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But even after the Amityville Horror house's address changed, the public fascination never let up. Though attorney William Weber tried to enter an insanity plea, the prosecution argued DeFeo Jr. was a mere drug addict who was well aware of what he was doing that night. He was convicted on six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to six concurrent sentences of 25 years to life. With an abusive father and passive mother, the boy's troubled childhood led to substance abuse as an adult.
Who bought the home after the Amityville murders?
However, a look at DeFeo Jr.'s life provides an alternative reading of the events. Either way, the images above and the stories below take you inside the Amityville Horror house, the scene of both one of the grisliest crimes and most notorious alleged hauntings in modern history. Despite the widely-publicized 1974 killings, numerous families have since moved in and out of the house, now listed as 108 Ocean Avenue.
America’s Real-Life Horror Movie Houses, Mapped
However, there were no reports of any problems, except for unexpected visitors stopping by over the allure of the story. Presently, the residence remains a private home, with the current owners maintaining a level of privacy and choosing to distance themselves from its haunted past. Before the DeFeo and Lutz families, the Amityville Horror House had a history steeped in darkness. Reports suggest the property was once the site of a Native American burial ground, adding an extra layer of mystique to its already foreboding presence. On a cold November night in 1974, Amityville, New York resident Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered his entire family in cold blood at their 112 Ocean Avenue residence. Over the years, the aforementioned case has skyrocketed in popularity and search and is often regarded as one of the most famous cases of paranormal ever.

The Amityville Murders Of Ronald DeFeo Jr.
The three-story colonial — its original address was 112 Ocean Ave. but was changed to 108 to deter tourists — was the site of a brutal slaughter. With five bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, and a boathouse on a canal off the Long Island Sound, the house can command a high price and attract wealthy buyers. To this day, countless people still seek to get inside the Amityville Horror house just to get a taste of its supposed terrors. It has changed hands for decades, with nothing but price fluctuations and a change in address serving as notable incidents.
Amityville: The Awakening, Revisiting the Messy 2017 Attempt to Reboot a Horror Classic - Syfy
Amityville: The Awakening, Revisiting the Messy 2017 Attempt to Reboot a Horror Classic.
Posted: Wed, 15 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Despite a Newsday report debunking a majority of their story, The Amityville Horror sparked a public fascination with the home that persists to this day. Situated sideways on a narrow plot in Amityville, New York, is a 1925 Dutch Colonial that’s arguably Long Island’s most notorious residence. While the movie remains a horror classic, it hardly depicts the real history of the house, which most likely was never haunted at all. What can be said about the Amityville, Long Island “Horror House” that hasn’t been said before?
They start to experience strange, inexplicable manifestations which have strong effects on everyone living in or visiting the house. Ronald went on to change his telling of events several times and even tried to claim his family had been murdered by a mob hitman. Finally, out of stories to tell, Ronald DeFeo confessed to murdering his entire family. He was convicted on 6 counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to 6 back-to-back sentences of 25 years to life.
Having given up on the idea of selling the house, the Cromartys eventually moved back in. Fighting to defend the home's reputation, they accepted speaking engagements throughout the New York area where they could share the real history of the house. In February of 1982, they reached a settlement with the publishing company to have the subtitle “a true story” removed from all future printings of the book. When the Cromartys did finally sell the house in August of 1987, things had quieted down significantly.
I live in an abandoned school — my family transformed the historic building into our dream home
Ronald DeFeo Jr., the notorious killer at the “Amityville Horror” house — a dwelling whose mystique continues to fascinate the public in the wake of a subsequent book and film franchise — died in prison Friday at 69. Ultimately, the appeal of the Amityville house and its related New Jersey home seems largely rooted in the purportedly exaggerated book and its Hollywood adaptations. To this day, horror fans truly convinced by the hauntings still visit, hoping to catch a glimpse of a ghost.
During the period in which the Lutz family was living at 112 Ocean Avenue, Stephen Kaplan, a self-styled vampirologist and ghost hunter, was called in to investigate the house. Kaplan and the Lutzes had a falling out after Kaplan said that he would expose any fraud that was found. Kaplan went on to write a critical book titled The Amityville Horror Conspiracy with his wife Roxanne Salch Kaplan. At times, his wife was physically transformed into an old woman and once levitated, George said. One night, he heard his children’s beds “slamming up and down on the floor” but claimed he couldn’t do anything because an invisible force was paralyzing him.
According to Jim, it was on the night they the house sold to longtime Amityville residents Peter and Jeanne O’Neill. The Lutz family left the Amityville horror house, claiming that they had been terrorized by paranormal phenomena while living there and that the home was a real-life haunted house. But while the actors who played the Lutz family have admitted to fabricating the hauntings they once claimed to experience, the real George and Kathy Lutz maintained that it was all true. Biography notes that the couple "took a lie detector test to prove their innocence," and that they passed the polygraph.
While he was gone, Dawn also murdered the children as a means to silence them. Upon returning, Ronald fought with Dawn and then ended up shooting her as well. Long before it became the site of a mass murder, the Amityville house was actually the dream home of John and Catherine Moynahan. The couple had the home built in 1924 and resided in the Dutch colonial for many years. The Amityville horror house today (aka where the movie was filmed) is actually a beautiful 4-bedroom, 4 bathroom home in Toms River, NJ. Built in 1920, the colonial-style home sits on nearly half an acre and boasts a gorgeous view of the neighboring river.
In 1965, the house was sold to the DeFeo family, and that’s when things started to go downhill. The Amityville horror house’s address has historically been 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, New York. But in an attempt to protect its new owners’ privacy and keep tourists at bay, the address has been changed to 108 Ocean Avenue.
The house that first came to be known as the "horror house" in the wake of the murders, and then The Amityville Horror house after the 1979 movie, refers to the large, three-story Dutch Colonial home at 112 Ocean Ave. in Amityville, New York. First built in 1927, it has gone through several renovations and sales since it was constructed. Publicly, the address was changed to 108 Ocean Ave. to deter the influx of tourists trying to find the residence. Per the story, the property was built on top of a Shinnecock burial ground, and one of its previous owners, John Ketchum, was an avowed Satanic worshipper. Those two rumors are uncorroborated, but are now chalked up to the many fabricated claims about the property that have bloomed from the multiple horror films about the property, and from the book, The Amityville Horror, by Jay Anson. Although the brutal murders were sensational in their own right it wasn’t until the house was purchased by the Lutz family that the home haunted its way into infamy.
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