The Amityville Murders

One whole year before the Lutzes' arrival in Amityville, at the infamous house on 112 Ocean Avenue portrayed in The Amityville Horror (1979), the eldest son of Ronald and Louise DeFeo--the troubled twenty-three-year-old, Ronald "Butch" DeFeo Jr.--grabbed a powerful .35 calibre lever-action rifle, and executed his parents and his four unsuspecting siblings in their sleep. Claiming that indefatigable and penetrating "voices" compelled him to perform the atrocious deed, DeFeo Jr. was found guilty on six counts of second-degree murder and, until now, he remains in the maximum-security Sullivan Correctional Facility, New York. However, a thick mystery shrouds the gruesome findings of the police. Did Ronald, indeed, plant the seeds of evil in the notorious Amityville House?—Nick Riganas