The Amityville Horror

After a series of dark and ominous events, an unassuming family home on Long Island becomes the most notorious house in America. 50 years later, it’s spawned a title wave of books, documentaries, and films; but do haunted houses really exist? Who – or what – is really responsible for the Amityville horror? Thank you to our experts who contributed to this episode: Laura DiDio, Anthony Holmes, Jason Horton, Eric Walter, John Tefft, Dr. Phani Tumu, and Loyd Auerbach. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow History’s Greatest Mysteries to never miss an episode! History’s Greatest Mysteries is a History Channel Original Podcast, brought to you by Rewind Studios. 🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Rewind Studios Originals, Hidden History and Government That Doesn’t Suck, wherever you get your podcasts! Follow us on Social Instagram: @RewindStudios https://www.instagram.com/rewindstudiosTikTok: @RewindStudios https://www.tiktok.com/@rewindstudiosSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  And now a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Today, a mystery that's haunted the world for almost 50 years, one so terrifying it spawned a tidal wave of books, documentaries, and film.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  They've endured what some of the family have defined as a circus act of paranormal activity.

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  They decide right then and there, we are leaving in the dead of night.

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  Now we uncover the top theories surrounding the most notorious house in America.

• 0:40Speaker 03

  I don't think it was the murder that scared them away. I think it was something much more devilish.

• 0:46Speaker 04

  There are a couple of other things that indicate that there is another accomplice on the loose.

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  Can new testimony finally reveal the answer?

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Danny claimed that George's interest in the occult instigated the haunting.

• 0:59Speaker 00

  Who or what is responsible for the Amityville Horror?

• 1:08Speaker 00

  Welcome to History's Greatest Mysteries, a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind Studios. Each episode, we take a deep dive into some of the greatest unanswered questions from history, backed by some of the foremost experts on the subject. Today, the Amityville Horror.

• 1:32Speaker 05

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• 2:03Speaker 00

  December 18, 1975, Amityville, New York. George and Kathy Lutz, along with their three children, Danny, Christopher, and Melissa, move into their new home.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  It was a typical day by anybody's standards. The weather was fine. Everything was seemingly normal.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  But it's immediately clear that the Lutz's new house is anything but normal.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  From the very first night of being in the house, they start to experience knocks, chills. So many things are happening. Gusts of wind in a room that is sealed. George even believes that there is an invisible force in this house.

• 2:49Speaker 00

  As the days pass, patriarch George seems to be affected the most.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  George says he could never get warm. He's building fires all the time. He's not going into work. He stops bathing. He's very disheveled and unkempt.

• 3:08Speaker 00

  Soon, other members of the family are impacted as well.

• 3:12Speaker 04

  George's wife Kathleen comes down with a mysterious illness.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  The crescendo of horrors continues to build until one final night when it comes to an alarming peak.

• 3:25Speaker 04

  George reports a deafening sound coming from the living room, like a marching band at full volume, marching across the living room. Windows are going up and down. Doors are flying off the hinges. When they go to check, there's nothing there.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  They've been living in this house for 28 days, and they've endured an onslaught in what some of the members of the family have defined as a circus act of paranormal activity.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  The Lutz's finally can't take it anymore, and at 7:00 AM on January 14, 1976, they flee.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  They packed just a couple of changes of clothes. They grab the dog and literally leave or abscond in the van, and that's it. And they're at Kathy's mother's house, and they said they will never, never go back there again.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  Why would this seemingly normal family abandon their brand-new home in the dead of winter? What or who are they running from? While dozens of theories have risen over the years, the first is based on an actual horrific event that happened one year earlier, which brings us to theory number one: the house was tainted by murder.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Before the Lutz's purchased 112 Ocean Avenue, the DeFeo family lived there.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  The members of the DeFeo family are Ronald DeFeo, Sr., and his wife, Louise Briganti DeFeo. They are 42 and 43 years old. They have five children. Ronald DeFeo, Jr., who is known to his friends and family as Butch, his younger 18-year-old sister, Dawn, followed by Allison, who's 13, and then the two youngest are Mark, 12, and John, 9 at the time. And they are a typical, middle, upwardly mobile, suburban family.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  For the DeFeo children, coming from a small apartment in Brooklyn, moving to this lavish property had to be a dream come true.

• 5:24Speaker 00

  But that dream comes to an abrupt end on November 13, 1974. At 6:30 PM, the crowd at Henry's Bar, just a few blocks from the DeFeo home, are enjoying their cocktails when suddenly Butch DeFeo, the eldest son, bursts in.

• 5:42Speaker 06

  He's very frantic. He's very upset. And he's telling everyone that his mom and dad have been shot and that he needs assistance. Initially, the patrons don't believe him. They think he's making it up. They think it's kind of a sick joke. But the more Butch goes on about that, the more they believe that he, in fact, is telling the truth. Couple of his friends, Bobby, John, Joey, and three other men, decide to leave the bar, go to Butch's house, and see what's going on. When the group gets to Butch's house, there's some discussion about who's going to go in. There's some concern. Hey, is there a suspect inside? What should they do? Bobby takes the lead. He's going in. He becomes the alpha dog in this group, and he's going to go in and find out what's going on.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  As the rest of the men come inside, the house is eerily quiet. The only sound is the barking of the DeFeo family dog, Shaggy.

• 6:32Speaker 06

  As they move up the stairs onto the second floor, they start to smell something. It's a smell that they associate with death. Nothing else in life smells like death. Once you smell it, you will always recognize it.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  Bobby heads straight to the master bedroom.

• 6:49Speaker 06

  Bobby goes inside, turns on the light, and this is when he discovers the first two murders. The father, Big Ronnie, he's laying face down. He's been shot a couple of times. And in the bed is Louise, the mother. She's curled up in a fetal position, and she's been shot a couple of times. This is more than Bobby can handle, to the point that two of the guys believe that he needs to be taken away from this scene and taken downstairs. One of the men in the group, John Altieri, he decides to stay on the second floor and investigate further.

• 7:22Speaker 00

  Further down the hall, John Altieri stumbles upon another horrific scene.

• 7:28Speaker 06

  When he goes in that bedroom, he discovers Butch's two brothers. John, who's nine years old, he is found dead in bed, soaked with blood. In the same bedroom is his brother Mark, who's 12 years old. He too has been murdered in his bed. Altieri sees this. This is too overwhelming for him as well. Leaves the bedroom. He goes back downstairs.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  The men have found four victims, but the body count doesn't stop there. In another room, the two DeFeo daughters, Dawn and Allison, are dead as well.

• 8:05Speaker 06

  The police arrive at the scene, and they start to interview the group. What these men find are six people, all family-related, all murdered in their own home in their own bed.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  As police begin to process the scene, a prime suspect emerges.

• 8:22Speaker 06

  On the outside of the residence, they find a Marlin Rifle 35 caliber. This rifle is kind of unique, one of the rifles that Annie Oakley used to use in her competition. They learn that Butch is a gun guy, that he's a gun fanatic. In Butch's room, they find a box of 35 caliber rifle ammunition.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  Based on these discoveries, Butch is brought in for interrogation.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  He eventually breaks down and admits that he is responsible, saying that, once he started, he couldn't stop, that he killed everyone in cold blood.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  Butch's trial begins on October 14, 1975.

• 9:05Speaker 06

  And on his face, it's a pretty straightforward case. You have a confession, you have the murder weapon, you have lots of pieces of physical evidence. Butch goes through multiple lawyers before he finally decides on William Weber. William Weber and Butch decide on an insanity defense. Butch states that he was hearing voices, that he did these murders based on the voices that he heard, that these voices drove him insane, and that's why he killed his family.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Butch also claims he was possessed.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  During the trial, the prosecution brought out that Butch is a heavy user of LSD and heroin. LSD and heroin can both cause psychotic symptoms in the using individual during the time that they're in the body. While someone is under intoxication of LSD, they can have psychotic symptoms, including, but not limited to, feeling that they're possessed. If someone is possessed, they may not know what they're doing, much like a hypnotist can get someone out of a crowd and hypnotize them and make them quack and walk like a duck. And then when they snap out of the hypnosis, they don't remember what they did.

• 10:16Speaker 06

  I find the insanity defense a little weak. And I'm not the only one that thought it was a little weak.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  The jury rejects the insanity argument, and on December 4, 1975, Butch DeFeo is sentenced to 25 years to life.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Most people in Amityville and Long Island in general thought that, once Butch was put away, that that was the end of the story, that the house would be wiped of its dark past.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  And that life would move on. That was only the beginning.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  Thirteen months after the murders and just two weeks after Butch's sentencing, George and Kathleen Lutz buy the property.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  George and Kathy Lutz got it for the bargain basement price of $80,000. They also purchased a great deal of the furniture, including the beds, the living room furniture, you name it, because the DeFeo family wanted no part of it.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  But unfortunately, new owners don't mark a fresh start for the Amityville House. One month after they move into their new Amityville home, the Lutz family flees in terror. The question is, why? Some believe the property's dark past is to blame, but not everyone's convinced.

• 11:36Speaker 03

  I don't think it was the murderers that scared them away. I think it was something much more devilish.

• 11:43Speaker 00

  According to the Lutz family's account, from the moment they arrive at the Amityville house, they face a host of terrifying events. As practicing Catholics, the Lutz's bring in a priest, Father Ralph Pecorero, to bless the home before they move in.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  The ritual and blessing is going through every room of the house, sprinkling holy water and reciting prayers of peace throughout the house. When Father Pecorero goes inside of the house, everything is calm and peaceful. But when he enters the room of John and Mark DeFeo, he hears this voice say to him, "Get out."

• 12:27Speaker 00

  Pecorero leaves the house as commanded, but he doesn't say anything about the ghostly voice he's just heard.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  He doesn't tell the Lutz's what he heard because he does not want them to think that he's crazy, but he does tell them to not sleep in that room.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  Soon after, the Lutz's begin having their own strange encounters.

• 12:48Speaker 03

  George starts this habit of waking up at 3:15 a.m. every morning because he's not able to sleep. 3:15 is important because this is the time Butch DeFeo did these murders in the house. The Lutz's didn't even know this. They had to talk to the authorities to piece together a timeframe of what took place.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  But it may be the Lutz's daughter, Melissa, who experiences the most bizarre terror.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Melissa, or Missy, as she was called at that time. She spends a lot of time in the room, which is typical for any child of that age. But when asked what she's doing, she's talking to an imaginary friend. This isn't your typical imaginary friend. It's a red-eyed pig. It can supposedly change shape. Sometimes even it's larger than the house. And it apparently has a name, Jody.

• 13:47Speaker 00

  And their troubles don't end there.

• 13:51Speaker 07

  They claim that there is green slime coming down from the ceilings and on the walls, an infestation of flies, which doesn't seem to make any sense. They see objects moving and breaking.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  The Lutz's tried to contact Father Pecorero to do a second blessing to cleanse the house. But every time they tried to call him, the phone shut off. It's as if the house won't let them contact Father Pecorero.

• 14:25Speaker 04

  I don't know how they survived four hours in that house, let alone four weeks. Regardless, they never spent another night in their dream home, which is now nothing but a nightmare.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  To the Lutz's, one thing is clear. Evil lurks in their new house, which is theory number two. The home is possessed by evil.

• 14:44Speaker 07

  Over the 140 years of parapsychology and psychological research, we have looked at a lot of possible explanations for what are called hauntings. These are repetitive experiences that people have. The DeFeo murders are definitely, to my mind, an environmental imprint. In hauntings like the Lutz family situation, they are picking up on an imprint that is tied to that environment, an event that happened that is completely negative, Butch's killings of his family.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  When the Amityville hauntings make national headlines, it catches the attention of two world-famous paranormal investigators.

• 15:21Speaker 03

  The Warrens are paranormal investigators who've done over 10,000 investigations.

• 15:27Speaker 00

  But they aren't ready for what lies ahead.

• 15:31Speaker 04

  When we went into the house that day, we didn't realize that it was diabolically infested. On a scale of one to 10, I would have to say that Amityville was a 10.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  In January of 1976, the Lutz family claims their house is haunted. But can they prove it?

• 15:57Speaker 02

  The Lutz's were not nut jobs. They were very ordinary suburban, middle-class people. Back in the mid-'70s, you couldn't just go online and look things up. You actually had to have feet on the street, dig for information, look for people face to face, talk with the Lutz's, talk with the neighbors, and then go into the house and see what was happening.

• 16:25Speaker 00

  To help them gather evidence, the Lutz's call on world-renowned paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  The Warrens are paranormal investigators who've done over 10,000 investigations for hauntings, poltergeist, exorcism. This is what they do.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  The real-life inspiration for the Conjuring film franchise, this husband-and-wife team make a name for themselves in the late 1960s when they investigate a doll supposedly possessed by the spirit of a little girl.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Lorraine was psychic. She was a light trance medium. She would go into a trance to try and connect with the other side. Ed was a self-styled demonologist. He would guide Lorraine through her trances, ask her questions, generally run the investigation.

• 17:18Speaker 00

  In February 1976, Lorraine meets George Lutz at a local pizza parlor. George gives permission for the Warrens to enter the house, but he refuses to come along.

• 17:30Speaker 04

  George Lutz wouldn't even go to that home. He said, "There's no way I'm going into the house." And when I asked him at this restaurant where we met him, I said, "Mr. Lutz, what happened to you in that house?" He didn't say anything. He just looked at me. He said, "You know."

• 17:46Speaker 00

  According to the Warrens, although the property is empty, they can tell they are not alone from the moment they arrive.

• 17:54Speaker 03

  Ed Wong is drawn to the cellar. And down here is where he believes that everything started.

• 18:02Speaker 04

  This home is haunted. I mean, they left behind everything, everything to eat, everything to drink. Within seconds, I could feel what I can only describe as being under a waterfall. Pressure pushing me down to the floor. Then I could feel hundreds of pinpoints of electricity hitting my body.

• 18:21Speaker 00

  Ed leaves the basement to check on Lorraine upstairs. She also describes feeling a powerful unseen force.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Going up the stairs, I was going against a tremendous pressure. It was the worst feeling.

• 18:37Speaker 00

  In over their heads, the two quickly flee.

• 18:41Speaker 04

  I knew right at that point what we were dealing with. And I said to myself, "I don't think I'll ever come back in this house again."

• 18:48Speaker 00

  But despite their misgivings, the Warrens don't give up. A few days later, they return to the house, but this time, they bring backup and cameras.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  There were five people from Channel 5, myself, Marvin Scott and the crew, two other reporters, the Warrens and their team, which was about seven people. Then there was another team of psychics and investigators. So all in all, I counted 21 people in the house that night.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  The Warrens and their team spend hours investigating the house, and it's not long before disturbing things start happening.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  It moved. And as it moves, it kind of, it says, "I feel personally threatened." It's, I mean, it's whatever's here. Whatever is here.

• 19:43Speaker 04

  You're trying to harm them?

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Yes. We had a cameraman, Steve Petropolis. Steve was in his 40s, about 5'10", a marathon runner. So in other words, he was in good shape. He starts up the stairs with his light meter to take light readings. And I'm standing at the bottom of the stairs with the other members of the crew. He gets to the middle of the staircase and he turns around and he says to me, "Hey, there's a room at the left, and it's, one wall is filled with mirrors." So he continues up the stairs. He gets to the top of the landing and he turns around

• 20:26Speaker 02

  and he looks at me strangely and he says, "I don't know how I knew that." And all of a sudden, I can see the blood drain from his face. He goes ashen and he doubles over and he's clutching his chest. And he's gagging. He's trying to get words out, but he can't. So our sound man and our lighting man run up the stairs to assist him down the stairs. One of the scientists that had come up from Duke University, he became so terrified in this home and the chair that he was

• 21:01Speaker 00

  Sitting on actually went right backwards with him in it. They had a real hard time just stabilizing him emotionally in that home. The Warrens record their entire experience.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  That night, the Warrens were accompanied by Gene Campbell, their photographer, who had what, for the time, was advanced infrared equipment. He's hoping to pick up something, white noise, what have you. So he sets up the camera. He points it at that second-floor landing, sets it, forgets it. He takes many photos that night, you know, well over 100.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Once the infrared photos are processed, the team uncovers an unusual find.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  This image on the one picture peeking out of a doorway looks like it's a young boy. The eyes are sort of bright and glowing.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  There are no children present during the investigation. So who or what is the mysterious figure in the photograph?

• 22:10Speaker 02

  It's what has come to be known as the ghost boy photo. And this has been the object of much curiosity and much controversy. People have said and speculated, oh, it's the youngest boy. Nine-year-old John DeFeo, it's his ghost.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  Ed Warren, however, thinks it's something different.

• 22:32Speaker 06

  Well, is that the spirit of the young boy? No, it is not the spirit of the young boy. But is a spirit of a diabolical nature in that room that appears in that home to confuse the investigators?

• 22:45Speaker 00

  The mysterious figure in the photo remains unidentified, but the Warrens agree that something is terrorizing the property, and they're now armed with proof.

• 22:56Speaker 02

  I always consider myself an objective person and not given to flights of imagination or fancy. But at the same time, there were many things that happened that night. There were subtle signs of what many paranormal investigators classify as infestation and some not-so-subtle things.

• 23:21Speaker 00

  Amityville horror, the very name conjures fear. While some believe the home's darkness was brought on by the DeFeo family murders, others chalk it up to paranormal activity. But one member of the Lutz family, who experienced the terrors firsthand, thinks the source is much closer to him. Their move to Amityville in 1975 was supposed to mark a fresh start for the blended Lutz family.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Kathy had three children from a previous marriage. There was Daniel, Christopher, and Melissa. At the time, they lived in this house. Daniel was nine, Christopher seven, and Melissa was five years old. George was actually their stepfather. These were very young, impressionable children, certainly subject to the feelings that were going on from the family.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  eldest son Daniel stays silent for decades. Then in 2009, he finally speaks publicly in a series of interviews.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Daniel Lutz reached out to me, wanting to tell his story. At the beginning, I was very skeptical. But as soon as I saw a photograph, right away, the likeness to Kathy Lutz was so striking, I knew it was him. At that time, I began conversations with Daniel Lutz that really changed the paradigm of how I viewed this entire case.

• 24:41Speaker 06

  This is not something I enjoy discussing. I don't look forward to this.

• 24:48Speaker 06

  It's not easy to tell somebody how you got thrown up a staircase. It's not easy to tell somebody that your bed was bouncing off the ceiling. Once I start talking about it, I become stuck with it.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  I felt strongly, sitting with him, the passion, the anger for living in the shadow of this story. His story had been told by everyone else but him. He felt that his voice had been silenced. And so it was almost a cathartic process to purge these demons of his past for him to have a say.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  Daniel offers a dramatically different potential reason for the Amityville hauntings.

• 25:28Speaker 06

  When you walked into George's house, it wasn't inviting and welcoming. If you read his bookcase, you know, it would range from satanic history, mind control type of books and hypnosis books. This guy was into some pretty dark stuff. And I walk over to my mother, and I said, you married this guy. You moved me to his house. What the hell is he into?

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Danny claimed that George's interest in the occult instigated the haunting, that it was like a magic trick that you couldn't shut off.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  So that's theory number three. George Lutz summoned the evil. Was an evil spirit invited to Amityville by George Lutz in a spell gone wrong? Daniel believes it was.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Danny claimed that he felt he was possessed, and that the only way to get away from it was to leave the family. And so that's what he did. In a lot of ways, I think Daniel was haunted by George and still is to this day. At the end of the day, something happened to his family and to him in that house that forever shaped them.

• 26:41Speaker 00

  Daniel's story isn't the only firsthand account from the Lutz family. 30 years earlier, his parents offer a very different and very public version of what happened in Amityville.

• 26:53Speaker 07

  After the Lutz's move out, they're telling people about the situation. And they're not actively just trying to tell people to get help. They are actually telling people to try to sell the story somehow, to make some money, to make the money back that they paid for their house. The Lutz's paid out $80,000 with a large down payment for this particular house. George needed to recoup that loss. You know, if it were me paying all that money, I'd be really concerned about how to provide for my family. And one way to do that would have been to try to sell the story somehow. At the time, the media was very interested in these kinds of stories. They had covered the exorcist and looked for other types of cases like that. And so George may have seen an opportunity.

• 27:37Speaker 07

  So the Lutz's hire an attorney, who turns out to be William Weber, who was the defense attorney for Butch DeFeo.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  Weber agrees to help sell the family's story if they split the profits 50-50. George declines Weber's deal, but Weber goes out and sells the story anyway.

• 27:56Speaker 07

  So William Weber sells two articles to publications about the situation that George had described and that they had worked up in their conversation. George is enraged about this because it was done without his permission. So at that point, George is so upset that he walks away from Weber. As a consequence, Weber files a lawsuit against the Lutz's. They eventually settle out of court, but the damage between the two of them is irreparable.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  The Lutz's ultimately move forward on a book deal with author Jay Anson, who agrees to a more reasonable partnership. In response, Weber makes a bold accusation. The Amityville hauntings are a hoax, giving us theory number five. It was all made up.

• 28:38Speaker 07

  Once the story got very popular and the book's sales were high, William Weber started going out to the media and actually disputing the facts of the case as reported in the book. Weber was totally willing to say that everything was 100% true until it turned out that he couldn't cash in.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  To counter his claims, the Lutz's agree to a polygraph test. They pass.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  George, unless he was the oracle of Delphi himself, had no way of predicting that even if he was hatching this grand master scheme, that it would come to fruition. Are you really going to bet your entire life savings on a ghost story? Well, some people might. I never bought into that.

• 29:26Speaker 00

  Whether it's a haunting, a summoning, an elaborate hoax, or the chilling aftermath of a family homicide, for the next several years, the Amityville case continues to puzzle the public.

• 29:46Speaker 00

  While many questions surround New York's infamous Amityville House of Horrors, at least one has long been assumed to be solved. Who committed the brutal murders that started it all? After a confession, a conviction, and a sentence of 25 years to life, it seems certain that Butch DeFeo, single-handedly, killed his family in 1974. But in 2000, Butch DeFeo makes an astonishing claim: He didn't act alone. Butch writes a letter from prison on May 1, 2000, with a shocking revelation.

• 30:22Speaker 04

  Butch mentions that he didn't kill his family by himself. He had help, and it wasn't even his idea. So this is interesting. If there's another killer out there, is that who is tormenting the Lutz's? Maybe it wasn't a haunting after all.

• 30:37Speaker 00

  Bringing us to theory number six: A mystery killer.

• 30:41Speaker 04

  At the time of the murders, Butch is 23, Dawn is 18. They're in the family basement with a few friends, drinking and smoking. This is an escape from their family, especially their father.

• 30:52Speaker 00

  Their father, Big Ronnie, apparently lived up to his intimidating name.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  This family was not a happy one. For many years, Ronald Senior in particular, had inflicted domestic violence against Ronald Junior, Louise, the other children. There's been stories about how he had walked over and punched Louise in the face, that she fell down, and that he had just gone back to dinner and said, "We can eat in peace now." This type of occurrence encapsulates what life must have been like in that house for these children.

• 31:30Speaker 00

  But despite Butch's struggles with his father, he claims it's his sister Dawn that harbors the deepest resentment.

• 31:37Speaker 06

  She is 18 years old. She has a boyfriend that lives in Florida, who happens to be 33 years old. A great age difference. Big Ronnie is very disapproving of this relationship. He belittles her, he berates her. Her Butch, Dawn, comes up with a plan, and the plan is to murder their parents. Dawn states that other siblings can be taken to the grandmother's house in Brooklyn, and they can live there. Mom and dad will be out of the way, kids will be taken care of, and everybody will live happily ever after if mom and dad are murdered.

• 32:14Speaker 04

  Apparently, it wasn't hard for Dawn to convince Butch, because the plans were set in motion pretty quickly.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  Butch says he recruits two friends to help.

• 32:22Speaker 06

  About 1 o'clock in the morning, they sneak out of the basement and go into the interior of the house. They then go upstairs to the parents' bedroom. Butch is arming himself with the .35 caliber Marlin rifle. He makes no bones about that, that he has the rifle.

• 32:38Speaker 00

  Lit only by a nightlight in the second-floor bathroom, the siblings open their parents' bedroom door, and the massacre begins.

• 32:46Speaker 06

  Butch goes into the bedroom, fires the rifle twice into his father, and then fires the rifle twice into his mother, killing them both.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  Butch then says he and his two friends flee the Amityville house, leaving Dawn and their three other siblings inside alone.

• 33:04Speaker 06

  Butch relates that the plan was merely to kill the parents. It wasn't to kill the brothers and sisters.

• 33:11Speaker 00

  He says Dawn, however, goes rogue.

• 33:14Speaker 06

  Butch returns inside the house. Dawn has done something horrible. Butch says that she took it upon herself to murder the other brothers and sisters. Dawn believes that these children were a liability, certainly not an asset. This infuriates Butch. He explodes. This is more than he bargained for. He didn't want his siblings killed. He only wanted the parents killed. They get into a violent argument, and that argument turns into a struggle.

• 33:44Speaker 04

  They struggle, he knocks her out, and then shoots her in the back of the head.

• 33:50Speaker 06

  Now, whether Dawn was involved in these murders or not really has no influence about what the Lutz family went through. The bottom line: Six people got murdered there. Whether Butch was the primary shooter or Dawn was the shooter, really makes no difference.

• 34:04Speaker 00

  But what about the two other friends he claims were there that night? Were they involved in the massacre?

• 34:10Speaker 04

  Butch mentions two friends that he brought along as lookouts, but as soon as there's gunfire, they panic, they leave, and he never mentioned them committing any violence. Butch mentions something curious in a letter. Quote, "It was cold-blooded murder, period. No ghosts, no demons, just three people, of which I was one." So he says there's three people. And we know there's two: Butch and Dawn. But who is this mysterious third person? Butch never names this third person. Nobody follows up. They chalk it up to the ramblings of someone who's been in prison 20 years, maybe looking for a reduced sentence, or somebody just looking for attention.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Ronnie was running through every possible scenario he could in his mind to deflect away from the fact that he had committed these murders.

• 34:57Speaker 00

  Butch dies in March of 2021, taking any further details of a possible third killer to his grave. But some are convinced that this is the key to the Amityville hauntings.

• 35:10Speaker 04

  Besides Butch's letter, there are a couple of other things that indicate that there is another accomplice on the loose. The first thing happens at the time of the trial. Louis DeFeo's father hires a private investigator to look into the idea of there being more than one killer.

• 35:25Speaker 06

  The house is very big. It's three stories. The people that were murdered were spread out throughout the house. And so for someone to move around deliberately, firing a rifle, which is very loud, could seem very puzzling to people. Why didn't somebody get up? Why didn't they get out of bed? Why didn't they flee? Why didn't they hide? I can understand how some people have difficulty believing that this was a single suspect killing all these folks.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  The private investigator also presents evidence that two guns may have been used in the murders.

• 35:55Speaker 06

  During the investigation, there is physical evidence called powder burns. And on Dawn's body, there were powder burns that some experts believe did not match what the murder weapon would be. And that there were some theories that there could very well be a second murder weapon based on the powder burn evidence on Dawn's person.

• 36:15Speaker 00

  But at the scene, detectives only find Butch's .35 caliber Marlin. That is, until 2011, when the Long Island dive team goes searching in a canal near the Amityville house.

• 36:27Speaker 04

  The divers are following up on a documentary and the multiple killers theory. They fish out an old revolver in the canal behind the house that could easily have been dumped by somebody fleeing the murder scene.

• 36:39Speaker 00

  Police try to collect evidence from the handgun, but time and the elements have erased it. The answer to who or what lies behind the Amityville horrors remains just out of reach.

• 36:51Speaker 04

  I think it's possible that Butch and Dawn had help, especially since no one else was arrested in the case. And if that's true, is that other person still out there? Is that who is tormenting the Lutz's? Will they be back for another haunting?

• 37:07Speaker 00

  Supernatural or not, one thing is certain: The Amityville house has experienced incredible tragedy. And while this story has captivated more than three generations, none of the four families who've owned the house after the Lutz's have reported any paranormal activity, yet. Thanks so much for listening to History's Greatest Mysteries, a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind Studios. Join us next time for a deep dive into another mystery and all the theories behind it.