The Devil I Know: My Haunting Journey with Ronnie DeFeo and the True Story ofthe Amityville Murders (28 page)

Though I’d explained my process a thousand times before, this time I was finding it hard to stay focused on the simple task of conversation. This woman’s voice was like a shudder, and I felt she was aging by the second, as though a thickness was seeping into her voice. She began to slur. Her words began to run over one another until she was making no sense at all. It was already happening, and, for the first time, I couldn’t stop a spirit from entering before I was ready. It was only after her spirit had finally lifted and I’d returned to myself that Jo explained to me what had happened. On the pad at my desk, I had begun immediately to draw roads leading up to and away from a door. I’d scrawled different versions of this same image many times over. The voice on the other end of the phone would giggle in a sinister fashion, then change into that of a lost child, then would sob. I have instructed Joanne many times not to interfere with the process even if it is distressing in the moment. It is a trancelike state, numb on the outside yet frenzied on the inside. As I continued drawing and writing and the paper ran out, she continued to slide fresh pages in front of me.

My eyes darted around the room, searching for something
or someone. In a shaky voice I had said, “Mary, are you there?” Even in the midst of transformation I would normally have resisted uttering such desperate words.
Let it bait you and you’re done, Jackie. Don’t let yourself be taunted. Don’t let it get into your head.

A demonic laugh had come out of the phone. “I tricked you,” said the voice posing as Mary. It had giggled, then roared. And our room in Brooklyn had begun to shake. Joanne tried to keep her footing as the voice said, “Why did you let me die? Why?” I had dropped the phone, but from where it lay on the floor, Joanne had heard the voice continue: “You coward. Your mother never loved you.”

The room had continued to quake, sending items in every direction. A book on photography I keep on the side of my desk flew across the room and struck me in the nose. Blood started coming out. Joanne, though shaken, had torn off a wad of paper towels and pressed them against my nose until the flow subsided.

Then everything had ceased, and there was silence. I knew two things for certain. First, it was back. Second, it knew I wasn’t going down without a fight. I’d often felt alone, as though trying to fight my way out of a shadowy maze. Every part of my life an open book to the devil. Blue-black thoughts dripping into my mind. The dread and panic came frequently, and most of the time I could repulse them. But when I came back quickly, like now, they rushed in with overwhelming force. I shook my head back and forth, as though if I did it hard enough, the wickedness would fly out of me. All these years fighting for someone else. I’d never stopped to think about who was going to save me.

I was sweating and seemed dizzy, Joanne said. I’d fallen backward into my chair and, as a click came from the other end of the phone, had come back into myself. Joanne had witnessed the flight and the return, and I now saw two things in her eyes you never want to see from your child. Fear is one. The other is sympathy.

That was the point when my conscious awareness had resumed. I’d looked down at the papers and all my scribbles, then at the picture of the woman. Across her face, I had written, in a different hand, two words.

Remember me.

After our night
in the B and B, Will and I arrived again at Green Haven with the rest of the production crew. It was the break of dawn, but the sky was still the color of a dark bruise. On cue, Warden Lee walked out, his armed entourage in their perfect
V
flanking him again, and greeted us. I returned his greeting and asked if there was always a dark cloud over Green Haven.

The warden didn’t respond to the question, but replied only, “He knows you’re here,” then turned, followed by his posse.

It’s hard to really get an idea of the height of a prison’s walls until you walk past them. As I followed Warden Lee and stared upward, the thought occurred to me that, when you’re surrounded everyday by four vertical cement slabs that seem to rise forever, you must truly feel cut off from the world, which is exactly how they want you to feel. The warden saw me looking up at the towering walls and said,
“Think you can scale that?” It was a joke, but I could imagine him saying it to an inmate in a much graver tone.

I’d been inside detention facilities before—Rikers Island, Bellevue—as well as state prisons in California and New Mexico. None had seemed so foreboding. Set periodically along the walls at Green Haven were gun towers, anonymous faces behind the guns whose only duty was to keep bad people scared twenty-four hours a day. A sense of menace pervaded the space, chilling me.

But as we went deeper into the prison, my feeling of dread began to change into a dreamlike, nearly fantastical state. This was more like a movie set than reality. I had to remind myself that, for everyone on the inside of these walls, reality was of a type those of us on the outside couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

We passed though a gray entryway into the large main cellblock, a massive, walled enclosure. This was the administrative engine of the prison—offices for the warden and deputy, a staff room, the library—that hid the hub of the complex, a network of eight-by-twelve-foot cells laid out in long rows and stacked five high, each separated from the next by two-foot-thick stone walls to prevent inmate communication. Better the prisoners should have as much time as possible to focus individually on the consequences of evil. A man wearing a clerical collar came by and introduced himself as Father Fernando. It was obvious to me right away that his happening by was no coincidence. I sensed a callous spirit.

Will was told he had to stay behind, where he would be overseen by a few members of Warden Lee’s band. The
production crew was asked to stay behind, too. Warden Lee informed me that Ronnie had requested I go in alone before any cameras were on him.

The warden asked for my wallet and jewelry so they could be scanned and inspected. My wallet was opened first. Credit cards, subway card, health-insurance certificate—nothing special. “Wait,” I said, remembering another item that I’d forgotten to remove before leaving the house: a skeleton lock pick that I carry on homicide cases. The warden started laughing and asked me to remove my jewelry next.

I had two rings, five gold bangles, a solid-gold Mardi Gras bead necklace from the 1920s that had been restored, a chain with antique amulets, and my mojo bag, which I’d worn around my neck for this trip. Sometimes the mojo bag hangs from one of the loops on the side of my pants, but today I’d wanted it in a more prominent place. The contents of the mojo bag are more precious and more powerful than any gem. In the bag were the charms and talismans of my native ancestors, ashes and bones from powerful medicine men—the spiritual items that, after all is said and done, protect me.

I don’t allow anyone else to touch the bag. In voodoo, this is referred to as the bag being fixed to its owner—as in, you don’t want someone else’s energy disturbing the spiritual balance represented inside. I looked at Warden Lee and asked if I could wear my mojo bag inside. He paused, considered the bag, arched his eyebrow again, and said no. Though I felt like I was being sent into battle without a weapon, I saw there was no point in arguing.

Warden Lee escorted me through a series of heavy steel
doors and iron gates. An unseen voice over a loudspeaker would instruct me to step forward toward a door, which would then buzz open and, after I walked through, slam down behind me. I felt I was being guided through a disorienting maze, each passageway becoming narrower. The towering cinderblock walls loomed constantly in my mind. Even inside the depths of the prison, you could constantly sense the futility of trying to escape.

After passing through several of these checkpoints, I finally came to a dark room fronted by twin iron gates. To my left, a correctional officer seated at a high counter instructed me to place my left hand through the bars between him and me. I did so. The top of my hand was stamped. When I pulled it back I noticed only a number on it, fluorescent in the black light. An electronic scanner passed over my body, head to toe, back to front, then over again. The warden kept a close watch on me.

I was instructed to move straight ahead. I did, and came to a large metal door with a small slit on the side. I was instructed to put my hand through. I did. Over the loudspeaker I heard a voice say
There’s no turning back for you now.
I didn’t bother to ask whether anyone else had heard it. The heavy door swung open, and several correctional officers stood waiting. One of them, a woman, gestured for me to walk forward.

I found myself in a plain visiting room whose simple classroom desks might have made it feel like a school were it not for the armed guards standing in every corner and the four-inch steel bars and barbed wire covering the windows. I was guided to a desk at the far side of the room, as far away
from the large metal door as possible. I looked down at a piece of old gum that had become part of the cement floor and had the thought that this place felt as much a tomb as it did a prison. How many different feet had stepped on that piece of gum? How many had been imprinted on it, the essence of how many misguided souls? I stepped over it. I didn’t want to leave any part of me behind.

Walking toward the desk, I scanned my surroundings, the same exercise I conduct when called to a crime scene. Adam had taught me to assess the most important elements of any environment quickly. I detected the smell of a musty mop that had probably been sloshed along this floor days ago. That meant it was unlikely anyone had occupied the room since.

Everything began to slow down. I turned and looked at the clock on the wall. Each of its ticks sounded in my ears like a gong. This is how it happens sometimes: all the elements around me become a collective slow-motion montage, and at the same time, individual sights and sounds become amplified. It’s one of the signs that the spirit is preparing to detach itself for a period. We call it becoming separated.

I looked at the young guard who stood in the corner nearest to me. Beads of sweat had formed on his forehead, and now he swallowed. I smiled and said, “Good morning, Kevin.” He nodded; then, with a start, he looked down at his own name tag, which bore only his last name.

“How did you know my name?” he said.

“Your dad told me.”

His face started to become blotchy and red. “My dad is dead,” he whispered.

“I know,” I whispered back. “By the way, don’t get too worked up. You’re holding a gun, remember.” Kevin turned toward the window and didn’t look at me again.
He’s got a lot of heart,
I thought,
but he doesn’t belong here. He should go back to the family farm
. I pulled out the small chair from the desk and sat down.

Warden Lee walked over to me and said, “I’ll keep a close eye on DeFeo. Don’t show any fear.”

I looked him in the eye. “Mr. Lee,” I replied, “do I look like I’m scared?”

Warden Lee walked toward the opposite wall and positioned himself behind a desk resting on a slightly raised platform, so that it sat a couple of feet above the other desks, including the one at which I sat. The warden’s posse fanned out around the room. Two bookended his desk. One took a spot to my right, another to my left, and a third behind me. The warden sat, so that he was now facing me, along with the empty desk immediately in front of mine. I could see that this was a psychological move. Ronnie’s back would be to the warden the entire time.

In my line of work I’ve seen just about everything. I’d looked the warden straight in the eye and assured him I wasn’t scared. But I confess I was unnerved when, over the loudspeaker, I heard the name Ronald DeFeo called.

A slim man
in an olive jumpsuit entered the room, his hands cuffed in front of his thighs. As he approached me from the doorway, I took immediate notice of his perfect skin, shiny hair, striking dark eyes, and straight white
teeth. Then, as he came nearer, that image diminished and the real man was revealed: boyish features now hidden by a weathered, sickly mug and a frail figure. I stood up from my desk and asked the warden to remove Ronnie’s handcuffs. Warden Lee arched that eyebrow again, saying nothing. I repeated the request. The warden nodded at one of the COs, who walked slowly over to Ronnie and, with two other guards at his side, removed the cuffs. They backed away quickly.

Ronnie DeFeo walked up to me, the only thing between us a small school desk, and smiled. It was a regular smile, neither sweet nor calculating. Then he gestured with his eyes toward the white circular clock on the wall, the one whose ticks had become gongs in my ears. It showed that the time was 7:46
A.M.
As I looked up, the clock issued one thunderous tick, then stopped. Ronnie was still smiling. I couldn’t tell whether I was imagining that the clock had stopped the moment he’d looked up at it, but his smile had turned to a smirk. I sat down. He sat down across from me.

Apart from the fact that I was a psychic medium and he a convicted mass murderer, there was also between us the fundamental strangeness of knowing someone well without ever having actually met him or her in person, like longtime Facebook friends meeting for the first time. We had shared secrets and talked about pivotal moments in our lives but had never stood in the same room or looked at each other’s faces. Now here I was, sitting across from him, and his face reflected what I’d heard in his voice during all these conversations: the expression of a man who had seen—and
done—too much, wishing to be no more than an innocent boy starting with a clean slate. He knew, of course, that he could never be that, would never be that. He hated his father and mother. He hated his lawyer. He hated his old friends. He hated his grandparents. He hated Hanz Holzer and all the other opportunists. Mostly, he hated himself.

Ronnie leaned across the desk and turned his palms up. “I’m dying, Jackie,” he said. “Please help me. I want to die knowing I’m human. Let me feel what’s inside of you, even if it’s just for a minute.”