Original subtitles

DeFeo: I really feel bad about what happened.

[ Gunshot ]

I'm really sorry about the whole thing, but...

all the sorries in the world aren't gonna change anything.

Like I say, 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 13, 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, facedown 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 them 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.

♪♪

Man: First this bulletin from the WOR newsroom.

Six members of one family have been found shot to death

in their nightclothes in their expensive home

in Amityville, Long Island.

They were all killed in their beds, shot in the back.

All found in the same position, facedown.

And there's no evidence of a struggle.

Martin: And that was very unusual.

Osuna: The rifle used in the murders was a Marlin rifle,

.35-caliber.

[ Gunshot ] It is so deafening.

Why didn't anyone hear a gunshot?

Man: 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,

Marc, 11,

and John, the youngest one, 9.

Gloria: We were devastated.

They were all gone. They were all gone.

Man: 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-I wonder.

♪♪

Dr. Cohen: On the face of it, this is a family

that is very good at keeping up appearances,

but this is a family with secrets.

♪♪

Scott: When the murders were uncovered,

Ron was pulled in and questioned.

Man: Police have been questioning the son, Ronald.

He initially said that this was a mob hit.

My father was involved with big, big people

in organized crime.

Genis: And Ronnie had even named a specific person.

The person was later found to have an alibi

and could not have been in Amityville

killing Ronnie DeFeo's family at all.

Scott: More intense questioning of Ron DeFeo.

He told the police that people broke into the house,

they pulled him along with them,

and they shot everyone while he was present.

I knew then I was set up.

I was gonna be the scapegoat for everybody.

[ Gunshot ]

Man: They were shots that left six members of one family dead

in this charming Dutch colonial home.

Aronson: 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.

Dr. Cohen: And Ron Jr. was subject to a lot of abuse.

Osuna: 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 in trouble,

no matter what I did.

Aronson: He quit school and didn't really work.

I think he 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.

Didio: He veered wildly back and forth,

and then, finally, Ronnie did break down and confess.

Ronnie says, "Yes. Yes, I did it."

He was an angry young man,

and on the night of November 13, 1974,

he unleashed that anger.

And when all hell broke loose, it broke loose.

[ Gunshots ]

♪♪

Scott: It was about 3:15 in the morning.

[ Dog howling ]

Didio: 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.

Berry-Dee: 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 his 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.

Berry-Dee: He fires one shot into each child.

♪♪

[ Gunshot ]

Didio: And he described to Detective Rafferty

how he stood there

and he watched his little brother die.

That just makes your blood run cold.

Berry-Dee: Sweet Allison --

DeFeo points this Marlin rifle barrel

into her face and fires.

[ Gunshot ]

Scott: In a confession to police,

he said, "Once it started, I couldn't stop.

It went so fast."

Like lighting a firecracker, and there's a whole pack.

Like a chain reaction.

Rafferty: We had asked him

if anyone had awakened during all of this,

and he told us that his sister 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.

Berry-Dee: He fired a single shot,

blowing the side of her head off.

[ Gunshot ]

It was all over in 15 minutes.

Six members of one family were dead.

♪♪

DeFeo: As far as I'm concerned,

I got to them before they got to me.

♪♪

[ Bell tolling ]

♪♪

Didio: The funeral took place

at St. Martin de Tours Church.

The church was packed to overflowing.

Uruburu: There was no sound except for the organ.

It was very quiet.

And, suddenly, they wheel in

not one, not two, but six coffins.

Anthony: 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 -- I mean, just terrible.

You're just in shock.

I actually went outside for a little while and sat outside

'cause it was just --

It was --

It was overwhelming.

They were a great family.

Marc and John Matthew were great kids.

Allison was wonderful, Dawn.

I mean, they had so much to live for,

and it's just wasted for no reason.

♪♪

Osuna: Butch was in custody when his family was buried.

♪♪

Symons: I met Ronnie for the purposes of arraignment.

I was shocked because of the nature of the charges.

I mean, 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.

♪♪

♪♪

Jordan: Authorities in Amityville, New York,

were searching for evidence

while building 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.

Spero: 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?

♪♪

Uruburu: 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.

Jordan: But details were emerging

as investigators learned what Ron Jr. was doing

in the 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.

♪♪

Ron DeFeo -- after committing the murders,

he showered, he packed up his bloody clothing,

stuffed it into an oversized pillowcase.

Calmly went back into the bedrooms

to retrieve the spent shell casings from the rifle.

He destroyed evidence.

Didio: He drove to Brooklyn.

Scott: And stuffed it into a storm drain.

And then he went to work at his grandfather's auto dealership.

Didio: 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.

Rafferty: 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 Division,

they recovered the murder weapon...

.35-caliber Marlin.

We would've never found the weapon,

only that the killer told us where it was.

Jordan: 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.

Berry-Dee: And then the 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."

DeFeo: They got lucky.

Truth of the matter is a police diver --

he's diving in shallow water over there

and they found the gun -- that was it --

a mile away from my house.

I did not direct them 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, uh --

really, really out of it, mentally out of it,

and 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.

When it ejected, you know, another one went in.

He's describing himself as, like, being in a dream,

going through the house, killing everyone in the house...

[ Gunshot ]

...and almost having a sense of unreality...

[ Gunshot ]

...not believing that this was all real.

[ Gunshot ]

DeFeo: Then 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,

touch with reality there for a couple of minutes.

♪♪

Jordan: After the murders, Ronnie went to work,

but he left early, saying that he didn't feel well.

Dr. Cohen: Then he decides to go score some heroin.

In the haze of heroin and alcohol,

he almost convinced himself that everything was okay.

DeFeo: 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.

Jordan: 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 had gone by,

and I'm drinking and using more dope.

So, I finally decide that I'm gonna 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, my sister.

I said, "My God." I got scared.

I ran out of the house.

Dr. Cohen: He did alert his friends

that something had gone on in the house.

They all go over to the house.

They all went in the house. I stood outside it.

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.

♪♪

Jordan: 11 months after the brutal murders of his family,

the case against Ronald DeFeo Jr.,

also known as "Butch,"

was ready to go to trial.

Didio: William Weber, who was the court-appointed attorney

for Ronald DeFeo --

he was actually Ronnie's third lawyer

because Ronnie had actually assaulted

one of the former court-appointed attorneys.

Osunda: 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,

asked him 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 this is now moot.

We knew he did it.

We just had to determine why he did it.

The 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.

Scott: 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 gonna 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.

Jordan: Another theory the police were following

is that Ron Jr. was looking to steal money and jewelry

allegedly hidden in his parents' bedroom.

Ahearn: And he was interrupted and 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 father 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.

Aronson: 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 was legally insane.

It was a defense Ronnie had fought against

with his first two attorneys, but now, with William Weber,

they were ready to roll the dice.

DeFeo: My attorney used insanity as a defense.

He told me, "You are to go in the courtroom and act crazy.

Make these people think you're crazy."

Didio: Was Ronnie insane?

Did he know what he was doing?

The insanity defense was, I guess,

the best that William Weber could do under the circumstances

because he has his work cut out for him.

Dr. Cohen: 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.

Osuna: At times, he would say he was insane.

"Hey, I didn't seem like myself.

I saw these dark hands

that resembled my sister hand me a gun."

But then he would let it slip, like, "No, I'm not crazy.

I feel sane."

It was very, very bad theater acting.

The change in stories was part of the insanity.

You cannot go in the courtroom and stay 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 conditions, by his own admission,

don't meet the criteria for

not guilty by 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

about his dog.

Didio: And it came down, at the end,

to the dog,

the family's Old English Sheepdog, Shaggy.

Giambra: 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 murders,

the dog was howling straight for that 15 or 20 minutes

that it took Ronnie to kill his family.

[ Dog howling ]

And 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."

DeFeo: 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've been the end of this.

Didio: There were very strange things

associated with the DeFeo murders

that the coroner, the forensics people

could not understand.

Martin: Before you know it,

people are talking about this house allegedly being haunted.

[ Thunder crashes ]

♪♪

♪♪

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.

♪♪

Jordan: 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.

♪♪

Didio: The house stayed empty for a year,

after which the Brigante and DeFeo relatives

sold the house to George and Kathy Lutz.

Scott: For George and Kathy Lutz and their three children,

this Dutch colonial at 112 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.

Martin: Before you know it,

people are talking about this house allegedly being haunted.

[ Thunder crashes ] Scott: The Lutzes claim

the house was haunted by evil spirits.

Didio: There were very strange things

associated with the DeFeo murders

that even the coroner, the forensic people

could not understand.

Martin: How did it stay so quiet?

How did nobody else wake up?

If the first person was killed,

wouldn't the second, third, fourth --

Somebody'd wake up.

Didio: How can you sleep through

.35-caliber, high-powered rifle going off?

[ Gunshot ]

Why didn't anybody really wake up or try and defend themselves?

Scott: The parapsychologists said it was phantomania,

some kind of a psychic paralysis

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.

Didio: And why were they all found facedown?

Nobody's ever been able to explain that.

Scott: 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 of the family

after another.

[ Gunshot ]

♪♪

Martin: So, there's now a new family in there,

and they're claiming that they were terrified

by all kinds of things there.

Didio: I went out, met George and Kathy Lutz,

sat and talked to them for 5 1/2 hours.

And they seemed genuinely frightened and scared.

Scott: 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.

Didio: 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.

Martin: 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 was, we were going to cover it

because everybody loves a good ghost story.

Laura Didio doggedly 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 séance

on March 6th at the house.

♪♪

Scott: 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.

♪♪

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.

Scott: They started this séance,

and I remember sitting there with a 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.

I was marveled. I'd never seen something like this before.

And then another psychic

started seeing things.

Didio: Alberta Riley...

screamed, "It's upstairs in the second bedroom!"

[ Exhales sharply ] Whatever is here is --

Man: Are they trying to harm them?

Yes.

And she ran out of the room screaming.

Scott: At 3:15 in the morning --

that was the precise time

Ron DeFeo committed the murders...

[ Gunshot ]

...Lorraine Warren and I

went to the sewing room upstairs,

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 Lorraine burst.

She said, "Marvin, this is the closest to hell

I ever want to get."

Ronald DeFeo was demonically influenced

in committing that horrible crime.

♪♪

Ronnie DeFeo Jr.'s lawyer, William Weber,

saw this as an opportunity to help his client.

George and Kathy Lutz approached William Weber,

and William Weber listened to the story.

And what does he do?

He sits down and begins to think,

"Maybe we can make something out of this house."

Didio: 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."

[ Thunder crashes ]

Hence, "The Amityville Horror" was born.

Didio: Nobody knew that it was going to morph

into what it has become,

and to this day, it's still going on.

Man: You will believe in the Amityville horror.

♪♪

♪♪

Jordan: A year after the murders of the DeFeo family

in Amityville, Long Island,

their house was once again the site of horror.

Scott: 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.

Man: What happened to them

is an experience in terror

you will never forget.

Osuna: If it wasn't for "The Amityville Horror,"

people would have forgotten about this case long ago.

Jordan: "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.

Martin: They claim 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 Lutz is levitating.

She's off the ground, just like in "The Exorcist."

♪♪

And all attributable to some kind of demon or evil spirit.

♪♪

Jordan: As quickly as the Lutzes' 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 for the furniture

that belonged to the DeFeo family to remain in the house.

Including, by the way,

the beds 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.

♪♪

Scott: 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.

Giambra: As soon as it came out,

my first impression was Mr. Weber, who represented him,

is trying to get him out on insanity again.

They're trying to say that he was possessed,

that there 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 Best Seller list

in nonfiction.

And it was not a true story.

DeFeo: The house was not haunted.

There was nothing wrong with that house.

The whole thing was a hoax to make money.

Scott: In correspondence I had with Ron DeFeo,

he said this whole "Amityville Horror" was a money-maker,

and he blames his attorney, Bill Weber,

who was his defense 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 the Lutzes bought your house,

and we can use them and make money."

That's how the haunted house nonsense started.

Scott: I reached out to Bill Weber.

I asked him how the story evolved of these demonic forces

supposedly in the house, and he said,

"Over dinner with George and Kathy Lutz."

We sat down, and we talked.

We had a nice evening conversation.

Scott: And they saw a good story in it,

and he said the story grew and grew,

and it became what it is today.

[ People shouting indistinctly ]

♪♪

Didio: Somewhere along the line,

there was a parting of ways, and not amicable,

between William Weber and George and Kathy Lutz.

Jordan: They sued each other --

the Lutzes for alleged invasion of privacy

and intentional infliction of emotional distress,

and Weber for perpetrating a fraud and breach of contract.

Is this fact or fiction?

Fiction. Absolutely.

We could sit here for three weeks

and I'll keep telling you each time it's a fraud.

♪♪

Scene. Mark.

Jordan: "The Amityville Horror" franchise,

which has grossed in the hundreds of millions of dollars,

now includes more than 20 movies and countless documentaries.

Woman: There's something evil in my house.

♪♪

And despite the claims, George Lutz claimed

that the haunting was real until the 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.

Spero: In '79, after the Lutzes left,

I interviewed the people who were living in the house,

the Cromartys -- 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.

Genis: People have lived in that house for almost 50 years

since this has happened, and 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.

♪♪

DeFeo: My lawyer had to stick his two cents in

and wanted to make us millions of dollars, which I never got.

Osuna: 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.

DeFeo: The horror in itself is my family getting killed.

I guess that's the only real tragedy here.

Everything else is a --

it's fantasy, really.

It's fiction.

♪♪

The evil in the house was him.

♪♪

DeFeo: I'm Ronald "Butch" DeFeo.

I was found guilty of killing my mother and 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 Ronnie 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 you 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 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 in this whole crime.

Genis: Ronnie DeFeo said that his sister Dawn

murdered his entire family

and he was barely able to escape her.

Dawn had grabbed the rifle, and we got into a wrestling match.

I was pretty hyped up,

and I picked her up and I threw her down.

She landed on the bed. I grabbed the rifle and...

[ Gunshot ] ...shot her in the head.

Jordan: Ronnie claimed that it was his sister Dawn

who had killed their parents

because 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 gonna be the scapegoat for this whole thing.

Scott: But to this day,

there has been no evidence

that anyone else other than Ron DeFeo

committed those murders.

♪♪

Genis: 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 can get out of prison.

Scott: 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.

Dr. Cohen: 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 did this with other [bleep] people,

and you're all afraid to deal with reality

because that's reality,

not the [bleep] coming out of your mouth!

Dr. Cohen: There may also be a motivation for attention.

He seems to enjoy the attention.

He seems to enjoy being interviewed

in front of the camera and telling his stories.

He basks in that glory.

They made a monster out of me. People are afraid of me.

People in there are afraid of me.

These guards in here are afraid of me.

Terrified.

Uruburu: 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.

DeFeo: I'm the Devil, I'm possessed,

I'm supposed to be vicious,

a madman, insane, hear 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.

It's a secret DeFeo took to his grave.

He died in prison in March of 2021.

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Thanks for watching.

Good night.