Episode 97: "The Night the DeFeos Died"

 In 2002, Ric Osuna published his book The Night the DeFeos Died. He purports to finally solve the mystery of what actually happened on November 13, 1974 in Amityville. But does he?

➡️ Was the entire ghost story / IBG trope a hoax?

➡️ Was Butch framed? If so, by who? Or was he part of the murders but not the whole?

➡️ Was the mafia involved?

➡️ Who was the so-called "seventh victim" that Ric finds in the photographic evidence?

➡️ As an added bonus, you can hear the bursting light bulb that almost gave me a heart attack. 🙁

Links:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/15140359

https://amityvillemurders.com/the-night-the-defeos-died-the-book/about-ric-osuna.html

https://www.amityvillefaq.com/truth/defeo.htm

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/14175977

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/14230306

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/14400011

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/15117845

Need more? You can visit the website at: https://consaracytheories.com/ or my own site at: https://saracausey.com/. Don't forget to check out the blog at: https://consaracytheories.com/blog. 

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My forthcoming project, Simply Dag, will be available globally next summer. 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Sara Causey discusses Rick Osuna's book "The Night the DeFeos Died," which explores the DeFeo murders. Osuna, a former History Channel researcher, claims to uncover the truth behind the murders, relying heavily on Geraldine DeFeo's testimony. Geraldine alleges she was Butch DeFeo's wife and mother of his child, but official records contradict this. The book also suggests organized crime involvement, police brutality, and a conspiracy theory involving multiple shooters. Sara expresses skepticism about Butch's changing stories and the validity of Geraldine's claims, emphasizing the need for further investigation into the true events and motivations behind the murders.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Amityville Horror, DeFeo murders, Rick Osuna, Geraldine DeFeo, Butch DeFeo, organized crime, police brutality, conspiracy theory, true crime, murder victims, ghost story, paranormal, mafia connections, trial transcripts, crime scene photographs.

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I want to talk about Rick osuna's book The night the defeos died. You may remember that around Halloween I published the episode Amityville, an origin story about the epics Docu series of the same name. I watched it when it came out two or three years ago, and I thought it was very interesting. And then re watching it to prepare to record that podcast episode. I just sort of scratched my head and thought, There has got to be more to this story. There has to be I've never really gone down the Amityville Horror rabbit hole, hard and heavy, it's an interesting story, but it's typically like horror movie fodder. And I think sometimes we forget there was a real crime with real murder victims. The whole story with the DeFeo murders actually happened. And it's a sad, tragic, awful thing that an entire family was murdered in their own home, including small children. So I wanted to read Rick's book, because he purports to solve the mystery, to really give us a firm idea of what happened the night the defeos died. So does he or are we yet again, left with more questions than answers? Because this is going to get into the realm of true crime, murder. There's going to be some graphic content. There's just no way around that. If you're squeamish about that sort of thing, this might be the episode for you to skip if you're still with me, choose your frosty beverage of choice, and we will settle up and take this ride to begin with. Who is Rick Osuna? If we go to Amityville murders.com which I believe is manned by Rick himself, we can find this about tab author, Rick Osuna is no stranger to the mystery and intrigue surrounding the Amityville story. He started with the History Channel back in 2000 when he was lead researcher and a co producer on a documentary about the infamous Amityville case, disagreeing with the direction the History Channel took on its documentary, Rick continued on his own. He was determined to reveal the full story. Rick has received a number of acclamations from both expert criminologist and journalist for his research into the notorious Amityville murders, he was compelled to report the truth about the DeFeo murders and ensuing cover up that included turning the DeFeo home into the Amityville Horror Rick acquired crime scene photographs, trial transcripts, police reports and other official documentation previously unavailable to the public over a period of three years, he finished the night the defeos died despite facing threats and obstacles to revealing the true story. The first publication date was in 2002 the book was later optioned by Sony television for a film on USA Network. End Quote, The book itself is set up as such. There is an introduction titled, searching for the truth. Part one, mistaken perceptions. Part Two, The Untold Story. Part three, corruption in Suffolk County. Part Four, a mockery of justice. Part Five, alternative pathways to freedom. And then a brief afterward. There is also a foreword that has been written by a woman named Geraldine DeFeo, or who claims to be Geraldine DeFeo. There's some debate there. She alleges that in 1974 she was married to Ronald Joseph Butch DeFeo, Jr, and was also the mother of his child. Now if you're like me, you start at the beginning here, and you're reading this going, I was not aware that he ever had a wife or had fathered a child. So if that's your reaction, please know that you're not alone. One criticism that I would say I have with the book as a whole is that it relies very heavily on Geraldine, if she is telling the truth and everything is legit, that's no issue. I mean, it is in the sense that any book that relies solely on one particular person for a crime of this magnitude. If you're talking about something that's small and minor, that's one thing, but we're not talking about a kid stealing a package of bubble gum at the drugstore. I'm so sorry. My heart almost jumped out. Out of my chest because a light bulb just blew Whoa. Talk about making a spooky episode about a creepy, creepy story, and then, oh, my goodness me, that was quite something. Oh, how about jumped a foot right out of this chair? Okay, where was I? We're not talking about a kid taking a package of bubble gum at the drugstore or something minor. We're talking about the mass murder of an entire family, including young children, which makes it that much more heinous. So basing an entire book so heavily on one particular person, and then we're left with these questions of, were they actually married? Was this child actually butch's child? If this woman is not being truthful, then that puts a lot of the book in question. So for me, that's a red flag right at the beginning. In the introduction, Rick talks about how he read the Amityville Horror at like six years old. He was fascinated by it, and he believed that George and Kathy had really gone through some harrowing paranormal experience. But as he had more opportunities to talk to them and to work with them as an adult, he decided that he was mistaken and that they were, in fact, full of it, for lack of a less blunt term. He also presents affidavits and some documentation to substantiate the idea that Geraldine was married to Butch. He even has a document from Butch himself to attest that Geraldine was his lawful and legal wife, and that this daughter that Geraldine says belongs to Butch, according to Butch, he agrees with that point counterpoint. He's been caught in more than a few lies, his stories about what actually happened the night of the murders, they've been all over the place over the years. So it's like, do you trust a liar to tell you the truth?

You have to judge for yourself. On this one, Rick seems to be convinced that she's telling the truth and that she wouldn't have any reason to lie. She's not going to make any money off of it. It's certainly not going to do any favors for her reputation or for the reputation of her daughter. So why do it? If you go to Amityville faq.com they have a tab official document of no marriage. I'll drop a link obviously, so that you can check this out for yourself. And here they've written. Ronnie DeFeo was married to Geraldine Raimondo in 1974 at least. That's what Rick Osuna claims. This is important, because Geraldine is the main source for the claims in Osuna his book. The night the defeos died, I will butt in and say, I agree. She does appear to be a very prominent main source for his entire book, Geraldine seems to have been an eye witness at nearly every event, even claiming to have been in a bar with the lutzes and Bill Weber defeos attorney as they supposedly hatched the idea for the lutzes to buy the house and claim it was haunted in some bizarre effort to help with Ronnie's defense against Six murder charges, according to Geraldine, as evidence of their marriage, Osuna provides affidavits from old friends of Ronnie's, and you can see some of the pictures if you go here to this website, naturally, you can also see them if you check out or purchase the book. According to this, they not only got married in 1974 but also had a child out of wedlock that August. So we checked to see if there was any record of this marriage. Here is the official document from the state of New Jersey showing them as having no record of any marriage between Ronnie DeFeo and Geraldine in 1974 the search was done using both maiden names given by Jerry and Osuna. Why does no record of the marriage exist? Rick Osuna claims that the defeos connections to organized crime made sure that all such records of the marriage were destroyed in order to prevent Geraldine from getting involved in Ronnie's murder case. Why would they go to such great lengths to do this? That's not made clear. I will butt in and say in the book, the argument is made that because Butch was being portrayed as this insane, demonically possessed, cooped out, drugged out serial killer. There was fear that reprisals might happen to Geraldine, at least, that's as the story goes again, super duper. Judge for yourself. So. Protect her and to protect the daughter, a number of records were destroyed. Names were changed. It was like, We don't want any harm to come to you or to the child, because somebody might get mad and try to do like a retaliation or honor killing against you. I'll continue to read here is a notarized statement from Geraldine, which may be a bit closer to the truth. In it, she claims that she was never married to Ronnie, and was, in fact married to Joseph Pisani in 1974 and then Gerald gates in 1978 who she claims she is still married to. And there's a photograph here of a voluntary statement from a Geraldine gates dated May 1 1990 and that seems to match the birth certificate showing the child she delivered in August of 74 was not Ronnie's, but the daughter of her and Joseph Pisani. There's also a picture here of a verified transcript from the register of births and notice in those previous documents that Geraldine lived in upstate New York, about a four hour drive from Amityville, and that's still where she lives today. I'll butt in and say, I have no idea if this lady is still alive, if she still lives, there no clue. So she was married to Ronnie. It's tempting to say no, but here are some more documents, the first one being a marriage certificate showing Jerry married Ronnie in 1989 and as you can see, the state of New York granted them a divorce in 1993 so I suppose the 1989 marriage really went down, though it seems Geraldine was already married to Gerald gates at the time, which, if true, would be a case of bigamy, and would mean the marriage between Ronnie and Geraldine was never truly valid in the first place. End quote, so this is its own really weird can of worms, and you may wonder, why are you going in that direction? If the book is about the night the defeos died, why are we talking about whether Geraldine was legit married to Butch at the time of the murders, or she wasn't. For me, it's important for us to get some handle on what we think, because she's such a key source for the book's material. As I said before, if she's lying, which I'm not saying she is, I don't know. I've never met this woman. I have no idea if she's lying, then the whole book becomes problematic. If she's telling the truth, then it's no issue, although we would certainly wonder what, like, what was the necessity of hiding the identities here that they were scared that she would be killed because there was so much vitriol against Butch is, is that the whole story, I don't know, Rick's book tells us that big Ronnie, the patriarch of the family, was abusive to everyone, to the children, to his wife, and that the wife left at one point, and he wrote a song and actually had it made into a hit record. So as I'm reading this, I'm like, there clearly had to be some kind of pull in this family. There are also accusations of their involvement with organized crime. And I'm like, you typically speaking, I'm just thinking of like John and Jane Q Public, if there's a big marital row and Jane Q Public is like, I'm leaving you, buzz off and don't ever call me again. John might write love letters and poems. He might send flowers every day to try to woo her back, but generally speaking, John Q Public is not able to have a hit record produced in order to woo Jane Q public to come back to the homestead. I found that really interesting. Anyway, we're told that big Ronnie is abusive. He's a giant bully. He's he weighs like 270 pounds, so he's just a big, hulking guy, and anybody that gets in his way is perceived as a problem, and he just deals with those problems by using brute force. We're told that Butch loved and cared about the family, especially his siblings, but he grows frustrated with the abuse in the household, and we're really given this picture of the DeFeo household as being a ticking time bomb, and that the housekeeper for the household had even been told on several occasions that it was like a ticking time bomb, that the mother of the family felt like it was Just a matter of time before the other shoe dropped, and something really bad happened in the household. At some point, big Ronnie kind of goes off the deep end. Even worse, I guess you could say, because he starts to make claims that he has, ESP he gets involved. Involved, allegedly, with some kind of con artist priest who convinces him that he has abilities towards prophecy and predicting the future. I guess he takes that seriously, and he has a couple of shrines built outside the house, and he has some sort of shrine put inside the bedroom. This book also makes the allegation that Dawn was involved in the murders. Now, we've heard that before. That came up during the Amityville origin story Docu series. And people now, of course, they're grown. They're well into elderly adulthood, because this happened a long time ago, but people that were friends with Dawn at the time were like that is just preposterous. She would never have had anything to do with murdering the whole family again. Judge for yourself. The supposed evidence is that there were powder burns found on Dawn's person, you have some people from law enforcement saying that doesn't prove anything, because if she was shot at close range, she would have those powder burns on her from being a crime victim. That does not, in any way, quote, prove that she actually did any of the shootings that night, the story that's laid out in Rick's book, according to Butch, I guess, whatever mood he was in at the time that he told the story, because, as I've said, his stories have changed over The years. They they had been okay so like Dawn, had been into some kerfuffles with the parents because she was dating a guy who had moved to Florida, and she supposedly wanted to drop out of secretarial school and move to Florida to be with this guy full time, her parents said no, even though she was 18, presumably she could have just left. She could have just ran away and left. It wouldn't have even been running away, because when you're an adult, you can do whatever the hell you want. She gets so mad at this, allegedly, that she decides that the parents need to die. And also, allegedly, supposedly she was taking heavy drugs, LSD, mescaline, etc. And I'm like, holy shit. So now they've accused this girl of dropping acid, dropping tabs of acid, and using mescaline in her bedroom and wanting to kill her own parents over a boyfriend that moved away even though she was 18. Like, why would you not just hitchhike? Or people did it more back then than they do now. You get your head cut off if you do it nowadays. But I'm like, why wouldn't she have just left get on a Greyhound bus? Why? Why would you need to kill your family over that, especially the kids? What the hell did they have to do with it? So Butch has been watching the movie Castle keep which we heard about that and the Amityville origin story Docu series, he's got a friend or two over with him, and the decision is made that the parents need to be killed, that they're tired of big Ronnie bullying the family, and they feel that the mother has not only been an enabler of The abuse and the bullying, but she's gone off the deep end and she's crazy. She's going to defend him. She's going to take up for him, no matter what he does, no matter how egregious and heinous it is, she's going to take up for him. So she has to go too. So according to Butch, they decide to murder the parents, but then they leave meaning he and his cronies. And then Dawn goes nuts, oh, and murders the kids. Which, why? Why would that even be a necessity? And so then Butch turns and murders Dawn, because Dawn has murdered the children. I'm just long pausing here because it's like, yet again, I feel like I have more questions than answers, and I don't really feel like this explanation makes sense to me. I'm going to stop here and play a brief clip from that episode I recorded about Amityville and origin story, because I do think it makes sense that this was not one person acting alone. We so often get the narrative of the lone nut Kook, whether it's Sirhan, whether it's Oswald, it was a lone nut Kook that acted completely alone with no help. And I feel like this crime fits in with that general genre. A journalist says the Brooklyn DA is investigating Mrs. Defeos father on suspected ties to Joe Colombo. They were bugged. Allegedly there were tapes of this man saying. What are we going to do if that kid gets off? If he gets off, we've got real problems. End quote. So who was Joe Colombo? Joseph Columbo was the boss of the Columbo crime family, one of the five families of the American mafia in New York City. So we're not really talking about small potatoes here. If it's true that the Brooklyn da was investigating Mrs. Defeos father because he suspected there were ties to Joe Colombo, that's not small time. It's not like some kid that goes out and does graffiti or minor acts of vandalism around the neighborhood, this would be serious business. Also, there are supposedly tapes of this man saying, what are we going to do if that kid gets off? If he gets off, we've got real problems. So if that's true, that would lend itself to the idea that Ronnie is a patsy. Somebody else has done this murder, and they've set him up to be the fall guy, or that he participated in the murder, but he wasn't the only one doing the crime, so butch's explanation, if we can call it, that, alleviates the problem of how would one person acting alone with a boom stick, a loud, noisy boom stick. Go from person to person, room to room, on different floors of the house, and murder an entire family, and then they're all just coincidentally sleeping in the same position you have the ghost and the devil made me do it. Group of folk who claim that Satan made it so that the boom stick didn't make any noise. It was psychically trapped in the house. The people were psychically trapped in their beds. And I'm like, I don't think so. I feel like this was not the devil made somebody do it, or ghosts committed the murder. I feel like this is a conspiracy. Now, with that being said, Do I think that that means that it was Butch and his friends and that Dawn went ape shit crazy and murdered the kids? No, I don't necessarily think that that's the truth, but I do think it had to have been more than one shooter. I don't see any way around that. There's also the possibility that's brought up in Rick's book that the reason why they were all in the same position is because the bodies were murdered in one spot and then moved into the bed in the same position systematically to make it look like they were all asleep. And this was some kind of execution, even though there are some things in this book that I am highly, highly skeptical of, like butch's overall story, for example, as I said before, how can you trust a liar to tell you the truth, especially when the story has changed various times. I'm also thinking of that guy that said in the origin story that he had done jail time with Ronnie, and that the actual mobsters in the jail did not have any respect for him, and that Ronnie's story had changed even in front of him, and he sort of began to think that Ronnie was just a bullshit artist. There there's some good information, some interesting questions that I think should be probed further. That's like in part three, he talks about corruption in Suffolk County. He talks about police brutality, and how police brutality in that area was actually being investigated prior to what happened to the defeos and the arrest of Butch. So it's to me, it's like all of these wrongs don't make a right, whether Butch was involved, whether he was framed as a patsy, for him to be beaten and left in a room repeatedly saying, I want my attorney and to be denied the attorney, denied food, denied water, denied the opportunity to go to the bathroom, and then beaten that that's not that's not how you go about eliciting a confession. That's not justice. Look, we all know that the American judicial system is not just for the sake of argument, just putting it out there. If that is what happened. If that's how it went down, then these things should be exposed.

Also, to Rick's credit, he gets into exposing what I personally would call the paranormal hanger honors in this story, people like Hans Holzer and Ed and Lorraine Warren and various other psychics which we could use, psychics in air quotes here, and mediums in air quotes here. Do I personally believe that paranormal and extraordinary things can happen? Yes, I do. I also think it's possible that people can have. Or moments of ESP or can have psychic dreams or spiritual communication, or we can just have that, like, weird feeling, you know, sometimes you just, you just don't feel right about somebody. You can't put your finger on what it is, but you're just in the presence of someone, and you feel like that person is dangerous, or you feel like that person is not to be trusted, or we may just wake up with a sense of foreboding, like something bad is about to happen, and then you find out later that day that someone close to you has died or been in an accident or something pleasant, you might be thinking about a friend, and then two seconds later, the phone rings, and it's that exact friend. We've had those moments of synchronicity. Probably everybody listening has had at least one instance of what I'm talking about. I don't personally think that everyone that trots themselves out and says, I'm a psychic, I'm a medium, I'm a ghost hunter, I'm a paranormal investigator. I don't think everybody in those categories is sincere. I think some people are doing it knowingly as a hoax. They're doing things knowingly to try to make money out of other people. And I think there are others that they're not charging any money, they're not ripping anybody off. They may just have an over inflated sense of self, or they may have an overly inflated imagination. They may imagine that certain things are going on when they're not. I mean, that's like I jumped when that light bulb blew, but it was a light bulb that blew at a creepy time. I'm not saying that ghosts were in here blowing my light bulb. Would that being said, I do think there are instances, not maybe permanent conditions, per se, but there are instances where somebody might have a flash of clairvoyance or ESP, or they just have a feeling that something's off, and then they find out later, thank God I didn't go down that road because I would have been killed or thank God I didn't get in a relationship with that person, because he was absolutely bad news. So I'm not ragging on every single person that says they've had an experience, or that says that they have some kind of supernatural talent. I do think in this particular instance, with the Amityville Horror, because it has been such a prominent and money making story, it has attracted more than its fair share of Grifters. I'm not going to accuse any one person or point any fingers at any one particular person, but I will say that I feel like Rick's decision to call people out in the book and to point out discrepancies and inconsistencies in stories, I applaud him for doing that. And he also tells a story in this book. I'm not going to name any names. Read the book if you want to find out. But one of these particular so called ghost hunters had said, had made this comment, like the people that seek out ghost hunters are crazy. We're just giving them what they want to hear. They should probably go see a psychiatrist, but instead, they're calling a ghost hunter, and this person allegedly was laughing about it. I think that tells you what you need to know about some of these people that were attached to the Amityville Horror. He gets into the supposed mob connections. He alleges that big Ronnie was embezzling money from his place of business. He also alleges that that place of business was like a low level front for our mafia activities, like, for example, again, allegedly they were disposing of bodies and disposing of evidence they had like a melter that could melt down, corpses could melt down, boom sticks or knives or things that might constitute evidence that they wouldn't want the police to get a hold of. And allegedly, big Ronnie and Butch both were bag men, just low level bag men for the mafia. Also, there were alleged to have been some ledgers that big Ronnie had been keeping where he had detailed money and crimes and names, and those books were hidden in the house, and Butch had taken it upon himself, supposedly, to destroy those ledgers after the murders, because he felt like it would cause even more trouble. Rick also gets into the insanity defense angle, and this made me think of the sons of Sam and Maury Terry and the ultimate evil David Berkowitz, you may remember that I recorded an episode about that as well. I'll drop a link in case you missed that episode. I think you should check it out. So it's like the attorney decides the best way for us to deal with this is to say that you were crazy, if we make it like you were a drug addict. Old, crazy, insane Kook, then maybe you can get sent to an asylum for the criminally insane for two or three years, and then you'll be out. And then also, allegedly, there was a story cooked up between William Weber, who was one of defeos attorneys, and the lutzes. And also, supposedly Geraldine was there when this went down, and they made the decision that in order for us to make quite a bit of money and also to potentially help Ronnie, which aka Butch, I should just call him Butch, since there's another Ronnie in this story, we will concoct this ghost story. We will make it like the devil made him do it, Ronnie, but Butch, sorry, Butch was possessed at the time of the murders, and there were demons in the house. And we're all going to make a lot of money. This can be turned into a novel. It can be turned into a movie. There's big bucks for us there. And as the detractors have said, Geraldine seems to be in the right place at the right time, all the time. This reminded me of Madeline Duncan Brown, because when I reviewed her book Texas in the morning, it's the same thing. It's like, well, how did this woman, who supposedly was just kind of a Charlie nobody who worked as an executive at an ad agency. How does she always seem to be in the right place at the right time to rub shoulders with all of these oil barons? How was she just happening to be there at the night of this supposed house party at Clint murchison's place where one important person after another, after another, after another shows up and talks about how they're going to murder JFK the next day. I find that suspicious. I don't completely trust it. I don't completely buy it. Now, that's just my opinion, and it could be wrong. I may read more things to change my mind, but I'm skeptical and I'm suspicious. So I think we have to look at it the same way here we've got this David Berkowitz type narrative of, well, the devil made me do it. It's not totally my fault, because Satan was involved, and he's the ultimate boogeyman, but the boogeyman of all boogeymen, the devil, the Christian devil. But in Maury Terry's book, we learn that David Berkowitz knew that that part of the story was a hoax. Supposedly there were devil worshipers in Yonkers that were killing dogs and doing blood sacrifices and like a grotto cave area, but he knew that the devil made me do it. Story was exactly that. It was a story. It was concocted to make him look insane for the same reasons, so that he would be sent to an institution for the criminally insane. Do a few years there, get paroled out for good behavior and for being, quote, cured, and then everything would be fine. I don't know if that's a trope that these patsies are exposed to, like, don't worry. If you do this for us, we'll be able to get you out. But then instead, they go to Big Boy jail and they have to just sit there and rot. I don't freaking know, but there's a similarity there between Berkowitz and Butch and this whole well, we'll just say you were insane and the devil made you do it 1970s opening volley of Satanic Panic type stuff. Then also we have this Geraldine lady who reminds me of Madeleine Duncan brown always just seems to be in the right place at the right time to overhear these conversations or to be dragged into the machinery of what was going on with the DeFeo family, and then Butch, more specifically, and things that make you go, hmm. So Rick talks about the concoction, or the supposed concoction, of the Amityville Horror, and how George was completely okay with fictionalizing elements of a story, so long as it told a good story and it was a money making operation.

He also clearly states in the book, and I quote, Butch DeFeo nonetheless, has exhibited a real disregard for those around him, including suing his ex wife and wanting to exhume the body of his grandmother. Over the years, he has also proved himself to be a habitual liar, willing to change his story whenever it suits him. End quote, obviously, I would say we have to take anything that he says about the night of the murders, what was going on before, what was going on after? With a huge grain of salt, a grain of salt the size of a boulder. I want to read just a little bit more from the afterword. It would not surprise me if Butch in his future parole hearings, because obviously this was published while he was still alive. He's since passed away. It would not surprise me if Butch in his future parole hearings, blamed Don DeFeo and Bobby kelsky for the murders, forgetting once more to mention his own involvement. Aside from that, there is one thing I am certain about, and that is the story he revealed to me was true. Of course, that does not mean that Butch DeFeo revealed to me the entire story. After all, there is still the matter of the seventh body. I'm going to butt in here and say this is another part of the book that I think makes it worth reading when he's talking about police brutality and accusations of evidence being covered up the mafia and the police department operating in collusion with one another, I feel like those are legitimate questions. We're getting away now from the devil made me do it, and were there demons and flying pigs outside the house? We're getting away from all of that, and we're getting into some real substantive questions. That makes me think about the episode I published on Phil Schneider in the underground, and then also the Philadelphia Experiment on the surface. The story is about seven foot tall aliens having a war in the Earth's crust. I'm trying to be respectful here, but I'm also like picturing it in my mind's eye, seven foot tall, aliens having a war and living in the living under the surface of the earth for hundreds of years. And valiant Thor is in the Pentagon. And so there's all this window dressing, this insane window dressing around the story. But then we get into the story of this Otto Oskar Schneider guy and how he was a repatriated Nazi that supposedly had top secret documents in his possession, talking about things like the Philadelphia Experiment. And I'm watching this documentary going, Holy shit. I feel like that's the story. Whatever you want to believe, about seven foot tall space aliens and valiant Thor and all of that good on you mate, go for it. To me, the real story is repatriated Nazi with top secret documents in his possession. It's a bit of the same thing here. I start to feel like the real story is about the police brutality, the cover up Butch is inability to really get a fair trial, and then also this seventh body, because there's a photograph. If you check out the book, you can see it there. It's grotesque as any murder crime scene photo would be, but there's a seventh body, and it's like, who was this seventh person? Was it a member of the DeFeo family that was moved in order to be photographed, or was photographed and then moved? And if so, which one of them wasn't, and why? Why would be the necessity to do that, if it wasn't a DeFeo, who was it? It looks to be a young lady, a young girl. So who would it have been? And as he asks in the book, like was, was there somebody missing? Was there a missing person and someone's daughter gone missing. Who? Who is this seventh person? So to me, there are things in this book that I think merit discussion, that merit further investigation. He also writes in the afterward, one cannot simply disregard Geraldine defeos testimony, because records indicating her marriage to Butch DeFeo prior to the murders cannot be found. The records, according to Geraldine, were destroyed by some powerful figures. So who is to say she is not telling the truth? In her defense, are several affidavits that were presented in federal court by Butch defeos friends that vouch for geraldine's authenticity. There also are third party accounts, such as Abigail that support her story, even Dawn's boyfriend, William Davidge told me that Geraldine was around prior to the murders.

I'm going to scroll down just a little bit still. If geraldine's testimony was disregarded, then what is left there is still the matter of Bobby kelsky is being implicated in the murders, the second boom stick and a different caliber of bullet found in Louise DeFeo. The defeos bodies being moved and the blood stained floors, the undeniable mob elements associated with this story, the lutzes conspiring with William Webber to write a fictional ghost story a judge who, according to the prosecution, was hand picked and a seventh body end quote. So that's a fair point. I would say, even if we take all the parts of the book that hinge on geraldine's testimony, this idea that Butch had a friend named Bobby that was involved in the murders, maybe he was maybe he wasn't, but now you have a second boom stick, and you also have a different caliber of bullet found in Luis DeFeo. We're yet again, getting into the territory of conspiracy. You have more than one weapon, you have more than one type of bullet, and you have a crime scene that no sane, rational person would say one. Person did that alone with no problems, bodies being moved, blood being found on the floors, the involvement of the mafia, the idea that butch's attorney sat down with the lutzes and said, well, we'll just write a book about this. We'll turn it into a devil made me do it ghost story. He also talks in this book about how the Lutz has never even made a single mortgage payment. They moved in, stayed there for 28 days and left in great haste, or they say they left in great haste. And I'm like, Well, you don't have a lot at stake if you've never even made a fucking payment. I never knew that. I guess I never connected the dots on that. And then, as the story goes, they came up with the story, and they made a lot of money, and any financial troubles that they had were greatly eased after the book and then the film are released, a judge that's hand picked. Why? Why the necessity to make damn sure that Butch goes to jail over this and then stays in jail? That, to me, suggests a patsy. This is like what we see with Sirhan. He's he's never going to get out of jail. Isn't this never going to happen by the time that this episode is published, he may have already passed away. Who knows? They had to make sure that Oswald was gotten out of the way, so they just killed him. And then the same thing happens to Ruby, because he starts to sing like a canary about how, if I can get out of Dallas, if I can get up to Washington, DC, I'll tell you everything you want to know. And then he gets a turbo cancer and goes Bye, bye. And then the seventh body, who was was it a seventh body? Did somebody move one of the bodies and photograph it and then move it back, or photograph it and then move it for some reason? And if so, who did that? And why? I feel like these are legitimate questions. Unfortunately, they get trampled under the feet of ghosts and devils and demons, and maybe Satan was in there. Oh, and then there's the trope to add some racism. Let's make sure that we get some racism in the mix. It was an Indian burial ground. Supposedly the swimming pool was a place where members of the Shinnecock tribe would put people that were insane. It was like an insane asylum slash burial ground. And people in the Native American community are like, no, that never happened. There was never an insane asylum there, and we never would have just dumped people into a pit to die out in the elements. Was Butch framed? Was he a true Patsy in the sense that he didn't even take part in the murders? He was just framed, and if so, by who who framed him, who wanted that family dead and was willing to be so brutal and grotesque that they even killed the children. We tend to think of Mafia hits as being you deal with the man, but you leave the woman and the children out of it, and you don't kill the person inside the family home, at least old school, Mafia rules were that way. But who who would have done this. Who would have wanted this to have happened? Or was Butch part of the murders? But he wasn't the whole. Meaning he wasn't the only person committing these acts of violence. Was Dawn involved. It's just difficult for us to imagine an 18 year old woman, young murdering her own brothers and sister. That's so creepy. I'm not saying it's impossible. To be clear, there have been teenage kids who committed murder, and there have been young adults, 1819, years old that committed murder. It's not outside the realm of possibility. It's just one of those grotesque things that gives us the willies we don't want to go there. That doesn't mean it's not true. So was she involved? Or is this just pure bullshit that Butch made up? Was the mafia involved? If so, again, the question arises, why the kids? Why would they not have eliminated big Ronnie, even if they decided that big Ronnie and Butch had to go because they were involved as bag men, allegedly, Why kill the kids? What did young children have to do with any of this, and then who was the so called seventh victim? A lot, a lot to digest here. I feel like this story goes deeper than we ever imagined. Now, as an addendum, I also want to go back to Amityville. F. A cue for a second, because there was a letter presented by Butch to Lou Gentile of the Lou Gentile radio show, and he alleges that Geraldine Gates was never legally his wife. He also alleges that Rick Osuna was a fraudster who was perpetrating a hoax on the public using Butch as his supposed source. I will drop a link to that letter so you can check it out for yourself. I can't say I have a lot of certainties about this story. One certainty I would say that I have is that it was not one person acting alone that murdered six people, or perhaps seven. Nobody wakes up, nobody moves, nobody runs for their life. One person somehow did it with the help of ghosts or with the help of Satan. Maybe the house created some kind of psychic barrier. I don't believe that. I also would say that this whole environment has attracted a number of Grifters. So there are people involved that I feel like are not all the way trustworthy. They may have a portion of the truth, but I don't know that we can trust them to have the whole truth. I wouldn't trust Butch, as far as I could throw him, because the stories have changed, seemingly on a whim. Today, he might like someone and want to to collaborate with them and corroborate their stories, but then the next day, you might hate them. Who the fuck knows with that guy? So I'm certain that it was not one person acting alone that was able to commit all of these crimes. Just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and nobody wakes up, nobody fights back. Nothing happens. And they all just happened to be sleeping in exactly the same position on the same night. I'm also certain that Satan was not there, either as an assailant or as somebody that was putting a psychic shield around the house so that nobody could intervene. I'm also highly, highly, highly skeptical of this idea of the Indian burial ground trope and Native American Chief had possessed Butch. Maybe there were, let's let, let's give me some leeway here. Maybe there were bones in the area. Maybe there were skeletal remains. But I don't personally think that that house was built on an Indian burial ground, or that the swimming pool was a Native American insane asylum back in the day. I also do not believe that a Native American Chief possessed Butch and told him to kill the whole family. Many other things are up for debate. For me, I feel like those are some things that I have a pretty good handle on. But what do you think? Check out Rick's book the night the defeos died. I do think it's worth your time to read. As I said, in spite of the fact that he goes down some weird rabbit holes and he has some people that are potentially of dubious character involved in the book, he asks some insightful questions. Stay a little bit crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

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