The Amityville Horror (9 page)

He thought Missy was acting strangely. Did he really see a pig in her window the other night? And where was Jimmy's money? How could it simply disappear in front of them?

George finished his beer and signaled for another. His eyes returned to his image in the mirror. He recalled now, earlier that week, he'd been sitting like a dummy in front of the fireplace, then standing and staring in the boathouse. Why? And now this business with that red room in the basement. What the hell was that all about? Well, tomorrow he'd begin to dig into the background of his house. The first place to do that would be the Amityville Real Estate Tax Assessment Office, where he could look at the record of improvements that applied to the property at 112 Ocean Avenue.

"Yeah," be muttered to himself, "and I got to get to the bank and cover that check. Can't let that bounce." George drank down the last of his second beer. At first he didn't notice the bartender standing in front of him. Then he looked up and saw the man waiting. George covered his glass with his hand to signal that he didn't want another.

"Excuse me, mister," said the bartender. "You passing through?"

"No," answered George. "I live here in Amityville. We just moved in."

The bartender nodded. "Well, you are a dead ringer for a young feller from around here. For a moment I thought you was him." He rang up George's money. "He's away now. Won't be back for a while." He put the change on the bar. "Maybe never."

George took the money and shrugged. People were always mistaking him for someone else they knew. Maybe it was the beard. A lot of guys wore them these days. "Well, see you around." He headed for the entrance to The Witches' Brew.

The bartender nodded again. "Yeah, drop in again."

George was at the door. "Hey!" asked the bartender. "By the way, where'd you move into?"

George stopped, looked back, and pointed toward the general direction of the west. "Oh, just a couple of streets from here. On Ocean."

The bartender felt George's used beer glass slipping from his hand. When he heard George's final remark, "112 Ocean Avenue," it dropped from his hand and crashed on the floor.

Kathy was waiting for George to come home. She sat in the livingroom by the Christmas tree, not wanting to be in the kitchen nook by herself for fear of meeting up with that invisible something that reeked of perfume. The children were up in the boys' bedroom, watching television. They had been quiet most of the afternoon, absorbed in an old movie. By the delighted laughter that drifted down to her, Kathy was sure it was Abbott and Costello.

Now she was trying to concentrate on where Jimmy's money could be. Again Kathy and George bad gone over every square inch of the kitchen, foyer, living and dining rooms, and closets looking for the envelope. It couldn't just have vanished into thin air! No one could have possibly been in the house to take it. Where the devil could it have gone?

Kathy thought about the presence in the kitchen and shuddered. She forced her mind to think of other rooms in the house. The sewing room? The red room in the basement? She began to get out of her chair, then stopped. Kathy was afraid to go down there alone now. Anyway, she thought, sitting back down, she and George hadn't seen anything but the red paint when they were in there.

She looked at her watch. It was almost four o'clock. Where was George? He bad been gone over an hour. Then, out of the comer of her right eye, she saw movement.

One of Kathy's first Christmas gifts to George had been a huge, four-foot ceramic lion, crouched, ready to leap upon an unseen victim, and painted in realistic colors. George had thought it a pretty piece and had moved it to the livingroom, where it now sat on a large table beside his chair near the fireplace.

When Kathy turned and looked fully at the sculpture, she was sure she had seen it move a few inches closer toward her!

After Sergeant Gionfriddo left Father Mancuso's apartment that afternoon, the priest became angry with himself. He hated the way he was handling the Lutz situation and resolved to break his obsession with the whole affair. For the next several hours he dove into issues that were coming up in Court the following week, poring over caseloads that had piled up.

Realizing he had important decisions to make that would affect people's lives, he now cleared his mind of abstractions like Gionfriddo's unsatisfactory explanation of the DeFeo murders and the doubts he had about the Lutzes' safety in that house. As he worked, he slowly became aware that he was regaining his strength. The weakness he had felt in the wintry air was gone. It was now after six, he was hungry, and he reminded himself that he hadn't had anything to eat or drink since that cup of tea with Gionfriddo.

Father Mancuso put down a file, stretched his body, and went into the kitchenette. In the livingroom, the telephone rang. It was his private number. He picked it up and said "Hello?" There was no answer, only static crackling from the receiver.

The priest felt a chill run through his frame. As he held the telephone in his hand, he began to perspire, recalling his last call with George Lutz.

George was listening to the sharp, snapping pops on his own telephone. It had rung while he was in the kitchen with Kathy and the children. Finally, after no one answered his repeated hellos, George slammed the receiver back on the hook.

"How do you like that? Some wise guy's on the other end playing games!" Kathy looked up at her husband. They were eating supper, George had shown up just a few moments before. He told her he had taken a very long walk around the town and he was convinced the street they lived on in Amityville was the nicest.

Kathy thought George looked better for having gotten out of the house. She felt foolish about wanting to mention the lion and forgot,the incident now that George was upset again. "What happened?" she asked.

"There was no one on the other end, that's what happened. It was just a lot of static." He started to sit down again at the table.

"You know, it was just like the other time when I tried to talk to Father Mancuso. I wonder if he's trying to reach us?" George went back to the telephone and dialed the priest's private number.

He waited until it had rung ten times. There was no answer. George looked at the electric clock over the kitchen sink. It was exactly seven. He shivered a little. "Don't you think it's getting chilly in here again, Kathy?"

Father Mancuso had just taken his temperature. It was up to 102 degrees. "Oh, no," he moaned, "not that again!" He began to take his pulse, holding a finger on his wrist. The priest started to count when the big hand of his watch was exactly on twelve. He noted it was seven o'clock.

In one minute's time, his heart beat one hundred and twenty times! Normally Father Mancuso's pulse ran about 80 beats per minute. He knew he was going to be sick again.

George left the kitchen for the livingroom. "I'd better put some more wood into the fireplace," he told Kathy.

She watched her husband shamble out of the kitchen. Kathy began to get that depressed feeling again. Then she heard a loud crash from the livingroom. It was George!

"Who the hell left this goddamned Eon on the floor? It almost killed me!"

11 December 29 to 30 -The next morning Monday, George's ankle was stiff. He had taken a nasty tumble over the porcelain lion and fallen heavily against some of the logs by the fireplace. He also had a cut over his right eye, but it hadn't bled much after Kathy put a Band-Aid on it. What disturbed Kathy was the clear imprint of teethmarks on his ankle! George limped out to his 1974 Ford van and had trouble turning over the cold motor. With temperatures in the low twenties, George knew he could anticipate ignition problems. But finally he got the van going and was headed across the Island toward Syosset. His first order of business was to cover the check he had written to the Astoria Manor. That meant drawing funds from the account of William H. Parry, Inc., his land surveying business.

Halfway to Syosset, on the Sunrise Highway, George felt a bump in the back of the van. He pulled over and inspected the rear end. One of the shock absorbers had come loose and fallen off. George was puzzled. This was a mishap that might occur after the shocks were old and worn, if then, but the Ford had gone only 26,000 miles. He drove on again intending to replace the part once he returned to Amityville.

After George drove off that morning, Kathy's mother called to tell her that she had received a card from Jimmy and Carey in Bermuda. "Why don't you bring the children over to my house for a while?" Jimmy's car was still in the driveway, but Kathy didn't feel like leaving home. She said she still had a load of laundry to do, but that she and George might come over New Year's Eve. They had made no plans as yet, and she would ask George when he came back.

Kathy hung up and looked around, feeling at a loss as to what she should do next. The depressed feeling from the day before was still with her, and she was afraid to remain alone in the kitchen or go down to the washing machines in the basement. After the ceramic lion incident, Kathy also hesitated about going into the livingroom. She finally wound up going upstairs to be near the children. With them, she thought, she wouldn't feel so alone and frightened.

Kathy looked in on Missy in her bedroom and Danny and Chris in theirs before going into her own room and lying down. She had been on the bed, dozing, for about fifteen minutes, when she began to hear noises coming from the sewing room across the hall. It sounded as if someone was opening and closing a window.

Kathy got off the bed and went to the sewing room door. It was still shut. She could see that Missy was in her own bedroom and she could hear the boys running around on the floor above.

She listened. Behind the closed door, the sounds continued. Kathy stared at the door, but did not dare open it. She turned around and went back to her bedroom and got back on the bed, pulling the cover up over her head.

In Syosset, George found a caller waiting for him. The man introduced himself as an inspector from the Internal Revenue Service and explained he was there to examine the company's books and past tax returns. George called his accountant. The IRS agent spoke with him and made an appointment to return on January 7th.

After the agent left, George got on with his priorities: withdrawing five hundred dollars from the William H. Parry, Inc., account and depositing it in his personal checking account; going over the plans that had been completed for several land surveys; deciding how to handle the few assignments that had come into the office since he had been away; and then doing some research into the DeFeo family and the background of 112 Ocean Avenue.

When the men on his staff asked him why he'd been out so long, George told them only that he had been sick. He knew that was untrue, but what other explanation would make any sense? By on,- o'clock, George had completed his duties in Syosset. He planned to make one more stop before heading back to Amityville.

Long Island's largest daily newspaper, in pages of advertising and circulation, is Newsday. George reasoned that if there was any place where he could learn some facts about the DeFeos, Newsday's Garden City office would be the most logical starting point.

He was referred to the microfilm department, where a clerk checked the cross-index files for the dates of the DeFeo murders and Ronnie's trial. George only vaguely recalled the details of the way the son had slaughtered the whole family, but he did remember that the trial had been held in Riverhead, Long Island, sometime in the fall of 1975.

George put the microfilm of the newspaper into the reader and ran it down until he came to November 14, 1974. One of the first items he noticed was a photograph taken of Ronnie DeFeo at the time of his arrest, the morning after the discovery of his family's bodies at 112 Ocean Avenue. The bearded twenty-four-year-old face staring back at him from the picture could have been his own! He was about to read on, when it hit George that this was the face he had seen fleetingly on the closet wall in his basement!

The first articles told how Ronnie had run into a bar near his home, calling for help, saying that someone had killed his parents, brothers, and sisters. With two friends, Ronald DeFco returned to his house where they found Ronald, Sr., 43; Louise, 42; Allison, 13; Dawn, 18; Mark, 11; and John, 9. All were in their beds, all shot in the back.

The story continued that at the time of DeFeo's arrest the following morning, Amityville police said that the motives for the murders were a $200,000 life insurance policy and a strongbox filled with cash hidden in his parents' bedroom closet.

The last item explained that when the prosecution was ready, the trial would be held in the State Supreme Court at Riverhead.

George inserted another microfilm reel, this one containing the day-by-day record of the seven-week trial held from September through November. The record included charges of police brutality in forcing a confession from Ronnie DeFeo, and went on to attorney William Weber's parading psychiatrists to the stand to substantiate his plea of Ronnie's insanity. However, the jury found the youth sane and guilty of murder. Imposing a sentence of six consecutive life terms, State Supreme Court Justice Thomas Salk called the killings the "most heinous and abhorrent crimes."

George left the Newsday offices, thinking of the Coroner's report that pinpointed the time of the DeFeos' deaths at about 3:15 in the morning. That was the exact moment George had been waking since they'd been in the house! He would have to tell Kathy.

George also wondered if the DeFeos had used the red room in the basement as a secret hideaway for their money. As he drove back to Amityville, George was so absorbed in thought that he never noticed or heard his left tire wobbling.

As he stopped for a red light on Route 110, another car pulled alongside. The driver leaned over and opened his window on the right side. He tooted his horn to catch George's attention, then yelled that George's wheel was coming off!

George got out and examined the wheel. All the bolts were loose. George could feel them turn easily in his fingers. With his windows closed he had dimly heard the racket, but being wrapped up in his thoughts, he just never considered it was coming from his car.