Ronald DeFeo, who was convicted of killing his parents and four siblings at the family’s home in Amityville, N.Y. in 1974, died on Friday at a hospital in Albany, N.Y. He was 69.
DeFeo’s murder spree spawned a series of books and movies, including the 1979 film The Amityville Horror.
The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision confirmed the death on Monday and said that the cause would be determined by the Albany County coroner.
He was convicted in 1975 on six counts of second-degree murder after he confessed to using a rifle to shoot and kill his father, Ronald DeFeo Sr.; his mother, Louise; his sisters, Dawn and Allison; and his brothers, Mark and John Matthew.
The victims were found in their beds with gunshot wounds on Nov. 13, 1974. Mr. DeFeo, the oldest of the siblings, was 23 at the time.
DeFeo, who was serving 25 years to life in prison, had been held at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, N.Y., since 1975. He was transferred to the Albany Medical Center on Feb. 2.
The DeFeos’ house in Amityville, a village on the South Shore of Long Island, has since been the setting for dozens of books and documentaries, beginning with the 1977 book The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson and a 1979 movie of the same name that inspired multiple remakes, prequels and sequels.
The books and movies focused less on the 1974 murders in 1974 than on the family of five that moved into the house about a year later. That family, the Lutzes, stayed there for just 28 days and claimed that the house was haunted by poltergeists who slammed windows, banged walls and wrenched doors off their hinges.
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Ronald Joseph DeFeo Jr. was born on Sept. 26, 1951. According a 1974 report in The New York Times, the DeFeos were considered, in the words of one neighbor, “a nice, normal family.”
For about nine years, the family lived in a three-story home at 112 Ocean Avenue, not far from South Oyster Bay. The house had a swimming pool in the back and a statue of St. Joseph holding a baby Jesus on the front lawn.
DeFeo worked with his father at Brigante‐Karl Buick, a large car dealership on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn. They appeared to have had a tense relationship, and The Times reported that residents of Amityville said the younger DeFeo had a reputation for taking drugs, drinking and fighting.
A female friend of DeFeo’s said he was part of a crowd that “would drink and then get into fights, but the next day they’d apologize.”
On the evening of Nov. 13, 1974, DeFeo went to a bar near his home and proclaimed that his parents had been shot, witnesses said. He also called the police to report the deaths.
DeFeo later confessed to the killings, and his seven-week trial in 1975 focused not on whether he had killed his relatives but on why. His court-appointed lawyer mounted an insanity defense.
In November 1975, DeFeo was convicted on six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. In the decades since, he insisted that his lawyer had pursued the insanity defense against his wishes to make the story more attractive for possible book and movie contracts. He had also sought to have his conviction overturned, blaming his sister Dawn for the killings.
DeFeo became eligible for parole in 1999 and would have had his next parole hearing in July.
SOURCE: New York Times
