Amityville Murderer Dead at 69

 

Ronald “Butch” DeFeo Jr., the killer in the 1974 Amityville murders died on Friday, March 12th, 2021 at the age of 69. He was serving 25 to life for the murders at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, which is 30 miles west of Poughkeepsie.

He passed away at the Albany Medical Center, his cause of death has not been released. An Autopsy will be conducted and it will be up to the Albany County Medical Examiner if they wish to release the results to the public.

Butch was born into a generally well-to-do and religious family. He worked with his father at a car dealership in Brooklyn. Though many who knew Butch say that he had a very strained relationship with his father. Butch also had a reputation for using drugs, drinking, and fighting. 

Butch was convicted of the fatal shootings of his father, mother, and four siblings aged 9 to 18. The murders took place inside their home on Ocean Avenue, in Amityville, on New York's Long Island. He was 23 at the time, and no actual motive for the crimes has ever been determined. Various times while recounting the events of that night Butch frequently blamed his mother and his sister Dawn(18) for some of the murders.

The house in which the murders happened had been vacant for more than a year before George and Kathy Lutz moved in with their three children. The family only stayed for 28 days before they fled from the house claiming they were terrorized by an evil spirit. It was this event that inspired Jay Anson's 1977 best seller: “The Amityville Horror”. Which was a fictionalized version of the events of the Lutz family.

The book spawned a series of spinoffs and adaptions. Over 4 decades and countless adaptions, the Amityville story is essentially an “Unofficial” franchise. That is completely copyright-free. This is because the town is real, and the murders and the haunting are historical events.

The house has since been occupied by several residents, none of which has reported any paranormal activity as the Lutz family had experienced. The house itself was recently sold in 2017 for $605,000.