The Devil I Know: My Haunting Journey with Ronnie DeFeo and the True Story ofthe Amityville Murders (3 page)

I’d watch her perform her rituals. She would be dressed in black, wearing a veil and gloves, one celebrity after another in our house, connecting with her spirit, being absorbed by her until she released them back into the normal. I’d feel something blowing in—blowing through—the walls.

Mary and her own mother, Josephine Maria, who lived with us, operated a funeral parlor out of our house. There
was an embalming room in the rear of the place that was always occupied by one corpse or another. After a while, you got used to it. People would say Mary’s embalming work was so fine it looked as though she brought people back to life unmarred by death. She would prepare the bodies with the mirrors covered and music playing.

Sometimes, when she wasn’t working, she’d play the piano, and I would watch from the top steps. My father, Andrew Palermo (he used her name)—the tranquil Blackfoot medicine man to her Sicilian voodoo priestess, the diligent Canadian steelworker to her hot-blooded Creole—would sit and listen. His tough features would be softened by her sweet chords.

They called Dad “The Bull.” He wore a size sixteen shoe and walked like a silverback, but he never raised his voice. Dad had once shot himself in the foot just to see if it would hurt. Another time he’d had a piece of metal pierce his shoulder clean through, and he still made it home for dinner. The man was
tough
. But when Mary touched the keys, he changed. He’d just sit, listening. In Creole he would murmur, “My beloved,” and she would keep playing, a smile on her face.

Joanne had done
her usual digging, and had unearthed the story of a nightmare.

On November 13, 1974, in Amityville, New York, Ronnie DeFeo had been taken into police custody after it was discovered that both of his parents and all four of his younger siblings, ages nine to eighteen, had been
killed in cold blood in the early hours of that same morning. The kids had all been found facedown on their beds, bloody holes in their backs. Ronnie was twenty-three at the time, an employee in his father’s Buick dealership and a known delinquent.

It was a story I’d been only vaguely aware of, since I was so young at the time it had happened, and it was so far away from my home in Louisiana. Even as an adult, I knew no more of the Amityville murders than most people, which is to say I was generally aware of the case because of all the horror movies and books that had come out in the years since the gruesome event had occurred.

Most of my work is accomplished through feel and rare perception, but a deep curiosity was still gnawing at me, and this time I felt I needed more facts to validate the sensations. Sometimes I see things happening long before they actually occur, and I know I have to follow the path set out before me and begin to try to fill in pieces of the puzzle. This time felt different. It was as though I was seeing both ahead and behind.

As Joanne continued to research the case and report to me, I learned that most of what I’d picked up about the story from all of these movies and books could essentially be ignored. The slim paperback that had started the sensation,
The Amityville Horror
, had nothing to do with the crime itself. It was a chronicle of the alleged horrors experienced by George and Kathy Lutz, who moved into the DeFeos’ house after the murders and moved back out less than a month later, claiming the house was a source of intense paranormal activities. The book, a runaway
bestseller, became a movie, and it was the movie that had transformed Ronnie DeFeo from an ordinary criminal doing his time to an altogether different kind of figure: a celebrity monster on par with fictional serial killers Freddy Krueger and Jason Vorhees, equally abhorred and scrutinized by a public that had become enthralled by his tale.

Apparently, the fascination hadn’t abated.
The Amityville Horror
, despite the self-assured subtitle
A True Story
, had long ago been exposed as a hoax. William Weber, the lawyer who had defended Ronnie DeFeo at his trial, had admitted that he’d dreamed up the story with the Lutzes one evening over some wine—despite the Lutzes having stood firmly by the story’s authenticity until their deaths two years apart soon after the turn of the twentieth century. These conflicting assertions aside, the stream of books and movies devoted to the subject had stayed constant over the years.
The Amityville Horror
, though built on a ruse, had become the stuff of pop culture.

I read as much as I could about the facts of the original case, about Ronnie DeFeo, the crime, the trial, and his ongoing imprisonment. Most of what I read seemed driven by bias, hyperbole, or both. Or it just went in circles. There was enough speculation about what had really happened in the DeFeos’ home that night to populate a library.

And soon I realized why this man’s name had come to my lips in the middle of the canal. At the time, we’d been only a few hundred meters from the DeFeos’ now-famous address, 112 Ocean Avenue. We’d been a stone’s throw
from the place where an entire family had been slaughtered.

One night, I was doing research on the case online. I had regained some of my strength following my bout with pneumonia, but the aftereffects weren’t quite gone, and I was still pretty run-down. I was about to switch off the computer and turn in for the night when something stopped me cold. I was looking at one of the mug shots snapped of Ronnie DeFeo on the night of the murders. I suddenly realized, with the force of a punch, that it was the same face that had floated into my bedroom more than forty years ago.

It was 1966,
and I was four. My older brother Billy had been told to look after me that day, as was often the case. When you’re the youngest sibling of six, you’re always the one being taken care of. I didn’t yet know that I was the strongest of any of us.

My father was at the steel factory, my mother at a client’s. Billy was in his room with a girl. A thirteen-year-old boy, even a smart one like Billy, has only one thing on his mind. My mom had a rule: no girls in the house when he was taking care of me. But the minute she drove off, it seemed a girl would appear instantly, like she’d merely been hiding in the closet. Maybe she had, for all I knew.

Billy was showing this girl an Elvis album and trying to warm her up for a kiss. I knew this because I was spying on them from the edge of my bedroom, down the hall. They were sitting on his bed. She had braces and
shoulder-length blonde hair. When I got too curious for my own good and crossed the hall to get a better vantage point, Billy spotted me and told me to go back to my room—he’d come get me when it was time for lunch. But he said it with affection, not annoyance. Billy had a big heart. He would save his comics for me, teach me how to put a worm on a hook. He taught me how to write my name,
Jackie
.

I went back to my room and picked up a doll. I had started having a conversation with the doll when the feeling of being watched made my nerves jump. I looked up and saw an enormous face materialize on the white wall of my bedroom. Along with the face came a torso and two arms whose hands were held outward, as though the wrists were bound together. As the figure lifted off my wall and began floating toward me, I sat paralyzed by fear. It drifted slowly toward me and hovered a moment, looking directly at me, expressing nothing. My voice felt choked at first, in the way one can never seem to produce a sound during a terrifying dream, but then my silence broke and I shrieked.

Yelling my name, Billy burst through the doorway of my bedroom, the girl trailing him. My brother was big for his age, built solidly, like our father. As I reached for Billy, I saw a portal open on my wall, a swirling field of gray. Billy must have seen it, too, because he paused halfway across the room to look back at the wall. The floating figure, which had reached my bedside, suddenly darted its arms out, reaching for me. I felt its touch, shadowy but horrifyingly real. Billy’s girlfriend was immobile, her
hand over her mouth, tears streaming down her fine cheekbones.

Billy grabbed my hand, tugged me hard, and we ran—out of my bedroom, down the stairs, and out the front door. Then we kept going, all the way to the edge of the lake a quarter of a mile away.

As we caught our breath, Billy looked at the girl and told her never to tell anyone else about what had happened. Together we walked her home. I never saw her again in our home or with Billy.

Though Billy had told the girl to stay mum, with our own family, we hid nothing. My parents had taught us not to keep secrets from one another. That night, when we told them what had happened, my mother sat silent. In Creole, my grandmother, sitting in the next chair, whispered, “The devil finds his way.”

There was something else my parents taught: don’t show fear. If we had a bad dream, we weren’t allowed to go to their bed seeking a reassuring cuddle. We were supposed to stay in our own beds and deal with the fear. If we felt anxious in the dark, no one went out and bought us a night-light; they told us to find the inner strength to cope. After listening to my story, my mother sent me back to my room and told me to go to sleep.

That was eight years before the Amityville murders occurred, forty-three years before I first set foot on the south shore of Long Island. Now, as I peered at the mug shot taken on that distant night, I realized I was looking into the features of the same face that I’d last seen in my bedroom while a small, frightened girl.

The feeling I’d brought home with me two weeks earlier from the canal still seemed to cling. And now, the same evening I’d recognized Ronnie DeFeo’s face as the one that had terrified me years before, that feeling seemed to manifest in tangible forms. Our brand-new refrigerator, in perfect working order, abruptly failed, ruining everything inside. Eggs cracked and oozed yolk; meats became rancid; bread purchased the day before turned immediately to mold.

Our longtime housekeeper, Abby, was at a loss. She’d been coming for several years, three times a week, morning till evening. She was a cleaning whirlwind, and we all respected the work she did and tried not to mess it up too badly or too quickly. But now we couldn’t do anything about it. She’d come on Monday morning, clean everything from top to bottom, then return on Wednesday to find the place a sty. We could only shrug our shoulders and apologize, explaining that we’d had nothing to do with it. But Abby dealt in reason. Like many, she believed only in what she could see.

That’s fine when the things you can see are explainable. But what do you do when they aren’t? Abby would hear my voice coming through the intercom even when I wasn’t home. Other times, she would hear children’s giggles that chilled her blood. Our pets, normally affectionate with her, would suddenly take to hiding when she was around, and she would have to spend hours looking for them all. And the damn beds. She’d make one, go clean a different room, then return to find it unmade again. Finally, she walked up to me one day and said simply, “There’s something evil here.” A few days later, I
found a cross and a protection medal between Joanne’s mattress and box spring.

Finally Will and I decided to go to the store and stock up on nonperishables, then investigate the issue once we got back. But as we were preparing to leave, we looked at Joanne, and both of us had the same thought. We need to stay right here. Even a slight tremor of anxiety in one’s child, no matter her age, is like an earthquake inside the heart of a parent.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“Nothing.”

“Something’s up,” Will said. “Talk to us.”

“I’ll be fine,” Joanne said, pushing us out the door as though we were going on a date. “Go. I’m just going to run a bath.”

“I’ll get you some coffee,” I said. We left, but I kept my phone close. Will and I didn’t need to say anything to each other. Our eyes said it:
Let’s just get what we need as quickly as possible and get back home.
At the grocery store he rushed up and down the aisles as though he were on a game show.

We were gone just short of an hour, our anxiety snowballing with each minute that passed. When we arrived back home and came through the door, a feeling of alarm seized me. I called for Joanne, but she didn’t answer. Will and I saw her bathroom door ajar. Will dropped the shopping bags he was carrying and ran toward the bathroom. I’m not as big or as fast as Will, but I was close behind. I was the first to notice the washcloth floating in the tub. Will was the first to spot Joanne.

She was curled up in the corner of the bathroom, sobbing, her white robe tied loosely at the waist. Her head was on her knees, the phone clutched in her fist. On the other end, I could hear Adam’s voice and his attempts to comfort her.

Will scooped up Joanne and carried her to her bedroom. I told Adam we’d call him back and then followed Will and Jo to the bedroom, where he lay her down on the bed and stroked her hair, asking what happened. After a few minutes the sobs began to subside, and she was able, in brief gasps, to explain the vision that had accosted her.

She had just slipped into the bath when she’d thought she heard us come through the door. But it couldn’t be us, since we’d only been gone a few minutes. There were noises coming from the kitchen—clattering of pots, spoons banging. Then voices, rising in tandem. Neither of the voices was ours, Jo realized. She had grabbed the robe and stepped out of the bath, still dripping, then sneaked toward the kitchen and peered into the dining area. That was when one of the figures turned: a woman, her face covered in blood, her eyes wild, saying she was coming back. That she was going to get her. Joanne had shut her eyes against the horror and ran.

I asked Jo to describe the figure. Attractive, even through the blood, she said. Medium height, graying hair. Italian looking. Wearing a red dress and pearls.

“Wait,” I said, and rushed to my office. I grabbed the DeFeo file Joanne had started to assemble and scoured the pictures she’d gathered so far. There it was. An aging
but beautiful Italian woman in a red dress and pearls. Louise DeFeo. Ronnie’s mother.

The next morning,
I went directly to my office and took out a sheet of paper. You can only ignore things for so long. I started to compose a note, but I was still dizzy, and too weak to finish. So I went back to bed.