In the quiet Long Island town of Amityville, New York, the crisp autumn air of November 13, 1974, was shattered by a crime that would forever be etched in the annals of American true crime history. On that fateful day, 18-year-old Dawn Theresa DeFeo, a young woman with her life ahead of her, was found brutally murdered in her family's stately Dutch Colonial home on Ocean Avenue.
She, along with her parents, Louise and Ronald DeFeo Sr., and her younger siblings, Allison, 13, Marc, 12, and John, 9, had been shot and killed in their beds. All six victims were discovered lying face down.
The initial alarm was raised by Dawn's older brother, 23-year-old Ronald 'Butch' DeFeo Jr., who burst into a local bar claiming his parents had been shot. When police arrived at the DeFeo residence, they uncovered the horrific scene. The investigation quickly unraveled Ronald Jr.'s initial story of a mob hit, and the following day he confessed to the killings. He told authorities, 'Once I started, I just couldn't stop.' The murder weapon, a. 35-caliber Marlin rifle, was recovered from a nearby canal where he had disposed of it.
Ronald DeFeo Jr. was arrested and charged with six counts of second-degree murder. His trial began on October 14, 1975, where his defense team argued for an insanity plea, claiming he heard voices that drove him to kill his family. The prosecution, however, contended that while DeFeo was a user of heroin and LSD, he was aware of his actions at the time of the murders. A key point of contention during the trial was how six people could be shot in their sleep without any of the neighbors hearing the high-powered rifle shots and with no signs of a struggle from the victims.
Despite the insanity defense, a jury found Ronald DeFeo Jr. guilty on all six counts of second-degree murder on November 21, 1975. He was subsequently sentenced to six concurrent sentences of 25 years to life in prison. Over the years, DeFeo would change his story multiple times, at one point implicating his sister Dawn in the murders of their younger siblings, a claim that was never substantiated and which he later contradicted with other versions of events. He remained incarcerated, with all of his appeals and requests for parole denied, until his death in prison in March 2021. The motive for the gruesome familicide remains a subject of speculation, with theories ranging from a volatile relationship with his father to a desire to collect on his parents' life insurance policies.
