Episode 27: The Amityville Horror

Murderous Roots with Denise & Zelda

In the early evening hours of November 13, 1974, a young bearded man burst into a local bar in Amityville, New York in a panic. He believed his parents might have been shot, and he didn’t know what to do. Several patrons at the bar followed him home in order to help. What they found would horrify the community. In the home on 112 Ocean Avenue, six bodies lay dead, all shot to death. The police were called and the investigation began. It didn’t take long for detectives to come to the conclusion that Ronald Joseph DeFeo, Jr. had killed his own family hours before bursting into the bar.
But the story wouldn’t stop there. It didn’t stop once Ronald, or Butch as he was known, was convicted. The house itself would become infamous. A month after DeFeo’s conviction, George and Kathy Lutz would move into the home only to leave 28 days later. They claimed the house was possessed. This claim led to a book and then a series of popular horror films.
In this episode, we discuss the claims by the Lutzes, the murders committed by DeFeo, and then go deep into his Italian immigrant roots where we found family ties to the Genovese crime family.