The Devil I Know: My Haunting Journey with Ronnie DeFeo and the True Story ofthe Amityville Murders (14 page)

“I’m gonna tell the priest you’re gonna claim my body. I’m tired. If it happens by the end of the week, just get ready to claim my body. There’s a lot of blood coming out. Just remember what I said. I don’t wanna get put in no wooden box. I’m shaking like a leaf here. Gotta keep changing hands with the phone. They don’t care about the mass in my lungs. I don’t even want to talk about it. When you got fluid in your lungs, you do something about it. They don’t wanna do nothing. They sent me for X-rays, sent ’em out. All the X-rays say is oh, yeah, it’s getting better. It ain’t getting better, it’s worse.”

The mass in his lungs had been diagnosed as fungal pneumonia.

“I’m urinating blood. It’s coming out everywhere. When I throw up, when I cough, when I urinate, when I defecate. Doesn’t matter. Anyway, I wanna talk about you. I know it’s coming. Believe me when I tell you. Just remember what I said. Let’s talk about you now. Did you get my card?”

“I did, Ronnie. Thank you.”

Puss ’N’ Boots, the tuxedo cat I’d had for twenty-two years, had taken sick a few weeks earlier, and we’d had to put him down. It was rough on all of us, especially Ray. Knowing one of your friends is passing into the next world and going to a better place doesn’t make it easier saying good-bye. Ronnie and I had talked about it on the phone. His condolence card had arrived a few days later.

Four days after Ronnie’s call about his bloody nose, Max, our beloved bichon, got sick, too, and died. Something was going on.

When you’re a
renowned killer, you are, in one way or another, a target, no matter where you are, no matter where you go. For better or worse, you are, and will always remain, in a macabre kind of spotlight. As Ronnie spoke of his growing illness and the desire to lie down and give up, I thought of the strange contrast between this person and the one who had bragged to me about taking on David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, with a screwdriver.

It had been not long after his first incarceration, and also not the first time Ronnie said they had crossed paths.

“Me and Berkowitz met in the Cave, an underground discotheque in Southampton. Went to the Hamptons a lot back then, especially on the weekends. It was either 1970 or 1971. When I beat the draft, I went out and bought all new clothes and everything. In fact, my father took me. We went on a shopping spree; he spent hundreds of dollars on me. He felt bad, I don’t know. I lost a bunch of weight. I bought leather clothes and everything. Leather suit. Pants, jacket. Tan. I bought a suede one and a leather one. Suede top and bottom. Powder-blue dungarees, designer jeans, with silver pins going all the way down the legs, and embroidered pockets. Now them jeans cost you probably a hundred and fifty dollars. Back then, they cost me forty, something like that. Not tan, beige.
Real nice color. Suede pants and the suede jacket. And then I had the smooth leather. I did it up.”

By the time Ronnie DeFeo ended up behind bars with six consecutive life sentences hanging over him, he had become an entirely different sort of individual, someone forever infamous for a single extended moment. Berkowitz was, too. Of course, people who have little left to them but their notoriety will lay claim to that notoriety like a dog clings to a bone, and if someone else, willingly or not, encroaches on that territory, they will make a show of defending it. Nowhere else does this principle hold more powerfully than in prison.

“Saw him again in Clinton. I think this was 1981. He comes into my cell and sneaks up on me, just like that, out of the goddamn blue. I pull out a screwdriver and I say, ‘One more step. You take one more step and you won’t have to worry about doing this time. You don’t sneak up on me like that.’ ‘Oh, I heard about you,’ he says. I said, ‘You heard about me? You don’t remember me from the street?’ He says, ‘I don’t want none of that.’ Yeah, 1981. Clinton, APPU.”

“What’s APPU?”

“Assessment and Program Preparation Unit. As in substance abuse, mental-health issues, and so on. Support services. It’s supposed to be a protection program, but it’s a prison inside a prison. They got their own industry, they got programs better than population’s got. They use the gym all the time. Population doesn’t. It’s ridiculous. It’s a program they say that gets you ready for general population in another prison. If you can’t go to population,
that’s where they put you, so you can eventually go back. Berkowitz went to court and got a federal judge to see things his way.”

“To put him in APPU?”

“Yeah, to put him in APPU. Very few people they let loose in Clinton. A lot of guys ask to go in there. They had to go to their counselors; commissioner’s gotta sign an order.”

“Why were you in APPU?”

“Because I was notorious. Because of the nature of my crime and the spotlight I had that I didn’t want.”

“Sounds like protective custody.”

“It was, in a way. Some people ask to get put in there for the fags.”

“You mean for sex?”

“Yeah. And I’m not talking about three or four fags. I’m talking about a good twenty or better. Lot of these guys have breasts. You know how many cops they were busting?”

“You mean having sex with?”

“I knew one of them cops real good, I mean real good—he’d have done anything for me. He’s down there having sex with one of them fags. I said, ‘What the hell?’ ”

“You were talking about Berkowitz, Ronnie. What happened with him?”

“He comes in my cell; he’s upset. I pull the screwdriver out as soon as I heard. ‘One more step, this is going in you,’ I told him. I didn’t know who it was. Jealous over a fag. By the time I got to Sullivan, everybody, a lot of the cops, already knew the story. Two notorious guys,
you know, they figured, showdown. The superintendent knew, deputy of security. But everybody liked me, so they made believe it didn’t happen. Nothing did happen; it’s what coulda happened. It just went to show I wasn’t the guy with the contract to take him out. Families back then were paying people to try to get Berkowitz. It was in the newspaper, everything. I don’t get down like that.”

“You mean the families of his victims?”

“Yeah. They all wanted him taken out, for that terrible shit he did. Truthfully, I got a few offers through the mail. Two thousand, three thousand, five thousand.”

“To take him out?”

“Right. I mean, these people must be nuts. I’m gonna finish this guy while I’m serving my own sentence? What do they think I am?”

“They think you’re a killer, so you’re happy to kill.”

“They don’t know what they don’t know. They just want him punished, and they’re looking to me for help? Come on.”

“And now he’s found God,” I said. Joanne had done the homework for me. David Berkowitz had become born-again in prison and was now preaching the gospel of love and repentance to anyone who would listen. A lot of people had started listening.

“Oh, yeah, he went to the parole board talking God; they forgave him. He’s got the federal judge in his pocket, I don’t know. He’s claiming he’s with Jesus. And now he’s the only inmate in the country with his own radio program. How does David Berkowitz get a radio program? You tell me.”

“Was the incident with the screwdriver the last time you saw him?”

“I saw him again in Sullivan, back in 1991. Yeah, January third, 1991.”

“How do you know it was January third?”

“Because that’s when I got transferred to Disneyland. Eastern. We were in the yard, and he was going on about the dog giving him messages. I said, ‘Oh Jesus, come on.’ They were calling me back to the block, but I stayed in the yard, with him. I was going to Eastern, that’s the sweetest joint in the state. He said, ‘Ronnie, you almost stepped on Sam’s foot.’ I said, ‘Oh, Dave, stop that crap.’ He got mad, I said, ‘What are you doing that shit for?’ He was squatting, had about six hundred pounds on the bar, I said, ‘Listen, man, what’s the matter with you?’ They called me again, so I had to go in from the yard. I told him good-bye. He said, ‘Ronnie, take care of yourself, you’re going to a better place.’ ”

“What did he mean, ‘better place?’ ”

“Just what I said. Eastern. It wasn’t just better; it was the best prison in the state. Big flags out front, looks like a big castle. They just told me to put my stuff in a bag, and they put me in a van. There’s no wall around the jail. The wall is a phony. They got the wall in the back. If you came to visit me, I could shake your hand through the window. Then they transferred me out of there, and they didn’t write down no reason.” This set Ronnie off on another spiraling rant about prison administrators.

“Ronnie—Berkowitz,” I said, trying to pull him back on track.

“All that shit about the dog, he made it all up. I was there one night when he did something in Sullivan. Somebody tried him, he picked up a baseball bat. The only reason why the guy ain’t dead, I’m gonna tell you, is because me and a couple of other guys grabbed him and the bat. ’Cause he was gonna finish this dude. All over a softball game. No, Berkowitz could play. He could hit the ball and he could catch the ball; he was a catcher. Like I said, we were all together; we were hanging out together. I don’t know about now, with this religion stuff. He’s a minister. He’s a little off. But he’s the only prisoner in the United States that’s got his own radio show. Every Sunday morning, he’s on there, preaching. He’s got a congregation.”

At this Ronnie laughed his laugh, a distinct, childlike giggle that he always cut off almost as soon as it was out. It was always unexpected both to him and to me, and I got the sense that he felt it was an unfair sound coming out of his mouth. It reminded me of a small boy letting out a chuckle and then realizing quickly that there was an adult within earshot who was about to tell him to keep it in.

“I’ll tell you something, he’s gonna pull something. He refuses to go to the parole board; he went one time and now he refuses. Fired the lawyer. I know exactly what he’s gonna pull. He’s gonna give it a few more years, and then the people in his church are gonna go to the commissioner or the parole and get him out. The people that he killed, he’s got their families on his side now. The mother wants to come up and visit him. Stacy Moskowitz or something.”

He was almost right. Over the years, I’d become familiar with the Son of Sam murders, thanks to Joanne’s research. Stacy Moskowitz had been the last of David Berkowitz’s six victims in the blistering summer of 1977. Neysa Moskowitz, her mother, had forgiven the killer, the self-professed born-again Christian, and had even become his pen pal.

“She says oh, he’s sorry for what he did; he’s found God now. You watch—down the road, he’s gonna get out of prison. Born-again. His own radio station. Jesus Christ.”

“Have you talked to him since?”

“In 1994, he sent me a message. I’m telling you, he’s a nut. I said, ‘Oh my god, here we go.’ I said, ‘I don’t need this; I don’t need him contacting me.’ You think I’m going to answer that guy? Look what he did to people. I mean, come on.”

“I heard he and Charlie Manson are best friends.”

“Of course they’re best friends. The two of them wanted me to get together with them. I said, ‘No, I’m not down with this shit; are you crazy?’ Before Charlie came to prison, before that shit ever happened, one of the times I ran away, I was in Greenwich Village. There was this broad in a red convertible; she wanted me to go with her. Next thing I know, she’s one of Manson’s people. When that shit happened, I said, ‘Oh my god, it’s a good thing I didn’t get in that car.’ I ran away all the time.”

“They seem different to me, Berkowitz and Manson.”

“Berkowitz, I don’t know, he’s fooling everyone with his Jesus. Manson, he’s out-and-out nuts. He poured lighter fluid all over a guy and burned him up in prison,
started yelling ‘Hare Krishna.’ They did a routine cell search on the guy and found a goddamn cell phone.”

“What?”

“Yeah, you heard me. He did that shit and more. And the person using the cell phone was sending out text messages.”

“Are you messing with me, Ronnie?”

“Messing with you? That was everywhere, Jackie. This cell-phone shit is not private information.”

Joanne, who was beside me, did a quick Google search of “Manson” and “cell phone.” Multiple pages came up with a variation on the headline “Charles Manson Caught with Cell Phone in Prison.” It was one of the few times in my life I felt naive.

“So now they’re worrying about him being involved in criminal activities. He’s in SHU now; they put him in solitary. I said, ‘Oh my god, are you kidding me?’ A phone in the man’s cell? It was 1969 that happened. I mean, come on.”

“What do you mean it was 1969?”

“I’m saying the case is over forty years old, and they’re still terrified of this guy using a phone. Notifying his people. Remember, he never actually killed anybody. He just directed other people to kill. Public enemy number one, man. His name is a household word in Japan, for Christ’s sake. I don’t know how to send text messages out. I know how to use some cell phones. A guard showed me how to use his once.”

“When?”

“I don’t know, a few years ago. He got fired. Manson’s
always cooking up something. I mean, he tried to kill Gerald Ford. With a .45. Something happened, the gun jammed or something. You remember that case? The man is insane. He told me in a letter if I ever had a problem to just let him know and he’d have someone in his posse carry out a subway special. A subway special is something you do with an ice pick. Before his time is up, he’s gonna do something people are never gonna forget.”

“How do you know that, Ronnie?”

“I don’t know that; I believe that. I have an idea of who he’s gonna do it to, so I’m gonna keep my mouth shut. I ain’t even saying nothing because next thing you know, the Secret Service is gonna be in here on me. The guy sent me a message a while ago through some guy saying, ‘Tell Butch I’m very upset with him because he won’t write me back.’ Wants me to be in the loop. Are you serious? Just because we’re from around the same area and because what I’m in here for, these guys come up to me and say we could start our own cemetery. I said to myself, aw, geez, you wanna be down with these idiots?”

“Do you wonder why these people gravitate to you?”