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You're watching HLN On Demand.
I really feel bad about what happened.
I'm really sorry about the whole thing, but all the sorries in the world aren't
going to change anything.
Like I said, I'm not an angel, but I'm not the worst guy in the world either.
Welcome to Very Scary People, I'm Donnie Wahlberg.
November 13th, 1974,
six members of the DeFeo family were found brutally murdered in their seaside
home. The gruesome crime rocked the village of Amityville, New York.
The oldest son, Ronald Jr., claimed he came home to find his parents, brothers,
and sisters all shot to death face down in their beds.
There were different theories about the killings, including a possible home
invasion.
But the case took a shocking turn when Ron Jr. confessed that he had killed
all. But why?
The mystery about what really happened that night and the bizarre events that
inspired the Hollywood movie in part two of The Amityville Horror.
It was such a horrible
crime.
First, this bulletin from the WOR newsroom. Six members of one family have
found shot to death in their nightclothes in their expensive home in
Long Island.
They were all killed in their beds, shot in the back.
All found in the same position, face down.
And there's no evidence of a struggle.
And that was very unusual.
The rifle used in the murders was a Marlin rifle, .35 caliber.
It is so deafening.
Why didn't anyone hear a gunshot?
The victims have been identified as members of the DeFeo family.
And then the body bags started coming out.
The father, the mother, Dawn, 18, Allison, 13, Mark, 11,
and John, the youngest one, 9.
We were devastated.
They were all gone.
They were all gone.
They were found by a 23 -year -old son, Ronald DeFeo, the only surviving member
of the family.
People were counted. This was a close -knit family. They were just very sweet,
very religious people, very family -minded people.
When I think of it now, I wonder.
On the face of it, this is a family that is very good at keeping up appearances,
but this is a family with secrets.
When the murders were uncovered, Ron was pulled in and questioned.
Police had been questioning the son, Ronald. He initially said that this was
mob hit.
My father was involved with big, big people in organized crime.
And Ronnie had even named a specific person.
The person was later found to have an alibi and could not have been in agony
killing Ronnie DeFeo's family at all.
More intense questioning of Ronnie DeFeo. He told the police that people
into the house, they pulled him along with them, and they shot everyone while
was present.
I knew then I was set up.
I was going to be the scapegoat for everybody.
They were yachts that left six members of one family dead in this charming
colonial home. The police, they have Ronnie in custody just to talk about the
murder. And very soon they begin to wonder.
There was a history of violence there in that household.
Ronnie Sr., he had a temper.
And Ron Jr.
was subject to a lot of abuse.
He was the firstborn, so his father expected more from him.
The truth of the matter is, most of the time, I was always wrong. I was always a
joke. No matter what I did, he quit school and didn't really work. I think
was an incredibly spoiled kid.
At 17, he was into drugs, LSD, heroin, a fifth of scotch every day.
And he also had a stockpile of several...
weapons in the house.
The relationship between Butch DeFeo and his father was coming to a head. The
place was a powder keg waiting to explode.
He veered wildly back and forth. And then finally, Ronnie did break down and
confess. Ronnie said, yes, yes, I did it. He was an angry young man.
And on the night of November 13th, 1974,
He unleashed that anger.
And when all hell broke loose, it broke loose.
It was about 3 .15 in the morning.
The family's old English sheepdog, Shaggy, was howling.
The family had long gone to bed.
He climbs the stairs to his father's and mother's room. He had a .35 caliber
Marlin rifle.
A high -powered rifle.
The father's the biggest threat.
His father had a revolver, which he kept close by.
So Ronnie's first move is to blow the father away.
And he fires two shots into the father, killing him almost instantly.
The mother starts to wake up, and Ronnie shoots two high -powered bullets almost
point -blank range into her.
She's dead.
He then walked across the hall.
Got his two brothers.
He fires one shot at each shot.
And he described to Detective Rafferty how he stood there and he watched
his little brother die.
That just makes your blood run cold.
Sweet Amerson.
DeFeo points this Marlin rifle barrel into her face and fires.
In a confession to police, he said, once it started, I couldn't stop.
It went so fast.
We had asked them if anyone had awakened during all of this, and
he told us that it's just the dawn that she was asking what was going on.
He told her everything was okay to go back to bed, and she complied, at which
time he continued up the stairs.
He fired a single shot and blew the side of her head off.
It was all over in 15 minutes. Six members of one family were dead.
As far as I was concerned, I got to know before they got to me.
The funeral took place at St. Martin de Tours Church.
The church was packed to overflowing.
There was no sound except for the organ. It was very quiet, and suddenly they
wheel in not one, not two, but six coffins. I just remember all six
coffins just in the front of the altar, and it was just the most terrible thing
you'll ever see in your life. It was terrible.
You're just in shock.
I actually went outside for a little while and sat outside because it was
it was overwhelming.
They were a great family. Mark and John Matthew were great kids. Allison was
wonderful. Dawn, I mean, they had so much to live for and just wasted for no
reason.
Butch was in custody when his family was buried.
I met Ronnie for the purposes of arraignment. I was shocked because of
nature of the charges.
He is charged with wiping out his whole family. It was disbelief
that he would do such a thing.
We're certainly going to review an insanity defense in this case.
Is that a tacit admission that he did pull the trigger? Absolutely not.
Authorities in Amityville, New York, were searching for evidence while
their case against Ronald DeFeo Jr.
The 23 -year -old faced six counts of murder in the second degree for the
killing of his parents and four younger siblings.
It was a tragedy.
Innocent young people died, and there was no reason for it. It was horrifying.
I couldn't imagine it.
How can you do that?
How can you do that?
Every night we would watch the news for any kind of information.
I mean, it wasn't like today where you had 24 -hour news cycle.
But details were emerging as investigators learned what Ron Jr. was
hours after the murders.
I didn't really know what to do.
I knew what I couldn't do. I knew I couldn't call the police.
And I knew I couldn't call up my relatives and tell them what happened.
So I sat around and thought about it.
Rhonda Thale, after committing the murders, she showered.
He packed up his bloody clothing, stuffed it into an oversized pillowcase.
Calmly went back into the bedroom to retrieve the spent shell casing from the
rifle. He destroyed evidence.
He drove to Brooklyn.
and stuffed it into a storm drain.
And then he went to work at his grandfather's auto dealership.
He was able to tell Detective Rafferty where everything was, and they went and
they looked, and everything was exactly where he said it was.
He told us that he had thrown the gun in the Great South Bay, and we immediately
sent detectives down to the bay, and with the assistance of the Marine
they recovered the murder weapon.
35 caliber Marlin.
We would have never found the weapon, only that the killer told us where it
But after directly pointing police towards the evidence, Ronnie Jr.
backtracks again, and he now says that the police have coerced him into a
confession, that they are trying to frame him, and that they planted that
damning evidence themselves.
Many excuses he makes to the police afterwards.
In fact, he said, I never dumped the stuff. Police found it and told me I did
it. They got lucky.
Truth of the matter is, a police diver, he was diving in shallow water over
there and they found the gun. That was it. A mile away from my house.
I did not direct him to it.
Then, Ronnie begins telling people that he doesn't even remember what happened.
Ronnie DeFeo describes himself as being totally out of it.
He may have gone into something like a dissociative state.
Dissociation is something where you lose your bearings with your surroundings,
and you enter an emotional state where you're not quite in touch with reality,
and you're very keyed up emotionally.
I was really, really, really out of it, mentally out of it then.
I remember the lever on the rifle. I hit the lever on the rifle. A live round
ammunition jumped out of the rifle.
You know, ejected from the rifle.
I went and ejected.
You know, another one went in.
He described himself as like being in a dream, going through the house, killing
everyone in the house, and almost having a sense of unreality,
not believing that this was all real.
And when I realized what I did, you know, I said, my God, you know.
I mean, it happened so fast, I never even knew what I did.
I just lost, you know, a touch of reality there for a couple of minutes.
After the murders, Ronnie went to work, but he left early, saying that he didn't
feel well.
Then he decides to go score some heroin.
In the haze of heroin and alcohol, he almost convinced himself that everything
was okay.
During the course of that day, I was drinking, I was using heroin again.
I had forgot what happened in the house. I really did forget.
Then he drove home.
When he got there, he realized that he didn't have his house key, and so he
couldn't get inside.
I couldn't get in the house.
So a lot of time I've gone by, I'm drinking and using more dope.
So I finally decided that I'm going to go through the back window and go into
the house.
I went upstairs, and what happened?
It was like a nightmare.
I'm looking at my mother and father dead and my sister. I said, my God, I got
scared. I ran out of the house.
He did alert his friends that something had gone in in the house.
They all go over to the house.
They all went in the house. I stood outside.
And I think that that's very significant in terms of an awareness of guilt.
You're worried about your family and you bring all your friends over to your
house saying something's wrong in the house and they all go in and you stay
outside.
That clearly indicates that he knew that they were dead.
And there's a consciousness, I would argue, of guilt.
Eleven months after the brutal murders of his family, the case against Ronald
DeFeo Jr., also known as Butch, was ready to go to trial.
William Weber.
who was the court -appointed attorney for Ronald DeFeo. He was actually
third lawyer because Ronnie had actually assaulted one of the former court
-appointed attorneys.
The lawyer wanted him to plead insanity for the simple reason the deck was
stacked against him.
Ronald Jr.
did not want to do that.
He was a bit more respectful of William Weber. Maybe he thought he had a better
shot at getting off.
After nearly three weeks of testimony, Ronnie DeFeo takes the stand in his own
defense. I was a juror.
Ronnie DeFeo was sitting right there. He didn't look like this mass murderer.
He just sat there until he was called to testify.
And then when he testified, he said, yes, I did it. I killed them all.
About halfway through his direct examination, his attorney, Mr. Weber,
point blank, Ronnie, did you kill your father?
And Ronnie answered, yes, sir, I killed them all, and I killed them before they
could kill me. So the issue as to whether or not he was the person who did
is now moved.
We knew he did it. We just had to determine why he did it.
There's one major question about this crime which still hasn't been answered,
the question of motive.
They had a lot of people testify about his very dysfunctional childhood.
A lot of fighting went on in that house.
According to the defense attorney, Bill Weber, he said the closest that Ronnie
ever explained the motive for this was that he felt that the family was
conspiring against him.
The man was trying to hurt me bad. He was going to kill me.
He said it was self -defense.
But, you know, we didn't know where that came from. That was like out of the
blue.
Another theory the police were following is that Ron Jr.
was looking to steal money and jewelry allegedly hidden in his parents'
And he was interrupted and then he shot the parents. And as a result of that,
that he had to execute the other people in the house because they would be
witnesses to his act.
But no money has ever been found.
Another motive that the police were developing was he wanted to kill his
and mother for the insurance money.
It's reported that Ronald DeFeo Jr.
stood to gain about $200 ,000 in life insurance from the death of his family.
He told.
One of the cops, can I get insurance on my family?
He wondered if he could get insurance on the people he shot.
The defense strategy wasn't to determine why he committed the murders. They
decided to prove that Ron Jr. wasn't responsible for his actions because he
legally insane.
It was a defense Ronnie had fought against with his first two attorneys.
now, with William Weber, they were ready to roll the dice.
My attorney used insanity as his defense.
He told me you ought to go in a courtroom and act crazy.
Make these people think you're crazy.
Was Ronnie insane?
Did he know what he was doing? The insanity defense was, I guess, the best
William Weber could do under the circumstances because he had his work
for him. In our legal criminal justice system, to really be found not guilty by
reason of insanity, you typically need...
To have been so disordered and detached from reality that you really didn't know
what you were doing or that you didn't know that it was wrong.
At times he would say he was insane.
Hey, I didn't seem like myself. I saw the dark hands that resembled my sister
hand me a gun.
But then he would let it flip like, no, I'm not crazy. I feel sane. It was very.
Very bad theater acting.
Changing stories was part of the insanity. You cannot go in a courtroom
on one track.
If you stay on one track, you're not insane.
You're very intelligent and know what you're doing.
That was part of the insanity.
His condition, by his own admission, don't meet the criteria for not guilty
reason of insanity.
But going into jury deliberations, the outcome wasn't clear. The two youngest
jurors would be holdouts. I wanted to believe that he wasn't responsible.
I hoped that he didn't realize what he was doing.
But we were deliberating for two days, and then something stuck in my head
his dog.
And it came down at the end to the dog.
the family's old English sheepdog, Shaggy.
The dog didn't like him. He didn't like the dog.
So before he went on this shooting rampage, he took the dog and put the dog
outside.
Shaggy was actually tied out in the shed that night. And at the time of the
murder, the dog was howling straight for that 15 or 20 minutes that it took
Ronnie to kill his family.
It just clicked in my mind at that point.
He knew this dog would come after him if he started going after the family.
And it was just so clear to me at that moment that he knew exactly what he was
doing.
The jury deliberated, and they handed down a guilty verdict.
Justice Stark, he gave him six...
Life sentences.
So 25 to life with the possibility of parole.
Judge Stark made it a point to say it is my recommendation
that he never be released.
It would be a lot easier for me to admit that I killed everybody in the house
and I was stoned on drugs and that would have been the end of this.
There were very strange.
things associated with the DeFeo murders that the coroner, the forensic people
could not understand.
Before you know it, people are talking about this house allegedly being
Welcome back to Very Scary People.
A year after six members of the DeFeo family were found murdered in their
Amityville, New York home, the eldest son, Ronald Jr., was convicted of the
brutal crimes.
He was given six sentences of 25 years to life, one for each family member he
killed. Then came the strange twist that inspired the movie.
In December of 1975, Ronnie DeFeo Jr.
was moving into his new home in prison, and a new family was moving into the
DeFeo home in Amityville.
The house stayed empty for a year, after which the Briganti and
DeFeo relatives sold the house to George and Kathy Lutz.
For George and Kathy Lutz and their three children, this Dutch colonial at
Ocean Avenue was to have been a dream house.
But by their accounts, it was a hellish nightmare.
And 28 days later, they ran for their lives.
Before you know it, people are talking about this house allegedly being
The Lutzes claim the house was haunted by evil spirits.
They were very strange.
things associated with the DeFeo murders that even the coroner, the forensic
people could not understand.
How did it stay so quiet? How did nobody else wake up? If the first person was
killed, wouldn't the second or fourth, wouldn't somebody wake up? How can you
sleep through 35 -caliber, high -powered rifle going off?
Why didn't anybody really wake up?
try and defend themselves.
The parapsychologist said it was phantomania, some kind of a psychic
that they didn't hear the shots and they could not cry out.
But why was there phantomania?
That's still a question that's being asked.
And why were they all found face down?
Nobody has ever been able to explain that.
Ron DeFeo once said...
that he heard voices telling him to kill.
He sensed a shadowy figure alongside him, compelling him to shoot one member
the family after another.
So there's now a new family in there, and they're claiming that they were
terrified by all kinds of things in there.
I went out, met George and Kathy Lutz, sat and talked to them for five and a
half. And they seemed genuinely frightened and scared.
They claimed the house was demonized. They claimed all kinds of occult things
were happening there. There was green and black slime coming from the walls.
There was an infestation of flies.
George could never get warm. He was always cold.
Kathy said she looked in the mirror one morning and her face, instead of being
that of a 29 -year -old, was that of an old hag.
The story got bigger and more embellished.
Ghosts flying to levitating, to doors flying off hinges, to demons, to satanic
forces.
When you hear this, it's unbelievable.
But they were very convincing in telling the story.
But whatever, this story, we were going to cover it. Because everybody loves a
good ghost story.
Doggett Lee pursued the story and reached out to parapsychologists Ed and
Lorraine Warren.
For about 40 years now, Ed and Lorraine Warren of Monroe, Connecticut, have
investigated cases of haunted houses and demonic possession.
We went to the house to investigate why one family were all murdered,
another family moved in and fled.
After that, it was arranged that we would have this seance on March 6th. At
How.
It was a Saturday night. I was anchoring the news, and afterward, the news
director says, you're going to Amityville.
My assignment that Saturday night in March 1976 was to stay in the house and
report on any unusual activity at all.
So I was there at midnight, and I walked in, and here were about a dozen people
around a big table.
and a crucifix, a blessed candle, and a couple of psychics, Mary Pascarella and
Alberta Riley.
So there were about 20, 25 people, and we had a three -man film crew.
They started the seance, and I remember sitting there with the recorder rolling,
and suddenly I heard Mary Pascarella.
She was going into...
This trance, and she said, I saw this blackness.
It's like a black shadow that forms a hood.
And it moved.
It was marvelous. I'd never seen something like this before.
And then another psychic started seeing things.
Alberta Riley screamed,
it's upstairs in the second bedroom.
Whatever it's here.
And she ran out of the room screaming.
At 3 .15 in the morning, that was the precise time Ron DeFeo committed the
murders.
Lorraine Warren and I went to the sewing room up there where the strongest
force was said to be present.
We sat there with a candle in the middle of the floor and...
It was dark except for the candle.
We waited.
And the rain burst. She said, Marvin, this is the closest to hell I ever want
get. Ronald DeFeo was demonically influenced and committing that horrible
Ronnie DeFeo Jr.'s lawyer, William Weber, thought this as an opportunity to
his client.
George and Kathy Lutz.
approached William Weber, and William Weber listened to the story. And what
he do?
He sits down and begins to think, maybe we can make something out of this house.
William Weber was quick to seize on the idea.
There was talk of, oh, let's try and get an appeal for Ronnie on the
basis of possession, or the devil made me do it.
Hence, the Amityville Horror was born.
Nobody knew that it was going to morph into what it has become.
And to this day, it's still going on. You will believe in the Amityville
A year after the murders of the DeFeo family in Amityville, Long Island, their
house was once again the site of horror.
Was it a demonic force that greeted the George Lutz family, which they claim
drove them to run for their lives just weeks after moving in? They created a
story that has fascinated and unnerved millions.
What happened to them is an experience in terror you will never forget.
If it wasn't for the Amityville Horror, people would have forgotten about this
case long ago.
The Amityville Horror became famous in the book by Jay Anson, written in 1977.
The story was George and Kathy Lutz's account of their 28 -day stay at 112
Ocean Avenue the year before.
A story, they claimed, that was fraught with the horrors that nightmares are
made of.
They claimed that...
There was a pig on the windowsill that looked like a demon. And furniture was
flying and doors were going off the hinges.
Kathy Luss is levitating. She's off the ground just like in The Exorcist.
And all attributable to some kind of demon or evil spirit.
As quickly as the Lusset story spread, questions arose.
Could this be a case of a true haunting, or is it just a wild hoax? Because the
family had made some unusual requests when they had purchased the home.
The Lutz family moved into the house right after the court case.
And when they bought the house, they made sure that they paid a little extra
the furniture that belonged to the DeFeo family to remain in the house.
including, by the way, the bed that the DeFeo children had been murdered in. Why
would you want furniture of a family that was murdered?
Then came the claims of supernatural hauntings and happenings.
That night I spent in that house in Amityville, I saw no evidence of...
green slime oozing from the walls. I saw no evidence of infestation of flies.
I observed nothing that would support the story of this house being
occupied by demons.
As soon as it came out, my first impression was Mr. Weber, who
was trying to get him out on insanity again. They're trying to say that He was
possessed. It was evil in the house.
Yet despite the questions that arose from the start, Jay Anson's book rose to
the top of the New York Times bestseller list in nonfiction.
And it was not a true story.
The house was not haunted.
There was nothing wrong with that house.
The whole thing was a hoax that made money.
In correspondence I had with Rhonda Fayo, He said this old Amityville horror
a moneymaker, and he blames his attorney, Bill Weber, who was his
attorney, for creating this with the Lutz family.
During the course of my trial, some priest was in the courtroom watching my
performance on the witness stand.
He felt that my performance, I had to be possessed by the devil.
This was also, you figure, just a year or two after the movie The Exorcist had
debuted and was such a big hit.
Mr. Weber says, listen, these people named Lutz has bought your house, and we
can use them and make money. That's how the haunted house nonsense started.
I reached out to Bill Weber. I asked how the story evolved of the demonic
forces supposedly in the house, and he said, Over dinner with George and Kathy
Lutz.
We said that and we talked.
We had a nice evening conversation.
And they saw a good story in it.
And he said the story grew and grew and it became what it is today.
Somewhere along the line, there was a parting of ways and not amicable between
William Weber and George and Kathy Lutz.
They suit each other. The Lutzes for alleged invasion of privacy and
infliction of emotional distress. And Weber for perpetrating a fraud and
of contract.
Is this fact or fiction? It's fiction.
Absolutely. We can sit here for three weeks and I'll keep telling you each
it's a fraud.
The Amityville Horror Franchise.
which has growth in the hundreds of millions of dollars, now includes more
20 movies and countless documentaries.
There's something evil in my house.
And despite the claims, George Lutz claimed that the haunting was real until
day he died.
The Amityville house appears to be quite peaceful now. There's been no evidence
of any strange occurrences here since the Lutz family fled.
In 79, after the Lutzes left, I interviewed the people who were living
house, the Cromerties, Barbara and Jim. They told me there was nothing going on
in there.
As far as we're concerned, the Amityville hoax is the real horror.
People have lived in that house for almost 50 years since this has happened,
nobody's ever had a problem.
The house isn't haunted. The people that live there now sure know that it's not
haunted. And Ronnie knows that it isn't haunted.
My lawyer had to stick his two cents in and wanted to make us millions of
dollars, which I never got.
And the sad point is, you don't need demons and ghosts.
The true Amityville story is what led to six people dying.
That's what's horrific.
The horror in itself is my family getting killed. I guess that's the only
tragedy here.
Everything else is fantasy,
really.
It's fiction.
The evil in the house with him.
I'm Ronald Butch DeFale.
I was found guilty of killing my mother, father, two brothers, and two sisters.
And I was sentenced to 25 to life.
I spent the first four years of my incarceration in Greenhaven Correctional
Facility.
That was where I met Ryan DeFeo.
At times it was very pleasant when we would reminisce together, talk about
Amityville. He was just a nice older guy from the same town that I knew as a
kid. And he kind of forgot.
that this man was accused of killing his entire family.
After 40 years in prison, Ronnie DeFeo told me an ever -changing story of his
versions of what happened on the fateful night that sent him to prison.
At first, Ronnie blamed the mafia.
He said, here I am, doing time for what these guys did.
Then I brought it up again.
And he forgot that he had earlier told me that the mafia had killed his family
and went into a whole different narrative.
He said it was his sister.
I'm not innocent, but I'm not guilty of this whole crap.
Ronnie DeFeo said that his sister Dawn murdered his entire family and he was
barely able to escape her. Dawn had grabbed a rifle and we got into a
match. I was pretty hyped up and I picked her up.
And I tore it down.
She landed on the bed. I grabbed the rifle and shot her in the head.
Ronnie claimed that it was his sister Dawn who had killed their parents
she wanted to elope with her boyfriend and her parents wouldn't let her.
And he also claimed that Dawn planned to pin the murders on him.
I was set up and brought into this by my sister.
I was going to be the scapegoat for this whole thing.
But to this day, There has been no evidence that anyone else other than Ron
DeFeo committed those murders.
Ronnie DeFeo's actual sentence is only 25 to life. That means that after the 25
years, he started going to parole boards.
You would think that he might want to avoid that traumatic experience, but no,
he thinks that they still might let him out.
What I have to do now is just get the truth out and straighten this out so I
get out of prison.
Will we ever know the true story of what happened that night? What motivated Ron
DeFeo? Only Ron DeFeo can answer that.
And I don't think we'll ever get a true answer because he's told so many
differing stories over the years.
I think that the shifting stories that DeFeo gives are really consistent with
psychopathy, psychopaths. seem to lack any moral reasoning, and they tend to
just produce excuses for their behavior almost in random fashion.
Everybody else is scared, and you know what you're all afraid of? You know I
this with other f***ing people, and you're all afraid to deal with reality
because that's reality, not this s*** coming out of your mouth.
There may also be a motivation for attention.
He seems to enjoy the attention. He seems to enjoy being interviewed in
the camera and telling his story.
He basks in that glory.
They made a monster out of me.
People are afraid of me. People in here are afraid of me. These dogs in here are
afraid of me.
Terrified of me.
He looks like the disaffected, sort of angry, lost person that he was then.
It's not like age has given him any kind of wisdom or hindsight.
He's a mass murderer. He took a rifle, blasted his family to death, and came up
with so many lies afterwards that nobody believes a word he said.
I'm the devil, I'm possessed, I'm supposed to be vicious, a madman,
voices, which is all nonsense.
I realize I'm a bad guy, but...
You know, what they're doing to me, it's a little blown out of proportion, you
know?
It's been decades since Ronald DeFeo Jr.
brutally murdered his entire family that November night in Amityville.
And investigators still don't know why he did it.
The secret DeFeo took to his grave.
He died in prison in March of 2021.
I'm Donnie Wahlberg.
Thanks for watching.
Good night.
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