Urban Legends and Myths

Amityville Horror: Horror or Hoax?

The horrific carnage that prefaced the story of the "Amityville Horror" began one dark fall night in November 1974. The DeFeo family, Ronald Sr. and Louise, their two young sons, Mark and John, and two daughters, Dawn and Allison, were sleeping peacefully in their comfortable, three-story, Dutch Colonial home in Amityville. The silence of the house was shattered when Ronald DeFeo, nicknamed "Butch", murdered his parents and his siblings with a high-powered rifle. One by one, he killed each of them as they slept, beginning a tale of terror that has endured for three decades.

The DeFeo's seemed to be a happy all-American family in 1974. Ronald Sr. had been born and raised in Brooklyn and had worked hard at his father's Buick dealership until he finally became successful in his own right. He moved his family to Long Island and into the large house at 112 Ocean Avenue. It was perfect for the family, with two stories, plus an attic, several rooms and a boathouse on the Amityville River. A signpost in the front yard read "High Hopes", a physical reminder of what the house meant to the DeFeo's.

Beneath the surface of success and happiness though, Ronald was an angry man, given to bouts of rage and violence. He and Louise often fought and he was a threatening figure to his children. As the oldest child, Butch often bore the brunt of his father's expectations and ill-temper. He was an overweight, sullen boy who was often picked on in school. His father harassed him to stand up for himself - but never at home. Ronald Sr. had no room for backtalk or disobedience.

As Butch grew older, he grew stronger and larger and was no longer as tolerant of his father's abuse. Their shouting matches turned into physical battles and even Ronald Sr., with his own anger issues, began to realize that his son's temper and violent behavior were not normal. He and Louise arranged for Butch to visit a psychiatrist but it did no good. The young man insisted there was nothing wrong with him and refused to work with the counselor. In the absence of any other solution, the DeFeo's began simply buying Butch whatever he wanted in order to placate him. At the age of 14, his father gave him a $14,000 speedboat to cruise the Amityville River. Whenever Butch needed money, he only had to ask and it was handed to him.

By the time that he was 17, Butch had been kicked out of the parochial school that he had been attending because of drug use. His behavior had also become more erratic and his violent outbursts more psychotic. The altercations with his father grew more frequent and more dangerous. One night, when Butch was 18, a fight started between Mr. and Mrs. DeFeo and to settle the matter, Butch grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun from his room, loaded a shell into the chamber and went downstairs. Without hesitation, he pointed the gun at his father and pulled the trigger. Mysteriously though, it did not go off. Ronald Sr. froze in place and watched as his son lowered the gun and walked out of the room. He was completely unconcerned that he had nearly killed his fathering cold blood. The fight was over but Butch's reaction was a foreshadowing of events to come.

In the weeks before the murders, the relationship between Butch and his father reached a breaking point. He was unhappy with the money that he "earned" from his father (he had been an easy job at the Buick dealership and a weekly allowance that he used on drugs and alcohol) and so he arranged to be "robbed" one day on the way to make a deposit at the bank.

Ronald Sr. was at the dealership when his son returned from being "robbed at gunpoint" and exploded into a rage when he heard Butch's story, berating the staff member who had entrusted him with the money in the first place. The police were called and when they arrived, the naturally wanted to speak with Butch. Instead of devising a fictional story about the robbery, he became tense and irritable with them. He soon became outright violent when they began to suspect that he was lying. Butch began to curse at them, banging on the hood of a car in his grandfather's lot to emphasize his rage. The police backed off for the moment, but Ronald, Sr. had already come to his own conclusion about the motive for his son's behavior - he knew that he had stolen the money.