The Amityville Horror: Everything You Didn't Know

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show
that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating
facts and figures behind your favorite TV shows, movies, music,
and more. Where your two paranormal investigators are pretty interesting
trivia the Poltergeists of probing. Not that way. I'm Alex Hagel,
I'm Jordan run Tog and Jordan. Today we're talking about

(00:30):
one of the defining haunted house stories of the twentieth century,
the film that launched a thousand ripoffs literally and the
book that inspired it. And uh, I don't know, man,
I got like twenty one pages. We should not run
long on this in that's very true.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah, this is maybe one of the most insanity inducing
episodes we've ever done. I mean, the Titanic three parter
almost killed me. You got away fairly unscathed, but this
one nearly took us both down. Because you got the murder,
You've got the supposed real life haunting, you got the book,
you got the movie, you got the gazillion sequels, and
you've got just the flurry of lawsuits. It is a

(01:12):
wild ride. This is really I think one of the
craziest episodes we've ever done. How many episodes have we
done that have a haunted pig. It's kind of shocking
that we've made it to like episode one sixty without
a haunted pig.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
I know, I know, I feel remiss about that. But Jordan,
what's your where do you get off on the old
Amityville Express? You know?

Speaker 1 (01:36):
I mostly come at this through the real life murder,
which we'll talk about, the the fail murder, and the
I guess I have to say, alleged haunting that followed
in the aftermath, although you don't.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, there's that Jimmy Carr bitt that he's like joker.
He's like, there's actually a rather simple way to tell
if your house is haunted.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
It isn't. I love Jimmy Carr. Yeah, I mean, okay,
So the phenomenon, shall we say, of the real life
house the book I'm sure I read at some point
the movie I probably saw twenty years ago. I haven't
seen since. Once it starts getting into the pop culture realm,
I tend to taper off a little bit.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
But yeah, the murder and all.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
The investigations done on the house out on Inanityville is
kind of what interests me. What are your thoughts on
the movie.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
I mean, it has been a while since I've seen it,
but I don't remember it being particularly good.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
I think what drew me to writing this and the
reason I did twenty one pages on it was it
is one of the most repellent cases of American and
or human nature that I think I've ever like, as
angry as I was at Jerry Springer by the time
I got done with that episode, I am angrier by this,

(02:52):
but I could not look away.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yeah, I mean you were really It's funny for me.
I found this to be murderous, which is a really
sad qualifier, a sort of just uniquely American brand of hucksterism,
you know, like faking a haunted house essentially.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Yeah, to get out of your more. This really offended you, Yeah,
it does. I mean, I think it's a combination of
how much I hate d Lorraine Warren.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Famous pseudo psychic investigators that are okay, sure conn artists.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
And if you believe the allegation, human monsters. So yeah,
I really hate them, and I hate George Lutz. It's
cosmically hilarious. His name rhymes with putts yes.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
Because like the guy George Lutz, by the way, is
the guy who moved into the Amityville Horror House after
the murder's architect and claim the whole thing. Yeah, claim
that the house was haunted and sort of shining him,
like took over him and his family, nearly killed them
all and they fled in the dead of night after
only living there for four weeks.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yeah, and then like the next like the rest of
his life in half a century. Yeah, jealously guarding literally
like a little chihuahua, just like barking at people who
came close to this had no other skills. I hate it.
It's so gross and like, you know, we're perpetuating the cycle.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
But like I think it's so fascinating though.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
The fact that six people were like shot to death
in their home and then this guy moved in before
the trial was even done and was like with a
scam in place, Yeah, is utterly repellent. And then the
cast of care the lawyer of Weber, who will get
into like also repellent, And just.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Like should we be throwing more allegedlyies in here, because
I think he's still alive.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
He's got to be he's got to be near death.
Right Also, like that's unless it's defamatory, which that's not
like libel. It's my opinion, Okay, I don't think he
could argue that I'm damaging his reputation more than he
has by calling him an opportunistic scumbag.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Well okay, let me ask you this. Do you think
I mean, I'm sure there are that there are people
out there that genuinely believe that this house is overtaken
by supernatural phenomena.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there are people out there now
that I don't believe in some form of life after death,
like as we discussed. I don't actually know how much
of it you cut into the episode, but like, you know,
I believe that based on you know, the principles of
thermonuclear physics, like matter cannot be created or destroyed, just
changes forms. Like I do believe, you know, whatever our

(05:34):
brain or solely is is just like electrical impulses, so
that probably just goes into the world and comes back
in weird ways.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
But no, I totally agree. Yeah, we talked about that
during the sixth Sense episode.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
Right, yes, so yeah, I don't know, man, I just
this whole cottage industry of like ghost hunting and paranormal investigation.
I mean, I respect people who are more about it
being like drawing some kind of line and being like hard,
this is bullshit, versus people who are just like, well,

(06:10):
I'm just open to everything. Like as we'll discuss, one
of the debunkers of the Amityville story is a guy
who believes vampires are real and.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
Let me get Manhattan.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Yeah, real and living in not in Brooklyn, curious but
Queen's the Bronx and Manhattan. Yes, it was just funny
because they were Eddie Murphy made a movie about it. Yeah,
I don't know, man, The whole thing is really interesting
to me. It's like, uh, it's a weird phenomenon. I
think it attracts weird people, and I think it is
ultimately about like money and cloud and.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
We are some of the weird people following in their lineage.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
Anyway, from the aforementioned haunted pig demon named Jody, to
the dedication of the con artist at the center all
of this to the record setting triumph of the film,
Here's everything you didn't know about the Amityville Whore Horror.

(07:07):
I'm gonna have to keep keeping an eye on my
regional accent there the Amityville Hohror. Her name was Jody. Anyway,
the basis for this book, film, and its descendants is
the case of the aforementioned Lutz family patriarch George matriarch

(07:27):
Cathy during the twenty eight days that they spent in
their Amityville, Long Island home at one one two Ocean
Avenue in December of nineteen seventy five, thirteen months before
the family moved in, twenty three year old Ronald de
Feo Junior murdered six members of his family in the house,
both parents and four siblings. Claiming that this had an

(07:51):
effect on the house and paranormal circumstances arose from it,
The lutz Is vacated the home in as mentioned, twenty
eight days in the dead of night, and yes, in
the dead of night, leaving their things to be auctioned
off later.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Never to set foot In't that possibly on that coast again?

Speaker 3 (08:10):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (08:10):
Maybe, I'm sure they moved to California soon after.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, but with the volume of lawsuits, I'm sure he
was traveling back and forth. He had to be in
Brooklyn at one point at least. Anyway, we're putting the
whole the disgusting scam artist the head of the tragedy here,
which is that Thursday, November thirteenth, nineteen seventy four, at
an oft discussed window between two forty five and three fifteen,
am Ronald de Fayo Junior murdered his mother, father, and

(08:37):
four younger siblings, two brothers and two sisters with a
thirty five caliber Marlin rifle in the Amityville home with
the front yard sign that read high Hopes the family
had been living for nine years. He then showered, trimmed
his beard, dressed in his jeans and work boots, before
wrapping up his bloodied clothing and the rifle in a pillowcase.

(08:59):
Then he drove from Amityville to Brooklyn, where he threw
the pillowcase into a storm drain and drove back to
Long Island to report for work at his grandfather's Buick
dealership at six am. I'm trying not to get into
the like true crime podcast Cadence, but like I could
also refer some I could layer some sinister ambient music
in here. Oh, we think that'll juice the Noel Dafayo Junior.

(09:23):
Heretofore just to Fao repeatedly called his parents' house from
work before leaving around twelve pm. On his way back
to Amityville, he met up with his girlfriend Shelby, calling
his house from her apartment to demonstrate that no one
was answering, and then met up with his friend Bobby,
whom he explained the situation to, opining that there's something
going on over there. A few hours later, he went

(09:45):
out to a local bar, Henry's, where Bobby joined him.
Dafayo continually brought up the situation with the house and
told Bobby that he was going to drive over and
break in through a window. He left and returned shortly after, saying,
someone show my mother and father.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
It really creeps me out all of the ways that
he laid an alibi, calling the house from multiple different places.
There's a record of him calling, doing it with witnesses there,
going to the bar and be like, yeah, that's the
weirdest thing. I don't know what's going on with my family.
Is nobody's answering like that? I mean they talk about later,
you know. Maybe he almost certainly wasn't being possessed by

(10:25):
the devil. He just had anti social personality disorder that
sounds like what it was. That's really scary. It's sociopathic,
psychopathic behavior. Obviously, you just shot his entire family. I
don't know why I feel you need to make that point,
but really creeps me out that part. It's all the
like premeditation that creeps me out about this.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
This is where it gets a little.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
Weird, though, and I'm curious about your take on this.
All the victims were found face down in their beds,
apparently undisturbed. There was a lack of defensive wounds. You
would think that the sound of these rifle blasts in
the house would have woken up some of the later victims.
The rifle didn't have any kind of silencer on it
or anything, but it doesn't seem like any of them

(11:04):
were disturbed. But there are theories that the bodies were
moved post mortem, and so maybe that was why they
were all in the face down position on all their
individual beds, but according to the official autopsy, they weren't moved.
There were also no traces of drugs in the victim's bodies,
because that would have been the other theory of that
he drugged them or something before before killing them. Also

(11:27):
interesting that none of the neighbors, because there werehouses nearby
reported hearing the dozen ish rifle blasts in the middle
of the night. So this gave rise to rumors of
the house's you know, evil satanic energy. It put up
some kind of a weird a baffler, a cone of silence,
an evil cone of silence during the time of the murders.

(11:47):
I don't know that is interesting, though. I do find
it strange that officially the bodies were not moved, which
means that they were all just you know, face down
in bed and nobody seemed to hear anything in the
house or any of the neighbors or anything either.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yeah. I mean, you know, it's a big house built
in nineteen twenty three. I don't know how much sound
would have escaped it in is Amity Field rural. Is
it like a hamlet?

Speaker 1 (12:10):
You know?

Speaker 3 (12:10):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
I think it's like a from what little of scene
of it, it just kind of looks like a New
England town to me in the little seaside village.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
Okay, okay, okay, well that's all fine. About fifteen hours
after the murders had taken place, police had been notified
and by seven pm, police and neighborhood rubberneckers had descended
on the house. Suffolk County Detective Gaspar Randazzo incredible name.
This story has a lot of Italian American shame. He

(12:45):
was the first question to Feo, the massacre's soul survivor,
who volunteered one Lewis Fellini, a notorious mafia hitman, as
the likely culprit, based on an argument Fellini had had
with Ronald D. Fayo's senior years prior.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
That's his dad. And it's also worth noting that the
the failed grandfather was evolved with the Geneveci crime family.
We'll touch more on that in the moment, but it
wasn't inconceivable that this could have been a mob hit
given their ties.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Sure, I mean you know in the moment to the detectives. Yeah,
based on his premise of mafia involvement, police took Dafao
into protective custody and he gave them a statement at
the station and went to sleep on a cot in
the back. Meanwhile, another detective at the Amityville house uncovered
a pair of cardboard boxes into Fayo's room, both with
labels describing their recently used contents. Marlin rifles, a twenty

(13:37):
two and a thirty five. The detective didn't know that
a thirty five caliber Marlin had been the murder weapon,
but took the boxes anyway, and at eight forty five am,
Detective George Harrison, not that one, not that one, and
not the first time this will happen in this episode.
Shurek da Fao awake. Did you find Felini yetd Feo asked,
deny till you die. But George Harrison, not that one,

(13:59):
was not there with any such news. He was there
to read to Fao his rights. Dafeo protested that he'd
been trying to be cooperative all along, and went so far,
doltishly as to waive his right to counsel in an
attempt to prove he was an innocent witness with nothing
to hide. A fresh set of detectives arrived and grilled
Dafao about the inconsistencies in his statement, which Dafao began

(14:20):
to alter as the interrogation went on. After a while,
they got him to confess. It all started so fast,
he said, Once I started, I just couldn't stop. It
went so fast.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
This is known in legal circles as the pringles defense, can.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
You put the taco bells on me? That I didn't
have it up?

Speaker 1 (14:41):
People died and I still I still.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Couldn't six people in their bed.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
Unsurprisingly, this all was traced back to Rondefao's dad, Rondefeo Senior.
He was apparently a demanding, raging f around the de
Feo household, known in legal circles as a mid century dad.
As as Ron Junior grew older, his anger and outbursts
continued in frequency and in intensity, and he also outgrew

(15:15):
his dad, which was tough. So their shouting matches then
turned into boxing matches around the house.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
Do you ever have that moment with your dad?

Speaker 1 (15:23):
He's still taller than me? Do you have any idea
how much that bothers me?

Speaker 4 (15:29):
So?

Speaker 1 (15:29):
No, I beat him in foosball though, Oh well that
counts right exactly. Yeah, that's actually it takes one. Oh.
The Dafaos sent Ron Junior to therapy, but that didn't
help because, in the tom Honor tradition of psychopaths, Ron
Junior just played the therapist and blamed everything on his parents.

(15:53):
So the Dafaios turned to the grand old tradition of
placating their Braddy little kids and simply spoiled him by
way of examp Apple Ron Jr. Was given a fourteen
thousand dollars speedboat for his fourteenth birthday. So that's like
sixties money too, So that's like one hundred grand.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, super cool. It's just super cool. I
love this. I love everything about that.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
Your blood pressure is gonna spike so bad during this episode.
I thought, given it was horror, Jason, there's like spooky stuff.
I thought you would have been happy.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
No, man, it just it just offends my oft commented
on sense of righteousness.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah. Rondefeo Junior was kicked out of his Catholic school
at the age of seventeen, having begun dabbling in what
you describe as more serious than usual teenage drugs like
LSD and heroin.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
LSD. I give a watch. I give a pass too.
I regret that I had no intention of defaming Ellis Well.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
It's a hero it's like good to have in your
brain still farming. I believe it's true, like post age
twenty isn't twenty six when your brain is officially stopped forming,
and then from that point it's like the Big Bang,
and it's reached the biggest show of getting and it
started shrinking for the rest of your life.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
Sure, short, short, yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
And also he was involved in larceny schemes too. It's
good to have hobbies as a teen, and unfortunately, Ron
Junior's concerning behavior was no longer confined to just spights
with his dad. On a hunting trip with some friends,
he pointed a loaded rifle at a teen that he'd known
for years, watching him blankly as he ran away. When
the party caught up with a kid later that afternoon,

(17:32):
Ron Junior asked him why he had left so soon. Yeah,
this has psychopath written all over it.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
That is so chilling, just someone slowly aiming a gun
at you wordlessly and then being like what was wrong? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (17:44):
Oh yeah, yeah, this is really Yeah. Have you seen
interviews with him, like prison interviews. Oh, he's like, well's yeah,
he's really scary. He's like kind of a like like
a Brooklyn Charles Manson, Like he's got the like long
Island accent. But he talks about like I mean, we'll

(18:04):
give some quotes from him later about all this kind
of like quasi religious demonic mumbo jumbo.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
Well, very scared at the edge of eighteen, Ron Junior
was given a cushy job at his grandfather's Buick dealership,
but as you write, he half asked even that and
continued drinking and doing heroin and speed. One evening, a
fight broke out between his parents, and Ron Junior grabbed
twelve game shotgun from his room, loaded it, and pointed

(18:31):
it at his father, yelling, leave that woman alone. I'm
going to kill you, you fat.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
This is it? Oh I forgot, this is it.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
He then pulled the trigger, but the gun mysteriously misfired,
after which he simply walked out of the room.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
Do you think there were signs, yeah, you can do man,
I'd have that kid committed in a heartbeat, or at
least like under So, like your Long Island rich you know,
hires somebody to like follow him around and be like
make sure he doesn't murder me or anyone else.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
I just had a thought go on. This story could
have only come from one of two places. Either Ron Junior,
after his arrest, volunteered it, which clearly would have blown
up his whole the devil made me do it defense,
or his own parents told someone else that, oh, yeah,
our son had a loaded rifle and tried to fire

(19:30):
it at his dad and it just didn't go off,
because otherwise he killed everyone else in the house. That
story wouldn't been able to get out any other way
if it was a week before they were all murdered.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
This is one of the most repeated quotes that I
can find from him, and it's been cited by a
lot of people in a lot of different works. But
I do not have a source for it. And I
mean like real things, not like internet listicals, like you know, books.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
Maybe he admitted to doing it. Maybe it was some
part of his fence at one point, because he changed
his story and we'll talk about many, many times. Yeah,
maybe it was like I was trying to defend my
you know, my mother and it just got out of control.
I don't know. Yeah, But the inciting incident for the
murders appeared to be when Ron Junior stole nearly twenty
three thousand dollars in checks from the car dealership where

(20:17):
he worked his grandfather's car dealership, claiming that he'd been
robbed on the way of the bank. When questioned about this, about,
for instance, why it had taken him an extra two
hours to return following the robbery, he just became obstinate
and enraged, causing his father the Friday before the murders,
mind you to tell him you've got the devil on
your back, to which Ron Junior responded, you fat prick,

(20:41):
I'll kill you.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
And so you got to admire the consistency in messaging.
I mean he yeah, he had the makings of a
of a pr manager and he stayed on message. Stayed
on message, yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
Like you should lose weight before I kill you.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
And I'll kill you. So case went to trial in
October of nineteen seventy five. His attorney, the aforementioned William Weber, a.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
Big player in this episode, remember that name.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
William Webber attempted to have the case thrown out based
on the fact that to Feo had waived his right
to counsel when he was first arrested before pivoting to
an insanity defense, and boy howdy, de Feo went in
on that he claimed he heard voices urging him to
commit the murders. At one point during questioning, he said
I killed them all, claiming bizarrely that it was self defense, continuing,

(21:31):
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.
He then continued to dig himself deeper, saying that I
remember feeling very good when asked about his state of

(21:51):
mind post murders, and then going so far as to
threaten the prosecuting attorney by saying, if I had any sense,
which I don't, I'd come down there and kill you. Now,
I like that.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
He added the which I don't, which really it lays
the groundwork for that insanity defasurers. Yeah, and this is
again what makes me think that he's in on it
one thousand percent. He will do or say anything that
you know absolves him of this, which is psychopathic behavior.
I guess one of the stories, I mean, his story

(22:24):
changed a bunch of times. One of the stories he
told about something like this. On the night of the murders,
he was asleep in the living room at home watching
a war picture on television after having taken quote some
drugs specifics were not mentioned. He then awoke at the
end of the movie to hear the voices of his
family in the other room conspiring to kill him. He

(22:45):
would add that a quote female with black hands or
a hooded, black handed demon passed him the rifle. Now
remember that hooded black handed demon thing, because we'll come
back to that.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
What do you think was he was watching Glory Sanzevi
Regima Los Angels.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
To Toro Tora. Okay.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
Also not happy and not helping any of this is
the fact that at one point he asked police when
he could collect on his parents' insurance life insurance.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Do you think that like the Menendez brothers like studied this,
like okay, we don't do that. We don't do that,
we don't do that, but it does seem to work out. Okay,
what a bumbling mook. Anyway, none of this panned out.
His defense attorney called a psychiatrist who delivered a mini
lecture on psychosis, disassociation, and criminal insanity. The further the
prosecution psychiatrist would go with was antisocial personality disorder. Subsequently,

(23:40):
on Friday November twenty first, nineteen seventy five, Ronald Fao
Junior was found guilty of six counts of second degree murder.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
Second degree I don't even know what you.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
Well, yeah, but like it's got to be part of
the insanity defense in there. That had to be a
concession of that.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
But if you're getting hung up with legal details at
this age in the podcast, this is going to be
a two parter. Two weeks later, he was sentenced to
twenty five years to life in prison on all six counts.
Immediately after the trial, he claimed to the press that
he'd pled guilty at the behest of his attorney, the
afore mentioned William Webber, saying he gave me no choice.
He told me I had to do this. He told
me there would be a lot of money from book

(24:18):
rights and a movie. He would have me out in
a couple of years, and I would come into all
that money. While in custody, De Fao continued to alter
his story. In a nineteen eighty six interview with Newsweek,
he claimed that it was actually his sister Dawn, who
killed their father before his distraught mother saw what she'd
done and killed the rest of the family except them.

(24:40):
He explained that he'd taken the blame because he was
afraid to say anything negative about his mother to her
father and his father's uncle, who was involved with the
Genevesei crime family. Later he switched to this having Dawn
as the perpetrator of all the murders before he killed her.
And this is probably the most plausible theory, right Jordan,

(25:00):
Dawn did it?

Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah, there are a lot of stories that Ron Junior
and Dawn, his sister, were in cahoots together. They had
apparently a very close relationship. Some have even speculated that
there was some incests involved. I don't know. The story
would be that they were plotting to kill their abusive father.
But Dawn, for reasons I don't fully understand, got carried

(25:25):
away with this evil deed and killed everyone, maybe to
eliminate witnesses, I don't know. And then Ron was so
heartbroken by what she had done that he went and
killed her. It doesn't really hold up, but it is
interesting to note that her death appears to have been
the most violent, with her head being blown almost entirely

(25:46):
off by the rifle blast.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Here's where it.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
Really gets weird, as if it wasn't. Oh yeah, I
guess we haven't gotten to the demonic pig yet. According
to author Rick Asuna in a two thousand and five documentary,
Real Amityville, horror. A criminologist hired by the defense team
told a closed court that there was evidence that the
bodies had been moved and staged post mortem, and that

(26:10):
there was evidence that more than one gun was used,
so that would give credence to the idea that there
were two people involved in the killings, which would make
sense if there weren't any defensive wounds on everybody, because
presumably somebody would have heard something and tried to run
for their lives. But it looks like that they were
all shot in their sleep, which seems impossible that nobody

(26:32):
would have woken up anyway. This gets extremely weird. Journalist
Rick Moran was contacted many years after the murder by
a drug enforcement agent who told him that he had
the to fail home under observation at the time of
the murder, and he had seen don Defail leave the
house on the night of the murder with a rifle.

(26:55):
The agent said that he saw her put the rifle
in the back seat of her car and drive in
the direction of the city Dock, which was exactly where
the weapon was found by police divers later, and this
is really interesting, Down was dressed in a hooded jacket
in dark gloves, leading some to speculate that she was
the supposed hooded, black handed demon that Ron was referring to.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
It's interesting because, like, based on Ron, you think he
would be the one who would be like low key
trafficking drugs. Don also had a boyfriend around this time
who testified in an affidavit that she had been wanting
to leave and move to Florida. So maybe she really
was a burgeoning drug trafficker. Maybe, or maybe it was Rong.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
I mean, I don't know why the house was under surveillance.
I don't think that came up at least in my research.
It could have been wrong. It could have been Down.
But Don's night clothes apparently showed traces of unburnt powder,
which would indicate that she might have fired a rifle
that night. So your mileage may vary. It could have
been some sort of weird packed between brother and sister

(28:01):
that went awry at the last minute. I don't know,
We'll probably never know.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
Ricosuna released a book in two thousand and two called
The Night that Dafeo's Died, which is named after a
song that Down wrote as a teenager. Apparently, what Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
One of the lyrics to that.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
I think it had to have been like the night
they drove Old Dixie down, or like a Bobby Gentry
style like talk song that she like just did as
a bit, but it made its way into Rico soon
as book and he titled it after this. That's terrifying anyway.
This is one of the most coherent arguments that Don

(28:40):
was involved in the in the murders, among all of the
stuff that Jordan just talked about. Ossun it does say
that the mafia claim doesn't hold water because the killing
of children violates the code of the Italian mafia, which
sure man. But he does bring up a very useful
stat which is that at the time, Suffolk County Police
had an astronomical confession rate ninety five percent compared to

(29:07):
thirty five in the Bronx and twenty in King's County Brooklyn.
So soon it contends that Di Feyo, probably withdrawing from
any cocktail of drugs or just regular old alcohol, had
the crap kicked out of him in his cell and
confessed under those circumstances. Both the prosecutor and Amityville Police
has supposedly admitted on several occasions that the crime would

(29:30):
have required three people, and an independent investigation by retired
police detective Herman Race backed that up. Most importantly, o
Sooner recalls a moment when George Lutz told him clearing
up what happened isn't as important as making money with
the sequels, I kind of want to read this book anyway.

(29:51):
Getting back to Ronnie Boy on the he his nickname
is Butch. Butch, Yeah, I should have mentioned that earlier.
On the two thousand and six A and E special
First Person Killers, Ronald Dafeo, forensic psychiatrist doctor Stephen Hoge
said that after interviewing Ronald for several hours, he didn't
find anything credible about the Dawn story. Rather, he added,
I wouldn't be able to say this was absolutely true,

(30:13):
but it made me believe that, in fact Ronald had
killed them. Not a great look either way. Ronald Dafeo
Junior was denied parole every single time he came up
for it, and he died in prison in twenty twenty
one at the age of sixty nine, and that was
the end of that. Nice uh so. Speaking of George Lutz,

(30:36):
Land surveyor, George and his wife Kathleen bought the Amityville
House for what was considered a bargain prize of eighty
thousand plush in an additional four hundred for much of
the furnishing. They'd married in July nineteen seventy five. Kathy
had three children from a previous marriage, Daniel, Christopher, and Melissa,
and they wanted to start fresh with their blended family
and their dog Harry. During their first inspection of the house,

(30:59):
the real estate broker told them about the Defayo murders
and asked if this would affect their decision, but apparently
it did not, and the Lutses moved in on December eighteenth,
nineteen seventy five, less than a month after Defair Junior's sentencing.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
George would say that within the first hour of arriving
at the house, Harry the dog tried to hang himself
by hurling himself over the fence. His chain was too
short and he was hung by his neck. He survived.
If you learned that the house you were looking at
was the site of a not just any murder, but
especially grizzly murder like this, would you have any.

Speaker 2 (31:32):
Problem moving into a murder home? No, really, wouldn't bother me.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Really, Yeah, it was just I mean, you know, so
like a lightning won't strike twice kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
Or no, if all they're going to do is like
turn the lights on and off and move some furniture around,
I'd be like, hey, guys, I'm really sorry. That's an
incredibly thing. Don't do it while company's over.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
Serious. You wouldn't have any problem moving into a murder house.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
I mean, how grizzly are we talking? There's a sliding scale.
I would draw the line at like rape, cannibalism, or
like a dungeon that some guy kept his secret family in,
or like really grizzly dismemberment, little rich kid taking nighttime potshots.
I can live with that. Why is there a sliding scale? Dude?

Speaker 1 (32:26):
I just follow.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
I just follow the muse. Sometimes I don't even think
about about what I'm doing. You know, I'm led by
my whims.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
Uh where do they move from?

Speaker 2 (32:40):
I feel like that's an oversight on my part because
home buying in the nineteen seventies would have been slower, right,
So closing on this house moving in in December eighteenth
definitely presupposes that he had been looking into this for
like at least months prior, right.

Speaker 1 (32:59):
I would assume, so yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
And gross scrubby little opportunist.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Oh did he die?

Speaker 2 (33:07):
He's super dead.

Speaker 1 (33:08):
George Lut's die yeah and in hell? Oh okay, so
then I can say whatever I want about him.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
Yeah, oh yeah, brother. Anyway, the lutz Is sensibly decided
to have a priest come in to bless the house.
Another embarrassing Italian American brother, Ray Peccerero, arrived, and, as
Let's told ABC News in two thousand and two, the
priest said he felt an unseen hand slap him in
the sewing room and a voice say get out. Could
be a good thing. I mean usually priests are on

(33:34):
the giving end of uncomfortable touching, right, so maybe this
was a big shock to him. Per Lutz. Peccuerero then
became ill with flu like symptoms and his hands began
to bleed. I don't think stigmata is connected to haunting.
It's usually talked about in cases of like religious ecstasy.
What a fuck dip God, I hate this dumb pots.

(33:55):
Let's also said an interview with movie Web that Kathy's aunt,
an ex nun, also visited the house. Continuing to ABC,
he detailed the next twenty eight days. There were odors
in the house that came and went. There were sounds,
the front door would slam shut in the middle of
the night. I couldn't get warm in the house for
many days. He also told the network that they found

(34:16):
quote strange gelatinous drops on the carpet in the mornings,
which gross but attributed to any number of things gross,
and claimed that his wife was physically transformed into an
old woman with the face, hair, and wrinkles of a
ninety year old. Among his other claims were visits from
the aforementioned demonic pig Jody Green, ooze dripping down the walls,

(34:40):
the children's beds slamming against the floor, and what was
determined to be his final straw, Kathy levitating above her
bed one night. He also claimed to wake up each
night at three fifteen am, purportedly the time that the
Dafeo murders occurred, although I've also seen around two forty five.
It's a generous window.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
That's really interesting the movie because I thought that they
never spoke publicly about what happened the night they fled
the house in the middle of the night, so I
don't know what the last straw was.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
He has spoken constantly and in so many different variations
of it's true what happened, because his whole log line
has been like, what happened in those twenty eight days
is true. Everything since then has been embellished, and I
am like a perfect, blameless angel in all of that.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
Yeah, he would say that he got very sick in
the house and lost a lot of weight. He would
say that quote my own personal hygiene changed there. Not
totally sure what that means. He underwent personality changes. Supposedlyam
was quick to snap at his family while living there.
As you mentioned, he had a hard time getting warm
and was constantly outside chopping wood and building fires. It

(35:47):
was just such a hilariously mundane yet menacing thing the two.
It's just like angrily chopping wood outside.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
That was supposedly an invention for the movie. But I
find it funny that it is also the obsessive behavior
that Ralph Ineson experiences as the family patriarch in Robert
Egger's timeless classic The Vivich.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
Doesn't Jack Nichols, Oh no, that's a different acts. Never mind,
he used an ax for different, different thing, different thing. Yeah,
Kathy Lutz reported being hugged by an old woman who
wasn't really there. They reported swarms of house flies infesting
only certain rooms, despite the fact that it was midwinter.
There were your standard run of the mill screams and
footsteps in the middle of the night, toilets turning black, china

(36:33):
turning black, which I've never heard of. But my favorite
is the aforementioned demonic pig named Jody. It was seen
by the Lutz's daughter, Missy, who claimed that she would
see its red eyes. Oh yeah, it has red eyes.
That's important, red eyes peering through her bedroom window on
the second floor. According to the little girl, Jody, the
pig told her that he it the pig, was glad

(36:55):
she was living there and that she would be living
there forever. That's so I love that. I love that
so much.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
Hilariously.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
It was later believed that Jodi was in fact a
large Persian cat owned by a neighbor who was overfed
and known locally as Pig and had you know, cat's
certain breeds have like reddish eyes.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah, it's just at night when you look at when
the interior light would be shining out at them. Oh
there you go.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
Yeah. There was also apparently an innocent explanation of a
number of the supernatural these supposed all of it, okay, all.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
Of it, there's explanations for all of it.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
There were windows in one of the kid's rooms that
supposedly opened and shut on their own at random, and
investigators discovered that the windows were improperly counterbalanced, and all
he had to do was stand on a certain floorboard
to send them up and then release the floorboards.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
Was built nineteen twenty three, and the guy like tripped
over his dick to get into it. Based on the
court case, like, of course, it's sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry sorry.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
So yeah, I don't really understand the physics, but apparently
that was the cause of the windows going up and down.
And one of the claims from George Lutz is that, oh, yeah,
like the windows slammed down on my little boy's hand,
and I took him to the hospital.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
And have they ever been in a pre war house
with those stupid Pulley window things, Like I sker from
my hands every time I get near one of them. Well,
it gets worse though.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
He supposedly took his son to the hospital after the
windows slammed on his fingers, and then somebody he was
debating on like one of those like debunkithon TV shows,
was like, Okay, yeah, we're gonna subpoena the hospital and
have the hospital records. And then as soon as I
said that, he was like, well, I didn't actually take
him to the hospital.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
It was more single time he's pressed on it, he
backs off, which is so hilarious. Man, Like, at least
go through more trouble falsifying records, or even just do
I don't know, maybe tried doing that. You would later
claim it's just such. I think it's because he's stupid.
That's what bothers me the most.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
Actually, you want him to lie better. You don't care
that he lies. You want him to lie better. That's
really what it's all about.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
You perfect Dunning crue a perfect example of the Dunning
Krueger effect, Like, oh, I'll just I'll just falsify this thing,
and like as it spins out of control, just keep
pathetically lying and then live the rest of my life
doubling down on it. I didn't realize he died, Moron, Yeah,
he died. He's in hell. I explained it.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Journalist Rick Moran would cite an estimated one hundred and
sixty obvious physical errors in the book The Aminual Horror,
and that doesn't even count trying to prove or disprove
the existence of psychic phenomena.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
So yeah, as you meditate on that, we'll be right
back with more too much information.

Speaker 3 (39:42):
After these messages, George Lutz wasted very little time getting
experts involved.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
After he fled his home, he contacted Stephen cap the
founder and director of the Vampire Research Center and the
Parapsychology Institute of America. He agreed to investigate the home
with some members of his Parapsychology Institute, which is they.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
Were supposedly witches who showed up.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
Oh okay, there you go.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
I learned that recently. I didn't have time to edit it.
It's just hilarious.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
Yeah, this guy was so convinced of the existence of
vampireism vampiresm A VAMPIRESM just vampires.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
Oh okay, just say vampires.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
Of vampires that in twenty ten he told The New
York Post that he was corresponding with four vampires in Manhattan,
one in the Bronx, and one in Queens, but shockingly
none in Brooklyn. Are you want to thought Bushwick? There
would have been some well there are now, oh yeah,
certainly it was twenty ten as well as that was
when they would have gotten there. Yeah, it was looking

(40:50):
for crack sorry, or house shows.

Speaker 2 (40:54):
Not at that point.

Speaker 4 (40:56):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
I mo've died here in twenty one.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
I don't know. I mean, well, depending on what part Bushwick,
I feel like down by Knickerbocker was not like Gentrified
in twenty ten. You were there. I wasn't.

Speaker 1 (41:06):
I was there at the first house show at the Lodge.
I was there.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
I told Alex you'll never make it, never make a dime,
and you were right, and I was right.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
All right, LCD Sounds System reference folks, thank you there.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
We're white and we're white men.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
And talking about twenty eleven in New York, George Lets
requested that Kaplan, this vampire fetishist who had an.

Speaker 4 (41:35):
Expert expert, thank you very much, who had a PhD
in sociology following his BA in the subject and a
master's in education that interdisciplinary studies from Sunny and Cunie
stone Brook, along with his associates at the Parapsychology Institute.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
Why did you have me read all this investigate his home?

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Well, because because he's actually credentialed in some way. It's
funny because like, so I'm getting ahead of myself. Damn
it goop.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
Going Okay, So let's ask this guy who's credential to
investigate his home. Kapla wrote a whole book about the
whole Amityville situation, very tellingly called the Amityville Conspiracy, and
he recalled that during his short stay in the house,
Let's said, he'd read multiple books about the occult, which
I don't find to be a red flag if you're

(42:21):
in a home that you think is haunted and you
want to learn more about haunted homes and why.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
In twenty eight days while going to work or whatever,
like he was sick.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
He was sick a lot.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
He was researching his bullsh Caplin, Preston and George Let's
recall the conversation with Ray Buckland, who Kaplin described as
a prominent witch in the area who ran the witchcraft
Museum in Bayshore before moving to New England, adding Ray
Buckland had been gone from New York for a year
or two.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
Now, that would mean that George had researched his craft,
as is called with one of the most knowledgeable witches
in the country long before he bought the house.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
If he was planning it and had read a bunch
of books, do.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
You think that he was just like scanning the newspaper
for different horrific murders and was like, oh, that that
one fits the bill.

Speaker 2 (43:11):
No, I mean, well, I don't know. It's an interesting question, like.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
Or maybe he saw the devil maybe do a defense
in the newspaper and was like, oh, wait a minute.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
I think one of the most prominent conspiracy theories, which
I think is by Aukham's Razor, is likely. The real
thing is that they he bought this place kind of
on a on maybe a whim, or to try and
profit off of it in a different way, but then
realize that the mortgage was like unsustainable and that.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
Was like a bargain. I thought it was a really
diskoind of price because of the history.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
I mean, I don't know. I don't know what the
guy's income was. He was lazing around, you know, reading
occult books.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
They like, well, what do we do?

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Okay? Fair?

Speaker 1 (43:58):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (43:58):
No, I mean that's the theory is that they he
was trying to get out of the mortgage which was unsustainable,
and that he was like, I know, but I mean,
you know, I don't know. Man. The guy was such
a like bald faced liar for his entire life that
there's you'll never like and he's dead now and in hell,
so there's no way you'll ever get like him. To
pinpoint the time, like, oh, I researched a murder house,

(44:18):
thought I could profit off of it, got in trouble
with the mortgage, and then decided to fake a haunting
so we could leave.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
You know, things stall out between Caplin and Lutz when
Leut's asked about Kaplan's Institute's fee for investigating his house.
Caplain told him if they didn't charge for the investigation,
but that quote, if the story is a hoax, the
public will know. And shortly afterwards George Lutz called and
canceled the investigation, which is suspicious.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
And the reason I was getting so angry earlier is
that the people that he called are Ed and Lorraine Warren,
who have achieved there. You know, their whole thing was
getting famous for being paranormal investigators and psych They never
charged for doing any of this, but they profited immensely
off of books and speaking engagements and the like. They

(45:08):
are probably the most famous paranormal investigators in American history
thanks to the Conjuring franchise, which, as we will get into,
contains some amazing liberties with their story mandated due to
their disgusting lives. So Ed Warren had like a long
standing grudge against Stephen Kaplan because Caplan's whole thing was like,

(45:30):
I will investigate this, but if it's a hoax, I
will reveal it, whereas the Warren's whole thing was investigating
things and then making up bullshit. They then, like you know,
continued to profit off of. So Ed Warren was like
in this one sided battle with Stephen Kaplan and just
constantly lying about him every time he got on a
microphone put in front of him, like that man has

(45:51):
no credentials. He like is blah blah blah, He's this,
he's that, and just carried on this personal attack because
they were the second choice for investigating and Amityville House
because they were credulous and also scam artists. Anyway, that
was all off the dome. I didn't even write that.
You just made me so angry. So Ed Warren supposedly

(46:14):
grew up in a haunted house in Connecticut, remembering paranormal
experiences from as early as when he was nine years old.
He enlisted in the Navy in September of nineteen forty
three after being rejected by the Marines for lying about
his age. He was seventeen. I don't know if I
buy that sounds like something you'd lie about. Supposedly, a
ship Ed was on collided with an oil tanker in
the North Atlantic in nineteen forty five, and after being

(46:36):
evacuated from the burning ship, Ed bobbed in the icy waters,
praying for help and was soon rescued. He returned home
and immediately asked Lorrain, whom he'd met when she was sixteen,
to marry her. Lorraine, unsurprisingly also remembered being psychic from
a young age, and less than ten years later, the
couple founded the New England Society for Psychic Research in
nineteen fifty two. After first attempting to make a living

(46:59):
off of Ed's paintings, It's just a frustrated Painter, turned
to manipulating people's feelings and histories.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
Littered with frustrated painters. No good comps of it.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
Nailed it.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
Wait, folks will get that one on the way home.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
You should probably just cut that in instead of having
me open and unlock my phone and pull up them
up every time. Anyway, they claim to have investigated thousands
of cases of paranormal phenomena. And while they didn't, as
I mentioned earlier, they didn't charge for investigations. But they
made a killing off of this muscle speaking engagements, yeah,
and books, and they were on talk They were all

(47:43):
over talk shows for a long time too. It was
just like a you know, in the kind of wild
West of seventies and eighties talk shows. If somebody needed
to plug something, they would just call up the Warrens
and be like, what have you done lately? And they'd
be like, well, there's a haunted doll. Uh, that's not
a joke, and I mean the number of sorry I'm
putting again, I'm putting the scammer again. Of the horse

(48:05):
Ed Lorraine were devout Catholics, and Lorraine often claimed that
atheism was what opened the door to demon experience and
paranormal what a bitch Ed claimed to be sometimes, along
with his wife, quote the only non clerical demonologists recognized
by the Vatican. Sometimes he would sub in the phrase
church approved. However, Brad Miner senior editor of a website

(48:27):
called The Catholic Thing and a senior fellow of the
Faith and Reason Institute wrote in a twenty sixteen article,
if ever, there weren't actual recognition or endorsement by Rome
of their activities, I can't find it. The couple did
work with local Catholic priests frequently during the course of
their investigation, and alleged to have received a personally assigned
exorcist from the Vatican to assist in one case, from

(48:50):
none other than the future Pope Benedict, then a sprightly
young Cardinal Ratzinger as he was known. That was the
Nazi youth guy.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
Right, I think so, yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
Yeah great. The company they keep a's had from the
Amityville case. The Warrens were best known for their involvement
in a murder case in Connecticut in which the defendant,
Arne Johnson, sought to argue that he had been possessed
by the devil. The judge in the case disallowed the argument,
and mister Johnson was convicted of manslaughter. That story has
been adapted into one of the installments of The Conjuring Franchise,

(49:23):
which I'm about to get to. The fine folks at
New Line Cinema, owned by Warner Brothers, are responsible for
not just the Conjuring franchise, which I think is three
or four deep at this point, and they star in
these films. By the way, Patrick Wilson and Via Farmia
star as the Warrens and have a glowing, lovely, faith
informed relationship and are just like the Saints upon the

(49:46):
Earth combating the forces of the devil. This has since
sprawled into the Annabelle series, which is I think a haunted,
raggedy ann doll that they have in their museum of
bullsh that they probably charge people to get into, and
the Nun franchise Eyes. All of these has been responsible
for polishing the Warren's respond reputation, and we'll get into that.

(50:09):
Regardless of reviews on the Supernatural, this pop culture image
of them papers over a lot. First of all, they
were definitely con artists. The Warrens had a best selling
nineteen ninety two book called In a Dark Place, which
was co written with author Ray Garton and eventually made
into the two thousand and nine horror film The Haunting
in Connecticut. Ray Garton has given multiple interviews stemming from

(50:32):
his hiring by the Warrens to ghost write this book.
He alleges that this has been the case with a
number of horr writers retained by the Warrens. Uses the
phrase nearly identical, and after approaching Ed with concerns about
the inconsistencies of the testimonies in the material, who's provided
to write the book was told by Ed, they're crazy.

(50:56):
All the people who come up to us are crazy.
That's why they come up to us. Just use what
you can and make the rest up. You write scary books, right,
We'll make it up and just make it scary. That's
why we hired you. Garton also added that there are
questions about the legitimacy of the Catholic priests who worked
with the Warrens, and that his motivation for spilling, he says,

(51:16):
is that the book was marketed without his consent as
non fiction, as the Warrens had shifted from house hauntings
to the possessions after the popularity of The Exorcist, so
that guy at least has an axtra grind. But telling
stuff one family member of the devil made me do it. Case.
Carl Glatzel also sued the Warrens in two thousand and seven,

(51:37):
claiming that the book that they'd written was made of
complete lies and that the Warrens quote concocted a phony
story about demons in an attempt to get rich and
famous at our expense. He suggested then that the Warrens
slandered him by passing off his skepticism about the case
as merely a facet of the demonic entity's power over
the entire situation. What a convenient out hey, I think

(52:00):
thank you guys are both That's just what a devil
possessed man would say. Adding fuel to this, there's the
fact that the Warrens have never produced definitive proof behind
any of their cases. Their photos of the Amityville House
were fake, and in one nineteen ninety incident, Ed Warren
described a film that he took of a female spirit
haunting a cemetery. It was never made public and was

(52:23):
eventually allegedly revealed to be a woman named Judith Penny
wearing a white bed sheet over her head.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
So they went full Scooby do ghost with this. Yeah,
they didn't even Ukka. So that name Judy Penny is
tremendously important because in twenty seventeen, the Hollywood Reporter published
a lengthy article about the fantastically profitable partnership between New
Line Cinema, who does all the Conjuring movies, and the Warrens.
As of that article's publication, the Hollywood Reporter suggests that

(52:53):
all Warren related films have grossed over one point two
billion billion with a B dollars world wide, and that
number is probably approaching three billion as of this podcast.
That is astonishing. The Hollywood Reporter contends that just weeks
after the first Conjuring movie hit theaters in twenty thirteen,
studio executives were made aware of allegations from Judith Penny

(53:15):
that in the early sixties, when she was fifteen years old,
Ed initiated a relationship her with Lorraine's knowledge, claiming in
a sworn declaration in November twenty fourteen that she lived
with the Warrens as Ed's lover for four decades. Thank
you for forcing me to save lover.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
Which fine man, Whatever were you want to get up
to in the you know, in your own house is
fine with the consenting adult, not a teenager. But the
degree to which they've been lying about this go on.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
Judith Penny alleged that she met the Warrens before they
were the Warrens internationally famous paranormal experts. I'll say, you
will say con artists. At the time, Ed Warren was
just a city bus driver for Bridge, Connecticut, and she
moved another home in nineteen sixty three.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
He met her on the bus she took to get
to high school.

Speaker 1 (54:07):
Oh my, oh wow. It gets allegedly so much worse.
Judith Penny was arrested in nineteen sixty three after someone
reported her relationship with Ed, and she spent a night
in prison while police tried to get her to sign
a statement admitting to the affair. She refused to cooperate
and was ordered to report to a delinquent youth office

(54:28):
every week for a month, which Ed dutifully drove her too,
as good boyfriend material right there, keep going. Then, in
May nineteen seventy eight, when she was in her thirties,
Judith Penny said she became pregnant with Ed's child, and
claimed Lorraine persuaded her to have an abortion because the

(54:49):
birth of a child could become public and any scandal
could ruin the Warren's business.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
Which again is predicated on their heartfelt Christianity. And that
the idea that atheist a opens the door to the devil.

Speaker 1 (55:01):
I mean, as Judith Penny said, Lorraine's real god is money.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
Man. I set you up for that one.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
That was good. In her sworn statement, Judith Penny recalled,
they wanted me to tell everyone that someone had come
into my apartment and raped me, and I wouldn't do that.
I was so scared. I didn't know what to do.
But I had an abortion the night they picked me
up from the hospital. After having it, they went out
and lectured and left me alone. As if all this
wasn't enough. She also alleges that Ed was physically abusive

(55:32):
to his wife, Lorraine. Both Warrens had died by the
time Judith Penny's sworn statement and the Hollywood Reporter article
were publicized.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
And in hell.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
Their organization is currently run by their daughter, Judy. He
named their daughter after the fifteen year old that he
took in and had an affair with.

Speaker 2 (55:52):
Ah. Actually, let me check that real quick, because I
didn't pick up on that. Honestly, I was so in
the weeds. I was seeing so much read.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
Anyway, The folks running the Warren's estate now shot down
Judith Penny's story telling their attorney. The Warrens opened their
home to miss Penny when she was eighteen, then had
noe else to live following a childhood of neglect. During
much of their career, Eden Lorraine were on the road
working on cases and giving lectures, and Miss Penny lived
at and watched their house.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
Okay, so no, it was a complete coincidence that the
teenage mistress that he bullied and sex trafficked was named
after their first daughter, who was born in nineteen forty six.
Oh And New Line Cinema outside council Michael O'Connor received
a letter from an attorney named Sandford Dow, representing one
of the two parties suing the studio. More on that
in a minute in twenty fifteen that read, in part,

(56:45):
mister Warren has been accused of being cut from the
exact same cloth as convicted Penn State football child molester
Jerry Sandusky and the accused sexual predator Bill Cosby. Missus
Warren in both condoning and covering up these heinous acts
is as complicit as her husband. Speaking of Lorraine, the
Hollywood Reporter also delved into Lorraine's contract with Newline. The

(57:07):
talent attorney that they contacted to review this for the piece.
Jill Smith told them that it contained restrictions to a
degree of specificity she had never seen before. To wit,
Lorrain's deal with Newline to serve as consultant on or
model for the Conjuring included some unusually specific restrictions. The
film couldn't show her or her husband engaging in crimes sure,

(57:32):
sex with minors okay, child pornography hmm, prostitution, or sexual assault.
Neither the husband nor wife could be depicted as participating
in an extra marital sexual relationship, which is like that
tweet my not involved in human trafficking t shirt is

(57:52):
raising a lot of questions already answered by my T shirt.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
Ah.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
And that is literally what Lorrain did with this enormously
lucrative contract from Newline. So remember when I said two
people were suing over this situation. Bolstering Penny's account of
things is an author named Gerald Brittle. He's suing Newline
in Warners, claiming that the Conjuring franchise rips off his
nineteen eighty book The Demonologist. Part of Brittle's lawsuit alleges

(58:19):
that the studio was complicit in covering up Penny to
keep their franchise profitable, and his book even mentioned her
by name in the context of a nineteen seventy four investigation,
describing her as quote a young woman who works as
a liaison when Ed and Lorraine are out of town.
Producer Tony DeRosa Grund is also suing the studio over

(58:39):
the conjuring, alleging that he alerted a number of top
brass and creatives involved with the first film after its release.
He wrote in an email Ed was a pedophile, a
sexual predator, and a physically abusive husband. Lorraine enabled Ed
to do this. She knowingly allowed this illegal, read criminal
relationship to continue for forty years. They lied to the public.

(59:01):
His lawsuit alleges that he's been locked out of prophets
since the first film, although he hasn't crossed the rubicon
of claiming that it's because he raised these objections. So
that's all horrible. But back to the other amoral profiteers
at the center of the story. In March seventy six,
right about the time the Warrens got involved, William Webber,
who you remember was Ronald de Fao Junior's attorney, sent

(59:24):
a book contract to the Lutzes, which detailed a proposed
company to be formed between Weber, two other paranormal specialists
who investigated the house, not the Warrens, and a writer
named Paul Hoffman. Weber, according to The New York Times,
had met the Lutzes after they abandoned the house, and
he was supposedly helping them out with their mortgage situation,

(59:45):
but Weber also hoped to collaborate on a book about
the murders, which was then titled Devil on My Back,
alleging that the Lutzes, as he later testified in State
Supreme Court, were interested in quote developing the demonism aspect
of the case. D Fayo, from prison, asserted in a
letter that Weber and the Lutzes were plotting all of

(01:00:05):
this as my trial was in progress, and that the Lutzes, Weber,
and the writer Paul Hoffman had allegedly had brainstorming sessions
in January of nineteen seventy six, a month after they
moved in.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
I don't understand how it's not a massive conflict of
interest that a defense attorney who used the defense on
one of his clients oh he was possessed by demons,
could then get in contact with the person who bought
the house and was claiming, oh yeah, the house is haunted,

(01:00:38):
and then sought to profit off of that. I don't
understand how that's in any way legal.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
Per Weber's proposal, the Lutzes were to receive twenty four
percent of the shares in this corporation, while Hoffman, the writer,
would get the largest at forty percent. This irked the Lutzes,
who decided instead to partner up with author Jay Anson
in March of nineteen seventy six. Primo lucrative fifty percent
spe this is the guy who wrote the book that
the movie was based on. Hoffmann, however, has the distinction

(01:01:05):
of being the first person to publish anything about the hauntings,
first in the New York Sunday News on July eighteenth,
nineteen seventy six, and then later in an April nineteen
seventy seven issue of Hilariously Good Housekeeping. Jay Anson's only
claim to any expertise in the paranormal was that he'd
been working as a writer for a company that produced
promotional material like behind the scenes shorts, essentially for films.

(01:01:29):
He'd done around five hundred of them features for nineteen
seventy one's Clute nineteen seventy two's Deliverance among them, and
he was working on a short documentary about the making
of The Exorcist when he met that film's technical advisor,
father John Nicola. The two of them apparently got on
like the proverbial house on fire, and they discussed writing
a book tentatively titled Psychology of the Devil for publishing

(01:01:51):
house Prentice Hall. That deal never came to pass, but
years later an editor at Prentice Hall heard the Lutzes
story imposedly from a friend of George Lutz who straight
up walked into the Prentice Hall headquarters in New Jersey
and asked how someone gets a book published, and then
that editor called Jay Anson. In a nineteen seventy eight

(01:02:13):
interview with The New York Times, Anson says he wrote
the book from tapes that the Lots has made recalling
their experiences, and from interviews with the local priest, Ralph J. Peccarero.
The aforementioned Italian American embarrassment, one of he's fictionalized in
the book as Father Mancuso, along with Marinan, the couple's relatives,
and Suffolk County police, incredibly Anson had a heart attack

(01:02:36):
shortly after accepting the gig, and wrote it during his
three months of recovery. The Lutz has split his four
thousand dollars advance with him and earned a share of
the book's profits. Anson collected from paperback rights two hundred
grand and then on the film rights two hundred thousand
dollars plus his fee as a screenwriter. It's worth noting

(01:02:57):
that he died shortly afterwards. I can't say whether or
not he's in hell. I can.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
We'll touch on that later. There's some great quotes from him, Okay,
but yeah, he didn't seem like a great guy.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
No. Almost. Yeah, he's like crowing about it in all
of these interviews, like I got my first novel is
an enormous hit. Who does that happen to it? It's like, well,
you know, sensationalless profiteers, you hack the real life priest everything.
He because all of the stuff that his defense of
this book is so irking, which is that he's just like, oh,
I think they believe it happened. I'm not claiming anything.

(01:03:33):
But then like in another interview, when people are calling
him on factual airs in it, he's like, I'm not perfect.
Sometimes I make mistakes. Oh okay, anyway, Almost immediately people
came for this book, which was subtitled A True Story,
and it was published in September of nineteen seventy seven.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
Here is but a smattering the real life priest you
just mentioned if. Father Pacarero said in an affidavit during
one of the many lawsuits over the book that his
only contact with the Letzes had been over telephone, so
he hadn't actually set foot in the house and God
is wrist slapped by a she demon, yes, as he claimed,

(01:04:12):
although later he gave an interview on the nineteen seventy
nine interview of In Search of hosted by Leonard Nimoy,
and he recaned to this, saying that he was indeed
slapped by an invisible force and told to get out
by a disembodied voice.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
Wonderful.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
The homes next owners, Jim and Barbara Cromarty, who bought
the home for fifty five thousand dollars in March nineteen
seventy seven after the lots has fled, refuted claims that
the homes doors, locks and windows had been damaged, saying
that they appeared to all be the original items and
not repaired. In other interviews, they said the house was
in perfect condition, despite the Lutz's claims the.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
Door being ripped off, Yeah, by demonic forces.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Meanwhile, the quote unquote hidden red room in the book
was a small closet in the basement that wasn't concealed
in any way.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
Yeah. They make it out to be this whole doorway
to Hell thing, and you get down there and it's
just like a plumbing closet.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
Jim Crummarty would say of his ten year stay in
the home, nothing weird ever happened, except for people coming
by because of the book and movie.

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
The book claims that the Amityville Historical Society told Lutz
that his property was on or near land that the
Shinnecock Indian nation had used as quote an enclosure for
the sick, mad, and dying, But he goes on to
claim that the tribe hadn't buried anyone there because the
property was infested with demons. And he made the key
mistake of coming after a historical society, because those people

(01:05:39):
will wreck you if you misquote them. In an article
for Newsday, the society's curator denied ever making such fantastic statements,
and that the Shinnecock tribe was not known to have
lived in the Amityville area. All of the Native Americans
on Long Island were part of the Montucket Nation, but
the massive Pequa tribe lived closest to Amityville.

Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
Yeah, there was a Deep Tree rants medium who made
similar claims. Basically, it's the old house was built on
an old Indian burial ground routine. There was a local
TV station that brought a whole crew of professional paranormal
investigators aka Charlatan's to the property in the seventies, and

(01:06:22):
one psychic recalls throwing holy water at invisible specters and
seeing the water hiss as if we're thrown onto a
hot stove. Lorraine Morin, of course, was present, and she
recalled saying, I hope this is as close to Hell
as I ever get.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
It would not be, because she's in Hell right now.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
It's just like the late era Lenny Bruce routines when
he just gets up on stage with like transcripts of
his obscenity trials, it just like quotes from it, just anchorly.
He's like not telling jokes, He's just like furiously arguing
his point.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
I just said, this whitewashing thing, it just.

Speaker 1 (01:06:58):
Drives me up a water No. Hilariously, though, the TV
reporters claimed that while all these psychics around them were
losing their mind when they went to investigate the house,
none of the reporters themselves saw or felt anything shocker.
A photo of this night appears to reveal the figure

(01:07:19):
of a little boy peeking out from a bedroom where
one of the failed children were killed. There were, in
fact no kids in the house that night. The photo
was shown to the Lutz's daughter, the same one who
saw Jody the demon pig, and she apparently said, oh,
that's the boy I used to play with, which was news,
supposedly to George Lutz and his wife. What do you

(01:07:42):
have to say about that these pictures were faked?

Speaker 2 (01:07:47):
Were they?

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
It's a spooky photo? Have you seen picture?

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
Do you want to see it? No?

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
Those fairy kids in New in Britain like Pool, it
was like a national national mind losing mass dellusion over
fairies because they like held pasted images up on a stick.
And it fooled Who did it fool? Like? C. S.
Lewis right, somebody or the pediass the Peter panguy.

Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
I thought it was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote
the Sherlock Holmes books.

Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
Oh you're right, yes, sorry, apologies to the pediast.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
Yeah. The Sherlock Holmes author was like, my god, what
an incredible factual demonstration. And they were like they were
paper cutouts. Researchers Rick Moran and Peter Jordan rejected the
book's claim of cloven hoof prints in the snow on
January first, nineteen seventy six, by simply pointing out that
there had been no snowfall recorded during that time. No

(01:08:49):
neighbors reported anything unusual during the time that the Lutzes
were living there.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
It was so cold there that it snowed just over
the house. Remember that's what happened. White houses are hot.
I forgot about that. That's why he couldn't get warm.
He was always outside chopping the wood because of Yeah, yeah, right,
I forgot about that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
Gee. Police officers are written about having visited the house
in the book and the film, but records show that
the Lutzes did not call the police. There was no
bar in Amityville called the Witch's Brew. There was one
called Henry's, but that's not quite as snappy as it
and our old friend Stephen Kaplan the Vampire Guy, pointed
out that the book's text evolved inconsistently with each new edition.

(01:09:32):
Oh Wow. In the original hardcover edition, the priest's car
is described as quote an old tan Ford, though in
later editions the cars is Chevy Vega and then becomes
a Ford again, that's hilarious. Part of the reason that
there were so many editions that came out was because
people who were mentioned in the book kept suing them.
Marvin Scott, an anchorman for the local Channel five TV news,

(01:09:54):
Steve Bauman, a reporter, and Sergeant Pat Kammodo, Italians of
the Amityville Police Department all sued the publisher, so they
had to keep writing these guys out in these new
editions because of the litany of bullsh that's in there.
Despite all of this, the book was a best seller
upon its release in September of nineteen seventy seven. Who

(01:10:16):
was It said, You never go broke, underestimating the stupidity
of the American public anyway. By March of nineteen seventy nine,
Writers Digest contended that it was on its thirteenth hardcover
printing with at least two million in paperback sales. Hl
Mencin by the way, oh Man Balmer icon hl Mencin also,
I believe one of his notable quotes is there comes

(01:10:38):
a man in every time's life when he is tempted
to wash his hands, hoist the black flag and begin
slitting throats. I don't know, I like hl Mencon.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
Every normal man must be temphed at a time, so
spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and begins
slitting throats. There it was.

Speaker 4 (01:10:55):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
All of these reprints were mandated by this legal app
which is why an executive for Bantam Books, who published
the paperback edition, told The Washington Post in September of
nineteen seventy nine, two years after The Amityville Horror was published,
that quote, half the Western world is getting sued over
the book. In addition to all the aforementioned lawsuits, The
couple that moved into the house after the Lutzes, the Cromarties,

(01:11:19):
sued the Lutzes, jay Ansen, and the publishers of Amityville Horror,
alleging that the book wasn't just an invasion of privacy,
but that quote false misrepresentations were made willfully and solely
for commercial exploitation. This was, as will see, as a
common theme settled out of court. The Crimarties, must be said,
came at this thing from all angles. They supposedly after

(01:11:41):
asked for too much money to allow the film to
shoot at their house, and then a December nineteen eighty
New York article reported that they had teamed with a
producer and a New York Post reporter to craft their
own film called The Amityville Horror Hoax, but that never
got released.

Speaker 1 (01:11:57):
They are the people who bought the house after the Lutzes.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
Anson, for his part, never copped publicly to any of this,
just unmitigated horse, claiming that he'd simply written from what
Lutz had given him, and frequently repeating some variation on
I believe that the lutz is believed that it happened.
He's the guy who wrote the Amityville Horror Book. He
lived just long enough to enjoy the book success, dying
in March of nineteen eighty.

Speaker 1 (01:12:21):
Yeah, he was apparently a real, uh, real piece of work.
A parapsychologist named Peter Jordan tells the story that he
talked to Jay around the time the book was starting
to blow up, and Jay told him, I predict one
day you'll be sitting there broke writing your little not
ghost stories, and I'm going to be on an island
in the Bahamas with a truckload of cashmere sweaters.

Speaker 2 (01:12:45):
Cult machine though.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
And then and he later said this guy Peter Jordan
later said yeah. When I heard that he died, I thought,
oh no, he never got to enjoy those cashmere.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):
Sweaters, Apex Petty, I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:58):
Yes. Jan also told journalist Rick Moran, I'm a writer.
My only goal is to write a bestseller and build
a house New Yorca and never have to write again.
Lots of pieces of work in this story.

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
I would say pride and greed are both deadly sins,
so he's probably in hell as well, picking up my
lapsed Catholicism. Just to dispel eternal damnation on people. Before
we even get to the movie, we should settle the
other cloud of lawsuits hanging over all of this. In

(01:13:34):
May of seventy seven, George and Kathy Lutz filed suit
against the aforementioned writer, Paul Hoffman, the attorney William Webber,
these two paranormal investigators Good Housekeeping, The New York Sunday
News and the Hurst Corporation because, as you recall, they
pulled out of a deal with all of these people
because they weren't happy with their split. And then Hoffman

(01:13:57):
wrote some articles about it, regardless the invasion of privacy,
misappropriation of name for trade purposes, and negligent infliction of
mental distress, seeking four and a half million dollars for damages.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
They're public figures and somebody wrote a news story about them.
That doesn't that makes no sense.

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
Well is because they didn't have control over it, you see, Well,
I know I see that. Otherwise they can't get off
and that's what this is all about. Subsequently, Hoffman, Weber
and Burton countersued them for like six and a half
million dollars for fraud and breach of contract. The case
went to trial with one judge who immediately dismissed the

(01:14:36):
claims against the publishers of the story and then handed
it off to another judge, Jack B. Weinstein. This guy
is a minorly famous Brooklyn judge known as something of
a hard ass, and hilariously he dismissed the Lutzes suit
in nineteen seventy nine, but allowed the countersuit to continue, saying,
based on what I've heard, it appears to me that

(01:14:58):
a large extent the book is a work of fiction,
relying in a large part on the suggestions of mister Weber.
So to reiterate, the Lutzes sued being read asked about
their split over the publishing of this story, and then
were countersuit, and a judge dismissed their claim for being
horshed before allowing the countersuit to continue. That said, Weinstein

(01:15:23):
took William Webber to task for ethical violations, saying there's
a very serious ethical question when lawyers become literary agents,
and proposed moving this whole thing up to the State
Bar Association, at which point a rattled Weber settled his
countersuit for a mere twenty five hundred dollars in what

(01:15:44):
I have seen quoted as twenty four hours after this
judgment was handed down. Before that suit was said, though,
William Webber was maneuvering with yet another writer to get
more cash out of this Dafayo case. In a letter
to Dafayo in custody in June of nineteen seventy nine,
Weber urged his client to participate with a guy named

(01:16:04):
Hans Holzer, who is a paranormal investigator. Holzer was offering
to pay Dafeo, another perianormal investigator, and naturally the attorney
Weber two grand each for an interview to be used
in televised special Holzer had authored over one hundred and
forty books on ghosts, the afterlife, witchcraft, and so forth.

(01:16:25):
He investigated the Amityville House with a medium named Ethel
Johnson Myers in nineteen seventy seven. Holzer, apparently unaware that
the Shinnecock tribe never lived in Amityville, wrote that his
medium channeled the spirit of a Shinnecock chief named Rolling Thunder,

(01:16:45):
like the Bob Dylan tour who'd gasp possessed Ronald D.
Fayo to commit the nineteen seventy four murders. Rolling Thunder,
speaking through this medium, explained that the house did indeed
stand on an ancient in Da Indian burial ground, which
contradicts the book's account that it was not used as
a barioground because the vibes were too bad. Holzer took

(01:17:08):
photographs of bullet holes from the nineteen seventy four murders,
in which he claimed mysterious halos had appeared, and ultimately
the guy got what he wanted out of this. He
regardless of all this top to bottom, lying he wrote
his own book about the situation, which was adapted for
the Amityville Horse sequel nineteen eighty two's Amityville two, The Possession,

(01:17:32):
and then he eked out two more novels about it,
perhaps needless to say. According to the Amityville Historical Society,
a guy named William E. Eardley was commissioned in nineteen
thirteen by the State of New York to copy down
old cey records because a lot of the Amityville cemeteries
were either abandoned or neglected. His findings concluded that most
of these cemeteries were moved or relocated to bigger incorporated cemeteries,

(01:17:55):
but that there was no report or any indication of
any cemetery of any kind resideing on or near the
Amityville House.

Speaker 1 (01:18:02):
Isn't the Amityville House like on the water it is?

Speaker 2 (01:18:05):
It is a waterfront property in Long Island, which ain't cheat.

Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
Well, yeah, but I mean, isn't it Generally considered a
bad idea to build cemeteries extremely close to the water
because it tends to gosh an excellent point.

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):
Jordan, an excellent point. Wow. Anyway, attorney in scumbag William
Webber learned his lesson from his court case, though, and
subsequently gave a famous interview to People magazine in September
of nineteen seventy nine. This is one of the most
famous Amityville quotes. And he said, I know this book's
a hoax. We created this horror story over many bottles

(01:18:43):
of wine. I told George Lutz that Ronnie Defeyo used
to call the neighbor's cat a pig. George was a
con artist. He improvised on that, and in the book
he sees a demon pig through the window in those
halcyon days of May of two thousand and one, when
a hopeful nation turned its eyes towards the twin towers,
saying nothing will ever happen to them. Geraldine d Fao,

(01:19:06):
who is ron Butch d'fayo's wife, requested that Judge Weinstein
unseal the remainder of the lots versus Weber files. She
had to prove, of course, that she was legitimately married
to Ronnie Dafao, which was a whole thing, and she was.
The judge granted the request and one of the unsealed
files contained under oath testimony from Father Ray Pecquerero that

(01:19:29):
the events described in Anson's book never transpired and speaking
of Father Ray the year after, in May of two
thousand and two, the Diocese of Rockville Center finally broke
its years of silence, responding to a letter from our
boy Rick Osuna, which read, in part, the diocese maintains
that this story was a false report. In November of
nineteen seventy seven, Diocenan attorneys prepare a substantial list to

(01:19:52):
be submitted to the publisher of The Amityville Whore of
numerous inaccuracies, factually incorrect references, and untrue statements regarding events, persons,
and occurrences that never happened. It also adds that Pacquerero
took a leave of absence in May of nineteen seventy eight.
Some people have said he was defrocked and never returned
to work for the diocese before his death in nineteen

(01:20:13):
eighty seven. Lastly, Lutz's lies alliteration may have been cross denominational.
Questioned about Ray Pacquerero in September of nineteen seventy nine,
he told the Washington Posts that there were a number
of priests involved who will never be told about. Also
a rabbi just just doubling that hedge in his bets.

(01:20:35):
I realized that people are going to tune out, even
as good as as your edit well of this will
inevitably and people are going to tune out because there
is so much damn stuff out there about this. But
this is a pile of unmitigated horse people. I cannot
stress that enough before God and the courts of man.
This stuff is all made up by a couple of grifters.

Speaker 1 (01:21:01):
God, it is shocking how few at the base of
this there are, you know. And then they brought in
all these other professional con artists who had a vested
interest in playing along with it. But it really is
astonishing how it's basically like the Lutzes and the attorney Weber.
And then they got the Warrens in because they knew
they play along with anything. And then a bunch of

(01:21:23):
screenwriters and authors who are like, yeah, I want to
sounds like it'll sell a lot of copies, you know,
write whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:21:28):
You's what's it pay? Yeah, this is always the first question. Yeah,
what's it? Pay the hear number. I'll do it.

Speaker 1 (01:21:35):
Yep, We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be
right back with more too much information in just a moment.

Speaker 2 (01:21:55):
So how do we get a movie about this regional
hoax and best selling book of lies?

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):
So glad you asked, Yes, largely, we have Samuel z
Arkoff of American Pictures International to thank AIP is a
classic B movie studio. They made a ton of movie
with Roger Korman throughout the fifties and sixties, doing my
beloved kitchy stuff like I Was a teenage werewolf in
the Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon beach party movies. In

(01:22:21):
the seventies, they were notable for releasing not just the
Amityville horror but blaxploitation stuff like Blackula and Pam Griers
early films. And I also imported the original Mad Max too,
which is very cool. The Samuel Arkoff guy, he's pretty hilarious,
not just for overseeing all of this, but also for
coining and we use this term loosely a formula, and

(01:22:41):
we use that term loosely for successful low budget movies.
And he named this formula after himself. It's an acronym
Arkoff a Rkoff, and it's a checklist. A is for action.
R is for revolution, controversial themes or ideas. K is
for kill, you know, a modicum of violence. Oh, it's

(01:23:03):
for oratory, notable dialogue and speeches. F is for fantasy,
acted out fantasies common to the audience. And the other
F is for fornication because sex cells. Heigel, you have
a checklist, a Higel checklist for when you do podcasts. Right,
hate everything in great loudness. I was proud of that.

Speaker 2 (01:23:28):
He was good. No, I was good. I love this guy. Yeah, yeah,
he's pretty funny. First of all, that's a great formula
for a video, and second of all, coining an formula
after your own, nat, I know as an acronym is
what chutzpah.

Speaker 1 (01:23:44):
It's so good. Samuel Arkoff had supposedly been casting around
for something he could do to hit on the order
of Jaws, which basically invented the modern summer blockbuster when
it was released in nineteen seventy five. He went off
on vacation one year and left the copy of The
Amityvole Horror on his kitchen table. While he was gone,
his daughter read it, and when Arkoff returned, she had

(01:24:07):
already enlisted Milton Moritz, he's senior VP of advertising in Publicity,
is to convince her dad to pick up the rights. Arkoff,
in a very crafty bit of maneuvering, contacted CBS asking
to produce a film as a theatrical release, but he
offered them rights to broadcast that on their network as
a trade.

Speaker 2 (01:24:25):
Explain that, oh, well, I mean made for TV movies
were a huge thing at this time, like you know,
Salem's Lot, the Stephen King adaptation was like like Toby
Hooper directed that. John Carpenter directed a made for TV
movie around this time, so you know, presumably there was
some calculus by the studio that was like, well, if
we get exclusive rights to broadcast this week, can juic

(01:24:45):
some ratings out of it and we'll just pick up
the rights, which weren't that expensive as far as these
things go. I don't know, two hundred thousand dollars and
that's is that.

Speaker 1 (01:24:54):
In it's like two million.

Speaker 2 (01:24:56):
I guess that was two million today's money for book rights.

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):
Well, the film rights sold for what you note as
a semi low two hundred thousand dollars, but most parties
involved are in percentage splits as well. The book's author, Jaynsen,
and it Are written a teleplay based on the book,
but Arkoff subsequently hired screenwriter Sandor Stern, another incredible name,
to rework Anson's teleplay for a feature film, all.

Speaker 2 (01:25:21):
Right, casting my voice is starting to wear out. Margot Kidder,
who plays the family's matriarch, was then coming off the
huge success of Superman, in which she obviously started as
Lowis Lane Christopher Reeves Superman. Although she'd done a few
horror films prior, like Brian De Palmer's Sisters and Black Christmas,
which some people hails the first true slasher film, Hitter
didn't seem to put too much stock in the Amityville Hohr.

(01:25:42):
She told People magazine of the film, I suppose I
believe in the possibility of many things, but I think
pigs snorting in windows is taking it a bit far.
But I laughed all the way through The Exorcist, so
I'm not a good person to comment, and the Amityville
Whore is extremely successful.

Speaker 1 (01:25:57):
In a later interview, she'd put it more simply. At
that stage, she took the jobs you were offered and
took the money. Do you know she was married to
the dad from Home alone, John Hurd? They did not.
They were separated six days later. She has three marriages
that were shorter than one year under her belt, which
is sad. Her whole story is sad.

Speaker 2 (01:26:17):
It's really sad.

Speaker 1 (01:26:18):
Yeah. After her death in twenty eighteen, she was cremated
and her ashes were scattered by her brother in her
favorite childhood locations in Canada and also in Montana, amongst
lilies often eaten by grizzly bears, thus partially fulfilling her
wish to quote, have her body just left out there
for the bears?

Speaker 2 (01:26:38):
Why does it have to be bears?

Speaker 1 (01:26:39):
Man? Now I'm curious.

Speaker 2 (01:26:42):
Aip secured Stuart Rosenberg, who directed Freakin' Cool Hand Luke,
as the director of the film. This ended up being
his only horror film, which scans It's not good. Kiddo
said that Rosenberg did as much as he could to
help the atmosphere on set, and much of it related
directly to your beloved Jodie. She said he tried to
scare me all the time. In one scene, a pig

(01:27:04):
was supposed to come at the window, and he had
the prop department make a pig. It was a bright
orange pig, like a soft animal with plastic eyes, and
he would put it up at the window to scare me.
But every time I saw it, I just laughed. And Jordan,
I'm sure you'll be delighted to know that Fred J. Kuhnenkemp,
who worked on The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno,
was cinematographer on Amityville.

Speaker 1 (01:27:25):
That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:27:26):
I keep seeing this fact that's repeated about him, that
he was like afraid of flies and had such a
hard time filming all the scenes involving flies that he
lost thirty pounds on set and couldn't even look through
the lens. He would just point the camera at the
flies and look away, hoping for a good shot. But
I wasn't able to verify that, but it is funny.

Speaker 1 (01:27:46):
Apparently Margo just loved grizzlies. By the way, that's a
quote from a brother. She loved grizzlies.

Speaker 2 (01:27:51):
Nice. The producer's job in swaying James Brolin, however, was
made easier for them by a set of pants. As
the star explained to the av Club, I love this
other names floated bra Harrison Ford after the unexpected success
of the First Star Wars, Burt Reynolds, James Kahn, and
Christopher Reeve. Anyway, Brolin was shooting Robert Butler's neo noir

(01:28:13):
action film Night of the Juggler, which is not a
fever dream I just had. When someone told him about
the Amityville project. He recalled being told, there's no script,
but you ought to read this book, The Amityville Horror,
because they'll have the script soon and they would really
like to have you do it. Brolin went on to explain,
So I was reading this novel at night and it's
two in the morning. Well, I would hang my pants

(01:28:36):
on the door of the bedroom. I'd throw them over
the top corner of the main door coming into the bedroom. Yes, James,
that's how that works. All of a sudden, the pants
fell off the door onto the floor. How I didn't
hit my head on the ceiling. I have no idea,
Because I was at a scary part of this book
and it so surprised me. I started laughing after I
recovered and said, I've got to do this movie. And

(01:28:58):
that's how that happened. James Brolin was kind of an idiot, right, Like,
he just seems like a tall, benign dumb ass.

Speaker 1 (01:29:05):
Yeah, I from what little I know about him, that
sounds about right, just a big sweamboat. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:29:13):
Everyone said how nice he was, totally but my god,
my pants fell off the door. So I was moved
to this movie.

Speaker 1 (01:29:23):
I've never heard of anyone in my entire life do
that with their pants, have you, No, I mean in
a pinch maybe, But it's just so funny how he
like disgrace patiently went on to describe the process of it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:36):
And here's how I hung the pants.

Speaker 1 (01:29:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:29:41):
Brolin took a lower payment up front for a cut
of the profits, which obviously turned out really well for him.

Speaker 4 (01:29:47):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:29:47):
Fun fact, his brother, Brian Bruderlin, which is his name
he changed it to Brolin, was used for an image
of this of a bearded man coming out of the
red room in the cellar who's supposed to be Ronald
de Fayo. The studio wanted someone who bore a close
resemblance to Brolin, discovered he had a brother and slapped
a fake beard on him. So the gist is that

(01:30:08):
Ronald de Faeo's demonic spirit is coming out of the
Red Room, and Josh Brolin's character sees himself in it.
Uh again, all Horse. An amazing bit of micro niche
trivia is that Brutallyn was more of an audio guy
than an actor. He owned a studio and was an
engineer on, among others, nineteen seventy one's Merry Christmas from

(01:30:30):
the Brady Bunch.

Speaker 1 (01:30:30):
That's incredible. I'm so glad. I never thought we'd get
to the Brady Bunch with this. Yeah, I don't think
there's a Beatles one later, though, I can force it.

Speaker 2 (01:30:38):
I'll force it. You'll force You'll force it. Yeah, I'll
put about it. We'll force it, You'll force it. Brolin
followed his marching orders, thought he was a good soldier.
In interviews about the film, he dutifully repeats the book's
falsehoods and goes to bat for the Lutz family. He
told the Fort Lauderdale News in nineteen seventy nine, I'm
not superstitious, but I have an open mind about what
happened in that Emityville house. I simply ask why would

(01:31:01):
George Lutz move out of his dream house, abandon a
business which had been in his family for three generations
and flee to San Diego with his wife and three
children for nothing, just to have a book written about it. Yes, James,
that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 1 (01:31:15):
I didn't know about the family business for three generations.
Maybe he's natives.

Speaker 2 (01:31:20):
Did he know that? No, maybe he was a native
New Yorker. But like I don't know, did Broland know
that for a fact? Or was just something George Lutz
told him on the set? Because as I mentioned in
this next graph, Roland remarks in a Making of feature
that George Lutz was quote a good salesman, and that
the Lutz children responded to questions about the haunting as

(01:31:41):
though they were citing a script rather than recalling real events.
You know. The whole Amityville spirit of just lying continued
in the film version, after tales of creepy occurrences on
the set of The Exorcist and the omen part of
American International Pictures press campaign entailed lying about such events
that happened on the set of their own field professionally

(01:32:01):
to the point as always, Margot Kidder would call in
a two thousand and five interview. When we did Amityville,
the producers told us we should all say these terrible
things happened on the set. It was all bullsh nothing happened,
but it was funny. Brolin did go along with the
studio and say that all these terrible things happened, but
it wasn't true.

Speaker 1 (01:32:18):
Margot Kidder would later allow that she and James Brolin
were not an easy fit during filming. Her looser, more
improvatory approach clashed with his rigorous adherence to the script,
and she said, it's hard to read James Brolin. We
didn't get very close, and he's very diplomatic, unlike me.
She reminds me of Carrie Fisher. Oh well, no, never mind,

(01:32:39):
never mind, I died. Didn't mean that. Didn't mean that.
I was very full of myself and thought I was
from the hip, young Hollywood and James Brolin. To me,
it was from the old, stodgy Hollywood. Brolin's comment on
that was in fact very diplomatic. He said, yeah, there
were tribulations.

Speaker 2 (01:32:59):
This solid guy he was.

Speaker 1 (01:33:03):
Margot Kidder also mentioned that Rod Steiger, who played the
movie's priest, now irish in what you describe as a
grievous case of Italian American erasure. Although given all the
shameful Italian Americans that popped up in this story. It's
probably for the best.

Speaker 2 (01:33:17):
Also true, he was really into it.

Speaker 1 (01:33:19):
She said. He was really serious about it, about the story,
and every time he talked about it to me, I
couldn't help but laugh. This may have been due to
Steiger's life at the time. The veteran actor's career was
in low point in the late seventies following open heart
surgery that left him both depressed and risky for studios
to ensure, so he came to Amityville with the mindset

(01:33:39):
of quote, this is my last maneuver in letting Hollywood
know that I'm in good shape physically. He told that
to Wilmington, Delaware newspaper.

Speaker 2 (01:33:47):
Yeah. I went really hard on the local newspapers for
this one too.

Speaker 1 (01:33:51):
In an interview with a Spokane, Washington newspaper in nineteen
seventy nine, Jesus, you really did, He described himself as agnostic,
but he didn't need any help spiritually or otherwise. Filming
the scene in which the father that he plays is
swarmed by flies, he was no effect. He said. They
squirted me all over my face with sugar and beer
and then released about two thousand flies. From a screened cage.

(01:34:14):
The worst of it so gross was their feet tickling
my face and trying not to inhale or swallow any
of them.

Speaker 2 (01:34:21):
Oh well, I'm surprised I didn't give him another heart attack.

Speaker 1 (01:34:25):
Ah.

Speaker 2 (01:34:26):
Needless to say, the residents of Amityville, who'd been through
the Ringer twice with the initial murders and then the book,
didn't want a film shoot coming in to complete the trifecta.
Although supposedly, as I mentioned earlier, the Cromates were down
for it. They simply asked for too much money. Producers
Ronald Saland and Elliott Geisinger roamed from Maine to South
Carolina until they found a stand in home in Tom's River,

(01:34:49):
New Jersey, and leased the home for twelve thousand dollars
from the owners. Principal photography started there in the last
week of October nineteen seventy eight. Full author Who's Burning
in Hell Jay Andsen even called the stand in quote
a near perfect match to the original. This was, of course,
after the production did about thirty thousand dollars worth of renovations,

(01:35:11):
which basically came down to building a real boat house
and of course the famous windows that lend the Amityville
Home or lent, I should say some owners replaced it
that lent the Amityville Home its distinctive Jack o' lantern appearance.
Tom O'Neil, chief of the Toms River Fire Department, told
the La Times that the town raked in and estimated

(01:35:32):
two hundred grand from filming, with some of it going
to a local forestry student named Thomas Hirschbond, a twenty
two year old enlisted to teach James Brolin how to
handle an axe. Brolin had confessed to filmmakers that he'd
never even held one before, and so young Thomas was
dispatched to teach Brolin how to hold an axe properly.

(01:35:53):
After filming exteriors in Tom's River, production moved back to
Los Angeles to shoot the interiors at MGM Studios, where
filming concluded a week ahead of schedule on Soundstage twenty
six at MGM on December twenty second, nineteen seventy eight,
under two months and ahead of schedule. Aip Roger Corman
style ye score for The Amityville Horror was by none

(01:36:15):
other than our beloved Leilo Schiffrin.

Speaker 1 (01:36:17):
Oh my God, mission impossible and bull everything and Louke
entered the Dragon, not the Exorcist famously, which explains this
next bit.

Speaker 2 (01:36:29):
Shifferd I read interviews with him, whereas just blah blah
blah blah blah like formed the instrumentation in developing the themes.
Blah blah blah blah blah. The score is good. It's
got a creepy children's choir thing going on and a
lot of dissonant strings, influenced by Polish twentieth century composers
like Penderreshki and Lyghetti. One of those interesting rumors about

(01:36:53):
what's more interesting about this to me is that for
years it was rumored that Schiffrin's rejected score for the excerph.
As you'll remember from our episode on it, Exorcist director
William Friedkin rejected figuratively and literally tossing the reels into
a parking lot and calling it kin marimba music. Schiffrin

(01:37:13):
has denied that he simply took that unused music and
poured it over to the Amityville Horror. And you can
hear at least six minutes of the scotched Exorcist score
out there. Finally, and it doesn't sound anything like the
Amityville one, so I believe him and his score got
the film's sole Oscar nomination.

Speaker 1 (01:37:33):
Samuel Arkoff, the I would generally assume cigars chompinging studio
executive would kick this whole thing off crowd to People
Magazine in nineteen seventy nine, if there were an Academy
Award for a publicity campaign, we should get it for this.
They'd actually started trying to jump up buzz before filming
even began. American International Pictures Creative Affairs VP Charles Glenn,

(01:37:55):
who also oversaw The Godfather's pr blitz promo, handled a
new tie in cover for another paperback printing and set
eight copywriters to work on the movie campaign slogan. James
Brolin and Rod Steger were joined by the Lutzes on
a cross country tour along with what People Magazine called
quote a publicity wise psychic research duo, which one would

(01:38:17):
have to assume is the warrant?

Speaker 2 (01:38:19):
Who could that be?

Speaker 1 (01:38:21):
Newspaper ads began to appear appropriately on July's Friday the thirteenth,
with the winning tagline for God's Sake, Get Out. This
tagline was so successful that Samuel Arkoff joked people would
call theaters and ask for when, for God's sake, get
Out was opening. He probably was great joking. I'm sure
that was true. It's a great techniqu Yeah, it is.

(01:38:43):
When the film was actually released in Finland, it used
that phrase for the title, which is good.

Speaker 2 (01:38:47):
So at least one person fell for it, yes, Finland.

Speaker 1 (01:38:53):
James Brolind Margot Kidder also visited the actual home at
one twelve Ocean Avenue in Amityville, accompanied by the press.
The Amityville Horror premiered at a gala at the Museum
of Modern Art in New York City. Right, Okay, sure,
all right, on July twenty fourth, nineteen seventy nine, to
launch a retrospective of thirty eight American International Pictures films. Okay,

(01:39:17):
The film raked in buckets. At the conclusion of a
theatrical run. It had grossed a total of eighty three
point four million dollars in the US and Canada, nearly
twenty times its budget of six million dollars plus marketing,
making it the second highest grossing film of nineteen seventy
nine after Kramer Versus Kramer. I can't think of a

(01:39:38):
more diametrically opposed movie to the Amityville Horror than Kramer
versus Kramer.

Speaker 2 (01:39:45):
I like to think people who did like a you know,
like a Barbon Diners the Amityville Kramer and I just
double featured it one day.

Speaker 1 (01:39:55):
Oh, two different kinds of domestic horrors.

Speaker 2 (01:39:58):
Yeah. For while this was the the most successful independent
film of all time, that supplanting Halloween, which had previously
come out and earned that. Yeah, and it held onto
the record until nineteen ninety, when it was supplanted by
my beloved teenage mutant Ninja Turtles. Since then, the leaderboard
has been completely screwy. I logged onto a German statistics

(01:40:20):
site called Statista, and they, like a lot of other sources,
have the passion of The Christ as the most successful
indie movie of all time. Remember Gibson financed that himself.
But all of these other lists have all kinds of
other qualifiers, like was the film produced independently but distributed
by a major, then it doesn't count this or that.
By way of example, Statista's number two film on this

(01:40:42):
list of most profitable indies of all time is The Graduate,
which doesn't even appear anywhere on Wikipedia's top grossing independent list.
So I just found that passinated regardless.

Speaker 1 (01:40:52):
In twenty nineteen, Forbes published an inflation adjusted list ranking
horror movie film grosses based upon contemporary ticket price is,
in which Amityville Horror ranked as the eighth highest grossing
horror film of all time, with an adjusted gross of
three hundred and ten point three million dollars at the
time the article came out, Critics, however, were less kind.

(01:41:13):
Rogeribert dreamed it, rod He Reeber.

Speaker 2 (01:41:16):
Did dream it.

Speaker 1 (01:41:16):
Maybe he did dream.

Speaker 2 (01:41:17):
Maybe we're all just living in Roger Ebert's fever dream
about a movie called the Amityville Horror.

Speaker 1 (01:41:22):
He's just looking at a snow globe thinking about a
movie called Amityville Horror that he he didn't really like
that much.

Speaker 2 (01:41:28):
You didn't like it, but his powerful mind created a
multiverse and we're just living in it. Wake up, Wake
up Ebert. I went out of the Amityville Horror Universe.
Can you hear me? Screaming?

Speaker 1 (01:41:45):
Roderrieber called The Amityville Horror dreary and terminally depressing. People
Magazine to cried it as quote ridiculous, and singled up
roth Steiger for overacting. The National Review. Famed right wing
news Yeah News organ is charitable.

Speaker 2 (01:42:03):
Yeah called it quote dreadful.

Speaker 1 (01:42:06):
Just believe that Buckley went to go see the Amityville.

Speaker 2 (01:42:10):
And was moved to like, all right, I found this.

Speaker 5 (01:42:13):
I found this sign on film considering the popular and
demonic positions unbearable, as anyone with even a passing knowledge
of Protestant lore would That's very good.

Speaker 1 (01:42:23):
That's very good. An impression that four of our listeners
were get. But I think that is that is truly incredible. Wow.
Janet Maslin went hard at The New York Times, hitting
it with so many horror movie clichs a bit assembled
under the roof of a single haunted house, that the
effect is sometimes mind bogglingly messy. There was apparently very

(01:42:43):
little to which the director, Stuart Rosenberg will not resort.
But the worst came, or at least the most famous
pan came from tell them Heigel.

Speaker 2 (01:42:54):
Stephen King, our boy Stevie. Yes, that's Stephen King. He
panned the film and Rolling Stone in a review of
the horror genre in nineteen seventy nine. They must have
asked him about like r end best List, but two
years later he returned to it in his nineteen eighty
one Foundational Tomb on scary stories as a whole called
donce macabre. He analyzed the film as a meditation on

(01:43:16):
the economic instability of the times, while still allowing that
it was stupid and simplistic. Ultimately, he lauded it as
a perfect example of the tale to be told around
the campfire archetype, comparing it to classic urban legend the
guy with the hook for a hand on the car
roof or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:43:34):
I don't know that urban legend.

Speaker 2 (01:43:36):
Oh it's it's like this couple are like neck in
and the neck and in a car or whatever, and
they keep hearing the scraping sound on the car hood
and or wait, no, maybe I'm thinking of that's the
one where the guy hung himself. The woman keeps hearing
stuff outside and the guy's like, no, baby, this is
the sixties, like let me make it with you. And
you know, wow, moxie, you know whatever they said back then,

(01:43:59):
and you know they eventually she like sours the mood,
you know what, to kill joy and drives off and
there's they find a hook, a hook hand, a hook
for a hand dangling from the car door handle. And
then they read the next day that an escaped mental
patient with a hook for a hand had been roaming
the very forest where they were necking.

Speaker 1 (01:44:20):
I've never heard that that's good.

Speaker 2 (01:44:21):
I was getting it conflated with the other one, which
is like a similarly like teen necking set up. And
then they keep hearing scraping on the roof of their car,
and they get creeped out and leave, and it was
a guy had hung himself in the tree, his toes
scrape in the roof. Wow, no, your mileage.

Speaker 1 (01:44:37):
Mayververy I'm like getting this confused with the opening of Zodiac.

Speaker 2 (01:44:41):
Oh, when the couple just gets bluntly stabbed to death
in full view.

Speaker 1 (01:44:45):
I thought shot. But yeah, your minagement.

Speaker 2 (01:44:47):
Firy anyway, the movie. The original film has received a
critical reassessment in recent years, but it certainly never got
one from Margot Kidder, who told the The Ivy Club
in two thousand and nine that it was a piece
of I couldn't believe that anyone would take that seriously.
I was laughing my whole way through it, much to

(01:45:08):
the annoyance of Rod Steger Steiger, who took the whole
thing very seriously. And then, in a barn burning quote,
she says it was the crazy Christians who made it
a hit. They wanted people to believe in the devil
in possessions and haunted houses and all that hooey. Tall
handsome idiot, but nice guy. James Brolin subsequently blamed the
film for a two year career slump and said he

(01:45:30):
was type.

Speaker 1 (01:45:30):
Cast as a tall, handsome idiot, just.

Speaker 2 (01:45:36):
A benign moron. Since then, Amityville has just become this
collective describer for spooky. So it's hard to get an
accurate count of quote unquote true Amityville horror sequels. Because
the original was a huge success, that obviously meant that
they quickly pumped out I guess quote unquote canonical sequels

(01:45:57):
nineteen eighty two's Amityville two The Possession and Amityville three D,
which is apparently followed in Paranormal Investigators as they encountered
hauntings the house, so they'd already even discarded the lutzes.
The made for TV fourth film, Amityville four, The Evil Escapes,
was written and directed by the original film screenwriter the

(01:46:18):
aforementioned Sandor Stern. This came out in nineteen eighty nine,
and I am not joking. Followed a cursed lamp like
a like.

Speaker 1 (01:46:26):
A table escaped.

Speaker 2 (01:46:28):
Yeah, so it's like the Family Guide joke about Stephen King, Yes, exactly. That.

Speaker 1 (01:46:33):
Don't forget Amityville the musical.

Speaker 2 (01:46:35):
No, it's it's truly wild man. I mean. So the
fact that you can't copyright protect public a public place.
You know, you can't copyright New York. This means that
filmmakers were just free to attach the name of their
town to any project that's paranormal. That as Amityville became

(01:46:55):
this cultural thing, lets deserves it. That's such a great
it's so turn about as fair play. So there's films
like Amityville Bigfoot and Amityville Shark House. Other notable Amityville
films kitchi or otherwise include Amityville Vibrator, Amityville Christmas Vacation,
Amiteville in Space, Amityville Elevator, Amityville Karen, and Amityville Gas Chamber.

(01:47:20):
Jacob Awler, the movie's editor at Pascet till the New
York Times in twenty twenty four. If you can't afford
an ip, Amityville is just a name you can get
for free. Slap anything on the end of it. Just
grab a theme out of the ether and someone will
stream it. Iconic horror magazine Fangoria even added a Best
Amityville Film category to its Golden chainsaw Awards last year.

Speaker 1 (01:47:41):
That's hilarious.

Speaker 2 (01:47:42):
That's so good it is, I mean, it's wild. Yeah,
so yeah, there is something like I think that people
have estimated between forty five and fifty four films as
part of the quote unquote Amityville Family of both. There was,
of course, also the two thousand and five Ryan Reynolds
starring reboot during the era of Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes

(01:48:04):
flood of remakes of classic horror films. You may remember
he did Fight of the Thirteenth, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hitcher,
The Talent, Dreaded Sundown, I Think, and the Original Nightmare
on Elm Street. Dur Awll varying degrees of bad and
at least some of the old aip razzle dazzle spirit
survived into the aughts. Ryan Reynolds himself claimed in the
press that people shooting on set frequently woke up at

(01:48:26):
three point fifteen am, the spooky time that was supposedly
linked to the first killings. Those filmmakers apparently went so
far as to credit both George and Kathy Lutz as writers,
although Cathy died the first week of filming and George well,
he bit the hand that fed him.

Speaker 1 (01:48:43):
Yeah, he hated that movie. He didn't really much like
the original one with James Browlin either, but he really
didn't like this one.

Speaker 2 (01:48:49):
Yes. The nicest thing that I can say about George
Slutts is that he confined his grift to just one
story and clung to it like a rat, rather than
the Warrens, who spanned there entire brand of lies and
abuse over a half century and an entire country. Lots otherwise,
scans largely as a grubby, little opportunist who jealously tried

(01:49:09):
to control the one moderately interesting thing he ever did
with his entire life. Lots ultimately, though, embodied the Seinfeld
bit about a lie is the truth if you believe
in it enough. By way of example, in nineteen seventy nine,
the Washington Post quoted Chris Gougis, a Los Angeles polygraph specialist.
He tested the Lutzes separately. An associate worked with Kathy,

(01:49:32):
asking her about the levitation incidents, her whole thing about
turning into a nine year old woman, etc. Gougis told
the paper they both answered truthfully, they were pretty frightened
and it took us nearly two hours to get George
calmed down. But what they told us they believed. Gugis
added that he had run similar tests on people in
other occult paranormal cases, finding that some were lying outrageously,

(01:49:54):
but that some were telling the truth. This guy is
something of a famous polygraph dork. He also lists tests
on James Earl Ray and the actress Terry Moore, whom
he confirmed in her claim to be Howard Hughes's first wife.
Gugas is an XCIA guy and wholeheartedly believed in the
polygraph But it is worth noting that the Lutzes contacted him,

(01:50:19):
not the other way around, and given their commitment to
the BIT, we're probably aware of how to manipulate a
polygraph test. Goug has estimated in nineteen seventy nine that
across three thirty thousand tests he administered, seventy percent of
people were probably telling the truth, and he said polygraphs
were ninety five to ninety seven percent accurate.

Speaker 1 (01:50:36):
That's not true.

Speaker 2 (01:50:38):
Yes, First of all, polygraph results are not admissible in court.
They're simply to help elicit a confession during interrogations. A
laythy article by the American Psychological Association debunks all of this,
pointing out largely that all a polygraph does is just
measure physiological responses that are subjectively interpreted by the guy
running the test. There's a huge set of factors that

(01:51:00):
can affect both the person being tested and the testee. Anyway,
speaking of James RL Ray, your friendly reminder that the
FBI killed Martin Luther.

Speaker 1 (01:51:08):
King, Yeah, I mean polygraph tests they basically just measure
skin response and for sweat and heart rate. I mean,
so if you put I think there's like a famous
story where if you put like a tack in your
shoe or something, and they ask the control question at
the beginning, which is like you know, are you in
this room right now, or like something dumber did you
eat today or something like that. If you like prick

(01:51:32):
your toe and cause your heart rate to spike for
the control question, then.

Speaker 2 (01:51:36):
That's the baseline. That's the baseline that.

Speaker 1 (01:51:38):
They go from. So when you lie and your heart rate,
you know, kind of imperceptibly goes up when you lie,
it'll just seem the same throughout all the rest of
the test. It's dumb.

Speaker 2 (01:51:47):
It is dumb. Thank you for saying that. Jordan Let's,
as I've mentioned so many times, zealously protected his claim.
He sued Orion Pictures and Dino de Laurentis, which could
luck Pal talk about a guppy and a shark tank
he see them in nineteen eighty nine because he felt
the original film's two sequels had quote so diluted the

(01:52:09):
value of his proposed sequel that his plans to produce
it had collapsed. Many of these counts were dismissed, but
the original judgment allowed certain aspects of it to continue.
Lutz himself said that the deal o Reentis case dragged
on twelve years and ended in a settlement. He and
Kathy divorced in nineteen eighty eight, and at some point this,

(01:52:33):
along with the futility of trying to combat the mushrooming
Amiteyville cations, must have sunk in. Because he seemed to
have stopped trying throughout the nineteen nineties, or he fell
off the grid. I could not find a lot of
stuff about him from this time. Maybe went back to
land surveying.

Speaker 1 (01:52:46):
He did do an interview for the two thousand and
five documentary I watched.

Speaker 2 (01:52:51):
Yes, Well, he got back up to things around the
turn of the millennia, perhaps motivated by nine to eleven,
you know, which taught us all to just commit to
our bit. Yeah. So, around the turn of the millennia,
LUTs had gotten around to more practical legal measures. He
trademarked The Amityville Whore in two thousand and two with

(01:53:14):
the United States Patent and Trademark Office because he wanted
to run a series of quote unquote nonfiction books about
the paranormal. The same year, Let's sign an agreement with
this company called Barstow Productions to allow a sequel to proceed,
but it included the provision that the film could not
intentionally defame or libel George Lutz. Long story short, The

(01:53:38):
Barstoo Production's rights were subsequently transferred to Dimension Films, which
were under Miramax under Disney. Lutz alleges that as much
as he tried to get involved with the two thousand
and five remakes, the remake that came out under Platinum
Dooms itself a subsidiary blah bla blah blah blah, that
he was shut out. He said he tried to get
in contact with anyone, and they kept saying, Oh yeah,

(01:54:00):
we'll bring you in to meet them, and they're like,
we'll send you a free swag bag or a crew
jacket or something. But that he was shut out, and
this resulted in the Ryan Reynolds starring remake being just
balls to the wall more intense than the original. It
of course starts with the classic based on a true story,

(01:54:20):
but it also depicts Lutz as killing his dog, building
coffins for his wife and kids, choking and later attempting
to drown his wife, shooting at his wife and kids,
and attacking his son with an axe. This was all
a bridge too far for George Lutz, who sued on
the basis of defamation and oh yeah, also on the

(01:54:42):
basis that Dimension hadn't honored his original agreement with Barstow
and he was getting screwed on the money. MGM's countersuit
and Let's died the year after in two thousand and six,
so that put an end to that. Let's his trademark
on the Amityville Horror phrase laps in two thousand and eight,
and as we will get into, his estate was not
interested in continuing this, and so MGM picked it back

(01:55:04):
up in twenty twenty three. Let's step kids have since
come into the spotlight a little more, and consequently, and unsurprisingly,
he looks even worse. Perhaps I should have mentioned that
in the interim between Let's trademarking the phrase Amityville Horror
and suing over the two thousand and five remake, he
also sued one of his own step kids, Christopher Quarantino,

(01:55:27):
who changed his name. He ran away from home at sixteen.
He was in the army. This situation really did a
number on him, and he did not want to be
associated it. So in two thousand and three, Quarantino hears
that George is planning yet another movie in which the
character quote unquote of Christopher returns to the original Amityville house,

(01:55:48):
becomes possessed and kills his father. So Christopher, none too
pleased about this, preempted his father by buying the domain
Amityville Horror dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:55:58):
Petty but effective.

Speaker 2 (01:55:59):
Yeah. Lutz countersued for trademark infringement and fraud. Eventually they
settled and George got the site. What a guy. Quarantino
eventually described Lutz more neutrally in the documentary Amityville An
Original Story saying Lutz was a man figure that was
there and kind to us, and mom liked him.

Speaker 1 (01:56:21):
That was that, you know, everyone could be a father,
but not everyone can be a man figure.

Speaker 2 (01:56:27):
Yeah. So, but both the kids who have come out
about this movie maintained an interest. They tow a very
interesting line. Christopher maintains that the house was haunted and
that George Lutz merely exacerbated conditions by dabbling in the
occult and then playing up the results for profit. Christopher
called Lutz quote a professional showman in an interview with

(01:56:50):
the Seattle Times in two thousand and five, and recalled
his stepdad being extremely curious of everything paranormal when they
moved in in nineteen seventy five, even trying to summon
super natural beings on his own by chanting I don't
know that I call it black magic, but it was
a way to call up spirits. Christopher said, I was
a spirit.

Speaker 1 (01:57:09):
I a spirit.

Speaker 2 (01:57:11):
I want work anymore. Christopher again rebukes a lot of
the bullet in the book, like the ghostly forces that
sent the front door to the house flying from its hinges,
but he added in the in the repeated in interviews
that he had personal run ins with the paranormal in
the house. He once saw a presence quote as definite,

(01:57:32):
as a shadow in the shape of a man that
moved towards him and dissipated the other Amityville kid who's
come forward. Eldest son Daniel had an entire movie made
about him in his experience, and it is harrowing twelve
as document I've seen in clips. I haven't sat down
and watched the whole thing, but it's it's a rough
watch man, honestly. This is a twenty twelve documentary made

(01:57:56):
by an Amityville super fan named Eric Walter. It's called
My Medieville Whore. Walter was actually contacted by friend of Daniels,
who was at the time living in Queens and either
working as a ups driver or a stonemason. According to
different sources, Danny's presence in the film is disturbing. He's chainsmoken,
becomes quite literally furious at anything George Lutz was involved in,

(01:58:22):
and just he's a generally haunted mien, I'll say. But
he also said that paranormal experience happened in the house,
whispering voices, moving furniture. But more pertinently, he describes George
Lutz as a vain, controlling man who kept his family
on a tight leash. He claims Lutz was abusive both

(01:58:43):
verbally and physically. Indie Wire in the review wrote, Daniel's
stories seemed less like tales of supernatural tear and more
like the coping mechanism of a young boy who has
been sexually assaulted by a parental figure. So I I
couldn't find anything else about sexual abuse specifically, But between

(01:59:04):
Christopher and Daniel both having these definite, quote unquote definite
memories of the paranormal, but also both hating their dad,
it stands to reason that this entire thing with something
that he just berated them into believing, which is horrifying.
There's a psychiatrist in the film who was later quoted

(01:59:26):
as saying this is reminiscent of cases of sexual abuse
in which kids are because kids of a young age
are malleable, and if you get at them from a
certain angle with repetition or abuse or physical verbal abuse,
they will believe something that's been planted into them for

(01:59:47):
the rest of their life. And that's just that's why
I have it out for old Georgie, a man like
the fact that you had these young kids who were
not yours, so fervently believing in the normal while also
hating your guts for whatever you did to them. That
is a crime beyond the pale.

Speaker 1 (02:00:10):
Well, the only way we can really get out of
this really sad, horrific, depressing anecdote is real estate, historic,
real estate, and architecture. We're going to talk about the
true star of this episode, the Amityville Horrhouse, the nineteen

(02:00:31):
twenty seven Dutch colonial house at one one two Ocean
Avenue by bedroom, four bathroom gets a great light ocean front.
Look at that, What a great place. In a two
thousand interview with The History Channel, Kathy Lutz claimed that
a tragedy befell every family that ever lived in the house,
which is another complete lie. Jay Andsen's book suggests that

(02:00:52):
the property is cursed because it had once belonged to
John Ketchum, a suspected witch who had fled Salem, Massachusetts
before taking up press. And it's in Amityville.

Speaker 2 (02:01:03):
Not not true, unsurprising.

Speaker 4 (02:01:07):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (02:01:08):
James Cromarty, who bought the house with his wife after
the Lutzes, said it in August nineteen seventy nine press conference,
I was born in Amityville. I knew every family that
grew up in this house. The lets to say that
every family that was brought up in this house had
bad things happen to them. It happens to be a
fact that only one family had a tragedy happened to
them in that house. The Cromarties remained in the house

(02:01:30):
without anything especially evil happening until nineteen eighty seven, when
it was purchased by Jean and Peter O'Neill. They this
is unforgivable as far as I'm concerned. They changed the
famed eye windows to square ones that gets to attract
fewer onlookers, and filled in the Dafayo's pool. Almost ten

(02:01:50):
years later, on June tenth, nineteen ninety seven, Brian Wilson,
No not that one, purchased the house for approximately three
hundred and ten thousand dollars. He remained there for thirteen years,
putting the house up for sale in twenty ten for
one point one five million dollars. It didn't sell for
that though. It was purchased for nine hundred and ten
thousand by Caroline D'Antonio and her husband David, who lived

(02:02:13):
there until twenty sixteen, when it went on the market again,
listed for eight hundred and fifty thousand. It again didn't
make market price and was eventually sold in March twenty
seventeen or six hundred and five thousand dollars, which I
don't oh Man for Ocean Front and Long Island.

Speaker 2 (02:02:30):
That's a bar bar haw right, thank you home. You
know we joke, We joke here on TMI Jordan. Would
you agree?

Speaker 1 (02:02:39):
I think we do. Yeah, we joke.

Speaker 2 (02:02:42):
But remember at the heart of this six people were
shot in their beds at night. To that end, the
Amityville saga is a truly American one. Rich kids offering
their parents for money, grubby opportunists coming in and peddling
lies to profit from a genuine tragedy. Hollywood, a succession

(02:03:02):
of lawsuits, But the most resonance that I find with
it at this point is the constant churn of these
new low rent films that are just tagged with the
Amityville name. Four of them came out this year alone, Wow,
and researching the varying lists of them that have been
compiled online starts to resemble the infinite scroll experience of
social media. That's the most American thing about it. Tragedy

(02:03:25):
becomes farce, becomes just content, an entire cottage industry of
low effort nonsense built on a lie started by a
couple of carnival barkers. What's more haunting than that? I'm
Alex Sigel. This has been too much information, and.

Speaker 1 (02:03:43):
I'm Jordan run Tag. We'll catch you next time.

Speaker 2 (02:03:51):
Too Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio. The show's
executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtogg. The show's
supervising producer is Michael All. Through June, the show was researched,
written and hosted by Jordan Rundgg and Alex Heigel.

Speaker 1 (02:04:05):
With original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra.

Speaker 2 (02:04:08):
If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
us a review.

Speaker 1 (02:04:11):
For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Amityville Horror: Everything You Didn't Know