How the Amityville Horror Worked

In early 1975, the world was introduced to George and Kathy Lutz, a couple who had fled their home in Amityville, NY to escape a powerful, evil supernatural presence living there. And this being the 70s, the world went nuts for their story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w No nonsense, let's get down to business. Bryant,
there's Jerry. What's going on with this thing? Rolling? And

(00:21):
again it's me Josh. Put the three of us together,
you get Stuff you should know. The late two thousand
and eighteen edition, which is tense. It's Josh doctor nonsense. Clark.
You have a degree in nonsense, that's true, and a
little I have a minor in tom foolery. Oh man,

(00:45):
how are you doing? I'm well, how are you good?
So I had to clear my throat. I had a
little garlic chicken in it really kind of attacked my
mucus memorane. Just fall chuck. Yeah, Halloween's almost here and
it's finally lie cooling off a little bit. Yeah, I know.
It's been a hot one, although the sun is still

(01:06):
blazing hot. Yeah in the sun, if it's in the shade,
maybe after sundown and the winds blowing big, you're you're
in there. It's fall time for real. I'm wearing my boots,
got a flannel shirt on. I might as well be
on a hay ride wearing my pumas my my favorite
murder shirt. Nice. Yeah, that's a great shirt. The toxic
masculinity ruins the party again. What a great shirt. Yeah.

(01:28):
They actually follow through with great show quotes and put
them on T shirts. Smart and sell a ton of them.
That's smart. Yeah, that's the way to do it. We try.
The key is selling a ton of them, that's right,
and having the good quotes. I feel like we we
ran out of good quotes seven years ago. That is
not true. Chuck, watch this you ready? It's showtime. What

(01:53):
do you think that's good? How about this? There's no
business like show business. Oh that's a good one too.
You could write a song out of something like that.
It's not show friends, it's show business. Well look, wait, wait,
before we start, I want to address the ten people
who are still listening at this point, I would like

(02:13):
to announce the birth of my new website. Yeah, it's
called the Josh clark Way dot com. How much did
it weigh? Uh? It weighed nothing because it's a website.
But there was a lot of blood, sweat and tears
put into its um gest station and delivery. And our
friend Brandon Reid who's such a great guy and a

(02:35):
listener on the podcast. UM put it together through his
business Innovate with an E built this awesome website. It's
super eighties, super poppy. I'm very proud of it. And
I'm starting a newsletter just to celebrate the whole thing.
And it's called The Josh Clark Way. Did you look
it up? Just now? I'm trying but it's not loading.
Oh what elves, we're cutting all this part out anyway? Oh,

(02:57):
wait here we go. Isn't it beautiful? Well, it's still voting.
It's because of my old phone. It's not because of
your I appreciate that. My my phone just can't handle
your website. I went, there's so much to my website.
It's like, oh, there you are clark Way dot com.
And um, I also want to say you me help
me with the site too, so big ups and thank

(03:18):
you to you me and Brandon for helping me put
this thing together. So anyway, I just wanted to say,
welcome website. Oh, I got a new fun thing to
do to hang out on my website. Sign up for
the newsletter to while you're there, Oh this is great, Okay,
you're ready. I'm glad I have this in my life.
Now you're ready to get started. Maybe I'll get a

(03:39):
website one day. You should get a website. It's like
the new thing. Everybody's sitting one. So um chuck. We're
talking fall here, which means there's only one word that
comes to mind every fall. Pumpkins. No. The other word
candy corn, no, diarrhea. No. Amityville. Oh, and specifically towards

(04:04):
the Amityville Horror, which is, from my money, one of
the greatest horror movies of all time. Yeah, one of
the great ones. And being a kid in the nineteen
seventies when this stuff was going on and famous, Like
even as a little youngster, I remember being terrified at

(04:24):
that paperback in the drug store when I would go
by the paperbacks and the look of that house just
terrified me. If the house looked any different, it would
be the story would have had fifteen percent less spread.
Or did the house end up looking creepy because of
the lore. It's just a colonial know that house looked creepy. Well, yeah,

(04:48):
if somebody, if somebody didn't say this house is haunted
by the way look at it, you'd probably be like, oh,
that's an interesting looking house. But yeah, you put just
even the hint of a haunting to it, and that
house was buil for it. Well, it looked like it
had eyes, which was one of the key things. It's
a colonial, but it's one of those colonials that is
situated sideways on the lot. So from the street you

(05:12):
saw the side of the house, the chimney running down
the side of the house, and those two I like
windows on the top floor on either side of the chimney.
It's just amazing. Yeah, it was a Dutch colonial to
be specific. Yeah, and if you Google maps that thing. Now,
first of all, it is not any longer one twelve
Ocean Avenue. It is now one oh eight Ocean Avenue

(05:35):
because the owners, at some point, whoever owned it, I
think two or three years ago, successfully lobbied to have
the address officially changed. It took them that long to
I don't know how long they had to battle, but
they changed it by four digits. Like they'll never find
an exactly. So I went and looked on the Google
images and of course now it looks it's bright and

(05:57):
sunny and has a lovely yard, and it's in the
middle of a lovely neighborhood and there's a a Chevy
in the driveway and an SUV and it just looks
like any other house. But it's still you know, if
you monkey around with Google, you can see that image.
And there are big signs all over like no trespassing
and and they need him. Believe me, people, just I

(06:17):
feel sorry for homeowners since the lets is yes, I
don't feel sorry for them though, No, I don't either,
because they made up a bunch of malory. Yeah, that's
one way to put it. But let's we'll get to
that part later. A right, Let's let's set the scene here. Yeah,
true horrific thing didn't ocur there. Yeah, and I think
that kind of gets swept under the rug a little

(06:37):
bit overlooked, you know. November, Ronnie Butch DeFeo Jr. Killed
the other six members of his family, his own family,
his mother, his father, his two sisters, Allison and Dawn,

(06:58):
and his two younger brothers, Mark and John. He's the
older brother, killed his whole family nine, twelve, thirteen and
eighteen ages. That is just I mean, this is one
of those crimes that rightfully has gone down in American history.
Is one of the worst. Yeah, and and yeah, like
you said, rightfully, this guy was a bad, bad dude

(07:21):
from the outset. He denied doing anything when he he
ran into a bar called Henry's Bar in the little
town of Amityville and I'll bet too, and he said,
somebody's just killed my family. And all the barbed patrons
were like, I gotta see this. And they ran to
one twelve Ocean Avenue with Ronnie de Feo and they
found all six members laying his face down on their

(07:45):
beds dead. I think their heads their faces resting in
their their hands. Um. And Ronnie Defao said it was
the mafia, yeah, which I think his family had some
tie somehow. Did the mafia kid an uncle named Carmine
And that's all you need right there. Yeah, but there
was one, uh like a legit crime family that had
some tie to his family, so maybe he just thought

(08:07):
that was a good um an alibi or whatever. No,
and he killed them with a thirty five caliber Marlin rifle,
which did you look this thing up? It's like the
the Old West, like lever action riding on a horse,
you know, cowboys and Indians kind of gun. I expected

(08:30):
the side bolt action carbon like a lee Harvey Oswald. Yes,
that's what I would know. This is like a boom.
That explains a lot, because one of the big mysteries
that still remains is why didn't the other family members
wake up? Well, that's a big I mean, I read
a little bit into the case, and that's definitely one

(08:50):
of these sticking points is because they it's not like
they were all like three years old and fast asleep
or something. I mean one of them was eighteen, and
so this there are a lot of variations of the
story because of that that one of the sisters helped
kill the father, and then the mother freaked out, so
Ronald killed her and like everyone was waking up, and

(09:13):
I don't know, I mean, it sounds like he just
he did it all himself. I also saw that he
had said years, like a year after while he was
being questioned, that he had drugged them all with barbiturous
But I only saw that once. That would make a
little more sense at least, because you can't silence to
this kind of I mean, maybe you could have wrapped
a pillow around it, but it's not like a handgun,

(09:34):
you know. So he said it was the mob first,
and then he said that he did it, but there
was a really big caveat to that. He said that
he had been hearing voices that were urging him to
kill his family, and even during the murder, something was
telling him to continue and just keep killing, kill him all. Uh.
And he said he looked around and there was no

(09:56):
one there, so I just assumed it was God telling
me to kill. So I it and he killed again
his whole family. And I read this article in Vice
magazine from like two thousand and fourteen from some guy
who said he spent like five years in prison with
Ronnie de Feo and said, finally, after befriending him over
a couple of years, he finally got to the truth.

(10:17):
And the truth was he felt like his parents treated
his brothers and sisters better than him. His parents didn't
like the fact that he liked PCP and LSD and
Heroin imagine that, and so he they got what was
coming to him, basically, and he do it again. I
mean he he I don't know this is an armchair diagnosis,
but clearly if his reason is, uh, he liked my

(10:39):
brothers and sisters more like he's he's has some sort
of serious mental issues going on. For sure, um, but
he did not want Apparently his attorney talked him into
uh talking about God and voices because he was like,
we can get you a plea of insanity and he
was like, I don't want to do that. He's like,

(11:00):
but you really should, and he goes, no, I don't
want to do that. He goes, well, there may be
a book deal in your future if he claimed this.
He goes, I like books anyway. What are books again?
There are things that make you money. Anyway. He's like,
you know how you like carve out the middle of
those things and you keep your heroine and PCP in there.
That's a book. Uh so a real crime happened there. Yeah,

(11:23):
in this house. Let's just say it was a faithful
decision for him to say publicly that a voice had
urged him to kill his whole family. Okay, that would
come into play pretty soon after that, after Ronnie to Fay. Oh,
I believe two weeks after he was sentenced a year
after the murders, and he got sentenced to six consecutive

(11:44):
life um sentences. He's still in jail. Oh yeah, he
will be forever. I would guess, like he's alive. That
was my point right, right, you're right. Um, about a
year after that, just like a year and a month though,
after the murders, a couple named George and Kathy Lutts
bought this place. And they bought it for a song.

(12:04):
It was eighty grand at a time when eighty grand
was a pretty good deal for a six bedroom Dutch
colonial in Amityville, New York. Yeah, and so there were
a couple while they were a couple with a couple
of kids, um well three I think nine year old Daniel,
seven year old Christopher at the time, five year old Missy. Um. Well,

(12:24):
we'll get to their financial situation a little bit in
more detail later, but um, the thought was that George
could run his even though it was kind of a
lot of money for them, it was a good deal
on the house and George could run his business out
of the house so save on office space. He had
a couple of boats. This house came with a dock.

(12:45):
He's like, I don't have to pay marina storage fees,
like you almost they almost had to buy the house.
It sounded like financially speaking, right, it was just too
good of a deal to pass up. Yeah, So um,
they bought the house did you say they were looking
in the thirty to fifty range originally, so it was
a stretch for him. But again, that's how good the

(13:07):
deal was. Um. So they buy the house and they
move in, and um, apparently almost immediately things started to
get weird. Right, So Cathy was a Catholic, and um,
what do you do when you're a Catholic and you
buy a new house. You invite your priests over to
come bless the house. I guess in the seventies in

(13:28):
New York you did well. I didn't know if that
had anything to do with the I mean, did they
know that the murders had occurred there and just sort
of didn't care. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Yes,
And I don't know that they didn't care. Supposedly, George
Lutts later said that like after they said we're interested
in this, when the realtor was like, wow, let me
just tell you one little detail. Just six big horrific murders, right, yeah,

(13:53):
just a year ago. Sorry, we haven't cleaned up the
blood yet. Um. So they they apparently took a second
to think about and talk amongst themselves like is that
really bothers this is such a good deal. And they said, no,
the deal wins out over any superstitions we have. So yes,
they knew, um. And I don't know if they hired

(14:14):
they were brought the priest in because of that or
just to bless the house. But they brought the priest
and to bless the house. And you can burn a
little sage, or you can call in a priest. I
think they had to ramp it up. Uh. They called
in father Ralph uh peccarero, and he came in. And
this is how the story goes, and we'll just sort

(14:35):
of tell it as it happens. Supposedly. I think that's
a great idea before we start pooping all over it. Um.
So he comes in blesses the house. Uh. Supposedly, he
feels in one room in particular, a very cold chill.
He said, even though it was winter, it was shouldn't
have been this kind of cold. And he hears a
strong voice, a masculine voice, shout and get out, and

(15:02):
then his car started acting. We heard apparently the hood
flew open and smashed the windshield. Doors are unlocking and
opening it. And he didn't even have one of those
kinds of horns. The car installed. Um, and this is
just the very beginning of And if you've seen the movie,
a lot of this stuff that we're talking about was

(15:22):
portrayed in the film. And it's Rod Steiger getting shouted at.
He's great, Like flies where there shouldn't be flies. Crucifix,
crucifix is spinning. Um. What a pig Well, smell of
rotten eggs in this hidden room that wasn't on any blueprint,
the red room. The pigs. So there was a pantom

(15:45):
like pig beast with glowing red eyes that would look
in on the family from the outside and leave cloven
hoofprints in the snow. And little five year old miss
You would be like, oh, that's just my friend Jody,
which makes it ten times area way scarier. Like I
would rather have my kid say I don't know what
that is, I'm scared, rather than that's just Jody. You know,

(16:08):
Jody's been suggesting things. Um. What else they claimed? I
think the dad claimed to see uh, Butch Dafeo's face
in a wall. He would wake up every every night
or a lot of nights, at three fifteen in the morning.
Supposedly when these murders took place, the kids started acting

(16:29):
funny classic movie haunting stuff. Yeah, it was a very
weird situation for him. Things were tense. They were all
like they had like hair trigger tempers. They were all
yelling at each other, apparently very uncharacteristically. And supposedly George
Lotts I've seen him described as a ex marine who
was an expert in karate, which again, this is the seventies,

(16:52):
so everybody was into karate back then or a black
belt sure, and um, he he was like a no
nonsense kind of guy. No nonsense right, yeah, like me.
So he's like, what's going on? And um he goes
to the uh the local Amityville Historical Society and says,
I want to know everything you have on one twelve

(17:14):
Ocean Avenue And it got quiet in the room and
the guy was like, come with me. So he George
finds out that their house is probably built on Shinnecock
Indian land. That was a big one. Yeah, not only that,
but supposedly where uh, this Native American tribe used as

(17:34):
a sick bay for the um for the mentally insane,
is how they put it. Um And this is where
they would just keep all of those people where they
were just sort of left to die there, so it
was haunted by them. It was the kind of place
where they just get dropped off and the people kind
of backslutely wait like okay, take care, see you later,

(17:55):
and they would die. And no one wants to be
treated like that. So of course anyone who has left
to die right there are on that land like that
would obviously haunt the land. There was some other There
was some other legends about what was behind it too.
There was like a m as abandoned cemetery pretty straight
up on the nose. Yeah, there was a Salem witch

(18:16):
guy that supposedly sacrificed animals, John Ketchum, And there actually
was a John Ketchum who lived somewhat in the area
around that time, but right he'd never been accused of
being a witch. And then I saw an interview with
a guy named Hans Holzer who's a bona fide para psychologist,

(18:37):
and Dr Holzer says that it all started in ninety
eight or nineteen o five when the original house there
was a house that was built in the seventeen twenties
that was moved. When that house was moved in nineteen
o five, it disturbed an Indian chief's grave, Native American
chief's grave, and somebody played with his skull like it

(19:00):
is a soccer ball, and he's been mad about it
ever since. And that is what drove Ronnie to Fayo
to kill and that is what terrorized the LUTs Is.
And that's the whole problem. Everybody just calmed down. That's it. HM.
So there's a little bit of a little bit of
peace falling into the puzzle. They're figuring it out, but

(19:21):
it's not making anything better. In fact, everything is getting
worse like this. This stuff is getting worse and worse
and worse. And finally everything culminates on this one stormy
night when they're their door blows open, blows off of
the hinges outward into the street I believe, or no,
into the house. I can't remember which way, but blown

(19:42):
off of the hinges is like a two pound door,
and the windows, the iconic eyeball or eye windows blow out,
some of the glass somehow blows in. It's just an
enormous explosion of energy, and the family leaves. They just
left the house after like twenty eight days supposedly, Yeah,

(20:03):
well no, they definitely, they definitely left the house. Yeah,
but neighbors say they left in ten days. Okay, yeah,
one of the two. But they're still The point is
their discrepancies all over the place. We'll get to those.
We'll get to those. But they left, and this is true.
They left all of their possessions in this house and
just fled. And that part is true. Never went back.

(20:25):
Uh yeah, unless they had a sneaky little moving team
with a U haul in the dead of night, go
back and get our stuff. From what story, there's stuff
got auctioned off? Yeah, I mean they left it. They had,
They grabbed some clothes and they took off into the night.
And um, which will go on later to be one
of the key selling points that this really happened, because

(20:48):
people that were on their side were like, why would
they do that on just the gambit of this being
a hoax that would eventually make the money. Would they
really leave all their stuff behind? Could anybody be that foolish?
Let's take a break and we'll find out. Right after
this stop you should stuff, you should know, all right,

(21:34):
So they get the heck out of Dodge, they leave,
They contact an author named Jay Anson. Oh even before that, well,
I was going to get to the attorneys over right.
So uh, Princess Hall as the publisher. In nineteen seventy
seven released The Amity a Horror was a huge bestseller.

(21:55):
Uh forty two weeks on the best seller list by one,
so it's six and a half million copies. They were
all over the country plugging this book, and we're the
letses were household names there, like on every talk show
you could imagine. I want to underscore that inn There
was a family from New York who claimed to have

(22:18):
been driven from their home by a supernatural evil force,
and they were international celebrities for it. Yeah, reason number
five million and eighty why the seventies were just awesome. Yeah,
Like that's what you could be famous for. Was saying
like ghosts chase this out of our house, and everybody

(22:39):
be like, that's a great story. Should we jump ahead
and talk about that attorney? Yes? Great? So what was
the guy's name? Bill Webber? Yeah, this is where things
get really hinky, is that Bill Webber is an attorney
and he's the one that sort of gets every I
think he's the one that saw dollar signs initially and

(23:00):
gets a team together for this book and starts saying
to everybody, including de Fao. Hey, we can all make
some money if we if we do a book here,
Dao has got to get a cut though. The lets
Is were like, what you're gonna pay the murderer and
he was like, yeah, it's my client, and they said,
we're not We're not down with that plan. Yes, but

(23:23):
this came after they had formed basically a business relationship,
but not even in an attorney client relationship, straight up
business relationship with William Webber, like, how can we make
money off of this? So the way that the world
heard about these things going on at one twelve Ocean
Avenue for the first time ever was at a press
conference that the letz Is held at William Webber's office.

(23:47):
That was when the world was introduced to the idea
of this amitieval horror, even before the book ever came out.
Um for anyone, at least not locally right right? So, um,
so Bill Webber and the lets Is they they had, Yeah,
they had kind of like a tentative, tenuous relationship. And

(24:07):
when Prentice Hall came along and Jay Anson came along.
I don't know if Jay Anson poached them or Prentice
Hall poached them, but whoever was involved with the Amityville
horror book, got the lutz Is away from William Webber
and his book idea and proposal, and he got cut
out of the deal. Just put that in your bonnet

(24:29):
and smoke it and save it for later, Okay. Yeah,
and supposedly left because again they didn't want to give
Dafeo a cut, or they just wanted a bigger cut themselves.
At this point, it's a it's a it's all about money.
But jumping back or forward, I can't remember where we
are in time, but they're they're all over the country,

(24:51):
all over the news. This would have been about, Yeah,
they're on MERV Griffin. Uh, there's They had a ghost
team of ghost hunters come by from Channel five in
New York w p i X and had people posted
in the house overnight taking all these photographs. There's one
now very famous photograph of uh, and it's creepy looking.

(25:12):
But you take a picture of anyone in black and
white in the dark poking their head around a corner,
and it looked creepy. So let me I want to
comment on that picture. You have you seen it? It
is creepy. Um. The the it's chalked up to some
of the paranormal investigators, one of like one of the
men who was at that w p i X seance

(25:33):
fest at the house, um getting in in front of
the camera. Yeah, they're saying that one of the uh
Paul Bart's that it was just one of the ghost hunters.
So that was a grown man whoever is in the
picture as a kid just playing his day. There's no
there's no confusing that for a grown man. I think so.

(25:53):
So unless he was had a boyish face, I think
it's a very bizarre picture. I mean no, I think
it's bizarre and supposedly was taken with infrared film in
the dark. And again it doesn't look like a man,
which is that's why the eyes are glowing, right, I
think that explains that. It's the fact that it's clearly
the face of a boy. Are you going under the
Josh clarkway dot com again? I'm trying to find that

(26:16):
picture again. It's clearly the face of a boy, that's
not a man's face. That's the thing that sticks out
to me. Yeah, I mean it certainly looks like a boy. Man,
it is creepy and also so so it's got to
be a boy and that's what it looks like to me.
And this picture was debuted in the vight by George

(26:37):
Lutt's on the MERV Griffin Show. But they could have
set that up. Could have been They could have and
and we were saying, have you seen the con drink?
I think I've seen parts of it. But that's the
real life couple. Yeah, Edin Lorraine Warren. Yeah, who hooked
up with these? I mean this is where they got
their start kind of right, kind of. They basically had
like an occult museum. They were like a psychic and

(26:59):
psychic investigators in Connecticut. And the guy Marvin Scott, who
was the anchor who investigated the the Amityville Horror for
the w p i X local Channel five station, he
invited them to come out to this seance and it
was like a series of sciences that they filmed. And
you can actually see this look up w p i

(27:21):
X News eleven Marvin Scott Part one and it's like
retrospective of this case and it has some of the
footage from the seance, but it also has an interview
with George and Lorraine Warren and they're basically like this
was real. This is obviously real. And during these seience
is supposedly the psychics started to feel sick. Lorreen Warren

(27:43):
said she felt an evil presence from the bowels of
the earth in the house. And then that picture, that photo,
that famous photograph was taken. So um, I think the
Warrens are the ones too that had said why would
they leave all of their stuff behind? And they also said, well,
we would not be involved, that this was some sort
of a hoax, right exactly. Don't you know who we
are proof positive? Right? Yeah? But the yeah, the real

(28:06):
life warrants were. They did investigate the Amityville House in
the early seventies or mid seventies, early on after the
story broke. You also know it was the seventies because
they were featured on Leonard Demi's Great Show in Search
of which we both used to love, and of course
they covered that in nineteen seventy nine. Supposedly got the

(28:27):
priest on there, even though he wanted to be kept anonymous,
and he or whoever it was, um kind of reinforced
this cold room get out, uh scream, Yeah, it just
went just double down on it. His face was hidden
and in the book, I think the j Anson book,
there were three source materials that came out about this story,

(28:50):
all within a couple of years of each other. There
was a Good Housekeeping article which is hilarious. There was
the Jay Anson book, and and then there was a
ring book, and then there was the movie. Yes, in
those three are like the source material for what everybody
knows about the Amityville legend. But what Leonard Nimoy pointed
out is that you know, this movie was, it's huge,

(29:12):
everybody loves it. But what a lot of people don't
know is that it's a true story. He says, it's
a true story. The book said it was a true story.
But Leonard, I just I just I expected more from
Leonard Nimoy than that. He says, unequivocally, it's a true story.
That's because that's what the script that teleprompter said. Well, anyway,

(29:33):
that was a great episode of In Search of Anyway. Yeah.
So in nineteen seventy nine, the very famous film adaptation
of this book comes out um starring James Brolin and
Margot Kidder as the lets Is, and it was a big,
big hit, eighty million dollars and domestic release, which was

(29:53):
I didn't do the conversion, but a very good haul
for ninety nine one of the smash hits of that
year for sure. I think it was close to probably Yeah.
Good money, Yeah, I mean this is back in the
time when like movies didn't routinely make a billion dollars
in an opening weekend. This was like that was a
ton of cash. Yeah. There were a lot of really

(30:16):
bad sequels that, no doubt, just kind of throughout the
whole legend of the house and just did whatever they
want with that name. Have you seen any of them?
I haven't. I haven't seen any of the sequels, Nor
did I see the remake recently with Ryan Reynolds. Yeah,
did you see that? I don't remember the original movie
that much, And to be honest, I don't know if
I ever saw it all the way through. I mean

(30:39):
I was way too young to see anything like this,
so it would have been it's still around the burning.
I know. That's the whole point though, is I would
have had to have seen this years and years later.
I don't know that I ever did. It's worth seeing.
It's a great horror film. Like I've seen a lot
of the parts. James Little Miss for Jody's Friend is

(31:02):
a little creep show. And who played Jody. I don't
know who played her, but like, yeah, the kids did good.
Rod Steiger was the priest. He was great. I remember
seeing that scene so definitely seen parts of it. Brenner
was the good O voice. Was he really sorry that?
It was kind of believaul Uh, they actually didn't shoot

(31:22):
at to that Ocean Avenue house though, Um, of course,
you know with a movie like this, the laure is
kind of usually not true, and the laura was that
they the crew was too scared to shoot there. It's
not true. They couldn't get a permit. So they shot
at eighteen Brooks Road Tom's River in New Jersey and
built a a superstructure around the house to make it
look like the other house, which was just like a

(31:44):
couple of hours from there, right to the town of Amityville.
Said no, we don't want anything like this, no publicity
like this. Please, this is a tragedy. We like our quiet,
sleepy town the way it is. No, we're not giving
you a permit to shoot here. Yes, so, um, but
Tom's River was like bring it. Yeah, nobody knows about us.

(32:05):
Who's Tom anyway? We don't know you ever River. So
the movie like you said it was a huge smash hit,
and it's just like the Lutzes were already kind of
household names. That changed everything, and that that the Amityville
horror became part of American popular culture. Like, yeah, it
was cemented into it. And it was also cemented in

(32:29):
that this is based on a true story. Maybe the
movie blew it a little out abortion as movies will do,
but the Lutzes were driven from their house by an
evil spirit and a lot of this stuff was true.
Isn't that nuts? Yeah? And it was that period in
the late seventies where, like we talked about it with
the Bermuda Triangle was a big deal and water beds

(32:50):
were huge. Water beds were big. But I feel like
there was just there wasn't as much stuff. There wasn't
as much content. If that's just the bigger deal like Amityville,
like you said, it was part of It wasn't just
oh that horror movie, like it was spoofed on Johnny
Carson and it was like it was all over the place.

(33:10):
It was like part of the fabric of America. But
I wonder if people bought into and thought about this
stuff like you were saying, because there was like nothing
was grabbing their attention every thirty seconds or over over here,
look over here, we're here, Like a could like really
kind of ruminate on something and let it like Stu. Yeah,
like now a show can win Best Show Emmy Award.

(33:33):
You're like, I've never even heard of that. Too much stuff,
a lot of stuff out there. But is that better
or worse? Um? Like, I feel like it's it's It
is true that things can just change and they're not
necessarily worse or better. But I also believe that it
is possible for things to get objectively worse now, whether
like they are not right now, who knows. I don't

(33:57):
think anybody's ever lived long enough to be like, I'm
a thous and years old and it is way worse
these days than it was five years ago. Now, are
you talking about entertainment content or just general culture everything
being alive? See, I think, uh, entertainment wise, it's better
because yeah, I mean back then, it was just like
everyone got obsessed with Amy Deville because it was the

(34:19):
only thing around obsessed with and it wasn't even great,
you know, but it was here. Just take this schlocky
thing and obsess over it. But you're saying it wasn't
great compared to today's standards, but back then, like it
was great. It was something that like you could maybe
you could basically put on like a cloak and wear

(34:41):
around for a year and really really be into the
Amityville horror rather than you know, like, um, the cameraman
missed that shot by like an eighth of a nance.
Like that's the critical detail that people have today, and
I think it keeps us from enjoying stuff like they
used to be able to in the seventies. That's I
think that's my point. Plus, we're all doped up. Yeah,

(35:03):
there's a lot of grass, but really terrible grass. That's
one thing that's gotten better is the grass, from what
I understand. All Right, so maybe we should maybe we
can take a break now and then we can start
poking holes in this thing. Start sounds good? Yeah, you

(35:39):
should should know, all right, So I insist we have
not booked any holes yet. There's some dents in there
that we've kind of put our fingers in. I've just
been snidey laughing at everything we say, like yeah, right, um,

(36:03):
but here's some of the holes, and there are quite
a few. I kind of mentioned before. Um neighbors say
that they left like a week and a half enter
their stay in this house, let's just said twenty eight days,
so right out of the gate, you got a discrepancy. Yeah.
And and the kind of what the thinking was and

(36:24):
still is to some people is that they couldn't afford
this house. Didn't take them long to realize it, and
so they cooked up the story. Yeah, but imagine figuring
that out in ten days. That's a little weird. Well,
and I also don't know how that would get them
out of their mortgage. Just defaulting on it because it's haunted, Yeah,
just walking away like can't get blood from a stone.

(36:44):
Go take the house if you want it back. Yeah,
but could they claim that that it wasn't disclosed? If
it was disclosed, like, how could they literally get out
of the mortgage? I don't know, man. I think like
I think, if you if you stop making payments, if
you don't care about your credit, and I'm not sure
what it was like in the seventies, but if you're like,
I'll take this hit for seven years on my credit
right away and just walk away, like then you don't

(37:07):
have to make payments anymore, that's that's what I think happened.
But I don't think that they were able to do
that because they started making money from their story, and
everyone knew that they were making money from their story,
so people wanted their money from them, Right, that's incredible.
The great show from eighties. Did you used to watch that? Yeah,

(37:28):
I watched the episode that this was on, But did
you watch it as as a kid? A great, great show?
And on this show? Sorry, it was really positive. Do
you remember it seemed pretty upbeat. Well, it's called that's incredible,
not like that's uh crappy. The cameraman missed that shot
and it was I think it even had an exclamation point,

(37:48):
didn't it. Yeah, at the end of the title. So
that's incredible. Barbara Comarty owned the house at the time
of this episode, walks them through and shows like close
up so the hinges of that front door and these
windows that are still sealed, was like, these things didn't
blow No. She she went out of her way to

(38:08):
make sure that everyone knew that this stuff hadn't happened,
and ironically, she exaggerated the facts that the skeptics pointed to,
so everybody was exaggerating their case on either side of this.
But look, let's also said though that no, no, there
were pictures in the newspaper of that front door blown out.
Have you seen the picture? Well no, like, I didn't

(38:30):
think anyone could find it. It's a screen door that's
kind of like hanging open. I'm not kidding. That's the
picture from what I understand. All right, so it's all
falling apart. Then, oh yeah, it's all fallen apart. It
has fallen apart big time. Apparently. George Lotts died in
two thousand and six and to his dying day said
that all of this is true. He said, yeah, man,

(38:52):
the book got a bunch of stuff wrong. The movie
got a ton of stuff wrong. Because, um, I think
the Ryan Reynolds dream make of the movie was supposedly
build this. This is way more um true to the book.
The original movie kind of created its own stuff, which
is why it's viewed as one of an additional source
rather than just part and parcel with the book. Um.

(39:13):
So George Letz would say, all these people got all
these details wrong, but this this stuff we said happened
really happened. Part of the problem is some of the
stuff that they said happened was like levitating off the
bed and looking at each other going can you believe
we're levitating? I saw an interview where he said that
in public on camera. Um, he really like, kudos to

(39:35):
him for sticking to it. Yeah, I would say a
deathbed is a perfect time to be like, guess what everybody,
because then everyone would be like yeah, no, no, thank you, guys,
knew no s. I love that. This is a family show.
So George Lutz went went to his grave saying, no,

(39:56):
this is this is for real. William Webber, Bill web Were,
the attorney, did quite the opposite of that. Well, he said,
and of course Lutz will paint this is probably painted.
This is sour grapes because Webber was cut out of
the money deal. But as soon as they left and
and made their own book deal, he started barking that

(40:18):
this is all b s. This is a hoax that
we made up to. He totally did that. Um. He
said that over about three bottles of wine, he and
George and Cathy lutts Um concocted the story out of
whole cloth and then had a smoking night of love,
making three of them on their water bed. Jeez took

(40:40):
a sexy turn all of a sudden sure, so um, yeah,
Bill Webber he said that. He said, Hey, I was
just looking to get another trial from my client, who
I think was innocent and insane. Um, what the Lutzes
were doing was going after money. But you can also
look at it like Ronnie to fay O was the

(41:00):
greatest thing that ever happened to Bill Webber's career. He
even said at the time, like, I'm giving Ronnie to
Fayo a cut rate because the publicity from this case
is more worth more than anything Ronnie Deafayo could ever
give me. So the idea of reviving interest in the
case would probably help his his caseload as well. Who knows.
The point is William Webber hired a guy named um

(41:24):
Paul Hoffman, I think his name was, and he wrote
the Good Housekeeping article. And when that Good Housekeeping article
came out, the Lutzes were like, you're gonna scoop us.
We're gonna sue you for invasion of privacy because you
stole our story, which is pretty rich because they were
using the courts like if you have a life story

(41:44):
and some lawyer comes along and hire somebody to write
that story. Yeah, that's invasion of privacy if you make
that story up with said lawyer and then screw that
lawyer over and he goes off his own way. Yeah,
using the courts for that is pretty um, I don't
want to say ballsy gutsy. Yeah. And speaking of lawsuits,

(42:07):
I mean, we won't go through the myriad lawsuits, but
there were it felt like more than a dozen lawsuits
over the years. Yeah, they sued Webber. Webber sued them.
That people are suing everyone, People are suing cops. Cops
were suing the family, the crol Marty's were suing the
lutz Is for even making the thing up in the
first place. And to me, this is what is sort
of proof positive that the whole thing is rotten to

(42:27):
begin with. Sure, when the lawsuits start flying, Yeah, everyone
had their hand out. This father Peccarero in court documents
said that you know what, I never went there and
blessed the house and heard this voice. I actually kind
of just had a phone call with them. Yeah, and
maybe and the guy, one of their daughters yelled, get
out right in the background, she was talking to a doll.

(42:49):
I think it had a dog, Harry, but it creeped
me out. Nonetheless, I always wanted to be played by
Rod Steiger, so I went for it. Uh but yeah,
I mean, it just it all sort fell apart. So
there's you know, in cases like this, people are like, well,
the Catholic Church is shutting that guy up. They don't
want to talk about the truth that there are some
demons here. Um. But the priests really confounds things. Not

(43:14):
because it's like it was a Catholic church really trying
to keep this quiet, more like, why did this priest
lie so overtly on in search of Well, he may
have had some skin in the game. Maybe maybe so
maybe you're right. I don't know. But the the warrant said,
in addition to him, you know, experiencing that in the house,

(43:36):
it followed him throughout his life, and that he was
once in a hotel room with a rabbi in Florida
and a lizard demon from the house appeared to him.
There that's the quality of quotes you can expect when
you have the Warrens on your interview show. I love it.
I love that we're treating in search of as if
it was this, you know, I mean, it was it

(44:00):
was great, but it was lucky TV for ten and
twelve year old boys in the eighties. Sure, like I'm sure.
I mean that probably wasn't even the priest. He probably
just hired a guy. No, No, it was the guy
who in court documents that was the guy on in
search of But they blacked his face out right, But
I mean, like they that's the guy. That's the guy.

(44:21):
He was revealed later on. The guy on in search
of was revealed later on to be Father Pecarrero, and
he was on in search of back before anyone ever
knew the name Pecuerero. He was called in the book
father man Queso. But as far as I know, that
is the same guy, and that he was just on
TV lying to his teeth that's what I saw. Or

(44:43):
he could have been just handed a script by Nimoy's team.
It's possible. It was the seventies and America went will
believe anything you say. A couple of years ago, actually
just last year, in two thousand seventeen, it was sold
for about six hundred grand the house, which is a
couple of hundred less than they were asking for it.

(45:03):
They're asking around eight And apparently it's not had nothing
that only had to do with the price le ring
was because of the pain and the rump to live
there and have people constantly coming by. It wasn't like
forget that there were six people murdered here, forget that
this house has green news and flies and devil pigs

(45:25):
coming out of you know, looking through the window. It's
the real problem is Google Earth and now people can
just say, oh, let's go by there and take some photos.
There it is. It's at one. Oh wait, they must
have moved it. That still cracks me up. But yeah,
that's the that's the thing. That's why the house is
still selling for less than it ever was before. And

(45:46):
the Lutz has claimed that they didn't make much money
on this and that, you know, like we never got
rich and what little money we made kind of went
out the door with court fees and legal fees. I
don't know if that maybe utterly true. Who knows it
says that they did. He did admit to getting about

(46:07):
a hundred grand from the book and another hundred from
the film. That's not that much money, no, but this
is money. Those those some money. Yeah, but it's not
like kickback and retire money. Sure, you know. Um. One
of the probably the most telling thing about the ltz
Is story being a hoax, the whole thing being just
one big hoax. Is that no one, no other person owner,

(46:31):
anybody who was associated with that house after the Ltz
family left, ever reported anything even remotely supernatural like this nothing.
And of course Lorraine Warren had a pretty good explanation
for that, which she said, well, then, obviously one of
the exorcisms was successful, because that's the only way. That's

(46:51):
the only way to explain why the hauntings went away,
and like it, that's the only way to explain it.
The ltz Is also never called the ops that one,
which was a big whole people poke into it, like
if all this stuff was going on, like at some
point you're gonna go to the police, and even if
it's ten days and not, you're not just gonna just

(47:12):
quietly be haunted by the demons of hell and not
not sweat it with a cops. Sure, at least call
them once and be like, you guys do anything about demons. No, Okay,
it's even if it's a frank call. Uh, what do
you think? I mean, this is getting a little philosophical,
I guess, But do you think what do you think

(47:33):
about bad juju in a in a home where six
people were murdered. Like I'm a I'm a totally agnostic
nonbeliever in any thing like that, But part of me
also thinks that, like, if you brutally murder six people,
there's got to be some change in the energy in

(47:54):
the air, which sounds hokey pokier than anything I've made
fun of. Um, I think, so you know, um, what's
the Josh clark way dot com, what's the what's the
word placebo? I think it's a placebo effect. Okay, so
you know that something happened here, and if you didn't

(48:15):
know anything, you would never notice anything. Probably not. Yeah,
I don't think that there is a change to the
energy or the air or anything like that. I think
there are cues that we can find where even if
you didn't know, um, you could be like there's a
shadow over there, something like that, and you can freak
yourself out, even in a house like that that you
didn't know it was haunted or said to be haunted.

(48:37):
But I think if you know a house is said
to be haunted, if you are just your brains working
overtime and you're gonna produce those things that you think
you see that, but my my imagination is just dead
and gone. So who knows. If you do believe stuff
like that, then that's that's fine with me. I mean, sure,
you're not hurting anybody with that. If you're taking money

(49:00):
from people to exercise stuff like that, then I have
a problem with you. But um, I don't think a
lot of people are out there doing I think most
people believe one way or another. You know. Interesting, Yeah,
I want to know that boy is in the picture.
It's Jody the pig demon. Uh. If you want to
know more about the Amityville horror, you can type those

(49:22):
words into the internet. Actually, you can type it in
the house stuff works and it will bring up an
article by our own former own Matt Hunt. I remember
that guy. He wrote the Amityville article on the website.
What's he up to now, any of you? I don't know,
And he's continuing his investigation into the Amityville horror. He
was never heard from again. Right. Uh, since I said that,

(49:43):
it's time for a listener mail, I'm gonna call this
follow up on the Homelessness episode. We re ran that
one for selects God a better response this time. Yeah,
I was really looking out for somebody. But I guess
they learned the lesson or else stop listening to us
by now. Yeah. Well, and I set it up too
because it was my pick with like, hey, this is

(50:04):
what happened last time, you know, I dare you are
right in this time it's exactly right. So this is
how this is from a woman who said that a
homeless man saved her dog. It's a pretty great story.
My sister and I were taking our three dogs for
a walk down main street in our city one day
and we stopped dressed on a bench for heading for home.
That realizing it, I had accidentally let one of the

(50:26):
laicious slip out of my hand. Unfortunately, Sephia noticed her
leash was free at about the same time I did,
decided to up and chase after something. My sister and
I jumped to grab her, but the speed of two
clumsy humans is no match for a spry young dog.
She ran down the sidewalk. This is like a nightmare
for me, and she ran on the sidewalk. A few

(50:48):
pedestrians reached down to try and grab her, which frightened
her enough that she ran from the sidewalk into the
busy street. Four lanes of traffic going in both directions.
Sprinting to try and catch up. I watched in horror
she ran out into the street, shair. I was about
to see my dog get killed by an oncoming car.
I was right about then that a homeless man that
we had previously seen around town rode up on his

(51:08):
bicycle right in the middle of the road, keeping himself
between my dog and the cars flying by. But weren't
for him doing that, she would surely have been run over. Uh.
Finally caught up, was able to catch her attention call
her thankfully. She ran right into my arms and I
looked up to thank the hero would save my dog,
and he was nowhere to be seen. What was it

(51:30):
a dream? That's me talking. Uh. He had put himself
in harm's way to save my dog's life and then
just quietly ridden away when he saw that she was safe.
I don't know his name, never saw him again to
thank him. Sepia is now ten years old. It's because
of that nameless man that she has lived to see
that old age. And that is Ali from New Hampshire.

(51:52):
That was a great story. I love it. Thanks a lot, Ali,
Thanks for sharing that one. See everybody we told you.
If you want to send us an email like alidad
or get in touch with this, you can go to
our website Stuff you Should Know dot com. I also
have a website called the Josh Clark Way dot com
if you want to check it out, and you can
send an email to Chuck, Jerry, and Me plus Frank

(52:15):
the chair guest producer Roll everybody. Send that email to
Stuff Podcasts at how stuff works dot com for more
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