Killer Ronald Defeo: Biography

Amityville. The name of this small town, thirty kilometers from New York, is known not only in the United States, but also far beyond the borders of America. But the prestigious area "for the rich" was glorified not by a successful billionaire or a major scientist. Amityville became famous thanks to the Hight Hopes mansion - an ominous house where the American killer Ronald Defeo killed his family.

This bloody story, which destroyed the quiet life of the quiet town of Amityville, occurred back in the 70s of the twentieth century. Since then, the three-story mansion has become a favorite place of visits to tourists, fans of the genre "horror", as well as various psychics, mediums, clairvoyants, eager to confirm rumors of supernatural manifestations in this house.

The murderer Ronald Defeo, Jr. is alive to this day. While in prison, he repeatedly interviewed, giving out the most unexpected versions of the events of that November night. The very crime committed by Ronald Defeo, managed to become a "city legend", growing rumors, conjectures and "new facts and versions appeared." Interest in the "terrible" house in Amitiville is not weakening yet, because the bloody story became the basis for the book and the plot of several feature films. Now that several decades have passed, the writings of writers and directors have become firmly entwined with the official facts of the investigation into the murder of the Defeo family.

So who was Ronald Defeo (junior)? Could he commit the murder of several people alone? And what events preceded the fact that Ronald DeFeo Jr. in November 1974 shot his entire family from his rifle?

Parents of Defoe

The future parents of Ronald were externally a beautiful couple, even though they belonged to different "layers of society." Mother, Louise Mary Brigante, came from a family of a successful businessman and dreamed of a career in the modeling business. A young beauty was not even twenty years old when she met her age-old Ronald Joseph Defeo (eldest). The decision to get married provoked a protest from Louise's parents, who completely broke off communication with her daughter and son-in-law. "The ice melted" only when, on September 26, 1951, the youngest child had a first child, Ronald Defeo, Jr..

After the birth of his grandson, Louise's father, Michael Brigante, took Ronald Sr. to work for his company, and later, a few years later, helped the family of Defeo acquire a house in the prestigious Amityville.

Childhood in Brooklyn

It is widely believed that it was childhood and parents in the first place that affected how the future "famous" killer Ronald Defeo grew up. His biography begins in Brooklyn, not the richest in the New York area. The first years of Ronald Defeo Jr.'s life are cloudless and happy to call difficult. According to the testimony of relatives and friends of the Defeo family, the upbringing that the father applied to his eldest son was reduced to brutal beatings for any offense. Louise could not or did not want to change with respect to her father and son, according to rumors, Defoe senior beat her.

The constant stress and cruelty of the father affected the appearance and health of Ronald, physical and mental. The boy was closed and also suffered from excess weight.

School and classmates

As is often the case, Ronald Defeo, who was beaten at home, was also attacked by other children in school. At first the boy was teased, because of excess weight, his classmates came up with the nickname "pork chop". About whether Defeo had friends in elementary school, nothing is known. Bullying and attacks on Ronald lasted several years. It all changed when the teenager Ronald not only grew up and became stronger, but also became addicted to drugs. Now the "problem" for others was he.

Butch and amphetamines

The drugs that high school student Ronald DeFeo took, made the teenager aggressive. Sometimes he had real attacks of frenzied rage. Of course, no one dared "chop" him again, especially since drug addiction made him lean. The teenager, who received the new nickname Butch, has now ceased to be a victim. He repulsed the aggressive behavior of Ronald the elder. The slightest reason was enough to arrange a real fist fight with his father.

Then the parents asked for a consultation with a psychiatrist, in order to somehow curb the aggressive and uncontrollable Butch. Visit to the doctor did not give results - Ronald Jr. in a sharp form refused to help a psychiatrist. The family had to find a new way to manage the addicted teenager - money. Younger Defoe regularly received from his father expensive gifts and money "for expenses". The relatives often remembered simply a "royal" gift to a fourteen-year-old son from a "loving father" - a motor boat that cost decent money for that time, about fifteen thousand dollars.

Children of the family of Defoe

Despite family problems and the brutal aggressive behavior of Defoe Sr., four other children were born in the family: two daughters, Down Teresa (1956) and Allison Louise (1961) and sons Mark Gregory (1962) and John Matthew (1965).

The murderer Ronald Defeo Jr., already serving a prison sentence, said in an interview that problems with his parents arose not only from him, but also from his younger sister Down. The rigid "educational methods" of his father extended to her too. In addition, apparently, Down Theresa inherited the heavy disposition of Ronald Sr.. Butch claims that the sister hated their father so much that once he even threatened him with a kitchen knife during a quarrel.

Later, all four children of the family, Defeo, together with their parents, will be shot. But the death of Butch's brothers and sisters is the most controversial. According to close friends and relatives, the children were quite friendly - everyone noticed the affection attached to the younger "difficult teenager" Ronald Defeo (photos of Ronald and Louise Defeo children, made in Amityville).

Prestigious Amityville

Moving to the town of Amityville, a quiet place for wealthy families, was preceded by several events, atypical for the family way of Defoe. Tired of the beating and explosive nature of her husband, Louise Brigante decided to leave after the birth of Mark Gregory's fourth child. This made Ronald the elder change his attitude to his wife. To return Louise, Defeo even wrote a song for her, which was later sung and recorded for the album by Joe Williams, a popular jazzman at the time. After the reconciliation, the couple changed the old house in Brooklyn to the three-story mansion "Hight Hopes" in the town of Amityville. In the same place was born their fifth and last child.

Their externally decent life overshadowed the behavior of their first-born Defoe the Younger. Completely addicted to drugs, seventeen Butch dropped out of school, his relationship with his father became worse from day to day. The matter increasingly came to clarify the relationship "on the kulaks." The situation did not save even the employment of Ronald in the grandfather of the company producing cars "Buick", where his father had already worked. Butch performed simple tasks, and, it happened, did not appear in the office for several days.

Ronald Defeo and outside the family home was characterized by outrageous behavior. The young man has a lot of hard-hitting "hobbies" besides drugs: the purchase of firearms, promiscuity with women, petty theft. The latter is more than strange, because Butch did not need much money - his father continued to support him, giving Ronald $ 500 a week.

The last year of the family of Defoe

The events of the last months of the life of the Defeo family, before the bloody November night of 1974, seemed to portend a terrible denouement. Passion for weapons and hunting Defoe Jr. began to present a real danger to others. Even his friends remember the cases when he "joking" aimed at someone. One day, Ronald took his parents under the sights to stop the quarrel between them, and pulled the trigger. The shot at that time did not happen only accidentally, the gun misfired.

A week before the shooting of the family in the Hight Hopes mansion Ronald, who was not shy to take and spend family money from home, went on a crime, appropriating the money of the company he worked in. When Defeo was commissioned to take a large sum, more than 20 thousand, to the bank, Butch simply "did not take the money", saying that he was robbed. Despite the refusal to help investigate the "robbery," the police found out that Butch and his friend had appropriated the money. For this misdemeanor, Ronald did not receive any punishment again, but the elder Defoe was furious. Father and son quarreled, while Ronald Sr. shouted that "the devil is behind" Ronald, to which his son threatened to kill his parent, calling it "fat bastard." These words were often heard in court from the prosecution.

Murder and Investigation

The family of Defeo (parents and four younger children) was brutally murdered on the night of November 13, 1974. Friends and colleagues who saw Ronald on that day remember that his day passed almost as always. He came to work unusually early, but explained this by saying that he had insomnia and decided to leave early, leaving the house at about 4 am. Butch acted as if nothing had happened. During the day, he phoned home several times to find out why his father did not come to work. And at the same time he was very "surprised" at the fact that the houses did not answer the calls. Evening Butch cheerfully spent with friends, as usual, using alcoholic drinks and drugs.

After the "party" Ronald went to a family mansion, but soon ran to the "Henry Bar", located at the corner of the street, a few meters from the house, shouting that his whole family was shot.

Police officers who examined the house that evening found six dead bodies lying in their beds. Both parents received two shots from the Marlin 336C hunting rifle, each of the children was killed with one shot. Strange seemed the following: all the bodies lay on their stomachs, dressed in pajamas. None of them woke up and tried to get up, run away or hide. Initially, the detectives decided that all the family members were mixed with sleeping pills, but the expertise did not confirm this version.

Versions of crime

At the very beginning of the investigation of the brutal murder of members of the family of Defeo, the police detectives did not even consider the elder son as a suspect. After a brief interrogation in the kitchen of the mansion, Ronald was taken under the protection of the police as a valuable witness. Of course, for neighbors and all friends, dislike, almost the enmity between father and son was not a secret. But all the witnesses confirmed that to the rest of the family, especially to the younger children, Defeo was very warm, with love. For this reason, it seemed so incredible that a young man could commit such a crime.

Thanks primarily to Ronald's testimony, the detectives also had a suspect. He became a close friend of Ronald Sr., who even for a while lived in an amitrivile family mansion, an American of Italian descent named Louis Falini. Butch said that his father helped Falini, who is in the local mafia, to hide the stolen valuables in the basement of the house of Defoe. The police had a version that the Italian shot the whole family as witnesses.

But with a careful examination of the house there was an unexpected find - a box from under the rifle Marlin 336C, owned by Butch. Under suspicion, Ronald changed the testimony of that terrible night. He claimed that Louis Falini and an unknown accomplice of the Mafiosi woke him up about four in the morning and, threatening with a pistol, took a rifle from which all members of the family were killed. After their departure, as Butch said, he desperately destroyed the evidence, getting rid of the shells and weapons. The last version was completely implausible and caused a lot of questions, to which Butch could not answer anything.

Detectives conducting the investigation, disappeared last doubt that it was Ronald Defeo who killed his family. And soon Butch himself confessed. The killer told in detail how he shot first his parents, and then his sisters and brothers from his rifle, and washed himself thoroughly, washing off traces of blood, how he hid all the evidence, rifles, liners and clothes soiled with blood, drowning everything in Brooklyn sewers.

The trial of Ronald

Despite the murderer's confession, all the details of the crime were established for quite a long time, the beginning of the trial took place almost a year after the murder, on September 14. The main argument on which Butch's lawyer relied was the statement about the madness of the murderer - Ronald claimed that he was ordered to shoot his relatives by "voices" that he heard in his own head. But after the survey by a forensic psychiatrist, it was concluded that, despite mild frustration and addiction, Defoe is quite sane.

After that, Ronald was not helped either by cooperation with the investigation, nor a word about repentance and regret. Ronald Joseph Defeo Jr. was found guilty of the murder of six people and received a total of 150 years in prison, 25 for each sacrifice. All subsequent applications for the release of the "famous" killer, filed to the present, have always been rejected. To date, Ronald Defeo Jr. (photo below, 2015) is in Green Haven (Bickman City), one of the correctional institutions of the State of New York.

A lone psychopath or a gang of murderers?

Most experts in the field of criminology and simply third-party researchers of the events of that night of 1874 agree that the shooting of the Defoe family still has many unexplained facts. In addition to the fact that during the assassination, none of the neighbors heard a single shot, and all the children after the shots in their parents' bedroom did not even try to get out of bed and leave the house, another circumstance opened. A specialist, hired by Michael Brigante, concluded that the family of Defeo was shot at least of two guns. This gave grounds to state that Ronald acted not alone.

However, this fact, surfaced during the trial, did not affect the verdict in any way, and Ronald himself made the first statement on this matter only after 10 years. Defoe Jr. reported that Louise Brigante was involved in the shooting of the family. This version was rejected as ridiculous.

In 2002, the book The Night the DeFeos died, author of which, Rick Osuna, interviewed Ronald. The Amityville story is set forth as follows: the killers were four - Ronald, his two friends and Down Theresa, and the sister, according to DeFeo, offered to kill her family. And it is she, according to Ronald, who shot the younger children, who were not originally planned to be killed. Thus, Ronald pleaded guilty to only three deaths - the parents and the "sister-killer" Down. In favor of this version, Ronald cited several controversial evidence. Interview those friends who allegedly took part in the murder, by that time it was impossible - the first of them died. And the second was under the program of witness protection in a different case.

City legend Amityville

The emergence of a halo of mysticism around the history of the Defoe family and the Hight Hopes mansion was facilitated by the following house owners at Amityville. The spouses Katie and George Lutz purchased the house almost a year after the crime. A month later the Lutz family left the mansion in great haste, informing the public about the unusual phenomena taking place in Hight Hopes. The bad reputation of the mansion was backed up by constantly "conducting studies" at home clairvoyants and mediums, they all claimed that the paranormal phenomena occur at the site of the death of the Defoe family permanently.

All this created a mystical urban legend "Amityville Horror", which inspired writers and screenwriters to create works in the genre of "horror." And the rights to film this story belong to the enterprising George Lutz.

Books and filmography

As already mentioned, the main "character" of the whole history of Defoe Jr. is still alive. He is serving his sentence in prison, was married three times and willingly gives interviews and puts forward new versions. Despite the negative reputation that Ronald Defeo earned, his biography became the storyline for Rick Osuna's book, which was mentioned earlier.

Back in 1977, Jay Anson's novel The Horror of Amityville was written, the plot was based on the stories of the Lutz family about the paranormality of the house. The book was a success, but the really popular story of the Detroys mansion, and with him Ronald himself, made a film adaptation.

The first film "Amityville Horror" burst onto the big screen in 1979. After it was filmed a few films - sequels, no longer on "real" terrible events. In fact, to repeat the success of the first film was only a remake of "Horror", released in 2005.