think of a place that large in
58:47
Speaker 1: our imaginations still having a kitchen that needs cleaning and
58:51
Speaker 1: rooms that were just used for ordinary things. But before
58:56
Speaker 1: we leave it, I want to come back to the
58:57
Speaker 1: people whose deaths started this story. Ronald Sr., Louise, Don, Allison, Mark,
59:03
Speaker 1: and John. We've spent time with the haunting because that's
59:07
Speaker 1: a huge part of what people mean when they say
59:10
Speaker 1: Amityville horror, but for those six people, this was their home.
59:15
Speaker 1: Allison's flowers on the walls, Dawn's toy monkey, Mark's crutches,
59:20
Speaker 1: those details belong here too. We opened with George's account
59:23
Speaker 1: of a night when the house seemed to have become
59:26
Speaker 1: impossible to live in, And what we end with is
59:29
Speaker 1: a documented family murder and a haunting story whose most
59:33
Speaker 1: frightening claims remain disputed. The case has a verdict. The
59:37
Speaker 1: haunting has very competing accounts. And the house has a
59:41
Speaker 1: reputation that lasted far longer than 28 days that the
59:44
Speaker 1: Lutzes spent there. I'd love to hear which part stayed
59:47
Speaker 1: with you. You can tell me in the broadcast channel
59:51
Speaker 1: on Instagram or send me a message. You can email me.
59:55
Speaker 1: You can find me on social media. And if you
59:58
Speaker 1: know someone who loves a spooky rabbit hole, share this
1:00:00
Speaker 1: episode with them. Also, if you're listening, thank you so much.
1:00:04
Speaker 1: If you could leave a review, throw in a star rating.
1:00:09
Speaker 1: Five is the best, but I'll take whatever you're going
1:00:11
Speaker 1: to throw my way. And with that, I'm Kat. And
1:00:17
Speaker 1: this has been Kat Has Questions. Stay curious. Thanks for
1:00:24
Speaker 1: listening to Kat Has Questions. If you liked this episode...
1:00:27
Speaker 1: follow the show and share it with someone who loves
1:00:29
Speaker 1: a good spiral. See you next week.