Seldom in the annals of criminal history has the adage 'truth is stranger then fiction' been more apt then in the murder of the DeFeo family, in the sleepy New York borough of Amityville, in the early hours of the 13th of November 1974. The discovery of a family murdered gangland style, executed via shots to the head or torso from a .35 caliber Marlin rifle, as they slept made headlines around the world and came as a horrifying shock to the local community. Neighbors whose own children had once played with the DeFeo children stood in the shadows outside the family's elegant Dutch Colonial home ironically named 'High Hopes', watching in stunned silence as the family's remains were carried out in grisly body bags. Mr. & Mrs. Ronald DeFeo aged 43 and 42, their sons Mark,12, and John, 9, daughters Allison, 13, and Dawn aged 18 piled unceremoniously into a coroners van.

The police focus soon turned on the only member of the family to have avoided the carnage and stood to inherit a substantial estate, the eldest son, 23 year old Ronald DeFeo Jr, who claimed to have discovered the bodies when he arrived home at 6pm. Known to family and friends as 'Butch' he had a history of violent behavior, been sent to a psychologist to learn how to control it. He abused alcohol and drugs, committed insurance fraud and was on probation for theft at the time. Character defects he inherited from his father, Ronald 'Big Ronnie' DeFeo, a service manager for Karl Brigante Buick, a car dealership in Brooklyn owned by his father-in-law and reputed to be a front for Mafia activities. His paranoid nature, short fuse and violent outbursts were infamous. He regularly beat his wife and ruled his children with a rod of iron, especially Butch who didn't have to do something wrong to be sadistically punished.

The DeFeo's had blood ties to organized crime syndicates on both branches of the family, so a mob connection was automatically suspected and supported by the Medical Examiner Dr. Howard Alderman who believed at least three people had been involved in the mass murder. Rumors circulated that the patriarch of the clan had been embezzling funds and mob plunder to pay for his family's lavish lifestyle resulting in ruff justice, a hit that went wrong resulting in his family being liquidated as witnesses. When Butch was asked by detectives whom he thought may have been responsible he told them a Mafia hitman named Louis Falini, a onetime intimate who had lived with the family for a period but fallen out with them, however Falini had an ironclad alibi for the night in question.

Police were amazed that none of the family seemed to have heard the gunfire, been roused from their beds, although three evidently lifted heads off pillows to look at bedroom doors as they were rudely opened and shot in facial regions. Evidence in the form of exiting bullets penetrating mattresses, blood pooling and soft tissue/blood splatter revealed they died where they had been shot. Which led police to suspect the family had been drugged at diner, however that theory bit the dust when toxicology reports showed no traces of drugs in anyones system.

Former Deputy Head of New Scotland Yard's Forensic Firearms Laboratory, Brian J. Heard, who has over 35 years experience in ballistics said, "the rifle used was designed for deer or black bear hunting, it had a six round tubular magazine which meant he had to reload at least once. It fires a projectile of 200 grains with a velocity of about 2100 feet per second with a kinetic energy of about 1970 ft lbs. This is an extremely noisy combination and if fired in a house would result in probable hearing loss for anyone in close proximity. An effective silencer could have been fitted considerably reducing the noise of the discharge but as the bullet is still traveling well above the speed of sound the noise of the bullet breaking the sound barrier would still be extremely noisy, well above that caused by a car back firing as a benchmark".

Investigators were also amazed neighbors in houses 40 odd feet away from 'High Hopes' heard nothing, however when they were assured by police that the murders weren't Mafia related they told them that they had heard gunshots that fateful night but never reported them knowing the family had underworld connections and were frightened of mob reprisals. They also reported the family dog 'Shaggy' barked and howled mournfully, tied up outside the animal grasped the fate which was befalling its family inside.

As time passed police suspicions Butch was responsible grew, especially when they found an empty box of ammunition in his bedroom. Under rigorous cross examination he protested his innocence, claimed he had left the house at 4am on the morning of the murders having suffered insomnia resulting from an upset stomach and decided to go to work early. He maintained his family were alive when he left, having heard a toilet flush. However when the coroners report came in it revealed the murders had taken place between 2 & 3am, his own statements placed him in the house when they occurred. Confronted with this fact he cracked, his story changed, it would change many times in the months ahead. He first claimed he had been in the house when the murders took place but had nothing to do with them, Louis Falini with an accomplice had done it. In a later interview he claimed his 18 year old sister Dawn had been responsible, that after a fight with her father he had given her the keys to his car so she could go for a drive and cool off but returned and went on a killing spree. He claimed he was in the basement at the time with friend Richard Romondoe, whose existence cannot be verified, and when he went upstairs to see what the commotion was accidentally killed Dawn in a struggle for the gun.

Weaving a tangled web his statements became too complex for him to keep track of and in a mix of exasperation and exhaustion he confessed, "it all started so fast", he said, "once I started I just couldn't stop. It went so fast". Years of mental abuse, frustration and resentment built up and irrupted. On the fateful night he sat brooding for hours in front of a TV, the last movie he watched was WWII movie "Castle Keep" which may have planted a seed in his mind. Probably under the influence of heroine, his drug of choice, he grabbed his .35 caliber Marlin rifle and wiped his family out with eight squeezes of the trigger.

While in prison he was visited by his grandfather Rocco and great uncle Peter DeFeo, who had him sign over control of his fathers estate to them. He was soon visited by representatives of his mothers family, the Brigantes, who made him sign over control of her estate, there was no doubt in his mind that refusal would have resulted in him being murdered in prison. His grandfather and great uncle were senior figures in the Mafia, the Vito Genovese syndicate, as were members of the Brigante family who paid the mortgage on 'High Hopes' as a gift to the family. This added weight to speculation the DeFeo's were murdered as part of a vendetta, bolstered by an FBI intercept of a phone call between Butch's uncles Michael Brigante and Peter DeFeo in which it was said that he [Butch] knew too much and was going to be killed. The FBI offered to cut him a deal, if he told them everything he knew about their criminal activities they would put him in the witness protection programme. However he would have no part of it, realizing he was in enough trouble already, the fact the FBI intercepted the call probably saved his life.

The police and district attorney built a substantial case against him, including witness statements to the effect that he had a turbulent relationship with his father and threatened to kill him at their workplace. However the foretelling incident of what was to come occurred at the family home, during a heated fight between husband and wife Butch snapped and pointed a 12 gauge shotgun at his father and pulled the trigger. For unknown reasons it didn't discharge and Butch walked away as if nothing had happened, however the incident put the fear of God into the patriarch, who seemed to appreciate that years of paternal bastardization had created a monster and dark days lay ahead. He became devoutly religious, filled the garden with shrines to St. Joseph and was often seen by neighbors praying piously rosary beads in hand.

DeFeo's attorneys Jacob Sigfried & William Weber knew he was guilty and appreciating public outrage at the killing of children made a sympathetic jury unlikely urged him to make an insanity plea, he initially resisted and only acquiesced when told the trial would otherwise end with him strapped in the electric chair or imprisonment without possibility of parole. An insanity defence was his only option, it made sense too, no one in their right mind would kill their family. If found not guilt by reason of insanity he would be out after a few years in an asylum for the criminally insane, a more appealing place to while away ones life then a maximum security hell hole. His lawyers instructed him to tell the police, court appointed psychologists and everyone else that 'ghostly voices' and supernatural forces haunting his house, in short demons, had compelled him to kill his family against his will. He also claimed to be in contact with God, hearing his voice on occasions telling him what to do. In court he told the prosecutor, "as far as I’m concerned, if I didn’t kill my family they were going to kill me. And as far as I’m concerned, what I did was self defense and there was nothing wrong with it. When I got a gun in my hand, there’s no doubt in my mind who I am. I am God.” This was to indicate he suffered from schizophrenia or some other disassociative mental illness which made him not responsible for his actions, not to point the finger at something else. However it didn't work psychologists didn't buy his act, neither did the jury. His anti social disposition, drug abuse, criminal history, threatening his fathers life after he exposed his staging a phony robbery to pilfer business takings showed a pattern of conscious behavior which made murder the natural culmination. On the 21st of November 1975, a year after the murders, he was found guilty on six counts of second degree homicide and sentenced to 25 years to life.