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Episode: Episode 609: The DeFeo Family Murder

Author: Morbid Network | Wondery
Duration: 01:20:12

Episode Shownotes

On the evening of November 13, 1974, twenty-three-year-old Ronald DeFeo Jr. burst through the door of Henry’s Bar in Amityville, Long Island, frantically yelling for help and telling the patrons that someone had killed his parents. When a small group returned to the house with DeFeo, they discovered that not

only had his parents, Louise and Ronald Sr., been killed, but so had his four brothers and sisters—all shot to death in their beds with a .35 caliber rifle.During a police interview that night, investigators became suspicious of Ronald DeFeo. Not only was his story of a mob hit difficult to believe, but he seemed incapable of keeping certain aspects of his story straight during the interview. The next day, DeFeo broke down and confessed to the murders, explaining that he had hated his father and telling investigators, “Once I started [shooting], I just couldn’t stop.”Ronald DeFeo’s trial was one of New York’s biggest news stories of 1975 and attracted considerable attention due to his attempt to mount an insanity defense and his frequent outbursts in the courtroom. In the end, the defense was unsuccessful and DeFeo was convicted of the murders and sentenced to life in prison. DeFeo’s conviction should have been the end of the story, but it turned out it was only the beginning of what would eventually become one of the most notorious supernatural claims in American history.Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!!ReferencesCarter, A.J., Soper Susan , Dallas Gatewood, and Sam Washington. 1974. "DeFeo son is accused." Newsday, November 15: 3.Incantalupo, Tom, and Sam Washington. 1974. "A quiet drink turns into an invitation to disaster." Newsday, November 14: 3.—. 1974. "Six in Amityville family slain, each in bed, 1 bullet in back." Newsday, November 14: 1.New York Times. 1974. "Six in family found slain in bedrooms in L.I. home." New York Times, November 14: 97.Smith, Don. 1975. "Attack mounted on DeFeio's insanity plea." Newsday, October 25: 16.—. 1975. "Cellmate says DeFeo had insanity plan." Newsday, November 11: 6.—. 1975. "Cop quotes DeFeoL 'I... couldn't stop'." Newsday, September 24: 4.—. 1975. "Cop: DeFeo altered story." Newsday, October 22: 9.—. 1975. "DeFeo charges police beat him into confessing." Newsday, September 27: 13.—. 1975. "DeFeo defended as psychotic killer." Newsday, November 19: 17.—. 1975. "DeFeo guilty of family murder." Newsday, November 22: 3.—. 1975. "Doctor: DeFeo knew it was wrong." Newsday, November 13: 19.—. 1975. "Family clash is cited in DeFeo trial." Newsday, October 15: 22.—. 1975. "I killed a dozen others, DeFeo says." Newsday, November 7: 21.—. 1975. "'I left the room in awe of the horror'." Newsday, October 23: 17.Smith, Don, and Sam Washington. 1975. "DeFeo a heroin user, cop testifies." Newsday, October 18: 16.Stark, Thomas M. 2021. Horrific Homicides: A Judge Looks Back at the Amityville Horror Murders and Other Infamous Long Island Crimes. New York, NY : Archway Publishing.Sullivan, Gerard, and Harvey Aronson. 1981. High Hopes: The Amityville Murders. New York, NY: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan.Vecsey, George. 1974. "L.I. slayings suspect had used drugs." New York Times, November 16: 18.—. 1974. "Neighbors recall DeFeos as 'nice, normal family'." New York Times, November 15: 80.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_05
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Morbid early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

00:00:08 Speaker_00
You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.

00:00:14 Speaker_01
Kill List is a true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those whose lives were in danger. Follow Kill List wherever you get your podcasts.

00:00:23 Speaker_01
You can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C True Crime shows like Morbid early and ad-free right now by joining WANDERY+.

00:00:33 Speaker_03
Hey Weirdos, I'm Alina. And I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.

00:00:52 Speaker_05
Hello. Hello. How are you? I'm great. I'm tired, but I'm great. How are you? I'm also tired and great. I love that. Great and tired. Yeah. We did all of the tour, the book tour. We just finished last night. And it was so much fun, so cool.

00:01:12 Speaker_05
It was one of the coolest things I feel like we've gotten to do. Yeah, you guys were rad as hell. Thanks for inviting me, bitch.

00:01:18 Speaker_03
Thanks for coming. No problem. It was so much fun. I love. And it was awesome, but I think my body just like crashed at the end of it. It's just like, okay, go to sleep.

00:01:28 Speaker_05
Well, the thing is, the thing you have to know about me and Elena, which most of you probably already know, we don't fucking go anywhere.

00:01:36 Speaker_05
ever and we don't socialize with really anyone other than each other and like some family and a couple of friends. We're very, I'm yawning right now, sorry.

00:01:49 Speaker_03
I literally was yawning as I was talking. Yeah my social battery, my social battery has always been pretty No. Pretty little, doesn't hold a lot, and foo, it gets empty real quick.

00:02:04 Speaker_05
Mine used to be so much larger and in charger.

00:02:06 Speaker_03
Mine never was. It never was. And it's only gotten smaller as I've gotten older. Same. I have to pick very carefully what I, how I socialize. You have to triage. And this was a great, a great way to do it.

00:02:18 Speaker_05
It was a great choice.

00:02:19 Speaker_03
But now I'm exhausted.

00:02:21 Speaker_05
As of this recording, this motherfucker sitting across from me is a number one New York Times bestselling author! I can't believe that. I am so happy for you. I was- I'm shooketh. Literally pooping my pants when you got the news.

00:02:41 Speaker_03
It's, I still, it's, I'm like honestly speechless about it still. It's incredible. But thanks so much for supporting me, everybody. You're amazing.

00:02:50 Speaker_05
And just know that I accidentally tackled her when she got the news.

00:02:53 Speaker_03
She did.

00:02:53 Speaker_05
She side tackled me. I meant to hug, but it was way more forceful.

00:02:57 Speaker_03
Full side tackle. It's amazing though. It's amazing and I can't believe it and I can't wait to make more books.

00:03:06 Speaker_05
And yeah, it's crazy. Hopefully the next one is also on the list. I see it. I see it. Manifest. We all manifested on tour. Hell yeah, we did. And you guys manifested, I'm sure of it. You did it. And you're just talented.

00:03:18 Speaker_05
This is because you guys did it, though.

00:03:19 Speaker_03
And yeah. You supported me. You bought the book. You pre-ordered the book. You seem to be enjoying the book, which makes me pretty happy. And I just needed to tell you, you are appreciated. Your kind words have been unbelievably appreciated.

00:03:33 Speaker_03
I can't tell you how much it has meant this whole time. Seeing in person has been amazing and appreciated. That's been really cool. And you are the real ones. So I just wanted to tell you that. But she's on the New York Times.

00:03:43 Speaker_03
So I just wanted to thank you because you guys made it awesome. Yay! And you're the reason for the season, you know? You are! I think that's all the happy stuff we have. Yeah, that's all the happy stuff. I like it.

00:03:55 Speaker_03
And what we're gonna do is, we're gonna, this is like, this is a two-parter, but it's like a different kind of two-parter.

00:04:01 Speaker_05
Whereas, you know, it's still sort of, well, not sort of, it is still very much spooky season.

00:04:06 Speaker_03
But this is straight up true crime. This is straight up true crime, but it's connected to a spooky thing.

00:04:12 Speaker_05
Because we wanted to give you like a little bit of both this season.

00:04:14 Speaker_03
Yeah, you gotta get both because that's what you're here for.

00:04:16 Speaker_05
Makes everybody happy.

00:04:18 Speaker_03
It does, and I get it. So this is one of the bigger ones that we've never covered before.

00:04:24 Speaker_05
I know, it's actually kind of crazy that we haven't.

00:04:26 Speaker_03
Which is shocking. So, what we're gonna do here is we're gonna talk about the DeFeo family murders. Those are largely connected to what came after, which is the Amityville Horror Hoax. That is a big old hoax.

00:04:41 Speaker_03
But it's such a big, that's almost a true crime in and of itself because it's such a... massively orchestrated hoax.

00:04:47 Speaker_04
It kind of was, right? Yeah. Isn't there, like, court transcripts about it?

00:04:53 Speaker_03
I mean, that's one of the biggest hoaxes ever. Like, it's huge. Yeah. So what we're gonna do is in this episode, I am purely going to tell you the true crime tale of the DeFeo murders. It's really sad. It's really brutal. Trigger warning right off the bat.

00:05:09 Speaker_03
It's an awful story. It's, like, pretty gruesome. It's, like, gun stuff. It's rough.

00:05:14 Speaker_03
unfortunately like the some of the victims are children some of the victims are children so it's just really sad but and then in part two of this series almost it'll be a totally different episode but it's going to be talking about the amityville horror hoax and some of the real stuff that could be associated with it we're gonna see ed and lorraine warren again in part two

00:05:33 Speaker_03
They make, they always, they come to stay for spooky season. They do. They just like, they really involve themselves. So, um, so yeah, today we're going to be talking about the DeFeo family murder case. So buckle up everybody. Alrighty.

00:05:46 Speaker_03
So when 23 year old Ronald DeFeo Jr. borrowed his friend Bobby Kelski's car on the night of November 13th, 1974. So this was a while ago.

00:05:56 Speaker_03
It was with the understanding that he was just going to be going down the street, just a few blocks to his house and he was going to be right back. So since he'd gotten out of work that afternoon, Ronald had been trying to reach anyone at his house.

00:06:09 Speaker_03
He said he just couldn't get anyone on the phone and it was starting to make him nervous. He couldn't get ahold of his parents, any of his brothers or sisters. And he was like, that's not normal. I've been trying to get them. I can't.

00:06:20 Speaker_03
So he had told Bobby, I'm going to have to go home and break a window to get in. Cause he was really worried at that point. It was late. Damn.

00:06:27 Speaker_03
So he took off in the direction of his house and he was saying, I'm just going to go there, check on things and I'll come right back with your car. A bit later, Ron came skidding into the parking lot of Henry's bar where he had left.

00:06:39 Speaker_03
Um, and he had barely made it through the door of the bar when he said, Bob, you've gotta help me, you've gotta help me. Someone shot my mother and father. I can't imagine hearing that. No. So everyone in Henry's bar was just like, what the fuck?

00:06:54 Speaker_03
Like, none of them knew how to respond. And Henry's regular, John Altieri, said he was hysterical. He was shouting, everybody come on, somebody shot my father and mother. Like, hysterical, all upset, you gotta come now. Okay.

00:07:07 Speaker_03
So, of course, as he's saying that, like, you gotta help me, a handful of guys jumped up, went out to their cars, and they were like, we'll follow you there.

00:07:15 Speaker_03
So at the time, no one knew what to expect because they were like, are we really going to like walk into dead bodies? Like what's going to happen here? But when they got to their destination, the scene at 112 Ocean Avenue was eerily quiet.

00:07:30 Speaker_03
Oh, I immediately hate that. And it gets worse because it's eerily quiet. And then there's just an alarm clock going off from somewhere on the second floor of the house. Oh, my entire body just warmed.

00:07:43 Speaker_03
I, the sound, the feeling of that, the sound of that was just like, oh no.

00:07:47 Speaker_05
I have come home from vacation before and heard my alarm clock going off. Cause like I've forgotten to, to put it on or to put it off. And it's just, when you walk into your house and you just hear a faint alarm and you're like, what the fuck?

00:07:58 Speaker_05
There's something about that. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Something about something being like so still and quiet and then a very normal, Yeah, exactly. Disrupting it. A very routine, like, why? And it's the, why hasn't somebody shut that off?

00:08:14 Speaker_03
Yes, that's the thing. And when you get- But why is that still going? Like that, and that's the thing. They know that there's brothers and sisters in this house. There's four other siblings in this house.

00:08:24 Speaker_03
So hearing somebody shot my mother and father and then rolling up and hearing an alarm blaring from the second floor and no one's shutting it off. Oh my God, that's horrible. I'd be like, what are we about to walk into?

00:08:35 Speaker_03
So once he had the car in park, Bobby Kelski and John Altieri didn't hesitate for a second before rushing straight into the house, which like, whoa. Good for them. The other people who showed up were a little more cautious. They didn't run right in.

00:08:47 Speaker_03
Also good for them. Yeah. Ron, on the other hand, waited outside with them. That's interesting. Yeah, very interesting. I wouldn't be outside if I thought my entire family was dead inside. Nope, definitely not.

00:08:58 Speaker_03
It was Altieri who found the bodies in the main bedroom, the father and mother. Then they found the two young boys across the hall. And Altieri was later quoted as saying, the little one was in pajamas and had blood all over him.

00:09:14 Speaker_03
I couldn't see where the bullet hole was.

00:09:16 Speaker_05
Just I think of like a little boy in his pajamas in bed covered in blood is so horrific.

00:09:22 Speaker_03
Yeah. Well, while Thierry and Kelski searched the house, another bar patron, Joey Yeswit, called the police from the phone in the DeFeo's kitchen. He told the Suffolk County Police Dispatcher, we have a shooting here. There's a guy here.

00:09:34 Speaker_03
He says, there's been a shooting and everyone's dead. Damn. Which that's interesting to me, that phrasing, because Ron, you know, some people are saying, like, he's coming into the bar, he says, my mom and dad are shot. Yeah.

00:09:48 Speaker_03
He's still saying that when they get to the house, they're thinking it's just the mom and dad.

00:09:52 Speaker_03
And then they find, like, then they find the other two boys, John and Mark, but then this patron, Joey Yeswick, calls the police from the kitchen and says that Ron came into the bar saying that everybody was shot, everybody's dead.

00:10:06 Speaker_03
So in the commotion, the story got fucked up somewhere. Yeah, it's a weird little thing, and that happens a little bit. But Officer Kenneth Graguski was in his police car just a few blocks away from the house when the call came in.

00:10:18 Speaker_03
So he was the first one to hear it over the radio, and he went right to the DeFeo house. When he pulled in, Ron DeFeo was crying, and he told Graguski that his father and mother were dead, again.

00:10:31 Speaker_03
And before taking any statement from anyone, Griguski had DeFeo and Bobby Kelski take him into the house because he was like, whoa, like we gotta figure out what's going on here.

00:10:41 Speaker_03
And he had them wait in the kitchen and he searched the entire house to make sure that the killer was not still inside the house. Now upstairs, Grigosky located the main bedroom, which was a very lavishly decorated, you know, bedroom.

00:10:56 Speaker_03
It had, like, ornate furniture. There was a lot of religious statues. They were a devout Catholic family. The photos of Louise and Ronald Sr. 's five children in there. This was a very nice home. They were, like, pretty well-loved. It's a nice area, yeah.

00:11:10 Speaker_03
Yeah, Grogowski though was not, he could only look at that for so long because he immediately saw two bodies laying face down on the bed. Louise on the left and Ronald Sr. on the right.

00:11:23 Speaker_03
Louise was covered with the gold bedspread but Grogowski could see a large hole in her nightgown And the blood had soaked all over the mattress between them. I mean, it was a brutal scene. Ronald Sr.

00:11:36 Speaker_03
was uncovered by the, like, did not have the blanket over him and was dressed only in boxer shorts. And his right leg was kind of like hanging a little bit off the bed.

00:11:45 Speaker_03
And there was a bullet hole in the small of his back and a trail of blood was leading down onto his boxers. And they were both face down? Face down. Everyone was face down.

00:11:56 Speaker_03
Now, Officer Graguski made his way from the parents' room to the room across the hall, and he said he could immediately tell this was like a young boy's bedroom from the way it was decorated. He could see toys and games on the floor. That's so sad.

00:12:09 Speaker_03
And Graguski immediately saw the two boys, 7-year-old John and 12-year-old Mark, lying face down in their beds just like their parents. And he said the blanket covering the boy on the left had been pulled down to his ankles.

00:12:24 Speaker_03
And Graguski could tell his pajamas were soaked through with blood. And he could see a very ragged bullet hole in his lower back. The boy on the right was also uncovered.

00:12:34 Speaker_03
His white t-shirt was pulled up around his chest and it revealed a bullet hole in his lower back. So it's interesting how this is all laid out. Shot in the back, too, everybody, like lower back. Yeah.

00:12:46 Speaker_03
Now, after discovering those four bodies, Groguski returned to the first floor and called the station to report what he'd just seen. And he requested additional assistance, more officers. He wanted the coroner there.

00:12:58 Speaker_03
And as he talked, the officer could see Ron DeFeo out of the corner of his eye, he said. And he said, Ron was crying. He was crying softly. But he said, he could tell that he was also listening to what I was saying. Hate that.

00:13:10 Speaker_03
Like it was one of those things like the, and then like the look over to see what's happening. And when Gragowski hung up the phone, DeFeo said immediately that he had sisters that were also in the house.

00:13:24 Speaker_03
One on the bedroom on the second floor and his oldest sister, Dawn, was in the attic bedroom.

00:13:30 Speaker_05
And immediately it's like, I don't know if this is just me, but like you find your parents, you have four other siblings, correct? Four? Yeah. You don't immediately search for your little siblings when you find your parents dead? Thank you.

00:13:43 Speaker_03
Because if I found my parents dead, my first thought would be my little sisters and brothers are in danger. Right. I need to gather them all up and get them the fuck out of this house. Yes. And then call the police. Exactly.

00:13:57 Speaker_03
but instead you left the house, left four children in the house with somebody who shot your parents?

00:14:03 Speaker_05
Yeah.

00:14:04 Speaker_03
That doesn't make sense. And also you've just heard this officer now say that your two brothers are dead. One, you would be losing your mind.

00:14:14 Speaker_03
And two, my first thought wouldn't be, well, I have two sisters, one's on the second floor and one's in the attic. I'd be like, are my sisters okay? Where are they? Like, what's going on? Like, you'd be like, wait a second, like, are they all right?

00:14:26 Speaker_03
Tell me you didn't say anything about them.

00:14:28 Speaker_05
The way he says it is almost like you haven't found these other two things, these other two people yet. Exactly.

00:14:35 Speaker_03
So Griguski heard that, heard there's two sisters, raced back upstairs to Allison's room on the second floor. And like the boys' bedroom, there were two beds in the room, but one was made up. Obviously, it had not been slept in.

00:14:48 Speaker_03
And then in the other bed, Griguski could see that, and he was joined by another patrol officer at this point, they found the body of 13-year-old Allison lying face down. And there was a pink bedspread covering her up to her shoulders.

00:15:02 Speaker_03
That's interesting. She'd been shot in the side of the face. Oh, my God. And a large pool of blood had collected on the floor next to her bed. Oh, that's awful. Hers was a very rough one. Brutal.

00:15:13 Speaker_03
The two officers found the stairs that went to Dawn DeFeo's attic bedroom, and they went up slowly, you know, wondering if the killer could possibly be up there. Right. But instead, upstairs, they found 18-year-old Dawn.

00:15:26 Speaker_03
Like the rest of her family, she was face down in bed, covered by the blanket, and shot in the chest. So that tells you something different. She's face down, but she was shot in the chest.

00:15:38 Speaker_03
By the look of things, nothing had been disturbed in any of the rooms and there was no apparent sign of struggle.

00:15:45 Speaker_03
If they had to guess, both officers said it looked like someone had entered the DeFeo home in the middle of the night and killed all six of these people in their sleep in the matter of like seconds.

00:15:56 Speaker_03
Otherwise, and to this day, even though we'll get into everything, like, you know, Ron DeFeo did this for sure. But there is a question of how the fuck did he do this? Without anybody running out of the house or getting away.

00:16:08 Speaker_03
Systematically, no one woke up? Like, what? Why are they all in bed? Like, they're all where they were shot. Right. So, like, how did this happen? That's why there is like theories and I'm not saying they're like credible.

00:16:22 Speaker_03
I'm just saying like that's why people do question like was someone else involved here? Like was there another person? Like what happened here?

00:16:28 Speaker_05
I only know that he that Ron DeFeo did it and that like I don't know all the major details. I know all the major details. I don't know all the little details.

00:16:37 Speaker_03
Well, the two officers returned to the first floor, and Grigoski called the station again to report, actually, we have six bodies in the house.

00:16:45 Speaker_03
And they said there's no sign of a shooter, can't find anyone, just the DeFeo's only living family member, Ronald DeFeo Jr. Suss.

00:16:53 Speaker_03
Now, over the next few hours, you know, homicide detectives showed up, local and county, various crime scene technicians, you know, the coroner, tons of people are at the DeFeo house.

00:17:04 Speaker_03
And in the back of the house, they discovered the family sheepdog, Shaggy, but he was okay. Shaggy? Shaggy, he's very cute. He was tied to the handle of the back door. Okay. Shaggy did not sleep outside. That's not how Shaggy slept.

00:17:21 Speaker_03
Shaggy slept in the house.

00:17:23 Speaker_05
Tied to the handle of the back door.

00:17:26 Speaker_03
He was deliberately tied outside for what had happened. He was very stressed out. Yeah, of course. Barking like crazy, going nuts, all the activity in the house, like he was losing his mind.

00:17:38 Speaker_05
Sheepdogs in particular, too, like something happening to their family, it's their job to round everybody up. So he's probably like, I can't protect anybody.

00:17:45 Speaker_03
Yeah, like I need to go get everybody.

00:17:47 Speaker_03
and it is it's amazing what dogs sense for their family like it's wild like we have like just a little side note no it's true like um blanche in particular our dog blanche is obsessed with john like literally would crawl into his skin i always say she wants to live inside of his she does

00:18:09 Speaker_03
She wants to live inside of him, like she loves him so much. If you talk to John, she starts barking at you.

00:18:15 Speaker_03
Yeah, she doesn't want you to talk to him, but if John like pretends to tickle me or the girls and like does it, like he'll pretend to do it like, like, like, I'm coming.

00:18:28 Speaker_03
Blanche will sail through the air and like go after him like it like all loyalty ends there and the loyalty to like you are hurting the rest of my family or what I see that I think you are hurting she goes nuts like

00:18:44 Speaker_03
She is, but then the same goes back. If you pretend to hurt John, she gon' get ya. She is loyal to this family, ride or die.

00:18:54 Speaker_05
She says Ohana means fucking family, baby.

00:18:57 Speaker_03
Yeah, but she's like, even family, you don't fuck with family. And Sid, too. Yeah, and Sid will lose it. So it's wild how dogs just, they tell you a lot. Well, because you're their pack. Yeah.

00:19:11 Speaker_05
It's just innate.

00:19:12 Speaker_03
It's so crazy, like I fucking love dogs.

00:19:14 Speaker_05
Dogs are great.

00:19:15 Speaker_03
Dogs are so goddamn cool.

00:19:26 Speaker_05
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00:19:38 Speaker_05
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00:19:50 Speaker_05
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00:20:01 Speaker_05
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00:20:35 Speaker_05
Have you ever felt a sense of unease when you leave your home, wondering if everything's going to be safe while you're away? I know that I have. But you guys know it wasn't until that night with the blizzard. I was literally at home. It was 3 a.m.

00:20:47 Speaker_05
I'm just in my bed and bang, bang, bang, knock on the door. I'm like, who's at my door at 3 a.m.? What could they possibly want? They go away, they come back, they keep knocking, and I have no idea who's there.

00:20:57 Speaker_05
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00:21:52 Speaker_03
But so yeah, this is weird. This poor dog Shaggy is tied up outside to the handle of the back door. So officers searched every inch of the house and the property looking for any evidence.

00:22:06 Speaker_03
And by all accounts, there was very little, if anything, to be found. It was like nothing, they had been shot and this person just disappeared. And there was also no signs of a robbery or a home invasion. Nothing was missing or even out of place.

00:22:21 Speaker_03
So what would the motive be? There was no sign of a struggle. To investigators, the lack of evidence was very confusing and very strange.

00:22:29 Speaker_03
And the DeFeos lived in one of the most expensive houses in Amityville and would have been prime targets for robbery. But whoever killed the six members of this family appeared to have done so

00:22:41 Speaker_03
just because for something other than money there was no or an apparent right you know like and it's also weird to me i wonder if people in amityville are annoyed by this i associate amityville with the word like with the amityville horror yes so when you hear it in reference of just like the residents of amityville i'm like oh that's like a real place no like i'm just like oh shit i was just thinking that as you're saying it it is

00:23:07 Speaker_05
I was like, oh, Amityville is a town.

00:23:09 Speaker_03
Just a regular town. Like, it's not like a spooky town. It's supposed to just be like a regular town.

00:23:13 Speaker_05
And it's like a beautiful town. It probably is so fucking irritating.

00:23:17 Speaker_03
It's probably so annoying. And I'm sorry for the people of Amityville. Thanks a lot, Lux family. Yeah. And it's like, and like this, like, you know, so it's like, I always think Amityville is so synonymous with like, ooh, spooky. Horror.

00:23:28 Speaker_03
And it's like, I feel bad. Like, I'm sorry, you're a real place. Isn't it just like a coastal town? Yeah, I think it's just like a nice town.

00:23:35 Speaker_03
And this particular, we'll get into it, but they had to do a lot to keep people from coming back to this house a lot.

00:23:42 Speaker_05
Oh, I'm sure.

00:23:43 Speaker_03
Got a little annoying. I'm sorry, does the house still exist today? I think it does. I thought so, yeah. But it's been renovated. It looks a little different.

00:23:50 Speaker_05
It is a beautiful home.

00:23:52 Speaker_03
It is, yeah. They had a sign out front that said, high hopes. That was always pointed at, like this really tragic story. And there's this little sign that says, high hopes, outside. The DeFeo family had that out?

00:24:05 Speaker_03
Yeah, it was always this just like really chilling thing. Is that in reference to something? I think it's just like, you know, prosperity and, you know, all that, like, you know, good luck. I've never seen anything like that.

00:24:18 Speaker_03
Now, while canvassing the neighborhood, officers took statements from several neighbors that kind of helped narrow down the timeline of what happened here. According to one neighbor who didn't want to be identified in the press,

00:24:29 Speaker_03
She said she had gone to bed around 10 p.m. the night before and noticed that all the lights were on in the house. That's weird. And she described this as very unusual and something I've never noticed before. And at 10 p.m.?

00:24:42 Speaker_03
Yeah, she said that usually at that late hours of the evening, she said there were there were lights on, but that house was only like partially lit up.

00:24:49 Speaker_03
And another neighbor, 15-year-old John Nemeth, told officers he'd been woken up by barking of one of the DeFeo's dogs at around 3 a.m. Okay. And he claimed that this was, and he said it was very unusual at that time of night.

00:25:04 Speaker_03
The dog did not bark in the middle of the night. And he said that the barking actually went on for about 20 minutes. Oh, that's so sad. And then it stopped. So that's upsetting. That's really sad.

00:25:15 Speaker_03
And given that he was the only living member of the DeFeo family and the only obvious person who stood to gain from the deaths of his parents, investigators quickly turned to Ronald to say, what was going on? What were you doing?

00:25:28 Speaker_03
And in their interview with Bobby Kelsky, you know, Ronald's friend, Bobby Kelsky, they learned that Ronald was what Kelsky described as a gun buff. He owned several guns. I know, I'm only saying uh because of this case.

00:25:42 Speaker_03
In Ronald's bedroom, investigators found a .22-caliber semi-automatic rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun, a .22-caliber bank revolver, a ton of ammunition. But according to Kelsky's statement to police, Ronald's .35-caliber Marlin rifle looked to be missing.

00:26:02 Speaker_03
Hmm. Remember that rifle. Okay. Now a little past 8 p.m. that night, County Detectives Gaspar Randazzo, excuse me, and Gerard Gozaloff sat down. They all have very interesting last names. They do.

00:26:15 Speaker_03
Gerard Gozaloff sat down with Ronald for what would be the first of many interviews with Ron DeVeo. Ron told detectives, I'll do whatever I have to do. I'll help you in any way I can.

00:26:27 Speaker_05
Okay.

00:26:28 Speaker_03
And what's funny is like, um, I, I, I, I prod you to go like watch an interview with him. Yeah.

00:26:35 Speaker_03
Because you can see how he comes off as like, he's got this New York accent and he's like, you know, like one of those guys, you know, I'm just talking to you. I'm just talking to you about stuff. You can see how he would come off as very like,

00:26:50 Speaker_03
Oh, I'll just help you. I'm just here to help. I'll cooperate any way I can. I'm a good guy. I'm just a good guy over here, you know?

00:26:57 Speaker_05
I'm obsessed with what we're doing here.

00:26:58 Speaker_03
He comes off that way. Yeah. And you can see how if he continued that act and somehow got through it, he could probably get away with this. That's so scary.

00:27:07 Speaker_03
Now, when they asked who he thought could be responsible for the murders, they were expecting him to say, I have no fucking clue who would kill my entire family.

00:27:15 Speaker_05
I don't know. I could not think of anybody that would murder my entire family. Well, Ron could think of someone. I just need a side note here. He was 23 when this all happened.

00:27:25 Speaker_05
And I need you all to go look at his mugshot because you could tell me this man is like 45 and I'd be like, yeah.

00:27:30 Speaker_03
Yeah, he is. He's 23. He lived a rough life. Oh, did he? Yeah. Okay, so I totally had to interrupt him, sorry. Well, Ron knew of somebody who he thought would kill his whole family. Tell me everything. He thought of a guy named Tony Mazzeo.

00:27:46 Speaker_03
He said he was the best suspect for this. According to Ron, a faction of the New York mafia had a grudge against his family because of his family's involvement in mob-related activities. Oh, and he just immediately gave that up?

00:27:58 Speaker_03
He was just like, bada-boom. I'm like, uh... He believed Mazio, a supposed Mosvia hitman, had likely killed his family in order to send a message. Now,

00:28:09 Speaker_03
This sounds like, what, like, you know, we're like, excuse me, what, you're bringing the mob into here? But they weren't totally out of the realm of possibility when it was brought up.

00:28:19 Speaker_03
It seemed unlikely, but it wasn't one of those, like, you know, anybody else who says that, that you're like, the mob did it, like, really? Because according to the Suffolk Police Department's Organized Crime Control Bureau, Ronald DeFeo Sr.

00:28:32 Speaker_03
's uncle, Peter DeFeo, was a captain in the Vito Genovese crime family. That's kind of a big fucking deal. And had been known to police as a member of the Genovese organization as early as 1934.

00:28:45 Speaker_05
Holy shit.

00:28:47 Speaker_03
Now, that's interesting. I find that shit so fascinating. Very interesting. But at the time of the murders, Peter DeFeo was 74 years old. Right. And he hadn't been involved in criminal activity for nearly a decade at that point. He had kind of retired.

00:29:00 Speaker_03
He's like Uncle June. Yeah, he's just, you know, I'm just over here. Yeah. I'm just Peter DeFeo. Okay. I don't know. I'm not into this. So any connection between him and the murders was seeming pretty unlikely because like why?

00:29:11 Speaker_03
I don't think a 74 year old man could kill six men.

00:29:14 Speaker_05
I mean, call me crazy when things happen. But also like why? A 74 year old man killing six members of a family and like.

00:29:21 Speaker_03
And even if you say like, okay, maybe it wasn't him, maybe he did something that caused them to go after the family, that still doesn't jive really because this is an Italian family. We're talking about the Italian mafia, Italian mob.

00:29:35 Speaker_03
There is a code of conduct and one of those very specific things in that code of conduct for the Italian mob is you do not kill children. No kids. So this doesn't fit.

00:29:46 Speaker_03
Like it's just not something that would happen because like, you know, that is a thing. That's a real thing. So in his statement to police, Ron explained that the day before the murders, he stayed home from work because he wasn't feeling well.

00:29:59 Speaker_03
After sleeping for most of the day, he woke up early the next morning around 4 a.m. And he said when he woke up, he saw his brother Mark's wheelchair. in front of the bathroom door.

00:30:08 Speaker_03
I know, like, I'm like, this poor kid didn't have a chance to even get out of bed. That's so sad. And the light was on in the bathroom, so he assumed his brother was in the bathroom.

00:30:18 Speaker_03
Instead of waiting, he said he used another bathroom, then decided to go into work early because he was up and why not? Okay. After work, he went to Henry's bar and had a few drinks with his friends like he normally did.

00:30:29 Speaker_03
And while he was there, he called the house several times but didn't get an answer.

00:30:33 Speaker_05
Because you always call your house multiple times when you're out drinking with your friends.

00:30:37 Speaker_03
Of course you do. After a while, he said he became concerned and borrowed Kelsky's car to go by the house and check on everyone, which is when he discovered his parents' bodies in their bedroom.

00:30:48 Speaker_05
And didn't bother to check if anybody else was okay.

00:30:51 Speaker_03
Exactly, did not bother to check on his fucking siblings. He said he had to force the kitchen window lock and since he said all the doors were locked and he didn't have a key to the house.

00:31:02 Speaker_03
Now, back at Henry's, he gathered all his friends, he returned to the house, but he never went inside again.

00:31:08 Speaker_05
Now, to the detectives, DeFeo's narrative was a little confusing. Because also, how did the person get out of the house that did this to your entire family if all the doors are locked and there's no sign of forced entry?

00:31:19 Speaker_03
Yeah. Just wondering. It's a problem. They thought it was a pretty meandering narrative that he was giving. And both the detectives found it difficult to follow at points. They were like, wait, what? Like, kind of like us, we're like, what? You did what?

00:31:31 Speaker_03
Yeah. And while Ron talked, Detective Gazaloff watched his body language. And he said, he definitely had some interesting body language. And he said, but he also noticed some marks on his arms.

00:31:43 Speaker_03
And when he asked about the marks, DeFeo confessed that he was a regular heroin user and had shot up at a friend's house earlier that afternoon. But Ron was very clear that he didn't want the detectives to get the wrong idea about him.

00:31:57 Speaker_03
He wasn't an addict, he said. He explained he was a chippy shooter and only used drugs casually. I don't think you can use heroin casually, that's just me. But it was an interesting note.

00:32:09 Speaker_03
They just were like, okay, that's an interesting, because when you add that into it, you've got to look at it different avenues here.

00:32:15 Speaker_03
So eventually the conversation got back around to the family's supposed mob connections and the man Ron believed was responsible for the murders, Tony Mazzio.

00:32:23 Speaker_03
According to DeFeo, he had been doing some work for his grandfather's car dealership a few weeks earlier and was on his way to the bank to deposit several thousand dollars when he was held up by two gunmen. All of a sudden, this is coming out OK.

00:32:37 Speaker_03
And when he told his father about the robbery, Ronald Sr. didn't believe him and got angry with him. This is what he's telling everybody.

00:32:45 Speaker_03
Apparently, according to him, his father said, not only do I have to worry about you as far as this phony robbery, but I've also got to lose a good friend.

00:32:53 Speaker_03
because Ronald had explained that Tony Mazzeo and his father had been friends but the robbery had caused a rift between the men because his father believed Mazzeo was the guy responsible. Even though he didn't believe it happened. Thank you.

00:33:05 Speaker_03
This ended their friendship and made the DeFeo's a target for a hitman according to Ron DeFeo Jr.

00:33:11 Speaker_05
Did he like think about this at all? No.

00:33:14 Speaker_03
You didn't run this by anyone? Apparently not. I mean, I'm glad you didn't. I'm glad. Now, at the time, the detectives found Ron to be very cooperative.

00:33:23 Speaker_03
And the confusing parts of his story could be chalked up, they said, to now that they know he's using heroin. They were like, you know, he could be under the influence. Also, because he's admitted that he shot up like this afternoon, essentially. Yeah.

00:33:36 Speaker_03
And also, he's under a lot of stress. He just lost his whole family. So if it's a little confusing or a little strange, We at least have to look at it with a benefit of the doubt kind of situation.

00:33:47 Speaker_03
The statement, you know, and that's the thing, the statement could have ended there. He gave a statement, told a little bit of a wild tale, but it could have just ended there. But Ron just could not help it. He just wanted to add more details.

00:34:00 Speaker_03
He's a yapper. And what we will learn is when someone's just wanting to add detail after detail, they're probably fucking lying. Yeah. That's just the way it is.

00:34:09 Speaker_03
So he explained that while he did own three rifles, his father had actually taken them away from him a few weeks earlier, and he'd actually sold one of them. But he couldn't recall the caliber of the gun or the manufacturer.

00:34:22 Speaker_03
Wouldn't that be so convenient, though? He just happened to sell the one gun.

00:34:28 Speaker_05
And also, first of all, why the fuck would you ever do that? Second of all, why did they find the guns that were taken away from you in your bedroom?

00:34:35 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:34:37 Speaker_05
That doesn't make any sense.

00:34:37 Speaker_03
It's a little weird. He also told them about a cash box that his father kept hidden in their bedroom. Tony Mazzeo, he said, had helped them carve the hiding place in the floor where the box was kept. That's kind of sick.

00:34:50 Speaker_03
So if they checked and the box was missing or empty, there'd be your killer's Tony over here, because he was there. He knew where that cash box was, Tony Mazzeo. OK. Does Tony Mazzeo exist? Yeah, actually. Oh, OK. Sorry.

00:35:07 Speaker_03
So you just kind of, you kind of just know what happened then. Like you seem like you're just telling us like this, you know what, I bet you'll find an empty cash box and I bet it's him.

00:35:15 Speaker_05
Yeah and you just, you didn't go straight to Tony Mazzio's house when you assumed that he killed your whole family?

00:35:20 Speaker_03
No, definitely not. Now eventually DeFeo's eagerness to cooperate crossed over from very useful if, you know, exhaustive But then it got unnecessarily detailed and started to border on suspicious. Yeah, we're heading down that lane.

00:35:36 Speaker_03
It's like something's weird here. He rambled on about his recent criminal past and what landed him on parole. Oh, he was on parole? I didn't know that. He said, I don't want you to think I'm hiding anything from you.

00:35:49 Speaker_03
That's why he said he was telling all the details. Okay. And the interview process went on until nearly 2.30 a.m.

00:35:54 Speaker_04
Damn.

00:35:55 Speaker_03
And when the detectives asked where DeFeo wanted to sleep that night, he said he couldn't stay with family because he was worried the hitman might find him. So they allowed him to sleep on a cot in the homicide division.

00:36:06 Speaker_03
Because they were like, well, we'll protect you, I guess. He spent the night there? Yeah, he spent the night there because they were like, they didn't know where else to bring him because he was like, I can't go anywhere. The hitman will find me.

00:36:16 Speaker_03
Can you protect me? And they were like, OK. So they just set up a cot for him in like one of the holding cells and were like, you can stay here. That's insane.

00:36:25 Speaker_03
So for Ron, this was preferable because it would allow him, you know, to stay up to date on the investigation as well. Oh. Because he could hear everything. Yep.

00:36:34 Speaker_03
While detectives looked into DeFeo's claim about familial mob ties, the medical examiner had begun the autopsies on the six unfortunate victims. Ronald and Louise DeFeo were each shot twice.

00:36:47 Speaker_03
Ronald in the lower back, which had pierced his kidney and shattered part of his spine. Louise was shot in the side and the chest, which broke ribs and punctured one of her lungs.

00:36:59 Speaker_03
According to the medical examiner, Dr. Howard Adelman, both could have remained alive anywhere from a matter of seconds to a few minutes. Wow, I just bled internally.

00:37:10 Speaker_03
And based on her body position when she was found and the trajectory of the bullets, Adelman did theorize that Louise had been shot second and had partially risen out of bed when her husband was shot. Oh God, that's horrific.

00:37:23 Speaker_03
Yeah, it breaks my fucking heart. I can't imagine. John and Mark DeFeo were each shot one time in the back at close range.

00:37:32 Speaker_03
Adelman theorized that the killer had stood between the boys' beds and fired in quick succession, shooting each in roughly the same part of the back.

00:37:40 Speaker_03
The bullets destroyed several organs before exiting out the abdomen and becoming lodged in the box springs of the bed. The bullets? Yeah. Oh my god.

00:37:49 Speaker_03
Adelman was almost certain neither boy had woken up before being killed, which I guess is a good thing, because they didn't wake up to know what was happening. They just were shot in their sleep and never became conscious.

00:38:01 Speaker_05
And he didn't think that they could have woken up, like, when the parents were killed? They didn't hear the shots?

00:38:06 Speaker_03
That's the thing. That's what doesn't really make sense.

00:38:09 Speaker_05
I don't know a lot about guns.

00:38:11 Speaker_03
Is it possible he used a silencer? I don't think so. I don't think they had any evidence that referenced a silencer. Okay.

00:38:18 Speaker_05
Because I'm like did anybody like in the neighborhood report hearing gunshots? Because an assault rifle is loud. That's the thing.

00:38:25 Speaker_03
By everything I could find the gun was not fitted for a silencer. There was no silencer involved. They never found a silencer. Your gun like specifically you have to like get it fitted for one. It did not. This is what makes no fucking sense.

00:38:40 Speaker_03
And this is the parts of this that make people go, what the fuck happened in that house? Because like we were talking about, neighbors heard the dogs barking, but they didn't hear the gunshots. And why is everyone on their stomach?

00:38:54 Speaker_03
Everyone's not sleeping on their stomach.

00:38:55 Speaker_05
Did he turn them around so as not to see their faces?

00:38:58 Speaker_03
A lot of them were shot in the back. And a lot of them were shot while in bed and the shot went through to the box spring. I mean, like, it was like they, it's like they were ordered to do that or something.

00:39:10 Speaker_05
The only thing that you can think of though, is like, like in the middle of the night, like, or like, remember like when you would fall asleep in the car and like your parents would carry you up to your bed, maybe he turned them over and they just didn't wake up.

00:39:21 Speaker_03
But like he had already shot the parents on the same floor. That's the part that, across the hall. Like John and Mark were in a room across the hall from their parents who just got shot four times total with a rifle.

00:39:37 Speaker_03
And like I was just saying, rifles are fucking loud. They're loud. So it doesn't make sense that John and Mark wouldn't hear it. It doesn't make sense that- The neighbors didn't hear it. Allison wouldn't hear it. She's on the same floor.

00:39:50 Speaker_03
She's on the second floor as well. Even Dawn, you would hear that from upstairs. She would probably hear it too, but the ones on the same floor, how?

00:39:57 Speaker_05
That is weird.

00:39:57 Speaker_03
How? It doesn't make sense. And no one's really been able to figure it out. It's one of these, like, enduring mysteries. But luckily, neither boy, John and Mark, seem to have woken up.

00:40:09 Speaker_03
They seem to have, which again, very strange that they were both on their stomachs. Yeah. It's just not a... Not everybody is a stomach sleeper. I don't sleep on my stomach. No, I can't.

00:40:18 Speaker_03
So Allison, on the other hand, had likely seen her killer as she rose from her bed. Like she, it seems like she heard something. She woke up.

00:40:27 Speaker_03
But like again, it's very strange because her wound indicated that she had turned around just in time to see her killer fire. The bullet entered her cheek.

00:40:38 Speaker_03
And it lacerated her brain before exiting through her skull and lodging in the wall behind the bed. Oh my god. Allison saw her killer. Yeah. Like, that's horrific.

00:40:48 Speaker_05
And she must have died like very quickly though if it went through her brain.

00:40:51 Speaker_03
Through her brain, just like... And again, she was found in the bed. But like, he doesn't say anything. Nobody says anything about like carrying them back to bed or anything like that. So I'm like, what is this?

00:41:03 Speaker_03
Do they know like around what time everybody was shot? They don't have like, um... Not exact times? Yeah, it's not weird that they would be in bed because it was nighttime. It was bedtime. Yeah. Like, they would be in bed. You're such a mom. It was bedtime.

00:41:15 Speaker_03
It was bedtime. Everyone was in their pajamas. Yeah. I wonder if he ordered them to face down, but he obviously never brings that up in his stories. But it's even weirder. But the medical examiner thought the boys were sleeping?

00:41:28 Speaker_03
The boys, it seems, were sleeping, but I don't know. It's like, this is what's so weird. It doesn't make sense. None of it makes sense. Every time you think you can figure it out, you're like, why though?

00:41:39 Speaker_05
And even if he had ordered them to stay down, I mean, Don is 18. He obviously got rid of the parents first, but I feel like Don could have potentially overtaken him somehow, you know?

00:41:50 Speaker_03
Yeah, I don't know. And it doesn't sound like there's evidence that she tried to. Yeah, I mean, he's got a rifle, which is terrifying. But there's other guns in the house.

00:41:58 Speaker_03
If he's holding a rifle at you and saying, turn around, I guess, like, you know, I'm not going to argue with a rifle pointed at me. No. I can understand that for like the first couple, but like, then the rest of them are hearing the shots.

00:42:13 Speaker_03
Why aren't they running? Hearing the shots.

00:42:16 Speaker_05
yeah they're waiting until he gets to their bedroom and then well okay so maybe so he gets rid of the parents immediately like that makes sense like they couldn't do anything the two boys were sleeping sometimes kids don't fucking wake up like it's crazy to think that like with a assault rifle shot they wouldn't wake up yeah

00:42:34 Speaker_05
But maybe he walked in their room and ordered them to turn around and just boom, boom. And then Allison wakes up because she's heard all of that. And that's why she's up and he shoots her essentially in the face.

00:42:46 Speaker_05
And then who knows, maybe Don did try to get past him and he ordered her back up the stairs with the assault rifle. Why didn't any of the neighbors hear gunshots? That I can't explain. That they heard a dog barking. That I can't explain.

00:42:59 Speaker_05
Like it just, I'm so confused by it. Or I don't, I mean I know this is like a nice area. Yeah. Maybe people heard things and just didn't want to say that they did. But why?

00:43:09 Speaker_03
Like, people were found dead by gunshots. Like, it's not like you'd be, like, weird to be like, oh, I heard something that I didn't know was a gunshot. Maybe they just didn't want to be involved at all. But they were. They were offering information.

00:43:21 Speaker_03
They were saying, I heard the dog barking. They were saying, like, let me tell you about this family. They were saying I saw lights on. It is bizarre. It just doesn't make sense. It really doesn't. It's so strange.

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00:46:00 Speaker_03
But Dawn's wounds were the most horrific, I would say. Yeah. The killer had stood about two feet away from her, according to the medical examiner, as she slept, shooting her in the back of the neck. just below her left ear. Wow.

00:46:17 Speaker_03
And according to the autopsy report, the left side of her face had collapsed and brain particles mixed with the blood saturating on her pillow. Wow, that's graphic. She had a very disfiguring injury.

00:46:29 Speaker_03
Yeah, and nobody else really did aside, I guess, from Allison. Yeah, and she was shot right in the back of the neck. And it's, again, face down and from what the medical examiner was thinking was sleeping.

00:46:41 Speaker_05
Why? Can you know if somebody's sleeping?

00:46:43 Speaker_03
Probably just because of the trajectory and what they're looking at. They're saying like there was no movement.

00:46:49 Speaker_03
You know, like they didn't try to move away from the bullet, like which your instinct is to move away from something that's going to hurt you. So if you're not moving away from it, they assume you have to be in an unconscious state.

00:47:01 Speaker_05
But then if you're in bed and you know he's coming, there's not really any way out of that. So maybe she just cowered in bed. But she didn't even do that.

00:47:11 Speaker_03
Her head was on her pillow. And she was shot right in the back of the neck. If she had cowered, it would have, like, potentially, like, skimmed another side or, like, moved. That's what they did.

00:47:22 Speaker_03
Like, seeing where the bullet goes in and how there's no, like, movement to get away from it will tell you that that person wasn't conscious. I don't know. Because her head was right on her pillow. Yeah.

00:47:34 Speaker_03
And if she's trying to, like, cower away... Like, she was sleeping on her side. No, she was facedown as well.

00:47:40 Speaker_03
she was shot right in the back of the neck but I think what happened was it like went out her just the exit all right the way it had hit like collapsed at the side of her yeah kind of thing

00:47:51 Speaker_05
I don't know, I'm trying.

00:47:53 Speaker_03
Yeah, people have been trying for decades. I think it's just like, it doesn't make sense. That's why this is such a like strange case. Yeah. Not only is the crime horrific and when you look at it, there's really no fucking real motive for this.

00:48:09 Speaker_03
There's also just these weird parts of like, what? And like the family's a little mysterious when you really dig into it and it's like.

00:48:16 Speaker_05
Oh, really?

00:48:16 Speaker_03
Then you have those like, You know, there's not mob ties, but it's like, you know, like somewhere in that family, there's like mob ties and history. This has nothing to do with the mob, but it's like that. It's just like a weird layer on top of it.

00:48:29 Speaker_03
Mm hmm. It's all very strange. But all six members of the DeFeo family had died from, quote, massive hemorrhaging due to bullet wounds.

00:48:37 Speaker_06
Yeah.

00:48:38 Speaker_03
Now, when the news of the murders hit the press the next morning, everyone in Amityville were stunned. They were stunned that such a brutal crime was happening in that small town. It's a very idyllic town, like we said.

00:48:50 Speaker_03
Everyone described the DeFeos as a nice, normal family who were always willing to lend a hand when someone else was in need. One of the neighbors said, like, Ronald DeFeo Sr. drove her to work every day when her car died.

00:49:01 Speaker_03
One neighbor told a reporter of Ronald and Louise they could not do enough for their children. The whole world was oriented around their children. Wow. They were very involved in their community as well, according to most. Like, all the good things.

00:49:14 Speaker_03
While the neighbors had nothing but kind words to say about the victims, most people were decidedly less enthusiastic about Ronald DeFeo Jr.

00:49:24 Speaker_03
According to one neighbor, Ronald was part of a crowd that would drink and then get into fights, but the next day they'd apologize.

00:49:32 Speaker_03
She recalled an instance in recent months where Ronald had gotten into an argument while at a bar with some friends and he had broken a pool cue in half because he was angry.

00:49:41 Speaker_03
yikes now neighbors referred to him as creepy always lurking around it was theorized that because it was a big italian family the first born son is usually like the heir you know and just supposed to carry look to as an important part of the family line yeah of course but according to those that knew him ronald tafeo jr was like not the ideal heir

00:50:01 Speaker_03
He was a mess, like just a mess. He was always in trouble, always getting into things. He would go out partying and then he would bring those parties back to the DeFeo house late at night, always causing issues.

00:50:13 Speaker_03
There was a lot of theories about, you know, his relationship with his father, which seemed to not be a good relationship.

00:50:20 Speaker_05
Well, his dad was probably disappointed.

00:50:22 Speaker_03
Yes. And I think they also had like a very volatile relationship where it got physical a lot between the two of them. Like they would get into like a fist fight, like essentially. That should never happen. No, it's awful.

00:50:33 Speaker_03
Now, for their part, a spokesperson for local law enforcement told reporters the murders were a real neat job, indicating that there was very little evidence left at the scene and very few leads to work with. They were like, there's literally nothing.

00:50:48 Speaker_03
Very clean. There was no signs of struggle, robbery, leading investigators to believe the motive had just been murder.

00:50:54 Speaker_05
Yeah.

00:50:55 Speaker_03
Like a murder. They were either going after one of the people and the rest were collateral or it was all of them.

00:51:00 Speaker_03
It was just... So while DeFeo slept in the homicide unit that night, investigators got word from the medical examiner that all of the DeFeos had been killed with a .35 caliber Marlin rifle. Imagine that.

00:51:14 Speaker_03
Exactly the model and caliber Bobby Kelsky had mentioned when police interviewed him at the scene, and the only gun that Ronald DeFeo could not account for. Like, you really, you only lost that one? Yeah, only that one.

00:51:27 Speaker_03
A little bit later, they got word from one of the technicians that upon a second search of the house, they discovered a box for a .35 caliber Marlin rifle, like a max of a, like to hold the gun. Yeah. Hidden in Ron DeFeo's closet. I gotta go.

00:51:43 Speaker_03
The gun they couldn't find. At the very least, the box indicated that DeFeo had owned the same model gun used in the murders. Until that point, investigators had given Ron the benefit of the doubt.

00:51:53 Speaker_03
You know, losing your whole family in one night, you know, he might be under the influence. There's a lot going on. Yeah, many factors here. But now they were starting to wonder if they just had their suspect in custody already. Willingly. Literally.

00:52:06 Speaker_03
Around nine the next morning, November 15th, Detective Gozaloff and several other homicide detectives returned to the office and woke up Ron, who immediately asked whether they'd found Tony Mazzeo yet. Okay.

00:52:19 Speaker_03
Gozaloff told him, well, we got people out looking for Tony Mazzeo, but he said, to tell you the truth, I think you're the guy we want.

00:52:27 Speaker_05
Damn, just like.

00:52:28 Speaker_03
Like woke him up and said. Hit him, hit him. DeFeo was like, what are you talking, like incredulous. Oh my God.

00:52:34 Speaker_03
Insisted Tony Mazzio was the guy they wanted, but the detectives read him his rights and took him into custody for the murder of his parents, brothers and sisters. Yeah.

00:52:43 Speaker_03
When he was asked whether he wanted to speak to his lawyer, Ron said he waived his right to counsel and he said he was willing to cooperate. Ron began the second interview by insisting that his family had been killed by the New York mob.

00:52:56 Speaker_03
But by then, Gozalov and the other investigators had assembled and presented the evidence that strongly indicated that Ron was involved. It was Ron.

00:53:06 Speaker_03
At one point, he claimed that he was just smoking pot in the basement when it happened and he didn't hear anything. Well, that doesn't make sense. And then later he claimed he heard the gunshots. Like he came up with so many different things.

00:53:21 Speaker_03
But before that, Gozalov said, let's go back to the day before and let's start over. Yeah. And then he said, let's start with supper.

00:53:28 Speaker_05
OK.

00:53:29 Speaker_03
Now, being confronted by all the evidence and the fact that they were like, we pretty much know you were involved, seemed to flip a little switch and run. But before then, he was crying. He was upset.

00:53:40 Speaker_03
He was I will do nothing but cooperate here, whatever I can do. But now it's like he took off a mask. And his true failings came out. So Gozalov said, let's start with supper. And he said, my mother was a lousy cook. And they were like, oh.

00:53:57 Speaker_03
And she said, she cooked up some brown stuff in a bowl. It looked like shit and it smelled like shit. Nice.

00:54:03 Speaker_05
And they were like, fun. Nice to speak of your recently deceased and murdered mother that way.

00:54:08 Speaker_03
Yeah, and these unkind comments about his mother seemed wildly inappropriate to the investigator set and they were like, wow, okay, but Rome was just getting started. He wasn't done. Oh no.

00:54:18 Speaker_03
When they asked him about John and Mark, his little brothers, he said, my brothers is a couple of fucking pigs. And he said, I often use the bathroom that they used on the second floor.

00:54:28 Speaker_03
And I go in there and sometimes there's toilet paper hanging out of the bowl.

00:54:32 Speaker_05
I mean, yeah, they were like seven and 12, 12 that checks.

00:54:35 Speaker_03
Yeah. Kids are gross a lot. And it's like, try following up a bathroom after a kid. Yeah, exactly. And also they're your little brothers who were shot in their bed. And you're just talking about them calling you just calling them fucking pigs.

00:54:49 Speaker_05
And like what just were murdered.

00:54:51 Speaker_03
And his feelings about his sisters were not any better. About Don, and this is like terrible, just so everybody knows. He said that fat fuck Don. Oh my God.

00:55:03 Speaker_03
And then he talked about the kind of music that she listened to over and over and he used a racial slur over and over. Oh. The one you're thinking.

00:55:13 Speaker_03
Over and over, he said, she listened to that music all day and all night, and I can't even tell her to turn it down, because if I tell her to turn it down, I get my fucking ass kicked. Okay.

00:55:23 Speaker_03
So now he's referring again to the allegations that Ronald DeFeo Sr. was abusive to his family.

00:55:29 Speaker_03
okay now he claimed that now after this he claimed that dawn shot all the family members including the kids and then he shot her in a rage about it okay and then he also claimed he shot dawn in self-defense because she was going to shoot him with a rifle

00:55:47 Speaker_03
okay yeah after ranting about his mother and the rest of the family and claiming that dawn did it no she didn't actually she did maybe not i don't know i shot her but then whatever ron launched into a big long rant about his father who he referred to as a cheat bastard and he talked about his grandfather kind of equally the same way as unkind yeah and the other members of the family

00:56:11 Speaker_03
When he was finally done giving his brutally honest roast opinion of his family, DeFeo still hadn't confessed to the murders at this point. But it was pretty clear. But to Gosloff and the others, it seemed like he was pretty ready to do that.

00:56:25 Speaker_03
Without saying a word, the detectives got up from the table and left the room and were replaced by Dennis Rafferty, who was a homicide detective with the Amityville police.

00:56:34 Speaker_03
Rafferty spent the next six and a half hours with Ron, and during this, he completely confessed to the murders of the family. Okay. It was clear that Ron hated his family. Like, it was very clear. Yeah.

00:56:46 Speaker_03
He was acting all broken up before, but suddenly, when that evidence was presented, it was like, mask off, they all suck ass, let me tell you about all of them. He especially hated his father. Yeah. He fought with his father constantly.

00:56:59 Speaker_03
But it seemed like his motive was not that, completely at least. His motive was money. Okay. According to DeFeo, his parents had a life insurance policy worth $200,000. Okay. In 2024 money, that's over a million dollars, over $1.2 million actually. Damn.

00:57:17 Speaker_03
And as the only surviving member of the family, Ron would have been the beneficiary of that policy. Uh-huh. On the night of the murders, Ronald woke up on the couch a little before 3 a.m.

00:57:27 Speaker_03
He went up to his bedroom, loaded his rifle, and went room by room shooting and killing his whole family. 3 a.m. Yep. He told Rafferty, I just started and it went so fast I couldn't stop. He just woke up and just in that moment decided to kill them?

00:57:41 Speaker_03
Uh-huh.

00:57:42 Speaker_05
Okay.

00:57:44 Speaker_03
When he killed everyone in the house, Ron collected the shell casings and his bloody clothing into a pillowcase. He took a shower, he trimmed his beard, and then he left the house.

00:57:54 Speaker_03
He threw the rifle into a pond down the street, and eventually he ditched the pillowcase and other evidence in a storm drain in Brooklyn on his way to work. Then he just went to work.

00:58:04 Speaker_06
What the fuck?

00:58:05 Speaker_03
When he was finished giving his confession, Rafferty asked whether DeFeo would sign a sworn statement that what he told them was true.

00:58:12 Speaker_03
But he refused, and he told the detectives he would not because he feared his grandfather, Michael Brigante, would see it. Okay. And it's like... He's gonna hear about it. Uh-huh.

00:58:24 Speaker_03
Now, using the two diagrams Ron had drawn for them, detectives were able to locate the gun and the pillowcase full of shells and other evidence, which were brought back to the precinct, and DeFeo identified them as his belongings.

00:58:37 Speaker_03
Meanwhile, the clothing Ronald was wearing was taken as evidence, and he was charged and booked with six counts of second-degree murder.

00:58:44 Speaker_03
And he was taken into custody and held in detention until a grand jury was going to be convened in the coming days. Now, Dave found an interesting tidbit here.

00:58:53 Speaker_03
That first-degree murder at the time was reserved for those who killed a police officer or a prison guard. Oh, so it had nothing to do with Mel as a forethought? Yeah, it was just like, that was at the moment, that was what that, in 74.

00:59:05 Speaker_03
We have come across this before. I'm fairly certain of it, but I always find it interesting. Yeah, that is interesting. Now, the news of Ronald's arrest shocked Amityville, almost as much as the murders had shocked Amityville.

00:59:18 Speaker_03
DeFeo's friend, Glenn Hoffman, told a reporter, I can't believe it. I can't believe it, even if they say it's true. He could have been set up for it. You don't know what's involved. Okay.

00:59:29 Speaker_03
For many, Ron's original claim of mafia involvement seemed more plausible than a son and a brother murdering his entire family for no fucking reason. I mean, yeah, that is hard to swallow.

00:59:40 Speaker_03
Even his probation officer, William Benjamin, was stunned and said nothing indicated he could have resorted to violence of this kind. That's kind of crazy.

00:59:49 Speaker_03
Now DeFeo was arranged in the first district court on November 15th, where his defense attorney, Leonard Simmons, requested a psychiatric examination. He told the judge, I have doubts about the defendant's ability to help in his own defense.

01:00:03 Speaker_03
Simmons also claimed that DeFeo had bruises on his body, which implied that he'd been abused by investigators while in custody. Judge Donald Operon refused the defense's request for a psychiatric examination and refused bail. Wow.

01:00:17 Speaker_03
Nearly a year went by before, between the arrest and the trial. Damn. Yeah, most of it was like pre-trial hearings. The defense teams repeated and unsuccessful attempts to get Ron's confession were thrown out. Yeah.

01:00:30 Speaker_03
They wanted to get it thrown out on the grounds that it was obtained through coercion. During this whole period, the prosecution called on a lot of the detectives who were involved in the interview process.

01:00:40 Speaker_03
And Dennis Rafferty said, it was a tricky situation. We started out dealing with a guy who was the sole survivor of a family massacre. But the more we questioned him, the more holes there were in his account.

01:00:50 Speaker_03
And he kept changing things until finally he started crying, put his head on my shoulder and told me, it just started. It went so fast. I just couldn't stop. Like, what are you gonna do?

01:01:01 Speaker_03
And Rafferty explains, um, they began to suspect if Faye was lying when he went from telling them he'd heard nothing that night to then changing his story several times to say he heard multiple gunshots and that he had even seen his brother John's toes twitching at one point when he discovered them.

01:01:19 Speaker_03
Cause then he went back and said, well, I did discover the bodies of my siblings and I saw John was alive.

01:01:25 Speaker_06
What?

01:01:25 Speaker_03
Yeah. Rafferty said, that indicated to me that he was there right after the shooting took place. Right.

01:01:32 Speaker_03
And when Rafferty pointed that out, DeFeo changed his story again and said a hitman came to do it, the mob story again, and that the hitman actually made him watch everything at gunpoint. And that's why he saw his brother John's toes twitching.

01:01:47 Speaker_03
And you would totally be super down to then tell the cops everything. Yeah. And they said, so Rafferty had said to him, they wouldn't walk out without making you a piece of it. They must've made you do one of the shootings.

01:02:00 Speaker_03
Like, that's how hit men work. Like, that's how the mob works. You're not leaving here unless you have blood on your hands, so you'll shut your mouth. You won't go and talk to the police.

01:02:08 Speaker_03
It was at that point that DeFeo broke down and confessed to the murders. Okay.

01:02:13 Speaker_03
Now DeFeo, on the other hand, claimed that while he was in custody, the detectives beat him until he finally told them everything that they wanted to hear about how, quote, I supposedly killed every member of my family. Okay.

01:02:24 Speaker_03
According to DeFeo's testimony, investigators started abusing him at the house next to the DeFeo home, which they had set up as a command post at first. and continued abusing him until he, through him being placed under arrest. Okay.

01:02:40 Speaker_03
So according to him, they think this man just lost his entire family and they started beating the shit out of him. Yeah, that makes sense.

01:02:56 Speaker_01
In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a beloved wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker. Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her.

01:03:11 Speaker_01
And she wasn't the only target. Because buried in the depths of the internet is The Kill List. A cache of chilling documents containing names, photos, addresses and specific instructions for people's murders.

01:03:26 Speaker_01
This podcast is the true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those whose lives were in danger. And it turns out, convincing a total stranger someone wants them dead is not easy.

01:03:39 Speaker_01
Follow Kill List on the Wandery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C True Crime shows like Morbid early and ad-free right now by joining Wandery+.

01:03:50 Speaker_01
Check out Exhibit C in the Wandery app for all your true crime listening.

01:03:59 Speaker_03
Now, he claimed they refused to let him eat or sleep during interrogation, and they denied him his request for an attorney, even though he had waived his right. And they gave him a cot to sleep on?

01:04:09 Speaker_03
DeFeo told Judge Stark, I fell down, they stomped on my stomach, then my back and my legs.

01:04:15 Speaker_03
They put a telephone book on my head and hit me with blackjacks, and then finally put a shopping bag over my head and slammed my head into either the wall or the filing cabinet. Totally.

01:04:26 Speaker_03
Considering that the prosecution's case rested almost entirely on the confession, the claim that it was obtained illegally was taken very seriously. I'm sure. And you have to take that seriously. And the prosecution had to prove that it was.

01:04:39 Speaker_03
The problem for DeFeo, though, was that his claims were extraordinary. And so they very much needed to be backed up by evidence of this supposed beating.

01:04:49 Speaker_03
But the only injury anyone saw at the time of his arraignment was a small, mostly healed cut above his eye.

01:04:56 Speaker_03
And in the rebuttal, the prosecutor, Gerard Sullivan, called on one of DeFeo's school friends, who told the judge that he had been at the house about a week before the murder, and had seen Ronald and his father get into a fistfight.

01:05:08 Speaker_03
And he said during that fistfight, he got that minor injury above his eye. That's really sad. Which is sad. Now... Judge Stark later wrote, I found that DeFeo's testimony was largely untruthful.

01:05:21 Speaker_03
His testimony was that he was given no food or drink, not permitted to sleep for over 24 hours. It seemed totally unreasonable and unbelievable.

01:05:29 Speaker_03
His failure to complain to the district court judge on November 15th about the alleged extreme police brutality the previous day, nor to mention it in any documents supporting his pretrial motions, was a factor leading me to believe it never occurred.

01:05:43 Speaker_05
Yeah, because also if he walked in there after, first of all, I don't think the cops would beat the shit out of him a day before he has to stand before a judge. Yeah, it's not a good look. And a judge would notice that and do something about it.

01:05:55 Speaker_03
That's the thing. And he would complain about it. Yeah. He would say, they beat the shit out of me. This is why I'm here. Right.

01:06:01 Speaker_03
So this was the biggest factor in Stark's decision and after considering the evidence and testimony, he ruled that the confession was given voluntarily, it was going to be admissible in the trial.

01:06:13 Speaker_03
So with the pre-trial hearings out of the way, Ron DeFeo's murder trial began on October 6, 1975 in the Supreme Court of New York.

01:06:21 Speaker_03
In the opening statements, Gerard Sullivan laid out the state's theory that DeFeo had murdered his family because of his, quote, deteriorating relationship with his parents and because of another separate and distinctive reason, a thirst for money.

01:06:34 Speaker_03
Sullivan told the jury the prosecution would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Ron hadn't committed the murders impulsively, but had in fact acted on a methodical plan that began with tying the dog outside. Because that's a big part of this.

01:06:49 Speaker_03
You tied the fucking dog up. You didn't just walk up there and start shooting. You tied the dog up. That shows a plan in action.

01:06:59 Speaker_03
And it ended with him calmly and methodically picking up exhausted bullets and casings, taking off his blood-stained clothing, trimming his beard, and getting rid of all of that in a Brooklyn storm drain.

01:07:12 Speaker_05
Also, the thought of him just trimming his beard in the house where all of his family lay dead because of him is fucking horrifying.

01:07:20 Speaker_03
Chilling. Chilling to the bone. Meanwhile, the dog is tied up outside barking his ass off. Because you tied him up because you planned it. That's so scary.

01:07:30 Speaker_03
In his opening remarks, the defense attorney, William Weber, who is a real piece of work, told the jury they would prove that DeFeo's confession was beaten out of him and that he was not mentally competent when the slayings took place.

01:07:41 Speaker_03
Which is like, um, what? Where did that come from? Okay. Weber assured the jury that DeFeo would take the stand and quote, tell you the truth about what happened at that house that night. I doubt it.

01:07:51 Speaker_03
And they would also call multiple psychiatrists who would testify that Ronald DeFeo Jr. was not of sound mind and thus couldn't be held responsible for whatever had happened that night. Okay.

01:08:01 Speaker_03
The prosecution had a relatively straightforward tale to tell. It was the one that most people were already familiar with because it had a lot of press coverage.

01:08:09 Speaker_03
Um, the medical examiner testified, you know, to the extent of the victim's wounds, including the fact that at least two of the victims, Louise and Don, had been conscious and aware before they were shot.

01:08:20 Speaker_03
I think also Allison, they believed, was possibly conscious. Okay. Um, in the days that followed, several investigators detailed their experiences at the crime scene and their interactions with DeFeo before and after his arrest.

01:08:34 Speaker_03
Detective Gosaloff, for example, told the jury about his various interviews with DeFeo and Ron's disclosure that he was an active heroin user who had injected drugs as recently as the day of the murders.

01:08:47 Speaker_03
Now, the most important testimony came from those investigators who had taken multiple statements from Ron DeFeo.

01:08:53 Speaker_03
In his testimony, Dennis Rafferty told the jury that Ron had given multiple accounts, ranging from him simply discovering some of the bodies, to his hearing the shots, and then eventually his confession that he acted alone in killing all six members of his family.

01:09:08 Speaker_03
By then, the detective explained that they already strongly suspected that he was the murderer based on the inconsistency in his stories and the various pieces of evidence that they got from the scene, which included the ammunition, tons of it, and the box for the Marlin rifle that was used in the murder.

01:09:25 Speaker_03
And hidden. Yeah. So Rafferty's testimony was backed up by the other detectives present during this time, including Lieutenant Robert Dunn, who told the jury, I got up and left the room in awe of the horror of what I had just heard.

01:09:38 Speaker_03
Dunn, who was a member of the Organized Crime Unit, explained that he was called in by the local authorities because of that whole claim about the Tony Mazzio thing, the members of the mafia involved.

01:09:49 Speaker_03
However, they investigated that claim and he said there's absolutely no ties to that whatsoever. Yeah.

01:09:55 Speaker_03
Finally, Dunn also refuted the claim that DeFeo was mistreated and abused while in police custody, and he said as far as he knew and saw, he gave his confession completely voluntarily. Right.

01:10:05 Speaker_03
Now, the state's case against DeFeo was strong and supported by evidence, but Sullivan nonetheless anticipated an insanity defense and was prepared with witnesses to combat that claim. Okay.

01:10:17 Speaker_03
In her testimony for the prosecution, DeFeo's aunt, Phyllis Presido, so DeFeo's aunt, told the jury Ronald's history of mental illness was a hoax, perpetrated in order to keep Ron from being sent to Vietnam. Oh. Yeah.

01:10:33 Speaker_04
According to her- The plot fucking thickens.

01:10:35 Speaker_03
It does. According to the aunt, about a year before the murder, she was, quote, introduced to a man who claimed to have been paid $5,000 to keep Ron out of the US Army.

01:10:47 Speaker_05
Oh, fuck.

01:10:48 Speaker_03
This was among several examples where Ronald Sr. seemingly paid or otherwise compensated individuals to keep his son out of trouble or to get him out of trouble that he had already been in. Yeah. On November 6th, Ron DeFeo Jr.

01:11:03 Speaker_03
took the stand to testify on his own behalf. That must have been something. And he wanted to provide support for that insanity defense.

01:11:10 Speaker_03
According to his testimony, DeFeo told Weber and the jury that he felt, quote, duty-bound to kill anyone he considered a threat, and he saw nothing wrong with killing his entire family, which he claimed was done in self-defense, even the seven-year-old.

01:11:24 Speaker_03
Yeah, that makes sense. He said, quote, when I have a gun in my hand, I'm God. According to DeFeo, he woke up on the couch the night of the murders and saw his sister Dawn standing before him in the living room with the rifle in her hands.

01:11:36 Speaker_03
And she told him that she was going to kill everyone. Okay. So he said, I took the rifle away from her and she just disappeared. And I walked a few feet into my parents' bedroom and I just started to shoot. That doesn't make any sense. What?

01:11:50 Speaker_03
When he was cross-examined by Sullivan, DeFeo reiterated that he had killed all six members of his family, but then later in his testimony to the prosecution, he claimed he believed his sister, Dawn, had killed his brothers. Okay.

01:12:05 Speaker_03
According to DeFeo, Dawn was constantly at odds with their parents, and their arguments did frequently escalate to violent confrontations between her and their father. This is according to Ron DeFeo. Okay.

01:12:16 Speaker_03
He said, on the stand, he said, I should have let them kill each other. Ooh. I believe this was not a happy household all the time. Yeah, that's sad. But it's all, you know, this is all just coming from his mouth as well.

01:12:29 Speaker_03
Yeah, so you have to take it with a bit of a grain of salt. In defense of his insanity plea, Ronald told the jury he frequently heard voices in the house, coming from the house, which is where we get the next. The haunting.

01:12:41 Speaker_03
And had command hallucinations that instructed him to act out violently. He said, for months before the incident, I heard voices. And whenever I looked around, there was no one there. So it must have been God talking to me. Probably not.

01:12:54 Speaker_03
When Weber asked if he thought anyone in the courtroom had been trying to kill him, he replied, yeah, Phyllis Presido, my aunt, who was sitting out there. That's new. It's new information. Yeah.

01:13:05 Speaker_03
So upon redirection, Sullivan said, is there anyone else you think is trying to kill you? And he said, you. So he's really trying for that insanity defense. Yeah.

01:13:16 Speaker_03
It seems that Phyllis Presido wasn't the only witness the prosecution had planned to undermine DeFeo's claims of insanity. They also called out a former cellmate of his, a cellmate that he had apparently boasted about his planned defense to. Oh God.

01:13:32 Speaker_03
According to John Kramer who shared a cell next to DeFeo in the sickbay, Ron had told him about his plan to plead insanity and boasted that he was quote bigger than Charles Manson.

01:13:43 Speaker_05
Oh please.

01:13:44 Speaker_03
Kramer told the jury he was in the cell next to me in the sickbay area of the jail and he kept telling me all these things even after I told him I didn't want to hear anything or get involved.

01:13:55 Speaker_03
Sullivan also subpoenaed several of the guards at the jail who testified that DeFeo had asked them how the mentally ill inmates acted when they were locked up.

01:14:04 Speaker_05
I always wonder why inmates will do that because I'm like, do you not think that these people have, like, that they're not going to rat on you? Do you think that's a literal job?

01:14:14 Speaker_03
Like, do you think they have any loyalty to you? Do you just think? Do you think at all? Do you think?

01:14:21 Speaker_03
So one of the guards, James DeVito, basically when DeFeo had asked him like how do they act, he said he told him inmates burned things, pretended to forget the names of prisoners and guards whom they knew, sat on a shelf in the cell, and feigned suicide attempts.

01:14:35 Speaker_03
Okay.

01:14:36 Speaker_03
And according to DeVito, right after I told him those things, he began doing them all and yelling at me to enter them in the logbook, but I considered them silly and refused to make any entries except for the incident when he tried to set the cell on fire.

01:14:50 Speaker_05
Oh my God.

01:14:52 Speaker_03
Now towards the end of the trial, Sullivan called Dr. Harold Zolan to testify as to his experience evaluating Ron following his arrest. Zolan testified that he diagnosed DeFeo with an antisocial personality. I could see that.

01:15:06 Speaker_03
But he added that the diagnosis did not affect his ability to tell right from wrong. Right. And insisted he, quote, was aware of what he was doing when he killed his parents and four brothers and sisters. Yup.

01:15:18 Speaker_03
Zolan further said, if he was in any paranoid psychosis, there would be no compulsion for him to hide the signs of his wrongdoings, such as trying to destroy the evidence or lie to the police. Right.

01:15:30 Speaker_03
On November 19th, the trial came to a close after each side gave their closing remarks.

01:15:35 Speaker_03
And in his statement, Gerard Sullivan went over all the evidence, all the testimony for the jury, and reminded them that DeFeo had confessed to the crime, but only recently had started claiming that he was mentally ill when he killed his family.

01:15:48 Speaker_03
Rather than insanity, Sullivan restated the state's belief that DeFeo callously, calmly, and coldly planned the execution of his family, carried them out, and then went about carefully taking the murder rifle and the used cartridges and his bloodstained clothing and hiding them in an obscure Brooklyn storm drain to cover up his role in the murders.

01:16:09 Speaker_03
He reminded the jury that no one was denying that DeFeo was sick, only that he wasn't so impaired that he didn't know what he was doing was wrong.

01:16:16 Speaker_03
Now, William Weber, on the other hand, said while his client had committed the murders, he had only done so because he was insane at the time and was heavily influenced by psychedelic, psychotic delusions, excuse me.

01:16:28 Speaker_03
Also, he continued to assert that DeFeo had only confessed after being beaten and abused by investigators. Now at the time, Ron DeFeo's trial was the longest criminal trial held in Suffolk County. Oh wow. Outlasting nearly a month and a half.

01:16:44 Speaker_03
After almost three days of deliberation, the jury emerged a little before noon on November 21st and announced that they had reached a unanimous decision, finding Ron DeFeo guilty on all six counts of second-degree murder.

01:16:59 Speaker_03
Suffolk County District Attorney Henry O'Brien said in a statement to the press, I'm extremely pleased the members of this jury realized the viciousness of the defendant and have removed a menace to our community.

01:17:10 Speaker_03
When asked for comment on the verdict, defense attorney William Weber shook his head and said, I'm glad I wasn't a member of that jury. What does that even mean? Okay. You are the defense attorney though, that's an even worse position.

01:17:24 Speaker_03
I'm like, I don't really get it. Because you lost. So for the jurors, it really all came down to his attempts to hide the evidence and conceal his guilt after committing the murders.

01:17:33 Speaker_05
That's what it would be for me.

01:17:34 Speaker_03
Yeah, like the spent shells, his clothing, the fact that he trimmed his beard. He was of sound mind. He knew what he was doing. One of the jurors said that was a major sign of guilt. He knew what he was doing.

01:17:47 Speaker_03
On November 4th, Ron was back before Judge Thomas Stark for sentencing.

01:17:51 Speaker_03
And at the time, Sullivan urged the court to not show any mercy in handing down DeFeo's sentence, describing the crime as an event so appalling and cataclysmic that it is without equal. It's true. It's an annihilation.

01:18:05 Speaker_03
Like the jurors, Judge Stark couldn't ignore the extent that DeFeo went to to conceal his criminal acts and deflect the guilt onto innocent people as well. He's trying to get someone else to go down for this.

01:18:16 Speaker_03
He said, I stated my intention to impose life sentences with the longest minimum period possible. I then imposed six sentences of life imprisonment, each with a minimum of 25 years to run consecutively with respect to each other.

01:18:30 Speaker_03
So he handed down six life sentences to him. So I think that's what he deserved. So I found this article by Marvin Scott from Long Island. We'll include it somewhere. But he had followed the story closely and he'd spoken via letters to DeFeo a lot.

01:18:44 Speaker_03
And one of the letters with DeFeo, DeFeo said he admitted there was absolutely no voices in the house, even though he had claimed on the stand that there was. He said there was no insanity. And he wrote, there was no demon. You know who the demon is.

01:18:59 Speaker_03
I'm the demon. Oh, that's even scarier. Yeah. Now, and he also claimed later that there was never a question of sanity and everyone knew it.

01:19:09 Speaker_03
He said his defense attorney, William Weber, capitalized on that and he wanted to get book deals and a movie going about the case. So he wanted that insanity defense.

01:19:18 Speaker_03
And he actually tried to get a new trial later based on his claims of this with the previous defense, but he didn't get one.

01:19:26 Speaker_03
Now, in the years that followed, Ronald DeFeo and his defense attorney William Weber did file multiple appeals and petitions for parole at various points, maintaining his innocence and claims of mental illness, even though later they would abandon that.

01:19:41 Speaker_03
But each of the attempts was denied by the appeal courts and the parole board. and ultimately DeFeo would spend the rest of his life in New York's prison system until his death on March 12th, 2021. I was gonna say. But no one knows how he died.

01:19:57 Speaker_03
How old was he? He was 69. And there's, they don't know how he died at all? They know how he died. We don't know how he died. It's undisclosed. You can't find it anywhere.

01:20:11 Speaker_05
Do you think it's just to add to the... I don't know.

01:20:16 Speaker_03
I mean, I don't know why anybody would want to do that, but I don't know. That's bizarre. Yeah, I don't know if someone took them out or what.

01:20:25 Speaker_03
And under normal circumstances, this, you know, Ron DeFeo's post-conviction life would probably have just like faded into obscurity, like resurfacing every now and then, you know, as one does. Sure.

01:20:37 Speaker_03
But a few years after his conviction, DeFeo's crimes and his defense would become the basis for one of America's most sensational and controversial paranormal stories. You know what I'm talking about. The Amityville Horror. We're talking about Kathy,

01:20:53 Speaker_03
And George? George Lutz. That's what it is. I was like, what's his name? Steve? George? Basic white man names? Yep. So it ensured that his legacy went much further than his death. Yeah.

01:21:06 Speaker_03
But next we will be talking about the wild tale that is the Amityville Horror and all that surrounds it. The bleeding, oozing walls. Yep. The bleeding walls. The pigs. Yep. We'll be talking about it all.

01:21:19 Speaker_03
We'll be talking about the Ed and Lorraine Warren of it all. We'll talk about all the things associated with it because there's so many things. It's gonna get wily as fuck next time. Yes. Wily. See you then.

01:21:31 Speaker_05
So we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that you annihilate your entire family because what the fuck is up with that? That's really fucked up. That's way too weird. I hate that.

01:22:45 Speaker_05
If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

01:22:54 Speaker_05
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01:23:01 Speaker_07
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01:23:09 Speaker_07
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01:23:22 Speaker_07
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01:23:33 Speaker_00
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01:23:53 Speaker_07
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