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History remembers certain things a certain way. Henry de Berk investigates what gets left out. Long-form documentaries on crime, power, and the stories we tell ourselves about both. Not to shock. Not to sell a theory. But to follow the evidence where it actually leads — and sit honestly with what it doesn't resolve. New episodes on the cases history got wrong, the myths that stuck, and the truth underneath that's usually more unsettling. For people who know the popular version. And want something more honest.
In 1974, a man walks into a bar. He said someone had killed his family, all of them shot, face down on their beds. Eight shots and nobody heard a thing. His friend called the police. They came and believed his story for about four hours, then they arrested him.
Henry de Berk:He confessed that same night, it's closed. Thirteen months later, family moved into the same house. They lasted twenty eight days before running out leaving everything behind. They said the house was haunted. First, the priest came to bless it, then reporters, then two paranormal investigators from Connecticut.
Henry de Berk:By 1977, it was a best selling book. By 1979, it was a movie. Three words Ronald DeFeo said that night in his police interrogation launched an industry worth $2,000,000,000. Nobody went to check on the facts. I did.
Henry de Berk:The house at 112 Ocean Avenue is quiet. Six people are asleep across two floors. Mom and dad and three kids in their bed on the 1st Floor, their oldest daughter on the 2nd. The whole tragedy takes less than fifteen minutes. At 06:30 that evening, a 23 year old man walks into Henry's bar.
Henry de Berk:His name is Ronald DeFeo junior. Everyone calls him Butch. You gotta help me, he says. I think my mom and dad are shot. A group of men get in his car and drive three blocks to the house.
Henry de Berk:Butch waits outside. They find his parents in their bed, shot, face down. They search the rest of the house and find the four children, ages nine, 12, 13 and 18, all of them face down, all of them dead. Not Butch, but Joe Yeswit makes the call to the police.
911 Operator:This is Suffolk County Police. May I help you? We have a shooting here, DeFeo. Sir, what is your name? Joey Yeswit.
911 Operator:Can you spell that? Yeah. Y e s w I t. W I t. Your phone number?
911 Operator:I don't even know if it's here. There's a I don't have a phone number here. Okay. Where are you calling from? It's in Amityville.
911 Operator:Call up the Amityville police, and it's right off Ocean Avenue in Amityville. Austin? Ocean Avenue. What the fuck? Ocean Avenue?
911 Operator:Off of where? It's right off Merrick Road. Ocean Avenue. Merrick Road. What's what's the problem, sir?
911 Operator:It's a shooting. There's a shooting. Anybody hurt? Yeah. It's everybody's dead.
911 Operator:What do you mean everybody's dead? Don't know what happened. Kid come running in the bar. He says everybody in the family was killed, and we came down here. Hold on a second, sir.
Henry de Berk:At this point, the 911 operator hands over the phone to a police officer.
911 Operator:Hello? Hello. What's your name? My name is Joe Yeswit. George Edwards?
911 Operator:Joe Yeswit. How do you spell it? What? I just how many times do I have to tell you? Y e s w I t.
911 Operator:Where are you at? I'm on Ocean Avenue. What number? I don't have a number here. There's no number on the phone.
911 Operator:What number on the house? I don't even know that. Where are you at? Ocean Avenue and what? In Amityville.
911 Operator:Call up the Amityville police and have someone come down here. They know the family. Amityville? Yeah. Amityville.
911 Operator:Okay. Now tell me what's wrong. I don't know. Guy come running in the bar and said his mother and father are shot. We ran down to his house, and everybody in the house is shot.
911 Operator:I don't know how long, you know. So What's the ad what's the address of the house? Hold on. Let me go look up the number. Alright.
911 Operator:Hold on. Hello? Hello? Yes. 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville.
911 Operator:1 what? 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville. Is that Amityville or North Amityville? Amityville. Right on South Of Merrick Road.
911 Operator:Is it right in the village limit? I no. It's do you know where the high school is? Yeah. It's in the village limit.
911 Operator:Yeah. Yeah. That's the village limits. Right? Yeah.
911 Operator:And okay. What's your phone number? I don't even have one. There's no number on the phone. Alright.
911 Operator:Where are you calling from? Public phone? No. I'm calling right from the house because I don't see a number on the phone. You're at the house itself?
911 Operator:Yeah. How many bodies are there? I think I don't know. I think they said four. There's four?
911 Operator:Yeah. Alright. You stay right there at the house, and I'll call the Amityville Village PD, and they'll come down. Okay.
Henry de Berk:The murders happened fifteen hours earlier at three in the morning. Butch DeFeo spent the entire day knowing they were all dead. After work, he went to the bar. He complained to anyone who would listen that nobody at the house was picking up. Then he went and checked.
Henry de Berk:That was the story. The murder weapon was a Marlin three three six c, lever action 35 caliber. Defense experts would later determine that a single shot from that rifle produces about a 140 decibels. A jet engine at close range produces about the same. There were eight shots in four rooms across two floors at three in the morning.
Henry de Berk:112 Ocean Avenue sits in a quiet suburban neighborhood, neighbors on both sides. Nobody heard a thing. According to testimony, all they heard was the DeFeo dog barking. Ronald DeFeo senior was shot twice from the bedroom doorway. Forensic evidence showed he was trying to get up when he was shot.
Henry de Berk:He never turned around. His wife, also shot twice. The autopsy confirmed she had turned towards the door. The 38 caliber Smith and Wesson on her nightstand had not been fired. Their daughter, Allison, 13, had raised her head and was looking toward the door.
Henry de Berk:Her son Mark, 12 years old, had suffered a football injury weeks earlier that forced him to sleep on his back. He was found face down. Investigators believe someone had ordered Mark to turn over before he was shot. John, nine years old, was also found face down in his bed. The oldest daughter, Dawn, was shot once through the left temple.
Henry de Berk:Forensics found gunpowder particles on the front of her nightgown, not from her wound, but consistent with firing a weapon or being close to a weapon fired. A Retired New York City detective working for the defense concluded that Don DeFeo had fired a gun that night. The prosecution claimed she was simply close to a gun being fired. The evidence was presented at trial. Butch's lawyer, William Weber, didn't ask a single follow-up question.
Henry de Berk:Six people in four rooms on two separate floors. Forensics shows that at least four of them were awake, yet nobody ran. The DeFeos were not ordinary. Ronald DeFeo Sr's uncle was Peter DeFeo. Peter DeFeo was a capo in the Genovese crime family.
Henry de Berk:Butch's grandfather on his mother's side was Michael Brigante Sr. He was not a made man, but he was so highly connected that the distinction barely mattered. Both Butch and Ronald Sr. Worked at his Buick dealership in Brooklyn. He paid their salaries, their cars, their mortgage.
Henry de Berk:Nothing in that house existed without his money, which also meant nothing happened without his knowledge. Ronald DeFeo's idea of being a husband and father was violence. Every minor infraction of the so called rules was met with his fury. Butch grew up absorbing it. He was a fat kid and bullied at school.
Henry de Berk:By his teens, he was using heroin and LSD. At bars, he would mimic his father, his uncles. He'd buy rounds for strangers and throw his DeFeo Wait around. But inside, he was a scared little boy, dependent on drugs to escape his life. One night after one of senior's violent rages, Butch loaded a shotgun and walked downstairs and pointed the barrel at his father's face and pulled the trigger.
Henry de Berk:Ronald senior stood there frozen as the gun misfired. Butch lowered the weapon and walked out of the room. Nothing was said, nothing was done. Just another Tuesday in the DeFeo household. He was not a calculating criminal, he was a broken boy trying to hold his own in a culture that demanded him to be strong and cunning, Butch was neither.
Henry de Berk:November 12, the evening before the murders. Butch is at his girlfriend Gerald ine's place in New Jersey, spending time with his infant daughter. A life he kept completely separate from Ocean Avenue. Then the phone rings. Geraldine picks up and hands phone to Butch.
Henry de Berk:It's your mother. He hears chaos. She's crying. He drives to Amityville and finds his sister, Don, threatening Ronald senior with a knife. Don was 18 and in love with a man called William Davich, who lived in Florida.
Henry de Berk:She wanted to move there, but Ronald senior refused to let her go. Years later, Davage signed a sworn affidavit. He stated that Don hated her parents, had a violent temper and frequently used LSD and mescaline. Butch took the knife away from her and told her to cool off. She came back before 11PM, still angry.
Henry de Berk:As far as she was concerned, the argument was not over. Reporters arrive at 112 Ocean Avenue. Joe Jeswit stands outside on the lawn. The nine one one operator told him to stay close. Police are on their way.
Henry de Berk:Rick Moran, a freelance reporter and former police officer, steps out of his car. He hears police sirens approaching. He moves fast, pass Jeswit towards the house. On the lawn near the boathouse, he sees a young man and an older gentleman engaged in a hush conversation. He doesn't know the young man, but the older gentleman is Michael Brigante senior.
Henry de Berk:Moran creeps in till he's close enough to hear them. He overhears Brigant to say that he doesn't want to hear anything more about Don. He's tired of the family's name being dragged through the mud. He tells Butch he needs to confess. The sirens drown out the rest of the conversation.
Henry de Berk:The police have arrived. Butch is asked to come to the station for a witness statement. He's 23 years old, addicted to heroin and has no lawyer present. He has been awake for over twenty hours. As detectives prepare statement, Butch gives them a suspect, a man named Louis Fellini, a mob associate with a grudge against his father.
Henry de Berk:The detectives know the family. They know they are well connected to organized crime, so it's not a stretch. They check, but Lewis Fellini has an alibi. He was out of state. Two new detectives walk in and introduce themselves as lieutenant Robert Dunn and detective Dennis Rafferty.
Henry de Berk:They close the door. The only alternative suspect is gone. The only person left in the room with no alibi is Butch. Dunn and Rafferty are running the Reed technique. It's a dominant American interrogation method developed in the nineteen fifties and adopt by police departments across the country.
Henry de Berk:It's not designed to find the truth. It's designed to get people to confess and it works best on vulnerable people.
911 Operator:From what I'm seeing, even if I fill those in, I'm thinking you're alright. Okay? You don't have to worry about things. We're there for you and we know what Stephen did and we know kind of what happened to you and what he did. We just need to hear the whole story from you.
Henry de Berk:A 23 year old heroin addict, scared, alone, without a lawyer, without sleep, that's a perfect subject. The technique is simple. Make him admit to a criminal act while providing a way out. Minimize the crime. Make it understandable.
Henry de Berk:Offer a reason that makes him feel like a victim rather than a monster. The confession that follows doesn't feel like an admission, it feels like an explanation. And Butch had that explanation all along, three words his grandfather gave him on the phone that morning. Eleven months earlier, the exorcist had told 40,000,000 Americans that possession means the person is not responsible for what they do. That logic was still in the room.
Henry de Berk:Dun and Rafferty spent hours pretending to believe the Fellini story. While doing so, they mined Butch for details. During the investigation, Butch added another suspect. Fellini had an accomplice. Every detail was documented.
Henry de Berk:They wait, hear him out, and then when the timing is right, one of them says, they must have made you part of it. They must have made you shoot at least one of them. Butch puts his head in his hands. They were never there, were they? Fellini and the other guy.
Henry de Berk:They were never there. You did it, didn't you, Butch? You wanted to get rid of your father, but you couldn't stop. That's what happened, didn't it, Butch? Butch lifts his head.
Henry de Berk:It all started so fast, he says. Once I started, I couldn't stop. It went so fast. The Reid technique at its finest. They have a confession.
Henry de Berk:Three more words follow. Butch says, I heard voices. In sworn statements filed years later, Butch claimed that he was beaten during the interrogation. A criminologist who later interviewed one of the detectives was told in the detective's own words, Sure, of course. We did a good job on him.
Henry de Berk:What did you expect? Suffolk County Police Department was later investigated by the State Commission of Investigation at the direction of the governor. The commission found that officers regularly coerced confessions from suspects. The police commissioner resigned. The DA did not run for re election.
Henry de Berk:Nobody faced criminal charges. Years later, the same homicide unit extracted false confession from a teenager named Martin Tankleff, who spent seventeen years in prison for crimes he did not commit. Suffolk County paid 10,000,000 to settle that case. The DeFeo murders were processed by the same department, the same homicide unit, in the same era. The prosecution told the jury that Butch's clothing had been found in the storm drain in Brooklyn, on it blood type A, consistent with five of the six victims.
Henry de Berk:What they didn't mention is that roughly forty percent of the population has type a. Weber never established Butch's own blood type at trial, so the argument that it might have been Butch's own blood from the beating at the station was never made. Butch's sworn affidavit states those clothes were taken at the police station, not found in any drain. Butch was known to be a liar. Many statements he gave were later proven false.
Henry de Berk:But a liar is not the same as a man guilty of multiple homicides. The jury deliberated for less than two days. Butch is found guilty on all six counts. He's sentenced to six consecutive terms of twenty five years to life. Bill Weber gathers his papers.
Henry de Berk:Butch's confession sealed his fate and there was nothing more he could do. But Weber doesn't feel the loss. He has something nobody else has, intimate knowledge of every detail of the DeFeo case. He has been shopping around a book idea, true crime based on intimate knowledge and his personal files. A retelling of the events on 11/13/1974 at 3AM.
Henry de Berk:The working title was the devil on my back. He pitched the idea to several publishers, but nobody's buying it. They say that linear true crime doesn't sell. They want the next exorcist. Then in January 1976, the family that bought one twelve Ocean Avenue flees in the middle of the night, leaving everything behind saying the house is haunted.
Henry de Berk:Three blocks away, Weber picks up the phone. Thirteen months after the killings, George and Kathy Lutz bought 112 Ocean Avenue for the discount price of $80,000. They knew about the murders, but at that price nothing even close was on the market, so they bought it anyway. George and Kathy had been married for about five months. He was a land surveyor and she was recently divorced.
Henry de Berk:She had three kids. The realtor offered the DeFeo family's furniture for $400 and they bought it. The forensics team had not cleaned up. They left it as is, in the same rooms, in the same place. Kathy scrubbed blood, bone and brain matter off the walls and the bed frames.
Henry de Berk:George, known for dabbling in the occult, cleansed the house with sage. He meditated and held a seance repeating the names of demons. The knowledge of the horrific event affected the whole family. Every sound, every open window, every misplaced item was treated with suspicion. And then George started waking up every night at three a.
Henry de Berk:M, the exact time of the murders. He contacted the law office of William Weber. George wondered if Bush was at all influenced by the demons that lived in the house. Weber met with the Lutzes, not because he believed demons lived at Ocean Avenue, but because his book was going nowhere. He needed a new hook.
Henry de Berk:The Lutzes claiming demonic possession and Butch claiming he heard voices reframe the whole story. It's no longer a family tragedy, it's a haunting. This was his exorcist. Weber knew details about the DeFeo family that had never been made public. He told the lutzes about the neighbor's cat that used to peer through the window.
Henry de Berk:Somehow that became a red eyed demonic pig. That night, Ronald senior struck Louise while she held a plate of red sauce spaghetti. It became mysterious fluid oozing from the walls. Real details, real family history, dressed up in supernatural clothing, all that to a family that needed very little convincing. On 02/16/1967, he held a press conference at his own office.
Henry de Berk:The Lutzes stood beside him. He announced that 112 Ocean Avenue was haunted, possessed by demons. The Lutzes had experienced evil. With the help of a priest and a demonologist, they had been able to resist possession where Butch could not. He claimed that this new evidence supports a new trial for Butch to fail.
Henry de Berk:The haunting was a legal instrument. If demonic presence could be established, if something supernatural had driven a family out, then the insanity defense that had already failed might find a new audience. The voices were not in Butch's head, they were in the house. The fact that Butch, under oath, testified at his own trial that he didn't hear voices was apparently no obstacle. The Amityville Horror describes a priest entering the house, blessing it, hearing a demonic voice scream at him to get out.
Henry de Berk:Get out. That priest filed an affidavit. The only contact with the Lutzes had been a telephone call. He was never inside the house. The diocese later said that the alleged hauntings at Ocean Avenue were not confirmed by the church.
Henry de Berk:112 Ocean Avenue is empty. Dishes sit unwashed on the kitchen counter, unfolded laundry piled up on the table. Channel five news van is parked outside. Marvin Scott, a journalist who had covered the Amityville story since the murders, steps out. He has brought Ed and Lorraine Warren.
Henry de Berk:He knows them from a previous investigation. The Lutzes were invited but declined. They told Scott's assistant, Laura Dididio, that they would never set foot in that house again. Inside the house, Ed and Lorraine gather a small group. They claim they need their spiritual energy.
Henry de Berk:Lorraine lights scented candles and invites them to join hands. Lorraine tells the camera she feels an overwhelming evil pressing in from every direction.
911 Operator:I hope this is as close to hell as I'll ever get.
Henry de Berk:In the hallway, Marvin Scott's cameraman walks in and tells them it's past lunchtime. The Warrens stay one night and then they never return. They never meet the Lutzes. They never speak to Butch DeFeo. Single night was enough though to give the mythology something Weber's legal strategy couldn't: demonic credibility.
Henry de Berk:After a falling out with Weber over money, an editor from Prentice Hall introduced the Lutzes to Jay Anson. They gave him forty five hours of tape recordings in which they had documented every supernatural encounter. It was the entire spine of Anson's book, The Amityville Horror, a True Story. He later told Writers Digest that he had no idea whether any of it was true. Nonetheless, the book sold 10,000,000 copies.
Henry de Berk:In 1979, a film based on this book grossed $75,000,000. Weber got none of it. In that same year, in an interview with People's Magazine, Weber said, I know this book is a hoax. We created this horror story over many bottles of wine. Nobody listened.
Henry de Berk:The Conjuring universe had grossed over $2,000,000,000. All of it extracted from one night the Warren stayed at a house where nothing happened. Sparked by a press conference at a lawyer's office, which traces back to a confession extracted in a room with no lawyer, from a man who said under oath that he heard no voices. Louise DeFeo was never really considered in the Amityville story. Yet if you strip it from all superstition, she's the only one that connects the evidence, the forensics and human nature.
Henry de Berk:The only one who had motive. The desperate act of a mother trying to save her children from the life she had. A woman who believed in heaven, trying to protect her children from a life in hell. Forensics didn't give us one shooter moving through the house while the family's asleep. At least four of them knew something was wrong, yet none of them ran.
Henry de Berk:The only version explains that is one where they knew the gunman, somebody they trusted, someone they didn't run from. The medical examiner said under oath he couldn't explain how one person did this. He was right. Rick Moran was on the lawn that morning when Brigante told Butch he didn't want to hear anything more about Don. In 1986, Butch gave his first interview in twelve years.
Henry de Berk:He said Don shot her father over the fight about Florida. He said Louise woke up and in the chaos that followed, shot Don and the kids. He said he came upstairs, found them and shot his mother in rage. It's not a monster story, that's a family tragedy. Dawn's gunpowder residue places her at the discharge.
Henry de Berk:Forensics on Ronald Sr. Puts the shooter at the doorway. Louise's gun was on a nightstand, unfired, which only makes sense if she never intended to use it on the person she saw standing there. Follow the evidence and you don't get a demon. You get an 18 year old girl who had enough, a mother who woke up and in self defense shot her daughter, a broken young man who walked upstairs and found what was left, and a grandfather who understood immediately that the truth could never come out.
Henry de Berk:This is what I think happened in Amityville. Same horror, there's no demons. Butch and Don sit in the basement. She's still furious about the fight earlier that night. They drink and do drugs.
Henry de Berk:The conversation escalates as Butch tells Don about the silencer he bought for his rifle. He screws it onto Marlin. He says he's not gonna let Ronald senior get away with it any longer. This time it won't misfire. Don, more agitated than usual, grabs the rifle and says, why wait?
Henry de Berk:She walks up the stairs, Butch follows. Don opens the door to the master bedroom and immediately fires twice. She hits her father in the spleen. Louise wakes up. She sees Don holding the rifle, frozen.
Henry de Berk:She jumps up and wrestles Don for the Marlin. In a struggle, she shoots Don. Butch now completely loses it. He runs down the stairs and out of the house. After a lifetime of abuse, protecting her kids and keeping up appearances, the stillness takes over.
Henry de Berk:It guides her through an event her brain is unable to process. She presses the barrel under her chin. Five seconds pass. Five seconds in which she sees the selfishness of her decision. There's one final act of love.
Henry de Berk:She has to protect the kids just one last time. She lowers the marlin and looks down the hall towards the children's bedrooms. As Butch walks in, the DeFeo dog starts barking. In the master bedroom, Louise lays flat on the bed. She doesn't speak, she does cry.
Henry de Berk:Her eyes are fixated on the wall. Butch picks up the rifle, aims and shoots Louise twice. Butch sits on the couch in the basement, alone now. He had picked up the rifle and unscrewed the silencer. He had lifted Don onto her bed and placed her face down.
Henry de Berk:He had turned his mother face down. They're at peace now. He calls his grandfather. Rigante listened to everything. He buries his emotion, his instinct, his grief.
Henry de Berk:The manager takes over. He has no choice, his own daughter. Even his reputation will not survive this stigma. It will end everything. He tells Butch to go to work.
Henry de Berk:From there, you call the house multiple times, he says. Make sure your coworkers hear you. After, you go to the bar. Make sure people see you arrive. Tell your friends you think someone shot your mom and dad.
Henry de Berk:Be loud. He says he'll do whatever he can, but Butch should be prepared to take the fall if it comes to that. They take you in for questioning. Don't ask for a lawyer. It will look like you're irrational, guilty, act confused, say strange things, say you heard voices.
Henry de Berk:Which hangs up, he sits in the basement, the sole survivor in a house with six bodies. He loses the rubber band tied to his left arm. His body goes numb. An FBI tap on Briganti's phone records Briganti saying, he's a nut job. If somebody killed this kid, he's better off.
Henry de Berk:You understand my language? They killed that kid in prison. Let's look at the confession. Without it, what does the prosecution actually have? A man who reported the crime himself, a rifle registered to the family, clothing with type a blood whose chain of custody is disputed, a medical examiner who said on the road that one person could not have done this, a crime scene processed by a department with a documented history of manufacturing evidence.
Henry de Berk:That's not a conviction. That's reasonable doubt. The only thing that convicted Butch DeFeo was Butch DeFeo. Remove the confession and there's no case, no trial, no conviction. No conviction means an open murder investigation in a house that's nearly impossible to sell.
Henry de Berk:The Lutzes never move in. Weber has no mythology to build. No mythology means no warrants, no franchise, no conjuring universe. $2,000,000,000 grown from one confession, extracted in one room, one night. So why did he confess?
Henry de Berk:He was a heroin addict under physical and psychological pressure in a police department with a documented history of coercion. That's a simple answer. But what if the 1986 interview was at least partially true, claiming he, Don and his mother did it? Timing works, Michael Brigante died in 1985. There was no longer a reputation to protect.
Henry de Berk:In November 2000, investigative journalist Rick Oshuna visited Butch in prison for six hours. Butch told him that three people were in that house that night. He wrote it in his own hand. It was cold blooded murder, period. No ghosts, no demons, just three people in which I was one.
Henry de Berk:Butch gave Oshuna the names of both accomplices. Oshuna contacted them directly. He received death threats during his investigation. He chose not to publish the names. In 2002, he published The Night that DeFeo's Died, Reinvestigating the Amityville Murders.
Henry de Berk:One accomplice Butch had fingered had entered witness protection for reasons unrelated to Amityville. The other passed away on New Year's Day two thousand one, thirty two days after Osuna's visit, in which he refused any comment. That's what researchers have been looking at for fifty years. Two accomplices, mob connections. But what if it's simpler?
Henry de Berk:What if Butch alluded to himself, Louise and Don? Brigante hired a private detective named Herman Reyes to investigate the murders and testified at trial that he did not believe his grandson acted alone. He pushed for years to establish there were other people in that house. That neatly fits into the two accomplices' mob story. It also diverts all attention from what really might have happened.
Henry de Berk:Ronald DeFeo Jr. Died in prison on 03/12/2021. He was 69 years old. In the year 2000, he was in the prison law library for five days a week, researching whether the son of Samlah could prevent the franchise from profiting from his family's graves. It could not.
Henry de Berk:The event that defined him consumed his every waking hour. In a letter from that period, he wrote, as for Amityville, the only thing that's real were the murders. No ghosts, no demons. I wish I could leave the door ajar on the Amityville hunting, but other than the superstitious lodge and financial incentives, simply not much there. The only thing I'm truly convinced of is this.
Henry de Berk:Butch could not have done it alone.