Did you feel anything at all
about the little red room downstairs?
That was like a secret room.
And that was described as
the gateway to hell.
If the red room is there,
then there really is something supernatural
or satanic about the house.
I'm not sure.
I think it was just a concrete wall painted red.
My name is Patty Commarato.
I was friends with Allison DeFeo,
the girl who was murdered with the rest of her family
here in 1974.
This is the red room.
Nothing more than a storage area
where Allison and her brothers and I used to keep toys.
Just red, you know?
There's never any feeling of spirit presence or ghosts
or any sort of thing like that.
Get out.
Haven't you made a lot of money
out of this story, whether it is true or not,
to the point where people might well say
they can't properly judge it
because it's been a profit-making enterprise
to tell the story?
We didn't write the book.
But are you not involved in the profits
of the book in some way?
We're involved with
the author, Jay Anson, on profits.
There is also--
We've been accused on occasion of fabricating a hoax.
And it's very hard to live a lie.
To daily come up against people who point a finger and say,
"This can't be.
"You went and you bought this house
"just to make a book,
"to take your children and to put them into this
"and to stand them up in front of the public
"and let the public ridicule them
for the rest of their lives for a few dollars." No.
Our parents sold us out for $275 a head
for the children to be depicted in the film.
George became obsessed with this moneymaking venture
from this Amityville story.
And he felt that it was fine to add fiction to it.
But I know what happened.
You don't get to play it off like
you were a hero to the family
when you're a perpetrator.
In my closet, there was a paneling
that revealed an area behind the wall.
That would have been where Ronald DeFeo hid
the things that he was trying to hide from his parents.
Looking in there, there was two bags of capsules,
pills.
Exactly what kind they were,
I didn't find out
until questioning George way later in life.
And he was really surprised that I remembered.
He said they were quaaludes.
So now, I don't know how quaaludes--
I've never taken them, so I don't know exactly
how they'd react on the body--
but I do know this:
George had a very different change in his demeanor...
...where he no longer went into work,
he no longer was doing personal care.
He became obsessed with just sitting around the fire
and obsessed with his boats and his boathouse.
And so to me, that sounds like a drug binge.
Mama!
Oh, mama! Mama!
We were going to do a sequel
to The Amityville Horror.
We're going to do a second book,
absolutely non-fiction.
We spent the money that we made from the first book
and from the movie to hire the writer John Jones.
And then subsequently go back and interview
all the other people that had helped us
and had been involved with us
while we were in the house and afterwards,
telling their stories.
George hired a ghostwriter
for the second book.
And he wanted me to come out
and help with all of that.
And that's when I moved out to San Diego.
George and Kathy wanted my recollections
of all these things that had transpired.
I actually went out to California.
It turns out,
George seemed to think that
whatever type of entity was in the house
followed them to California.
And he said to me, "Well, when we were on the plane
"going to San Diego, Missy was sitting there
"and said, 'Oh, look, Jody is on the wing.'"
Missy had a very high degree of sensitivity.
She truly believed that they were little playmates
that were there.
It was--it was frightening.
It was very, very, very, very frightening.
The Warrens became a part of our lives.
They'd visit us out in-- out in California
when we were living there.
And the Warrens started testing us kids
for psychic abilities.
We were walking alone with the children.
And those innocent little kids were relating to us
without us asking questions
about things that occurred to them in that house.
I remember Father Ray
coming to California one time.
It was Father Ray that suggested that we move out of
the Amityville house.
I felt safe around him.
I remember I just ran to him and jumped at him
and he picked me up and I--I just wept.
I remember George asking later, "Why'd you cry?"
I did ask Father Ray,
"Did you hear a disembodied voice
"telling you to get out?
"Did you feel something smack you in the face?
Did that happen?"
And he said "Yes, that did happen.
That's accurate."
Get out.
Get out!
I vaguely remember it.
I remember James Brolin, that's the main thing,
and flies or something like that.
Well, it was a haunted house movie.
So for me, it's how well is it done?
Haunted house movies, they began in France.
I guess the earliest was George Méliès,
1890s,
and they've always been with us.
It's always the same kind of basic story.
House is haunted.
People come in.
They get terrorized.
They don't leave like normal people would,
they stay like movie people do.
Horror is a great allegorical genre.
Everybody is afraid in the entire world.
We're born afraid.
We are afraid of the same things.
It's a universal feeling.
Humor changes sometimes from country to country.
The horror never changes.
It's a powerful medium when it's done right.
Part of where the title Get Out came from,
this goes back to the old Eddie Murphy routine.
In The Amityville Horror, the ghost told them
to get out the house.
White people stayed in there.
Now that's a hint and a half for your ass.
A ghost say get the fuck out,
I would just tip the fuck out the door.
And he did this Amityville bit of like, "Get out."
We got a chandelier hanging up here,
kids outside playing, it's a beautiful neighborhood.
We ain't got nothing to worry-- I really love--
this is really nice--
"Get out." Too bad we can't stay, baby.
I'm wondering if you ever saw
Amityville II: The Possession?
Please no, please.
Please, please.
No, life's too short for some of this.
Now, come on.
I guess the light's changing, right?
Let me know when you're ready.
I'm gonna just stick this back there.
Sound is speeding.
Diane Franklin interview, take one.
- It's changing, right? - Yep.
Thank you.
My name is Diane Franklin.
And I was the actress who played the daughter
in the film Amityville II: The Possession.
The film is about a young family
that moves to the suburbs
trying to start a new life.
I played Patricia Montelli,
based on Dawn DeFeo.
The minute they come into the house,
there is an energy that is not normal.
Take off your nightgown.
There.
And with that story,
I don't think anyone
has tackled the subject of incest that real.
The stories of the brother who takes on this energy,
taking on the poison of the family and the household.
She sees this monster about to shoot her
and she believes he won't shoot me, he loves me.
What are you doing?
And if you just look from where you are
and just look at my hand, it's out of the shot.
- So look out the window again. - Right.
And just turn to look at my hand.
Just keep it there.
Okay, and then walk to you.
And then just walk towards me.
Because of Amityville Horror,
I don't believe I'll ever get out of prison.
You know, they made a monster out of me.
And the public is terrified of me
and they don't want me back out on the street.
I spent the years 2004 to 2007
in prison with Ronnie DeFeo.
In prison, they show a lot of movies.
But they never showed any of the Amityville Horror movies
in Green Haven because Ronnie was there.
And Ronnie would have made a big old stink
about how showing the movie would put him in danger.
He also blamed them for his parole problems.
An Amityville Horror movie came out at the same time
as his parole hearing.
And he claimed that this made it
absolutely impossible for him to get a fair hearing.
And that's why he was denied parole.
It's all because of those fucking movies,
not because he had killed six people.
You want me to look out the window first
and look at Neil's hand and then walk into Neil.
When he first told me
that the mob rubbed out his family,
I of course nodded and said, "Sorry that happened."
It took about a little over a year
for him to start telling me a different story.
And go.
Ronnie talked to me in a hushed voice
and he said, "You know, it's really fucked up.
"My sister, Dawn,
"murdered my family.
"The only way I survived was by
"taking the gun away and shooting her.
"It was the worst thing I ever did.
It was horrible."
I heard a roar. You know, it was a gunshot.
It was loud.
I soon entered my father's room.
I pushed the light button on the wall there.
I saw a hole in my father's back--one hole.
I ran across the hallway, right?
And I saw my little sister there,
you know.
I started really getting crazy there, you know.
I saw her--with her head, you know--
blood running down the side of her head.
I ran upstairs then.
The only one alive in the house was my sister.
I went off.
I threw her across the room.
She went flying, landed in the bed on her stomach.
That's when I grabbed the rifle.
It was all one big motion.
I--I killed her.
I shot my sister in the head.
Like I say, I just lost it.
It just happened so quick, I lost it.
Over the years, Ron DeFeo had several versions of
how his sister, Dawn, was one of the shooters.
And this story changed over the decades.
It wasn't just one "Dawn was involved" story.
My father writes in his book that
he characterizes the accusation that
Dawn was one of the killers as preposterous.
He thought that it was unlikely that
a young woman who had no known experience with firearms
would be able to so expertly move from room to room
and in close range, with just a shot or two,
kill her siblings.
So my father did not believe the "Dawn is involved" story.
When I heard him accuse Dawn
of being part of the murders,
I was just astounded.
And I thought, "How dare you?"
She did not have that in her heart.
She loved her parents. She loved her siblings.
He was just trying to deflect, I think.
Yeah, I just knew that he was full of shit.
I read about the sequel, The Possession.
I was so incensed. And I'm trying to remember now.
I'm pretty sure that was the one where
they tried to now introduce the idea that
there might have been some incest.
And I said this is absolutely now obscene.
They want to make a movie about whatever that's not true,
you know, call it something else even.
At that point, it's really so exploitative.
The Possession shows the ways in which that story
got out of the Lutz's hands.
The sequel wildly fabricates things
because that's what we do with stories like this.
You can't tell the story in a strictly factual way
because no one--no one really wants to see that.
What was in this house?
No.
What evil could drive their son to madness
and destroy everything and everyone he loved?
Mommy!
Dino De Laurentiis put out a movie called
Amityville Horror II,
which they eventually changed to Amityville II
and did it without our permission.
Amityville II: The Possession.
And that became a 12, 13-year lawsuit.
So even if you have the rights,
even if you're trying to do this
the best way you possibly can
and fix the stuff that's been wrong or been said wrong,
things will come along and keep you from doing that.
I remember as a kid being in school
and we were asked what our parents do for a living.
I didn't even know what they did for a living.
I remember asking George.
And he said "I'm a writer."
And I said, "What do you write about?"
And he said, "Things that happened."
And that was where he left it.
Amityville became George's whole project.
It was his business.
He kept the publicity up.
That was his way of working.
He supported his family with Amityville.
The progression that George went through
was like, very obsessive
of the notoriety
and getting out there and his public image.
Behind closed doors, he was a very different guy
than what he was portraying publicly.
I asked Kathy a couple of times about the children.
And she told me that she was trying to
shelter them from everything that was going on.
But I didn't think, at that point,
they were being sheltered.
It was just too public.
And when it happens to a family,
usually they close the door and they don't talk about it.
Yeah.
And unless these things are talked about,
they'll never be understood.
When you would talk to the family and the kids
and I would ask them questions,
they would not go, "Well, um--"
They'd have the answer right now,
like they'd been schooled.
I listened to James Brolin talk
about how he met the kids
and they sounded like they were coached.
We were in a situation where
if we weren't on our best behavior,
we were gonna get the shit knocked out of us
when we got home.
So to say that we were coached,
the guy doesn't know what we were going through.
Ooh, "big star."
Okay, so you made your name off of that movie.
You didn't live it.
George was a former Marine, a black belt in jujitsu.
I had no defense against him.
So George believed that,
with my mind, I could make him ill...
even to the point where...
he thought he was gonna die.
And he came in and he started beating the shit out of me
for my thoughts.
Killing him through telepathy was just
so fucking fucked up, man.
And I really didn't plan on talking about that.
I need a minute, man.
Holy fuck.
If the Warrens found that Christopher, in a sense,
has some psychic ability,
I can see where one step could lead to another.
Because George, he was afraid that
Christopher took the evil with him,
was possessed by the evil.
George was kind of constantly haunted.
He would hear voices.
We would be driving somewhere
and he would turn around while he was driving
and yell at something in the back of the car.
He would be sitting in the room,
and all of a sudden,
he'd get up and start screaming at something...
telling these spirits or whatever that was haunting him
to go away, to not bother him.
It gets to the point where you're convinced that
there is evil, there is something there.
It kind of felt like George was acting possessed.
I had found out I was pregnant with my first child.
And I didn't want my unborn child
to have to experience anything like that.
I was just frightened by it.
I went back home to Brooklyn.
I don't want anything to do with Amityville at all.
I don't want anything to do with the Lutzes.
And just--I never contacted
George and Kathy again after that.
Book number two
that he authorized to have written,
it talks about how he had to go through an exorcism.
In London, England,
the Archbishop of Canterbury's exorcist,
Reverend Neil Smith,
he performed for us what some people would call an exorcism.
I'd call it more of a blessing.
But it was a rite of separation
in the Anglican church.
And it was a separation from the house,
from the effects of the house.
He looked right at Kathy and said,
"You're still affected by this."
Beat down Satan under our feet
and cause all evil forces to depart!
I've personally observed exorcism
both in Catholic circles and evangelical ones.
Exorcism can function as a placebo ritual.
And that that is then going to aid them
in their feeling of recovery,
and it actually will produce a physical sensation
that could, in a way, improve their condition.
You don't need an exorcism
because you lived in a haunted house.
You get an exorcism because you've got demons.
What is it like to live with a man
that's in need of an exorcism
that's your stepdad
who's treating you like a stepson
that doesn't care who the hell you are?
Christopher was always looking over his shoulder,
like, "Oh, I better not say anything I'm not supposed to
or I'll get in trouble."
The thing that really struck me most was that
Danny would just glare at George.
He did not hide his feelings.
If looks could kill,
I mean, he would have had laser beams towards George
coming out of both eyes.
Kathy had, from what I know,
an abusive first husband.
And it left her as a divorced woman in the '70s
with three children, which, at that time,
it was not exactly looked well upon.
So when George came along and was willing to accept her
and the children, it was wonderful,
from her point of view,
that somebody wanted to make them a family again.
And she did everything she could
to keep the marriage together
because of the children.
But you said you and Kathy
weren't together anymore.
And I was wondering if you can say when you divorced and why,
if it had anything to do with this or--
The reasons we got divorced are really personal.
We went in separate directions about exposing the house.
As far as Kathy is concerned,
her point is that she only wants to deal with
the nonfiction part
and does not believe that
fiction also helps to do that.
My mom became ill.
She had a medical condition and she needed help.
I took up residence with her,
started to care for her until her death.
That was when I decided to
change my name back to Quaratino.
And so for several years, I got to enjoy the anonymity
of not being associated with that story anymore.
And then one day, I got a phone call.
And that's when I found out that
George was getting ready to make another movie.
Next year, there will finally be
an authorized sequel of sorts,
Amityville Horror: 25 Years Later.
- Is it real? - Yes, it's in production now.
And you're the first people I'm telling in the media.
And then I find out that George's movie
is gonna be about a Lutz son returning to the house
25 years later,
killing him through telepathy in the end of the movie.
So I did whatever I could to, like, stop what he was doing.
I took to the internet.
AmityvilleHorror.com became available
and I scooped it up.
He sued me for what he said was a trademark violation.
I can't say that what I had done actually stopped it,
but I was making as much of a ruckus about it as I could.
All in favor, sign up on my Facebook page
and let's make history.
Good night.
I've made myself publicly available on social media
for about a decade now.
I'm just really amazed at the stories I hear from people
that were greatly affected by it
when it initially came out.
People of my generation or even older that, like,
this story really resonated with them.
There's so many people in the paranormal field
that I have met through the years,
having gone to conferences,
and I often ask people,
"What's got you so interested in the paranormal?"
And so many people have told me,
you know, "When I was a kid, I saw your--
I saw the movie about your family."
Enough about the story resonates as real.
And that's why it continues on.
Why is it you feel like people want to cling
to this story?
Partially because they have fantasies that they believe in
and partially because there's money to be made.
He holds the unique title of demonologist.
She's a psychic.
Together they just completed work as
demonology advisors on the upcoming film
Amityville II: The Possession.
Please welcome Ed and Lorraine Warren.
The Warrens,
they made a career for themselves.
They highlighted the fact that
they were involved in our story.
What's the most famous case
you've ever been involved with?
Well, I would have to say the Amityville Horror,
since it's world renowned.
Years later, I found out that they had been
the creative consultant on multiple movies
after the initial movie.
And I didn't find that to be, like, genuine.
When The Conjuring opened
in theaters in 2013,
it was a box-office hit
that raked in $137 million in the U.S.
and terrified audiences worldwide.
This is as close to hell as I ever want to get.
People would attach themselves to this
in one way or another.
Jay Anson, having been penned as the author,
is the one that's making the big money on it.
Last I know, he made, like, 16 million on it.
16 million.
My parents made, like, 400,000.
Get out!
It's a remake that's really worthy,
simply because the original doesn't--
I don't believe, holds up after time.
Kill them!
The greatest haunted house story ever told.
Catch them.
Kill them.
Catch 'em and you kill 'em.
You catch 'em and you kill 'em.
Ronnie DeFeo kept repeating this over and over.
I've never seen anything like this.
"How can I get a fair hearing when all they know
is that I catch 'em and kill 'em?"
He was angry at Hollywood.
He claimed that he should have been compensated
for his contribution to the Amityville Horror movies.
The Amityville Horror really is supposed to be me.
Because I'm the one that
got convicted of killing my family.
I'm the one they say did it.
I'm the one that's supposed to be possessed.
He had told me about the mob stuff,
and then said Dawn killed the whole family.
So I guess it's implied that
he had acknowledged that the mafia story wasn't true.
From what I understood, the father had
legitimate connections with the mafia.
But this did not spread to the son.
The mob guys in the jail
wouldn't have anything to do with him.
I mean, they actively disliked him.
They felt he was an embarrassment to them.
I don't believe organized crime had anything to do with that.
Anything.
There were two major rules:
you never killed a guy in his house
and you never killed him in front of his family.
That was the rule and you didn't break that rule.
The horror itself is my family getting killed.
I guess that's the only really tragedy here.
Everything else... it's fantasy really.
It's fiction.
When Ronnie died in 2021, I felt really sad,
which is kind of strange because he's a multi murderer.
He hadn't been, like, the greatest guy I ever met.
He was actually an oddity, if anything.
And I was surprised that he died
a little younger than I thought.
But he had been using drugs his whole life,
as a prisoner too.
Also, of course, prison is a stressful place
and it wears on you.
My grandmother was the secretary to Father Ray.
One of his annulment cases was George's first marriage.
She really documented everything
because she just had a bad intuition over time.
And the intuition was just, there's something there,
but I don't know what it is.
I was married previously also to a Catholic.
And as part of the annulment proceedings for that marriage,
I was called down to the diocese office
and interviewed.
The annulment documents
do reveal things about George's past
and have never been released.
Yeah, so the letter, um,
from the therapist was quite interesting
because of the fact that he has the perspective from both
George and his first wife.
And she defines her role as being
a maid in his office and in his home.
He never allowed me to open my mouth.
Yeah.
He'd proudly use terms as, "I got her trained,"
to defiantly state his position in their marriage.
"His rigid expansive attitude appeared to conceal
"a very frightened individual
"who was most insecure concerning his role
as a male and husband."
George has effectively extorted money.
She invested all of her savings,
and he refused to allow her name
to appear on the title of the house.
This is a little uncomfortable to read.
There is evidence that he abused her physically
on several occasions.
Apparently, she required medical assistance
for injuries that were inflicted by George.
The feedback from the medical expert, it says,
"In this case, with the preparation
"I am able to state with medical and moral certainty,
"that at the time of his marriage,
"George Lutz was suffering from
"a serious personality disorder.
"This would appropriately be diagnosed as
antisocial personality."
"George Lutz was suffering from a serious
"personality disorder.
"His callousness and selfishness is typical
"of the sociopathic
or antisocial personality."
I'm kind of mystified that somebody can be
that much of a chameleon.
I'm shocked that he hid it so well.
I really am.
Antisocial personality disorder
is a diagnosis that tends to be given to people
who have a blatant disregard for the rights of others.
These are people who do not show empathy
or remorse for other people.
And they're oftentimes believed to be manipulative.
So they might present differently
or say different things or shift facts
when they're talking to different people.
In 2006, Dr. Hoge, a psychiatrist,
interviewed Ronnie DeFeo to get a better understanding of
how Ronnie DeFeo was presenting,
how he was thinking about the crimes.
He believed that Ronnie DeFeo was experiencing
an antisocial personality disorder,
that he seems to be more manipulative.
Sometimes individuals try to
give an excuse for violent behavior or abusive behavior.
"The devil made me do it" or "I was possessed at the time."
And sometimes these individuals will
even undergo exorcisms,
as in the case of the Lutz family stepfather.
So that can be a little bit puzzling.
How do we interpret that?
Our only answer is that we're not totally sure.
There was a tribe of Indians called the Shinnecocks,
and they used this land as a sort of exposure pen.
They put all the crazy people here,
and they left them here to die.
The Amityville Horror film
is the first time in cinema
where the Indian burial ground trope is used.
That's why no one
ever buried a human being out there.
You are thinking of putting him out there.
Don't deny the thought hadn't crossed your mind.
The Indian burial ground trope--
I like to call it the IBG--
is the idea that if a place is built
on an Indian burial ground,
it is somehow more haunted or evil
or is going to inspire
something really dreadful to happen.
And yes, the Shinnecock Nation exists on Long Island.
They would venture to the area of the Amityville house
for possibly hunting.
But it wasn't really part of their traditional land.
The Indian burial ground in movies
is just such a cliché.
But people love that shit. They eat it up.
The site is supposed to be located on
an Indian burial ground,
and I believe they actually had to
repel a few Indian attacks as they were building it.
Why is it that the Indian burial ground
is always what people claim?
This was their burial ground.
Is it the white settler guilt?
Whose burial ground?
Mi'kmaq Indians.
Is it this idea that there has to be some kind of evil...
to justify why we took this land?
Even popular ghost shows
and the paranormal hunters that go out,
it's a very easy explanation,
especially if you're in the areas
that are associated with tribal people.
Perhaps we can think about this as a way
of dealing with the kind
of repressed and unspoken complicity,
especially in suburbia,
as a way of trying to tease out
some of the unspoken violence,
the unspoken horror of American history itself.
The fact that so many people wanted the story to be true
or in fact believed the story to be true
is much more revealing and is much more interesting
than whether the story itself is true or not.
What really happened is that we all joined in the story.
It became something that is self-sustaining.
It became kind of a feedback loop.
You can come into a space you think is yours,
but it has history.
There's traces, there's trauma.
Did this actually happen?
Maybe something did happen that was demonic.
We still don't know how to reckon with historical trauma.
It still rises up to battle with.
If you think about buildings that have seen
great violence or great suffering,
you think to yourself,
"Maybe they should be haunted."
There should be something here
because that way, it would mean that
all of that pain and suffering hasn't been forgotten.
She was shot in the head!
I never thought it was gonna be the basis of
an enduring story that we're still talking about
nearly 50 years later.
This has got to be the end.
I don't understand why people--
I don't know why people are so interested in it.
I guess because it's a ghost story
and people love ghost stories
and they want to believe they're real.
You want to believe there's something beyond our lives,
something that's beyond us.
Everyone in the world that I've spoken to,
if I mention it, know about this story.
They're fascinated by it.
But the sad thing is that he killed everybody.
No! No! No!
No!
I think a lot of it's true
and a lot of it's not.
And I don't think there was a demon in the house doing it.
I think there's some people in this world
are as evil as demons.
I believe it's now been 32 movies
that have attached the name Amityville to them
to capitalize upon this crap that I went through as a kid.
And none of those people give a shit what really happened.
George was embroiled in one lawsuit after another.
He had a lawsuit going with MGM
over the 2005 remake.
After that lawsuit was settled,
May 6, 2006,
George has a massive heart attack...
and dies.
Ronnie still haunts me.
Maybe I had a shot at getting the truth out of him.
I wanted to look him in the eye and say,
"What went down?"
But we'll probably never know.
And that's a shame.
I feel like Ronnie committed the murders alone.
He's scum.
And he's dead now and he's rotting in hell.
And that's my feeling.
No doubt George was a victim
of the karma that he put out.
"I'm gonna make a movie about my son
killing me through telepathy."
I'm not gonna tell the story about
what happened the day that he did die.
But that thing that he wanted in the movie?
Careful what you wish for.
The house will continue to be a time bomb...
ticking away, ticking away.
One fine day, someone will move into that house
who have some of the qualities of young Ronald DeFeo Jr.
and it'll start all over again.
♪ You were always Trying to mold me ♪
♪ Mold me
♪ But I'm not made of clay
♪ Oh
♪ You were always Busy molding ♪
♪ Molding
♪ Dating girls Half your age ♪
♪ I know you like working With your hands ♪
♪ But hands are for holding