The Devil I Know: My Haunting Journey with Ronnie DeFeo and the True Story ofthe Amityville Murders (6 page)

Ronnie had been born and raised in Brooklyn. When he was thirteen, in 1964, the DeFeos had moved into the majestic, four-thousand-square-foot Dutch Colonial on the shores of Long Island, at 112 Ocean Avenue. Their new house was a postcard of the American Dream: two stories, a big attic that served as a third floor, a finished basement, a heated in-ground pool, a sun porch—the whole nine yards, including a boathouse on the river. Along with Ronnie, there were three other siblings: Dawn, five years his junior, Allison, herself five years younger than Dawn, and Marc, a year younger than Allison. The year after the DeFeos moved into their new home, another brother, John Matthew, would be born. The two young boys would share a bedroom, as would Dawn and Allison. Ronnie, as the eldest child, had the benefit of being the only family member with his own
room. And Ronald DeFeo Sr., Ronnie’s dad, would pound into the ground, on the front lawn, a now-famous sign containing two simple words:
High Hopes
.

On the evening of November 13, 1974, the DeFeos went to bed. In the morning, they were all dead, except Ronnie. Two shots had killed Ronald DeFeo Sr., one through his kidney and one into his spine, lodging in his neck. His wife, Louise, had also been shot twice, one shattering her rib cage, the other puncturing her right lung. The brothers, Marc and John, had each been killed by a single shot to the back as they lay prone in their beds, the bullets having ripped through their bodies and become lodged in their mattresses. The sisters, Allison and Dawn, must have stirred or tried to defend themselves, because they’d gotten parts of their faces blown off. It had all happened within minutes, around three in the morning.

And that’s where the story gets cloudy. It was clear Ronnie had burst into his local watering hole late the next day—nearly a full day after the deaths—and shouted about something having happened to his family. It was known that some friends had accompanied him to the house, broke in through a window, and discovered his family dead. It was fact that Ronnie had been questioned by the police in his kitchen, then at the neighbors’, then at the precinct, first for his own protection—he’d named a local Mafia figure as the likely killer, and they were worried the guy might be after him, too—then as a suspect. And once the police found shell casings matching Ronnie’s gun, they’d decided the more likely murderer was
the one sitting in front of them. Plenty of others had been questioned, too, but ultimately released. Only one man would have to stand accused.

The trial that put Ronnie behind bars forever started nearly a year after the murders and lasted just over two months. He had, at the direction of his lawyer, William Weber, tried to act insane, but it didn’t fly, and the prosecutor had eventually worn him down, just as he would wear down the series of psychological experts the defense would call to the stand to try to paint a picture of Ronnie DeFeo as someone unaware of his actions at the time of the murders. He’d done it, Ronnie had admitted in court. He’d killed them all, then had discarded the evidence, gone to work, gotten high with some friends, and, eventually, run into the bar trying to act his way out of it all.

That story hadn’t worked, either, because of the shell casings. They’d matched one of the many guns Ronnie owned—a .35-caliber rifle, the same type of gun that had been responsible for the killings. The discovery of the shell casings had prompted a search for the gun itself, which had been recovered by divers in the shallow waters by the DeFeos’ boathouse. It was a slam dunk. Ronnie DeFeo was given six consecutive life sentences. Since the murders were deemed one continuous act, he could serve the terms concurrently and be eligible for parole in 1999. He’d had parole hearings since, which, predictably, had gone nowhere.

Were it not for George and Kathy Lutz—and Ronnie’s lawyer, Weber—he might eventually have been forgotten, just another briefly notorious killer left to rot in jail. Instead, a few years after the killings,
The Amityville Horror
was released. The book went gangbusters, a movie followed, and 112 Ocean Avenue became a character all its own. With it, Ronnie DeFeo’s legend grew.

The Lutzes became minor celebrities. But people started to question the claims made in the book, in particular the fact that it seemed to contain a virtual kitchen sink of nasty paranormal entities, from beds rising up off the floor to a sixty-seven-piece marching band led by a pig with red eyes. The most fantastic parts of the story were picked apart again and again, until finally Weber admitted they had fabricated the story for commercial interests. The Lutzes, who stood by their story until the end, would soon vanish from public memory. But not Ronnie DeFeo. More books and movies followed over the years, some dissecting the crime, others examining the life of the DeFeos, still others delving into the personality and character of the alleged killer himself.

Three questions from the original trial seemed to persist. First, reminiscent of Lee Harvey Oswald, was the question of whether Ronnie DeFeo had acted alone. Certain individuals, like Herman Race, a private investigator hired by Ronnie’s grandfather on his mother’s side, Mike Brigante, believe that one person
couldn’t
have killed six people in their beds that night with a high-powered rifle, execution-style.

The second question had to do with the police procedure surrounding the murders. Several witnesses suggested that the police had done everything they could to secure a confession from the young delinquent, ultimately beating it out of him.

Finally, and most puzzling, was the fact that no one ever reported having heard a shot fired in the house, even though no fewer than five different people in the neighborhood said they heard the DeFeos’ dog, Shaggy, barking like mad that night while he was tied to the boathouse.

Regarding Ronnie himself, no single theory had ever really taken hold, mostly because he had changed his story numerous times over the years, starting with that very first conversation after the murders, in which he’d implicated a local mobster. Later, at the precinct, Ronnie admitted to participating in the killings but named different accomplices at different times. By the time the case got to trial, Weber had advised him simply to act as crazy as he could in order to try to get off on insanity. But only people who are truly insane genuinely come off that way.

In later years, Ronnie would suddenly point the finger at Dawn, eighteen at the time of the murders, as the mastermind of the whole thing. A major question in the courtroom had been what to make of the unburned gunpowder found on Dawn’s nightgown after the killing. Some pointed to this as evidence that she had fired a gun. But the question had been explained away by experts showing that gunshot residue can appear not only on the shooter but also the victim, if she is close enough. Still later, Ronnie DeFeo would tell the parole board he simply couldn’t remember the events of that night at all.

I, like the rest of the world, didn’t know what to believe.

I can usually tell a lot from people’s voices—sometimes
everything. But the first time I heard Ronnie DeFeo’s voice, it seemed strangely shrouded. The voice was high and slightly rasping, the agitated voice of someone trying to make a point and hoping anyone within earshot will listen. Even during our first phone call, I learned one thing quickly about Ronnie DeFeo. It wasn’t easy to keep him on track. At least, not on one track.

It’s hard to remember everything we talked about on that first call. Even saying “we” is a bit inaccurate, since it was mostly him doing the talking. He spoke fast and urgent, like a little kid desperately trying to make sure he doesn’t lose your attention. The voice was like a pinched hose that had been released, the words coming furiously. He spoke about being older and in poor health. He spoke about needing to tell the truth. He spoke about release—not from prison but from pain. I didn’t say much, yet at the end of
the conversation, when his allotted time was up, I somehow felt we’d shared about the same amount with each other.

After that, he began calling every day. I came to understand that our most productive mutual rhythm involved letting Ronnie talk while I toggled between two roles: facilitator, pushing him to go on when he got quiet; and moderator, calming him down when he got too overwrought and needed to be reined back in.

During our conversations, there would be periods of several minutes where I said nothing, only listened or offered words of acknowledgment to let Ronnie know that I was still there. Much of the time, when he got especially distressed, I wasn’t even sure he was aware of someone listening at the other end. He was venting to the air.

Of course, what goes up must come down. His feverish tone could only last so long. There were many times he would end one conversation abrasive and edgy only to begin the next one quiet and subdued. I soon learned that this pattern would become normal. On a given day, I wasn’t sure which Ronnie I would get—the tense, aggressive one; the somber, sad one; or something in between. Listening to him was a roller-coaster ride, though his expressiveness never failed to surprise me.

Speaking to a man convicted of killing six of his family members, I tried to place any bias or preconception aside. When I didn’t know whether someone was being straight with me, I trusted my psychic sense, which had been my sole true guide since I was a child. I’d had enough crazies contact me over the years that I approached every conversation with caution. Ronnie knew things about me, but not
the kinds of things people find on the Internet. He knew about the Surf Hotel. Almost no one knew about that.

I had two tools available to me: my intuition and my willingness to listen. Sometimes you need to pull words out of the person you’re talking to. Other times, those words come in an unremitting stream. With Ronnie, my task wasn’t to elicit the words; it was to try to make sense of them.

I listened, paid attention, and looked for the trigger points. One morning, a few weeks after our first conversation, I asked him, as I had in my original letter, why he felt we were meant to connect. There were two reasons, he told me. First, it was time for the world to know the truth about what happened in that house, and I was the one to tell them.

Second, he needed my help. “I’m being haunted,” he told me.

“Who’s haunting you?” I asked.

“He’s back,” Ronnie said. “He wants to finish the job.”

“Ronnie, what are you talking about?” I said.

“All my life that bastard was beating me up, and now he wants to finish the job. The week before everything happened, he busted a pool stick over my head. I come in the room and bam, right over my head. That shit hurt. He almost knocked me out. Now all this happening in my cell. It’s him. He hasn’t had enough.”

There was little linearity but plenty of consistency in Ronnie DeFeo’s stories. I knew that each of his rants, each little snippet, were pieces of a larger mystery. I tried to remain indifferent as Ronnie unveiled his secrets. I knew bullshit the moment it appeared, and I did not suffer fools. His words, though bizarre, felt authentic.

“Slow down, Ronnie,” I said. “Tell me about what’s happening in your cell.”

“I had to put a towel over my mirror after what happened last night. Four o’clock in the morning. My cell, you know, isn’t that big, so I got up out of the chair, was writing you a letter, I passed the mirror, all of a sudden I saw his face, my father’s face. If eyes were daggers, I’d be dead, I swear. His mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear anything. That son of a bitch.”

Thanks to Joanne’s expert briefing, I knew Ronnie’s father, Ronald DeFeo Sr., quite well. He had been, in many ways, the picture of the American dream, a second-generation Italian American who had scrounged up enough to buy into a modest Buick dealership with his wife Louise’s family, the Brigantes, and eventually had moved his family into one of the country’s posh spots, Long Island’s south shore. The quaint-looking
High Hopes
sign he’d placed in the ground on the front lawn was a message to the rest of the world that he wanted the dream to continue.

He’d employed his son Ronnie, who he’d nicknamed “Butch,” at the dealership, not because of Butch’s work ethic or desire to start a career but to try to keep him out of trouble, something for which he showed an unfortunate knack.

“Why did your father call you Butch?” I asked Ronnie.

“That was my name growing up,” he replied. “No one called me Ronnie. I only became Ronnie after all that shit happened with my family, after I got to jail. Until then I was Butch DeFeo to everyone. I guess he probably did it so we wouldn’t share a name. It was a serious
mistake me telling my friends my name was Ronnie, because people would call the house and my father would answer the phone and start getting pissed. ‘Your name is Butch; your name isn’t Ronnie.’ My grandparents, everybody. None of them called me by my real name.”

“Why do you think the face in the mirror is your father’s?” I asked. “What business does he have with you now?”

Ronnie went on without answering my question, a move that would become typical. “I started screaming for the guard, I swear to God. Then I realized the guard ain’t coming. I’m locked in this cell; I gotta deal with it. Drove me nuts, I’m telling you. He’s really back.”