PART II - THE STORY - GEORGE AND KATHY LUTZ
In the summer of 1975 George (a.k.a. Lee) and Kathy Lutz moved along with their three young children into their dream home in the affluent suburb of Amityville, NY.
They knew about the famous DeFeo murders that had recently taken place in the house they had just bought, but claimed that these were of no concern to them and moved in regardless.
After living in the house for 10 days the Lutzes suddenly abandoned all their possessions and moved out of their beloved new home. They quickly went public and told of the horrors that that tormented them in the house.
*The horrors they spoke of included:
THE DEFEO MURDERS
The locals were devastated. The DeFeos were a well known family within the community. Their children attended the local schools with the other children of Amityville. Locals looked on with horror as Ronadl DeFeo Jr. was taken away by police. He was later tried and convicted for all of the murders.
The court found that Ronald DeFeo Jr.’s motive for murdering his family was the US$200,000 insurance that was payable to him. It was said that he drugged the family at dinner time so they would not awaken as he moved from room to room shooting each one with a rifle.
Once the Lutzes went public with their horror story of life inside the DeFeo house, professional paranormal investigators such as Stephen Kaplan began to follow the story… and soon found themselves dragged in to the web the Lutzes were weaving.
In fact the Lutzes changed their story quite a few times. As time went on the story became much more elaborate, and the Lutzes declared that they had lived in the house for 28 days, instead of the original claim of 10 days.
The media didn’t help with the truth behind the Amityville story. It is rare that the media comes upon such an unusual story and they certainly took to this one with full force.
The sad fact is that the newspaper and magazine reporters who covered the story knew it was a potential winner and quickly over-sensationalised it, allowing the real evidence and reports to be obscured by rumour and heresay.
In fact the house by this time had been investigated for evidence of paranormal activity. The investigators found that the house was very comfortable with no evidence whatsoever of any paranormal activity.
The media were not interested in evidence. Professionals such as Stephen Kaplan, Director of the well respected Society For Psychical Research, would send letters to newspspers and magazines pointing out that their reports were misleading the public and also adding to the much wanted publicity for the Lutzes. These letters were ignored.
The Lutzes appeared to welcome publicity with open arms. Although they claimed to Dr. Kaplan that they wanted to get to the bottom of the haunting, they would mislead him and his team of investigators, and deny access to the house to conduct proper investigations. Although they would claim to professional paranormal investigators that they did not want any publicity, they would happily grant access to camera crews from popular television shows.
A new family had already moved into the house by this time. They were established in the house by the time that the Lutzes’ story was given so much publicity. Unfortunately they soon found themselves subjected to the unwanted attention of lots of tourists when the book was released and the Lutzes started touring the country with their story.
The house which once had the address of 112 Ocean Avenue, now has a different street number and facing in an attempt to deter some of the pesky tourists.
The residents of Ocean Avenue, Amityville still suffer from nuisance tourists breaking into their homes and taking souvenirs, who seem to think that any house on Ocean Avenue has some relation to the Amityville House.
Residents also report of being rudely accosted on the street by visitors demanding to know where the “Demon House” is. It is sad that they are forced to live on with the trouble that the Amityville case caused – they never asked for it in the first place.
The unfortunate new owners of the Lutz house were so stressed by the publicity targeted at their new home that they actually took out a lawsuit against the Lutzes and the publishers. The case was settled out of court.
An attorney, William Weber (who was actually Ronald DeFeo's defense lawyer) jumped in on the scene. He was also suing the Lutzes for stealing his ideas for the Amityville story. His case was also settled out of court. The judge stated that with all the discrepancies and exaggerations in the story, the book was a lot of nonsense.
The real truth was eventually uncovered................
George and Kathy Lutz in earlier happy days
In the early hours of the morning on November 13 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr., then aged only 23, took a high powered rifle and murdered his father Ronald Snr (43), mother Louise (43), sisters, Dawn (18) and Allison (13), along with his two small brothers, Mark (12) and John (9).
Ronald DeFeo applied for parole in September 1999 and was refused.
Besides the DeFeos who were murdered, the other victims of this story are the community of Amityville. Being a close knit community, all were deeply affected by the loss of a well known and much loved family. Now they have all been forced to endure ongoing problems as tourists try to track down the original Amityville house.
PART III - click here to continue
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