The Amityville Horror

On November 13, 1974, Ronald "Butch" DeFeo Junior took a .35 caliber Marlin rifle and murdered his entire family as they slept in their beds at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York. His father, mother, two sisters, and two brothers — six people ranging in age from 9 to 43 — were all found face down, shot at close range, in what remains one of the most chilling mass murders in Long Island history. No one in the house appeared to wake up. No neighbor called the police. DeFeo confessed within 48 hours and was convicted on all six counts of second-degree murder, receiving six consecutive sentences of 25 years to life.

Thirteen months later, George and Kathy Lutz purchased the house at a steep discount, moved in with Kathy's three children from a previous marriage, and claimed that over the next 28 days they experienced escalating paranormal phenomena that drove them to flee in the middle of the night.

Their account included a priest who heard a disembodied voice command him to "get out" during a house blessing, swarms of flies in the dead of winter, green slime oozing from the walls, 5-year-old Missy's invisible friend Jodie — described as a pig with glowing red eyes — and George's disturbing physical and psychological transformation into someone who increasingly resembled DeFeo himself.

The Lutzes' story became Jay Anson's 1977 bestseller "The Amityville Horror: A True Story," which sold over 10 million copies and spawned the 1979 film starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder. Ed and Lorraine Warren investigated the house and produced the famous "Ghost Boy" infrared photograph, launching their careers as America's most recognized paranormal investigators.But the cracks in the story were significant.

DeFeo's defense attorney William Weber told the Associated Press the haunting was fabricated "over many bottles of wine" as a mutual profit scheme. Weather records showed no snow on the ground when the Lutzes claimed to find cloven hoof prints. Police logs contained no calls from the house during the 28 days. The front door the Lutzes said was ripped from its hinges showed no damage. And the Cromarty family, who purchased the home after the Lutzes, lived there for a full decade without a single paranormal incident. A federal judge reviewing the case described the Lutzes' claims as largely unsupported by the facts.

This episode traces the full arc of the Amityville story from the DeFeo family's violent dysfunction to the murders, the trial, the Lutzes' 28 days, the book and film phenomenon, the skeptics' case, the Warrens' investigation, DeFeo's ever-changing confessions from prison, and the cultural aftershock that reshaped how Americans think about haunted houses, property disclosure law, and the paranormal investigation industry. It examines all three prevailing theories — genuine haunting, deliberate hoax, and the psychological middle ground of real distress amplified into commercial mythology — and never loses sight of the six real people whose murders started it all.Ronald DeFeo Junior died in prison on March 12, 2021, at the age of 69. George Lutz died on May 8, 2006.

Kathy Lutz died on August 17, 2004. None of them ever recanted their version of events. The house still stands, its address changed and its famous eye-shaped windows replaced, but its history impossible to erase.

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Disturbing History is a dark history podcast exploring unsolved mysteries, secret societies, historical conspiracies, lost civilizations, and the shadowy stories buried beneath the surface of the past.

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