Ronald DeFeo

Ronald Joseph "Butch" DeFeo (born September 26, 1951 in Brooklyn , New York ) is an American multiple murderer who shot his entire family in 1974. The story was filmed as a horror film in Hollywood in 1979 .

Life

Ronald was born the first of five children. He is the son of Ronald Joseph DeFeo Sr. († 43) and Louise Marie Brigante-DeFeo († 42). His siblings were Dawn Theresa († 18), Allison Louise († 13), Marc Gregory († 12) and John Mathew († 9). At the time of the murders, the family lived at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville in the US state of New York . Ronald was 23 years old on the day of the crime.

Little is known about Ronald DeFeo's youth; he attended the local high school and is said to have been so contentious that he had to leave it. Ronald also used drugs, which compounded problems with family, high school, and friends. There are said to have been frequent violent arguments with the father within the family. Ronald was particularly often the victim of paternal violence. However, this statement is viewed with caution, as Ronald himself had behavioral problems and often resisted his father. Friends, neighbors, and independent witnesses describe Ronald DeFeo Sr. as helpful and hardworking, while Ronald DeFeo Jr. is contentious and unpredictable. Ronald DeFeo Jr. claimed in later interrogations that his sister Dawn also used drugs, but this statement could not be confirmed or disproved due to Dawn's death. As far as is known, Ronald Jr. attended the military after dropping out of high school . Apparently his family hoped this would "get him back on track". But only a few months later, Ronald was released there because he repeatedly provoked arguments and took drugs. After he made up for ninth grade in high school and struggled, his father got him a temporary job at a car company.

Murders

The original house where the DeFeo family was killed. Until 1979 the house was painted black except for the balcony and balustrade and the windows and doors were framed in white.

In the early morning of November 13, 1974, according to a police report, Ronald DeFeo Jr. walked into a bar in Amityville and said to have shouted, “You have to help me! I think my mother and father were shot! ”While some of those present rushed to the DeFeos house with Ronald, the remainder called the police. The bodies of the parents and four siblings were finally discovered in the DeFeos house . All of the murder victims were in their beds and shot from behind. According to the official report from the Suffolk County Police Department, there was no evidence of attempted escape or fighting, apparently the victims were surprised in their sleep. The murder weapon was a model 336C Marlin .

According to Ronald himself, he had taken a bath after the fact, changed his clothes and disposed of the blood-spattered clothing. Then he drove to work as if nothing had happened.

Arrest and conviction

Ronald DeFeo was initially taken into protective custody by the police after police officers speculated that a man named Tony Mazzeo could be the culprit, as he was known as a previously convicted contract killer and was temporarily friends with the DeFeos. This quickly turned out to be false (Mazzeo was outside the state at the time of the crime) and the next morning Ronald confessed to having shot his family himself. He was then arrested.

On October 14, 1975, the trial against him began. His defense attorney, Dr. Daniel Schwartz, had tried to plead insanity , citing Ronald's alleged insanity as the reason. Ronald claimed to have killed his family because strange voices in his head told him to. But the court found these allegations and the defense strategy to be implausible. Since there was clear evidence that he had acted carefully and rationally after the crime, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison for each murder.

Motives and questions about the course of events

To this day, the question is debated whether Ronald DeFeo committed the murders alone or whether there were people involved. The background to this are comments in the records of police officers and crime scene investigators, according to which the order of the killings was unusually fast. The fact that apparently none of the victims tried to flee or attack Ronald speaks for complicity by second or even third parties. The loud shots should have woken the rest of the family members. Furthermore, DeFeo had accused his sister Dawn in later interrogations of having shot the family with him. But immediately after the fact, there was an argument between the siblings and finally a scuffle, in the course of which Ronald shot his sister. The found situation of Dawn's corpse - she was also lying in bed and was covered up to the shoulders when it was found - as well as a missing second weapon cast doubts about Ronald's statement: Dawn was also shot from behind, which speaks against a fighting .

The actual motives for the murders are unknown. Since Ronald DeFeo gives contradicting information about the motive and the course of events in every police questioning and interview , there are numerous conjectures and theories. One considers greed as a possible explanation. Ronald DeFeo is said to have demanded the payment of life insurance unusually early after the death of his family . Another assumption is that he initially only killed his father for domestic violence out of vindictiveness and hatred and eliminated the rest of the family so as not to have to fear witnesses. A third possible motive is assumed to be drug addiction from Ronald, who was under police surveillance for drug abuse as early as high school. He would have killed his family while intoxicated on drugs.

filming

The murder of the DeFeo family aroused international media interest. In particular, Ronald Jr.'s allegations, found to be implausible by the court, that he was possessed by the devil or demons were eagerly picked up and exaggerated by the press. In 1975 the Lutz family moved into the DeFeos house. Allegedly, poltergeist phenomena should soon have occurred that drove the family out of the house. The book The Amityville Horror - A True Story by Jay Anson and George Lutz deals with the poltergeist phenomena. In 1979 it was filmed by Stuart Rosenberg under the title Amityville Horror ; it was followed by seven sequels and a remake in 2005.

literature

• Nick Yapp: True Crime . Parragon Books, New York NY et al. 2007, ISBN 978-1-4054-9795-4 .
• Jay Anson: The Amityville Horror - A True Story . Bantham Books, New York 1981, ISBN 0-553-14400-6 .
• Ronald Barri Flowers, H. Loraine Flowers: Murders In The United States: Crimes, Killers And Victims Of The Twentieth Century . McFarland, Jefferson 2004, ISBN 0-786-42075-8 .
• Will Savive: Mentally ill in Amityville: Murder, Mystery, and Mayhem at 112 Ocean Ave . iUniverse, New York 2008, ISBN 0595610102 .

Web links

• Site with background information on the Amityville murder with police photographs (English)
• Additional website with background information, newspaper reports and police photos (English)