October 25, 2018 • 52 mins
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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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
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
again it's me Josh. Put the three of us together,
you get Stuff you should know. The late twenty eighteen edition,
which is tense.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
It's Josh doctor nonsense. Clark. You have a degree in nonsense.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
That's true, and a little I have a minor. And Tomfoolery.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Oh man, how you doing. I'm well, how are you good?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
So I had to clear my throat. I had a
little garlic chicken in it really kind of attacked my
mucus memory just fall chuck. Yeah, Halloween's almost here.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Man, It's finally like cooling off a little bit.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, I know. It's been a hot one.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Although the sun is still blazing hot.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah in the sun, if it's in the shade, maybe
after sundown and the wind's blowing big, you're you're in there.
It's fall time.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah for real.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I'm wearing my boots. Oh nice, got a flannel shirt on.
I might as well be on a hay.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Ride wearing my pumas my my favorite murder shirt.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Nice. Yeah, that's a great shirt. The toxic masculinity ruins
the party again. What a great shirt.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Yeah, they actually follow through with great show quotes. Put
them on T shirts. Smart and sell a ton of them.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
That's smart. Yeah, that's the way to do it.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
We try.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
The key is selling a ton of them, that's right,
and having the good quotes.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I feel like we ran out of good quotes seven
years ago.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
That is not true. Chuck, watch this you ready?
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Huh?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
It's showtime?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
What do you think that's good? How about this? There's
no business like show business.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Oh that's a good one too. You could write a
song out of something like that.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
It's not show friends, it's show business.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Right. Well look, wait, waite, before we start, I want
to address the ten people who are still listening at
this point, I would like to announce the birth of
my new website. Yeah, it's called the Josh Clarkway dot com.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
How much did it weigh?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
It weighed nothing because it's a website. But there was
a lot of blood, sweat, and tears put into its
gestation and delivery. And our friend Brandon Reid who's such
a great guy and a listener on the podcast, put
it together through his business Innovate with an E. Built
this awesome website. It's super eighties, super poppy. I'm very
(02:45):
proud of it. And I'm starting a newsletter just to
celebrate the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
And it's called The Josh Clarkway.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Did you look it up? Just now?
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I'm trying but it's not loading.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Oh what else? We're cutting all this part out? Anyway?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Wait, here we go.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Isn't it beautiful?
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Well? Still loading? It's because of my old phone, it's
not because of your I appreciate that my phone just
can't handle your website.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
There's so much to my website.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
It's like, oh, there you are, Yeah, the Josh Clarkway
dot com.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And I also want to say you me help me
with the site too, so big ups and thank you
to you me and Brandon for helping me put this
thing together. So anyway, I just wanted to say, welcome website.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Oh, I got a new fun thing to do to.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Hang out on my website. Sure, sign up for the
newsletter too. While you're there. Oh this is great, Okay,
you're ready.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
I'm glad I have this in my life.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Now you ready to get started.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Maybe I'll get a website one day.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
You should get a website. It's like the new thing.
Everybody's it once. Yeah, So chuck, we're talking fall here,
which means there's only one word that comes to mind
every fall.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Pumpkins.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
No.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
The other word candy corn, no, diarrhea.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
No. Amityville. Oh, and specifically two words, the Amityville Horror,
which is, for my money, one of the greatest horror
movies of all time.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Yeah, one of the great ones. And uh being a
kid in the nineteen seventies when this stuff was going
on and famous, yeah, Like, even as a little youngster,
I remember being terrified at that paperback. Oh yeah, in
the drug store when I would go by the paperbacks
and the look of that house just terrified me.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
If the house looked any different, it be the story
would have had fifteen percent less spread.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Or did the house end up looking creepy because of
the lore it's just a colonial.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
No, that house looked creepy. Well, yeah, if somebody, if
somebody didn't say this house is haunted and by the way,
look at it, right, 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.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Well, it looked like it had eyes, right, 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 saw the side of the house,
the chimney running down the side of the house, and
those two eye like windows on the top floor on
either side of the chimney.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Just amazing. Yeah, it was a Dutch colonial to be specific.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
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 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 too, well I don't know
(05:45):
how long they had to battle, but they changed it
by four digits, like they'll never find a side exactly.
So I went and looked on the Google images, and
of course now it looks it's bright and sunny and
has a lovely yard, and it's in the middle of
a lovely neighborhood and there's 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
(06:08):
Google you can see that image, right, And there are
big signs all over like no trespassing.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Sure, and they need them, believe me.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yeah, people, just I feel sorry for homeowners since the letzes. Yes,
I don't feel sorry for them though. No, I don't
know either because they made up a bunch of malarkey.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah, that's one way to put it. But we'll get
to that part later, all right, Sure, let's set the
scene here.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Yeah, true, horrific thing did occur there.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah, and I think that kind of gets swept under
the rug a little bit overlooked, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
I agree.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
On November thirteenth, nineteen seventy four, Ronnie Butch di Feo
Junior killed the other six members of his family. His
own family, his mother, his father, sure, his two sisters
Alison and Dawn, and his two younger brothers, Mark and John.
(07:01):
He's the older brother, killed his whole family.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Yeah, nine, twelve, thirteen, and eighteen ages. Yep, that is
just I mean, this is one of those crimes that
rightfully has gone down in American history is one of
the worst.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah, and yeah, like you said, rightfully, this guy was
a bad, bad dude from the outset. He denied doing
anything when he ran into a bar called Henry's Bar
in the little town of Amityville. I bet that place
is great, and I'll bet too, you know, And he said,
somebody just killed my family, and all the barb patrons
were like, I got to see this. And they ran
(07:38):
to one twelve Ocean Avenue with Ronnie to Fayo, and
they found all six members laying his face down on
their beds dead. I think their heads their faces resting
in their hands. And Ronnie de Feo said it was
the mafia.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Yeah, which I think his family had some tie somehow
to the mafia.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
H had an uncle named Carmine, and that's that's all
you need right there.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Yeah, but there was one, like a legit crime family
that had some tie to his family, so maybe he
just thought that was a good an alibi or whatever. Yeah,
it wasn't so good, No, And he killed them with
a thirty five caliber Marlin rifle, which did you look
this thing up? No, it's like the the Old West,
(08:23):
like lever action. Oh really, riding on a horse, you know,
cowboys and Indians kind of gun.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
I expected the side bolt action carbo like a Lee
Harvey Oswald. Yes, that's what I would know.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
This is like a boom boom.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
That explains a lot, because one of the big mysteries
that still remains is why didn't the other family members
wake up?
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Well, that's a big I mean I read a little
bit into the case, and that's definitely one of these
sticking points is because 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 there were
a lot of variations of the story because of that
that one of the sisters helped kill the father, and
(09:07):
then the mother freaked out, so Ronald killed her. Yeah,
and like everyone was waking up, and I don't know,
I mean, it sounds like he just he did it
all himself.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I also saw that he had said years, like a
year after while he was being questioned, that he had
drugged them all with barbituates. But I only saw that once.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
That would make a little more sense at least, right,
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, you know, right.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
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 them all. And he
said he looked around and there was no one there.
(09:56):
So I just assumed it was God telling me to
kill so I and he killed again his whole family.
And I read this article in Vice magazine from like
twenty fourteen from some guy who said he spent like
five years in prison with Ronnie to Fayo and said, finally,
after befriending him over a couple of years, he finally
got to the truth. And the truth was he felt
(10:19):
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, so they got what
was coming to him basically, and he'd do it again.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
I mean he I don't know, this is an armchair diagnosis,
but clearly if his reason is he liked my brothers
and sisters more. Yeah, Like he's has some sort of
serious mental issues going on for sure, but he did
not want Apparently his attorney talked him into talking about
(10:52):
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, but you really should.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
And he goes, no, I don't want to do that.
He goes, well, there may be a book deal in
your future if you claim this. He goes, oh, I
like books anyway.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
What are books again? There are things that make you money.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
And he's like, you know how you like carve out
the middle of those things and you keep your heroin
and PCP in there. That's a book.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
So a real crime happened there.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, it was. Let's just say it was a fateful
decision for him to say publicly that a voice had
urged him to kill his whole family. M m okay.
That would come into play pretty soon after that. Yeah,
after Ronnie de Fayo, I believe two weeks after he
was sentenced a year after the murders, and he got
sentenced to six consecutive life sentences.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Yeah, he's still in jail.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Oh yeah, he will be forever.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
I would guess, like he's alive though.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
It is my point, right, right, you're right. About a
year after that, just like a year and a month
after the murders, a couple named George and Kathy bought
this place. And they bought it for a song. It
was eighty grand at a time when eighty grand was
a pretty good deal for a six bedroom Dutch colonial
(12:11):
in Amityville, New York.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Yeah, and so there were a couple, well, they were
a couple with a couple of kids, well three, I
think nine year old Daniel, seven year ol Christopher at
the time, five year old Missy. We'll get to their
financial situation a little bit in more detail later, but
the thought was that George could run his even though
(12:34):
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 doc. 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.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
It was just too good of a deal to pass up. Yeah, sure,
so they bought the house. Did you say they were
looking in the thirty to fifty range originally?
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
So it was a stretch for him. But again, that's
how good the deal was. So they buy the house
and they move in, and apparently almost immediately things started
to get weird. Right, So Kathy was a Catholic, And
what do you do when you're a Catholic and you
buy a new house. You invite your priests over to
(13:25):
come bless the house. See you really, I guess in
the seventies in New York you did well.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
I didn't know if that had anything to do with
the uh. I mean, did they know that the murders
had occurred there and just sort of didn't care?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Yes, And I
don't know that they didn't care. Supposedly, George Lutz later
said that, like after they said we're interested in this,
when the realtor was like, well, let me just tell
you one little detail. Just six big horrific murders, all right, yeah,
just a year ago. Yeah, sorry, we haven't cleaned up
the blood yet. Seriously, So they apparently took his second
(14:02):
to think about it and talk amongst themselves, like, is
it really botherus? This is such a good deal, and
they said not, the deal wins out over any superstitions
we have. So yes, they knew. And I don't know
if they hired them, brought the priest in because of
that or just to bless the house, but they brought
the priest in to bless the house.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
You can burn a little sage, ye, or you can
call in a priest. I think they had to ramp
it up. They called in father Ralph Peccarero, and he
came in, and this is how the story goes, and
we'll just sort of tell it as it happens supposedly.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I think that's a great idea before we.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Start pooping all of it. So he comes in blesses
the house. 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, get out, kid,
(15:02):
And then his car started acting weird. Apparently the hood
flew open and smashed the windshield, doors are unlocking and
opening his horn.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Went auga and he didn't even have one of those
kinds of horns.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
The car stalled. 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 is portrayed in the film.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Right, And it's Rod Steiger getting shouted at.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
He's great, like flies where there shouldn't be flies. Yeah, Crucifix,
Crucifix is spinning what a pig well, smell of rotten
eggs in this hidden room that wasn't on any blueprint.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
The red room the pigs. So there was a pantom
like pig beast with glowing red eyes that would look
in on the family from the outside and leave cloven
hoof prints in the snow, and little five year old
miss You would be like, oh, that's just my friend Jody.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Which makes it ten times 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 Jodie.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Right, you know, Jody's been suggesting things.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
What else they claimed? I think the dad claimed to
see Butch Dafeyo's face in a wall. He would wake
up every every night or a lot of nights at
three point fifteen in the morning, supposedly when these murders
took place. Yeah, the kids started acting funny classic movie
haunting stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Yeah, it was a very weird situation for him. Things
were tense. They were all like they had like hair
triggered 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 a seventies so everybody was into
(16:54):
karate back then.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Sure, Elvis had a black belt.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Sure, and 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 he goes to the local Amityville
Historical Society and says, I want to know everything you
have on one twelve Ocean Avenue.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
And it got quiet in the room and.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
The guy was like, come with me. So he George
finds out that their house is probably built on Shinnacock
Indian land. That was a big one.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Yeah, not only that, but supposedly where this Native American
tribe used as a sick bay for the for the
mentally insane. That's how they put it right. 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.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
It was the kind of place where they just get
dropped off and the people would kind of back slowly
away like okay, take care, see you later, and they
would die. And no one wants to be treated like that,
So of course anyone who's left to die right there
on that land like that would obviously haunt the land.
There was some other there were some other legends about
what was behind it too. There was like an abandoned
(18:11):
cemetery pretty straight up on the nose.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yeah, there was a Salem witch guy that supposedly sacrificed animals.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
John Ketchum. And there actually was a John Ketchum who
lived somewhat in the area around that time, but he'd
never been accused of being a witch. And then I
saw an interview with a guy named Hans Holzer, who's
a bonafide parapsychologist and doctor. Holzer says that it all
(18:40):
started in nineteen twenty eight or nineteen oh 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 oh five, it disturbed an Indian
chief's grave, a Native American chief's grave, and somebody played
with his skull like a soccer ball, and he's been
(19:02):
mad about it ever since. And that is what drove
Ronnie to Fayo to kill and that is what terrorized
the lutz Is, And that's the whole problem. Everybody just
calmed down. That's it. So there's a little bit of
a little bit of peace falling into the puzzle. They're
figuring it out, but it's not making anything better. In fact,
(19:23):
everything's getting worse, Like this stuff's getting worse and worse
and worse. And finally everything culminates on this one stormy
night when 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 off
of the hinges. It's like a two hundred and fifty
(19:43):
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,
well no, they definitely, they definitely left the house.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Yeah, but neighbors say they left in ten days.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Okay, yeah, one of the two.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
But they's still The point is there are discrepancies all
over the place.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Oh we'll get to those. Yeah, we'll get to those.
But they left, and this is true. They left all
of their possessions in this house and just fled.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
And that part is true.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Never went back.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Uh yeah, unless they had a sneaky little moving team
with a uhaul in the dead of night from go
back and get our stuff from under story.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
There's stuff got auctioned off.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Yeah it did.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
I mean they left it. They had, They grabbed some clothes,
and they took off into the night.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
And which will go on later to be one of
the key selling points that this really happened, because people
that were on their side were like, why would they
do that? Yeah, on just the gambit of this being
a hoax that would eventually make the money, Right, would
they really leave all their stuff behind?
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Could anybody be.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
That Foolish's take a break and we'll find out right
after this.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
Stop you should know, stop.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
You should I should know all right, So they get
the heck out of Dodge, they leave, they contact an
author named Jay Anson.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Oh even before that.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Well, I was going to get to the attorney. Is
that really so? Princess Hall as the publisher, in nineteen
seventy seven released The Amity of a Horror was a
huge bestseller, forty two weeks on the bestseller list by
nineteen eighty one, six and a half million copies. They
were all over the country plugging this book, right, and
(22:06):
where the letses were household names. They're like on every
talk show you could imagine.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I want to underscore that. In nineteen seventy seven there
was a family from New York who claimed to have
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,
(22:33):
Like that's what you could be famous for, was saying like,
ghosts chased us out of our house. And everybody'd be like,
that's a great story.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Should we jump ahead and talk about that attorney?
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Great?
Speaker 2 (22:45):
So what was the guy's name, Bill Weber?
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Yeah, this is where things get really hinky, is that
Bill Weber 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 gets a team together for
this book and starts saying to everybody, including Dafao, Hey,
we can all make some money if we do a
(23:10):
book here. Dafeo's got to get a cut though.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
The Lutzes were like, what are you're going to pay
the murderer?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, and he was like, yeah, it's my client.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
And they said, we're not We're not down with that plan.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yes, but 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.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Yeah, like, how can we make money off of this?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
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 lts
Is held at William Weber's office. That was when the
world was introduced to the idea of this Amityville horror,
even before the book ever.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Came out for anyone, at least not locally.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Right, right, So, so Bill Weber and the LUTs says
they they had Yeah, they had kind of like a tentative,
tenuous relationship. And when Prentis Hall came along and Jay
Anson came along. I don't know if Jay Anson poached
them or Prentis Hall poached them, but whoever was involved
(24:17):
with the Amityville Horror book got the Lutzes away from
William Weber and his book Ida and Proposal, and he
got cut out of the deal. Just put that in
your bonnet and smoke it and save it for later, Okay.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Yeah, and supposedly left because again they didn't want to
give DeFeo a cut or they just wanted a bigger
cut themselves. Yeah, at this point, it's a it's all
about money, right, But jumping back or forward, can't remember
where we are in time, but they're all over the country,
all over the news.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
This would have been about nineteen seventy seven to seventy eight.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Yeah, they're on MERV Griffin. There's they had a ghost
team of ghosts TNS come by from Channel five in
New York. Yeah, WPIX 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, but you
take a picture of anyone in black and white in
(25:15):
the dark, poking their head around a corner, and it
looked creepy.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
So let me I want to comment on that picture.
Have you seen it?
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Oh creepy.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
It is creepy. The the it's chalked up to some
of the paranormal investigators, one of like one of the
men who was at that WPIX seance fest at the
house getting in front of the camera.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Yeah, they're saying that one of the uh Paul Bart's
that it was just one of the ghost hunters.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
So that was a grown man. Whoever's in the picture
is a kid, just plain as day. There's no there's
no confusing that for a grown man.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
I think so. So unless he was had a boyish face.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
I think it's a very bizarre picture.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
I mean no, I think it's bizarre.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And supposedly it was taken with infrared film in the dark,
and again it doesn't look like a man.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Which is that's why the eyes are glowing, right.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
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?
Speaker 3 (26:15):
I'm trying to find that picture again.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
It's clearly the face of a boy that's not a
man's face. That's the thing that sticks out to me.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Yeah, I mean it certainly looks like a boy. Man,
it is creepy and also so it's got to be
a boy.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
And that's what it looks like to me, and it's
got to be. This picture was debuted in the nineteen
seventy seven seventy eight by George Lutz on the MERV
Griffin Show.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
But they could have set that up. Could have been.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
They could have and we we say, whatever, have you
seen the conjuring?
Speaker 3 (26:47):
I think I've seen parts of it. But that's the
real life couple.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah, Ed and Lorraine Warren.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Yeah, who hooked up with these I mean this is
where they got their start kind.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Of right, kind of They basically had like an occult museum.
They were like a psychic and psychic investigators in Connecticut
like you do. And the guy Marvin Scott who was
the anchor who investigated the Amityville Horror for the WPIX
local Channel five station, Yeah, he invited them to come
out to this seance and it was like a series
(27:17):
of siances that they filmed and you can actually see
this look up WPIX News eleven Marvin Scott Part one,
and it's like a nineteen ninety eight 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
(27:37):
obviously real. And during these seances, supposedly the psychics started
to feel sick. Lorrain Warren said she felt an evil
presence from the bowels of the earth in the house.
And then that picture, that famous photograph was taken.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
So I think the Warrens are the ones too that
said why would they leave all of their stuff behind? Sure,
and they also said, well, we would not be involved,
that this was some sort of a hoax.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Right exactly.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Don't you know who we are proof positive?
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Right?
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
But the yeah, the real life Warrens were. They did
investigate the Sanityville House in the early seventies or mid seventies,
early on after the story broke.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
You also know it was the seventies because they were
featured on Leonard de Mooy's Great show in Search of Love,
which we both used to love, and of course they
covered that in nineteen seventy nine, supposedly got the priest
on there, even though he wanted to be kept anonymous,
and he or whoever it was, kind of reinforced this
(28:35):
cold room get out scream.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah, it just went just double down on it. His
face was hidden in the book, I think the jaynsm book.
There were three source materials that came out about this story,
all within a couple of years of each other. There
was a Good Housekeeping article which is hilarious. Yeah, there
was the JAYANSM.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Book, and then there was a book, and then there.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Was a movie. Yes, and 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, 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.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
The book said it was a true story. But Leonard on.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
The cover, I just I just I expected more from
Leonard Neimoy than that. He says, unequivocally, it's a true story.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
That's because that's what the script, the teleprompter said.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Well, anyway, that was a great episode of In Search
of anyway.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Yeah, So in nineteen seventy nine, the very famous film
adaptation of this book comes out, starring James Berlin and
Margo Kidder as the Lutzes, and it was a big,
big hit, eighty million dollars in domestic release, which was
I didn't do the conversion, but a very good haul
(29:56):
for nineteen seventy nine, one of the smash hits. Yeah
of that year, for sure.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
I think it was close to three hundred million probably.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Oh yeah, yeah, good money.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah, I mean this is back in the time when
like movies didn't routinely make a billion dollars in an
opening weekend, right, that was a ton of cash.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
There were a lot of really bad sequels that, no doubt,
just kind of threw out the whole legend of the
house and just did whatever they want with that name.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Have you seen any of them? I haven't.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
I haven't seen any of the sequels, Nor did I
see the remake recently.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
With Ryan Reynolds.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Yeah, did you see that?
Speaker 4 (30:31):
No?
Speaker 3 (30:31):
I don't remember the original movie that much, and to
be honest, I don't know if ever saw it all
the way through. I mean I was way too young
to see anything like this. So it would have been.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
It's still around. They didn't burn a whole copy.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
It's worth seeing. It's a great horror film.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Like I've seen a lot of the parts.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
James James Beard, Little Miss for Jodie's Friend is a
little creep show.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
And who played Jody. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Who played her, but like, yeah, the kids did good.
Rod Steiger was the priest. He was great.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
I remember seeing that scene, so I've definitely seen parts
of it.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yule Brenner was the good voice.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Was he really.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Sorry that.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
They actually didn't shoot at that Ocean Avenue house? Though,
of course, you know with a movie like this, the
law is kind of usually not true, and the law
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 superstructure around the house to make it
(31:42):
look like the other house, which was just like a
couple hours from there.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Right the town of Amityville said no, we don't want
anything like this, no publicity like this. Please. This was
a tragedy. We like our quiet, sleepy town the way
it is. No, we're not giving you a permit to
shoot here.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Yes, so, but Tom's River was like bring it.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, nobody knows about us. Who's Tom anyway? We don't
know does a 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 that that the Amityville Hohrror became part of American
popular culture. Like yeah, it was cemented into it. And
(32:27):
it was also cemented in that this is based on
a true story. Maybe the movie blew at a little
labor 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?
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah? And it was that period in the late seventies where,
like we talked about it with the Bermuda Triangle was
a big deal.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
And waterbeds were huge.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Waterbeds were big, But I feel like there was just
there wasn't as much stuff. There wasn't as much content,
a bigger deal. Yeah, 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.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
It was like part of the fabric of America.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
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 over over here,
look over here, we're here, Like it could like really
kind of ruminate on something and let it like stew.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Yeah, like now a show can win Best Show Emmy
Award and you're like, I've never even heard of that.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Too much stuff, A lot of stuff out there, But
is that better or worse?
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Like I feel like 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 or
not right now, who knows. I don't think anybody's ever
lived long enough to be like, I'm a thousan years
old and it is way worse these days than it
(34:02):
was five hundred years ago.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
Now, are you talking about entertainment content or.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Just general culture everything being alive.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
See, I think entertainment wise, it's better because yeah, yeah,
I mean back then it was just like everyone got
obsessed with Amyville because it was the 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.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
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 around for a year and
really really be into the Amityville or rather than you know,
like the cameraman missed that shot by like an eighth
(34:51):
of an angela. 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
but I think that's my point.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Plus, we were all doped up.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Yeah, 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.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
All Right, so maybe we maybe we can take a
break now and then we can start poking holes in
this thing. Start, Does that sound good?
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (35:39):
Stop?
Speaker 3 (35:50):
Should I should know? All right? So I insists we
have not poked any holes yet.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
There's some dents in there that we've kind of put
our fingers in.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
I've just been snidely laughing at everything we say, like yeah, right, yeah,
but here's some of the holes and there are quite
a few. Yeah, I kind of mentioned before. Neighbors say
that they left like a week and a half enter
their stay in this house. The let's just said twenty
eight days.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
So right out of the gate, you've got a discrepancy.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
Yeah. And the.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Kind of what the thinking was and 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 this story.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah, but imagine figuring that out in ten days. That's
a little weird.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Well, and I also don't know how that would get
them out of their mortgage, just defaulting on it, yeah,
because it's haunted.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Yeah, just walking away like can't get blood from a stone.
Go take the house if you want it back.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Yeah, but could they claim that it wasn't disclosed? If
it was disclosed, like, how could they literally get out
of the mortgage.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
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.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Credit, right, just walk away.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
And just walk away, like then you don't have to
make payments anymore. Yeah, 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.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Right, that's incredible. The great show from nineteen eighties. You
just watch that.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Yeah, I watched the episode that this was on.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
But did you watch it as a kid? U A great,
great show and on this show.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Sorry, it was really positive. Do you remember it seemed
pretty upbeat.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Well, it's called that's incredible, not like that's crappy.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
The cameraman missed that shot and it was.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
I think it even had an exclamation point, didn't it. Yeah,
at the end of the title. Yeah, so that's incredible.
Barbara Camardi owned the house at the time of this episode,
walks them through and shows like close up. So the
hinges of that front door. Yeah, and these windows that
are still sealed. It was like these things didn't blow.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
No, she went out of her way to 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.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
But Leut's also said though, that no, no, no, there were
pictures in the newspaper of that front door blown out.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Have you seen the picture?
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Well, no, I didn't think anyone could find it.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
It's a screen door that's kind of like hanging open. Yeah,
I'm not kidding. That's the picture from what I understand.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
All right, so it's all falling apart, then.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
Right, oh yeah, it's all falling apart. For 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, the
book got a bunch of stuff wrong. The movie got
a ton of stuff wrong. Because I think the Ryan
Reynolds remake of the movie was supposedly build is this
(39:01):
is way more true to the book. Oh really, 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. So George
Lets would say, all these people got all these details wrong,
but this this stuff we said happen really happened. Part
(39:21):
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?
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (39:29):
I saw an interview where he said that in public
on camera.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Yeah, he really like, kudos to him for sticking to it. Yeah.
I would say deathbed is a perfect time to be like,
guess what everybody isn't Everyone would be like yeah, no, no,
like you guys knew.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
No, s I love that this is a family show.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
So George Lets went to his grave saying, no, this
is this is for real. William Webber, Bill Webber, the attorney,
did quite the opposite of that.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Well, he said, and of course LUTs will paint. This
is probably painted. This is sour grapes. Sure, because Weber
was cut out of the money deal, but as soon
as they left and made their own book deal, he
started barking that this is all bs, this is a
hoax that we made up.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
He totally did that. He said that over about three
bottles of wine, he and George and Kathy Lutz concocted
the story out of whole cloth.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
And then had a smoking night of love making the
three of them.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
On their waterbed. Geez took a sexy turn all of
a sudden. Sure, so yeah, Bill Weber, he said that.
He said, Hey, I was just looking to get another
trial from my client, who I think was innocent and insane.
What the Lutzes were doing was going after money. But
(40:57):
you can also look at it like running to fay
was the greatest thing that ever happened to Bill Weber'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 worth more than anything Ronnie to Fao could
ever give me. Yeah, so the idea of reviving interest
in the case would probably help his case load as well.
(41:18):
Who knows the point is? William Weber hired a guy
named Paul Hoffman I think his name was, and he
wrote the Good Housekeeping article. And when that Good Housekeeping
article came out. The Lesses 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
(41:41):
using the courts. Like if you have a life story
and some lawyer comes along and hires somebody to write
that story, Yeah, that's invasion to 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 I don't want
to say ballsy gutsy.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
Yeah. And speaking of lawsuits, I mean, we won't go
through the merriad lawsuits, but there were it felt like
more than a dozen lawsuits over the years.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, they sued Weber sued them.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
People were suing everyone. People were suing cops. Cops were
suing the family, The.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Cro Marty's were suing the Lutzes for even making the
thing up in the first place.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
And to me, this is what is sort of proof
positive that the whole thing is rotten to begin with.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Sure, when the lawsuits start flying.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
Yeah, everyone had their hand out. This father of Peccerero
in court documents said that you know what, I never
went there and blessed the house right 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.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Because she was talking to a doll I think had
a dog, Harry.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
But it creaked me out.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Nonetheless, I always wanted to be played by Rod Steiger,
so I went for it.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
But yeah, I mean, it just it all sort of
fell apart.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
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 if there are some
demons here. But the priest really confounds things. Not because
it's like it was a Catholic church really trying to
keep this quiet, more like why did this priest lie
(43:21):
so overtly on in search.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Of Well, he may have had some skin in the game.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Maybe maybe, so maybe you're right.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
But the Warren said, in addition to him, you know,
experiencing that in the house, 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.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
I love it. I love that we're treating In Search
Of as if it was this you know, no, no,
highly regarded. I mean it was, it was great, but
it was schlocky 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.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
No, No, it was the guy who in court documents
that was the guy on in.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
Search Of But they blacked his face out right, But.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
I mean, like they that's the guy. That's the guy.
He was revealed later on. The guy on in Search
Of was revealed later on to be father Pecqerero, and
he was on in search Of back before anyone ever
knew the name Pecquerero. He was called in the book
father man q Soo. All right, But as far as
I know, that is the same guy.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
And that he was just on TV lying through.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
His teeth, that's what I saw.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
Or he could have been just handed a script by
Nimoy's team.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
It's possible it was the seventies and America went we'll
believe anything you say.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
A couple of years ago, actually just last year, in
twenty seventeen, it was sold for about six hundred grand
the house, which is a couple one hundred less than
they were asking for it. They're asking around eight.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 3 (45:06):
And apparently it's not had nothing that the only had
to do with the price 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
ooze and flies and devil pigs coming out of you know,
(45:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
There it is. It's at one.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
Oh wait, they must have moved it. That still cracks
me up.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Yeah, but yeah, that's the thing. That's why the house
is still selling for less than it ever was before.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
And 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.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
I don't know that maybe utterly true.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
Who knows it says that they did. He did admit
to getting about one hundred grand from the book and
another hundred from the film.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
That's not that much money, No, but this is nineteen
seventies money. Those some money.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
Yeah, but it's not like kickback and retire money. Sure,
you know.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Sure. One of the probably the most telling thing about
the Luts's story being a hoax, the whole thing being
just one big hoax, is that no one, no other
person owner, anybody who was associated with that house after
the Lutz family left, ever reported anything even remotely supernatural
(46:39):
like this nothing. Yeah, And of course Lorraine Warren had
a pretty good explanation for that, which is what she said. Well, then,
obviously one of the exorcisms was successful, because that's the
only way job, that's the only way to explain why
the hauntings went away. Yeah, and like it, that's the
only way to explain it. Huh.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
The LUTs is also never called the which was a
big hole people poke into it. Like if all this
stuff was going on, like at some point you're going
to go to the police, right, and even if it's
ten days and not the twenty eight You're not just
gonna just quietly be haunted by the demons of hell,
right and not not sweat it with the cops.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
Sure, at least call them once and be like, you
guys do anything about demons?
Speaker 3 (47:21):
No, okay, even if it's a crank call. Sure, what
do you think? I mean? This is getting a little philosophical,
I guess, But do you think what do you think
about bad juju in a in a home where six
people were murdered? Like I'm a I'm a totally agnostic
(47:42):
non believer 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
the air, which sounds hokier than anything I've made fun of.
I think, so you know, what's the Josh clarkway dot com?
Speaker 2 (48:08):
What's the what's the word? Oh, placebo? I think it's
a placebo effect.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
Okay, so you know that something happened here. If you
didn't know anything, you would never notice anything.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
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. You could be like, well
there's a shadow over there something like that. You can
freak yourself out, even in a house like that that
you didn't know was haunted or said to be haunted.
But I think if you know a house is said
(48:39):
to be haunted, if you are just your brain's working
overtime and you're going to produce those things that you
think you see, well that's why I create 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 from people to exercise
(49:01):
stuff like that, then I have a problem with you.
But I don't think a lot of people are out
there doing it. I think most people just believe one
way or another.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
You know, yeah, interesting, Yeah, I want to know that boy.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
Is in the picture, it's Jody the pig Demon. If
you want to know more about the Amityville horror, you
can type those words into the Internet. Actually, you can
type it into how stuff works and it will bring
up an article by our own former own Matt Hunt.
Speaker 3 (49:29):
I remember that guy.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
He wrote the Amityville article on the website.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
What's he up to now? Any idea?
Speaker 2 (49:35):
I don't know, and he's continuing his investigation into the
Amityville horror.
Speaker 3 (49:39):
He was never heard from again.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
Right since I said that it's time for the listener mail.
Speaker 3 (49:46):
I'm gonna call this follow up on the homelessness episode
we re ran that one for selects. Got a better
response this time.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
Yeah, I was really looking out for somebody, but I
guess they learned their lesson or ell stop listening to
us by now.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Yeah. Well, and I set it up too, because it
was my pick with like, hey, this is what happened
last time. Oh right, so you know I dare you
it right in this time?
Speaker 2 (50:09):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
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 dress on a bench
for heading for home. That realizing it, I had accidentally
let one of the leashes slip out of my hand. Unfortunately,
Sophia noticed her leash was free at about the same
(50:33):
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. As she ran down the sidewalk,
a few 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
(50:55):
both directions, Sprinting to try and catch up. I watched
in horror as she ran out into the street chore.
I was about to see my dog get killed by
an oncoming car. It was right about then that a
homeless man that we had previously seen around town rode
up on his bicycle right in the middle of the road,
keeping himself between my dog and the cars flying by.
(51:16):
Weren't for him doing that, she would surely have been
run over. 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 a dream? That's me talking? He had put
himself in harms way to save my dog's life and
(51:37):
then just quietly ridden away when he saw that she
was safe. Don't know his name, never saw him again
to thank him. Sophia 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.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
That was a great story.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
Love it.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
Thanks a lot, Ali, thanks for sharing that one. See
everybody we told you. If you want to send us
an email like Ali did or get in touch with this,
you can go to our website stuffyshouldo dot com. I
also have a website called the Josh Clarkway dot com
if you want to check it out, and you can
send an email to Chuck, Jerry and Me plus Frank
the chair, guests producer Roll everybody. Send that email to
(52:18):
Stuff Podcasts at HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it HowStuffWorks dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
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
again it's me Josh. Put the three of us together,
you get Stuff you should know. The late twenty eighteen edition,
which is tense.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
It's Josh doctor nonsense. Clark. You have a degree in nonsense.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
That's true, and a little I have a minor. And Tomfoolery.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Oh man, how you doing. I'm well, how are you good?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
So I had to clear my throat. I had a
little garlic chicken in it really kind of attacked my
mucus memory just fall chuck. Yeah, Halloween's almost here.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Man, It's finally like cooling off a little bit.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, I know. It's been a hot one.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Although the sun is still blazing hot.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah in the sun, if it's in the shade, maybe
after sundown and the wind's blowing big, you're you're in there.
It's fall time.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah for real.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I'm wearing my boots. Oh nice, got a flannel shirt on.
I might as well be on a hay.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Ride wearing my pumas my my favorite murder shirt.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Nice. Yeah, that's a great shirt. The toxic masculinity ruins
the party again. What a great shirt.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Yeah, they actually follow through with great show quotes. Put
them on T shirts. Smart and sell a ton of them.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
That's smart. Yeah, that's the way to do it.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
We try.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
The key is selling a ton of them, that's right,
and having the good quotes.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I feel like we ran out of good quotes seven
years ago.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
That is not true. Chuck, watch this you ready?
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Huh?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
It's showtime?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
What do you think that's good? How about this? There's
no business like show business.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Oh that's a good one too. You could write a
song out of something like that.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
It's not show friends, it's show business.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Right. Well look, wait, waite, before we start, I want
to address the ten people who are still listening at
this point, I would like to announce the birth of
my new website. Yeah, it's called the Josh Clarkway dot com.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
How much did it weigh?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
It weighed nothing because it's a website. But there was
a lot of blood, sweat, and tears put into its
gestation and delivery. And our friend Brandon Reid who's such
a great guy and a listener on the podcast, put
it together through his business Innovate with an E. Built
this awesome website. It's super eighties, super poppy. I'm very
(02:45):
proud of it. And I'm starting a newsletter just to
celebrate the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
And it's called The Josh Clarkway.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Did you look it up? Just now?
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I'm trying but it's not loading.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Oh what else? We're cutting all this part out? Anyway?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Wait, here we go.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Isn't it beautiful?
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Well? Still loading? It's because of my old phone, it's
not because of your I appreciate that my phone just
can't handle your website.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
There's so much to my website.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
It's like, oh, there you are, Yeah, the Josh Clarkway
dot com.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And I also want to say you me help me
with the site too, so big ups and thank you
to you me and Brandon for helping me put this
thing together. So anyway, I just wanted to say, welcome website.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Oh, I got a new fun thing to do to.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Hang out on my website. Sure, sign up for the
newsletter too. While you're there. Oh this is great, Okay,
you're ready.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
I'm glad I have this in my life.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Now you ready to get started.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Maybe I'll get a website one day.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
You should get a website. It's like the new thing.
Everybody's it once. Yeah, So chuck, we're talking fall here,
which means there's only one word that comes to mind
every fall.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Pumpkins.
Speaker 4 (03:56):
No.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
The other word candy corn, no, diarrhea.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
No. Amityville. Oh, and specifically two words, the Amityville Horror,
which is, for my money, one of the greatest horror
movies of all time.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Yeah, one of the great ones. And uh being a
kid in the nineteen seventies when this stuff was going
on and famous, yeah, Like, even as a little youngster,
I remember being terrified at that paperback. Oh yeah, in
the drug store when I would go by the paperbacks
and the look of that house just terrified me.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
If the house looked any different, it be the story
would have had fifteen percent less spread.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Or did the house end up looking creepy because of
the lore it's just a colonial.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
No, that house looked creepy. Well, yeah, if somebody, if
somebody didn't say this house is haunted and by the way,
look at it, right, 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.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Well, it looked like it had eyes, right, 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 saw the side of the house,
the chimney running down the side of the house, and
those two eye like windows on the top floor on
either side of the chimney.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Just amazing. Yeah, it was a Dutch colonial to be specific.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
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 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 too, well I don't know
(05:45):
how long they had to battle, but they changed it
by four digits, like they'll never find a side exactly.
So I went and looked on the Google images, and
of course now it looks it's bright and sunny and
has a lovely yard, and it's in the middle of
a lovely neighborhood and there's 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
(06:08):
Google you can see that image, right, And there are
big signs all over like no trespassing.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Sure, and they need them, believe me.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yeah, people, just I feel sorry for homeowners since the letzes. Yes,
I don't feel sorry for them though. No, I don't
know either because they made up a bunch of malarkey.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah, that's one way to put it. But we'll get
to that part later, all right, Sure, let's set the
scene here.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Yeah, true, horrific thing did occur there.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah, and I think that kind of gets swept under
the rug a little bit overlooked, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
I agree.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
On November thirteenth, nineteen seventy four, Ronnie Butch di Feo
Junior killed the other six members of his family. His
own family, his mother, his father, sure, his two sisters
Alison and Dawn, and his two younger brothers, Mark and John.
(07:01):
He's the older brother, killed his whole family.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Yeah, nine, twelve, thirteen, and eighteen ages. Yep, that is
just I mean, this is one of those crimes that
rightfully has gone down in American history is one of
the worst.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah, and yeah, like you said, rightfully, this guy was
a bad, bad dude from the outset. He denied doing
anything when he ran into a bar called Henry's Bar
in the little town of Amityville. I bet that place
is great, and I'll bet too, you know, And he said,
somebody just killed my family, and all the barb patrons
were like, I got to see this. And they ran
(07:38):
to one twelve Ocean Avenue with Ronnie to Fayo, and
they found all six members laying his face down on
their beds dead. I think their heads their faces resting
in their hands. And Ronnie de Feo said it was
the mafia.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Yeah, which I think his family had some tie somehow
to the mafia.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
H had an uncle named Carmine, and that's that's all
you need right there.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Yeah, but there was one, like a legit crime family
that had some tie to his family, so maybe he
just thought that was a good an alibi or whatever. Yeah,
it wasn't so good, No, And he killed them with
a thirty five caliber Marlin rifle, which did you look
this thing up? No, it's like the the Old West,
(08:23):
like lever action. Oh really, riding on a horse, you know,
cowboys and Indians kind of gun.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
I expected the side bolt action carbo like a Lee
Harvey Oswald. Yes, that's what I would know.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
This is like a boom boom.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
That explains a lot, because one of the big mysteries
that still remains is why didn't the other family members
wake up?
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Well, that's a big I mean I read a little
bit into the case, and that's definitely one of these
sticking points is because 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 there were
a lot of variations of the story because of that
that one of the sisters helped kill the father, and
(09:07):
then the mother freaked out, so Ronald killed her. Yeah,
and like everyone was waking up, and I don't know,
I mean, it sounds like he just he did it
all himself.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I also saw that he had said years, like a
year after while he was being questioned, that he had
drugged them all with barbituates. But I only saw that once.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
That would make a little more sense at least, right,
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, you know, right.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
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 them all. And he
said he looked around and there was no one there.
(09:56):
So I just assumed it was God telling me to
kill so I and he killed again his whole family.
And I read this article in Vice magazine from like
twenty fourteen from some guy who said he spent like
five years in prison with Ronnie to Fayo and said, finally,
after befriending him over a couple of years, he finally
got to the truth. And the truth was he felt
(10:19):
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, so they got what
was coming to him basically, and he'd do it again.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
I mean he I don't know, this is an armchair diagnosis,
but clearly if his reason is he liked my brothers
and sisters more. Yeah, Like he's has some sort of
serious mental issues going on for sure, but he did
not want Apparently his attorney talked him into talking about
(10:52):
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, but you really should.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
And he goes, no, I don't want to do that.
He goes, well, there may be a book deal in
your future if you claim this. He goes, oh, I
like books anyway.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
What are books again? There are things that make you money.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
And he's like, you know how you like carve out
the middle of those things and you keep your heroin
and PCP in there. That's a book.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
So a real crime happened there.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, it was. Let's just say it was a fateful
decision for him to say publicly that a voice had
urged him to kill his whole family. M m okay.
That would come into play pretty soon after that. Yeah,
after Ronnie de Fayo, I believe two weeks after he
was sentenced a year after the murders, and he got
sentenced to six consecutive life sentences.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Yeah, he's still in jail.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Oh yeah, he will be forever.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
I would guess, like he's alive though.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
It is my point, right, right, you're right. About a
year after that, just like a year and a month
after the murders, a couple named George and Kathy bought
this place. And they bought it for a song. It
was eighty grand at a time when eighty grand was
a pretty good deal for a six bedroom Dutch colonial
(12:11):
in Amityville, New York.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Yeah, and so there were a couple, well, they were
a couple with a couple of kids, well three, I
think nine year old Daniel, seven year ol Christopher at
the time, five year old Missy. We'll get to their
financial situation a little bit in more detail later, but
the thought was that George could run his even though
(12:34):
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 doc. 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.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
It was just too good of a deal to pass up. Yeah, sure,
so they bought the house. Did you say they were
looking in the thirty to fifty range originally?
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
So it was a stretch for him. But again, that's
how good the deal was. So they buy the house
and they move in, and apparently almost immediately things started
to get weird. Right, So Kathy was a Catholic, And
what do you do when you're a Catholic and you
buy a new house. You invite your priests over to
(13:25):
come bless the house. See you really, I guess in
the seventies in New York you did well.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
I didn't know if that had anything to do with
the uh. I mean, did they know that the murders
had occurred there and just sort of didn't care?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Yes, And I
don't know that they didn't care. Supposedly, George Lutz later
said that, like after they said we're interested in this,
when the realtor was like, well, let me just tell
you one little detail. Just six big horrific murders, all right, yeah,
just a year ago. Yeah, sorry, we haven't cleaned up
the blood yet. Seriously, So they apparently took his second
(14:02):
to think about it and talk amongst themselves, like, is
it really botherus? This is such a good deal, and
they said not, the deal wins out over any superstitions
we have. So yes, they knew. And I don't know
if they hired them, brought the priest in because of
that or just to bless the house, but they brought
the priest in to bless the house.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
You can burn a little sage, ye, or you can
call in a priest. I think they had to ramp
it up. They called in father Ralph Peccarero, and he
came in, and this is how the story goes, and
we'll just sort of tell it as it happens supposedly.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
I think that's a great idea before we.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Start pooping all of it. So he comes in blesses
the house. 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, get out, kid,
(15:02):
And then his car started acting weird. Apparently the hood
flew open and smashed the windshield, doors are unlocking and
opening his horn.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Went auga and he didn't even have one of those
kinds of horns.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
The car stalled. 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 is portrayed in the film.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Right, And it's Rod Steiger getting shouted at.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
He's great, like flies where there shouldn't be flies. Yeah, Crucifix,
Crucifix is spinning what a pig well, smell of rotten
eggs in this hidden room that wasn't on any blueprint.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
The red room the pigs. So there was a pantom
like pig beast with glowing red eyes that would look
in on the family from the outside and leave cloven
hoof prints in the snow, and little five year old
miss You would be like, oh, that's just my friend Jody.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Which makes it ten times 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 Jodie.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Right, you know, Jody's been suggesting things.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
What else they claimed? I think the dad claimed to
see Butch Dafeyo's face in a wall. He would wake
up every every night or a lot of nights at
three point fifteen in the morning, supposedly when these murders
took place. Yeah, the kids started acting funny classic movie
haunting stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Yeah, it was a very weird situation for him. Things
were tense. They were all like they had like hair
triggered 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 a seventies so everybody was into
(16:54):
karate back then.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Sure, Elvis had a black belt.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Sure, and 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 he goes to the local Amityville
Historical Society and says, I want to know everything you
have on one twelve Ocean Avenue.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
And it got quiet in the room and.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
The guy was like, come with me. So he George
finds out that their house is probably built on Shinnacock
Indian land. That was a big one.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Yeah, not only that, but supposedly where this Native American
tribe used as a sick bay for the for the
mentally insane. That's how they put it right. 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.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
It was the kind of place where they just get
dropped off and the people would kind of back slowly
away like okay, take care, see you later, and they
would die. And no one wants to be treated like that,
So of course anyone who's left to die right there
on that land like that would obviously haunt the land.
There was some other there were some other legends about
what was behind it too. There was like an abandoned
(18:11):
cemetery pretty straight up on the nose.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yeah, there was a Salem witch guy that supposedly sacrificed animals.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
John Ketchum. And there actually was a John Ketchum who
lived somewhat in the area around that time, but he'd
never been accused of being a witch. And then I
saw an interview with a guy named Hans Holzer, who's
a bonafide parapsychologist and doctor. Holzer says that it all
(18:40):
started in nineteen twenty eight or nineteen oh 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 oh five, it disturbed an Indian
chief's grave, a Native American chief's grave, and somebody played
with his skull like a soccer ball, and he's been
(19:02):
mad about it ever since. And that is what drove
Ronnie to Fayo to kill and that is what terrorized
the lutz Is, And that's the whole problem. Everybody just
calmed down. That's it. So there's a little bit of
a little bit of peace falling into the puzzle. They're
figuring it out, but it's not making anything better. In fact,
(19:23):
everything's getting worse, Like this stuff's getting worse and worse
and worse. And finally everything culminates on this one stormy
night when 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 off
of the hinges. It's like a two hundred and fifty
(19:43):
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,
well no, they definitely, they definitely left the house.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Yeah, but neighbors say they left in ten days.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Okay, yeah, one of the two.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
But they's still The point is there are discrepancies all
over the place.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Oh we'll get to those. Yeah, we'll get to those.
But they left, and this is true. They left all
of their possessions in this house and just fled.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
And that part is true.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Never went back.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Uh yeah, unless they had a sneaky little moving team
with a uhaul in the dead of night from go
back and get our stuff from under story.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
There's stuff got auctioned off.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Yeah it did.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
I mean they left it. They had, They grabbed some clothes,
and they took off into the night.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
And which will go on later to be one of
the key selling points that this really happened, because people
that were on their side were like, why would they
do that? Yeah, on just the gambit of this being
a hoax that would eventually make the money, Right, would
they really leave all their stuff behind?
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Could anybody be.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
That Foolish's take a break and we'll find out right
after this.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
Stop you should know, stop.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
You should I should know all right, So they get
the heck out of Dodge, they leave, they contact an
author named Jay Anson.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Oh even before that.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Well, I was going to get to the attorney. Is
that really so? Princess Hall as the publisher, in nineteen
seventy seven released The Amity of a Horror was a
huge bestseller, forty two weeks on the bestseller list by
nineteen eighty one, six and a half million copies. They
were all over the country plugging this book, right, and
(22:06):
where the letses were household names. They're like on every
talk show you could imagine.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I want to underscore that. In nineteen seventy seven there
was a family from New York who claimed to have
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,
(22:33):
Like that's what you could be famous for, was saying like,
ghosts chased us out of our house. And everybody'd be like,
that's a great story.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
Should we jump ahead and talk about that attorney?
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Great?
Speaker 2 (22:45):
So what was the guy's name, Bill Weber?
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Yeah, this is where things get really hinky, is that
Bill Weber 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 gets a team together for
this book and starts saying to everybody, including Dafao, Hey,
we can all make some money if we do a
(23:10):
book here. Dafeo's got to get a cut though.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
The Lutzes were like, what are you're going to pay
the murderer?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, and he was like, yeah, it's my client.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
And they said, we're not We're not down with that plan.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yes, but 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.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Yeah, like, how can we make money off of this?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
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 lts
Is held at William Weber's office. That was when the
world was introduced to the idea of this Amityville horror,
even before the book ever.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Came out for anyone, at least not locally.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Right, right, So, so Bill Weber and the LUTs says
they they had Yeah, they had kind of like a tentative,
tenuous relationship. And when Prentis Hall came along and Jay
Anson came along. I don't know if Jay Anson poached
them or Prentis Hall poached them, but whoever was involved
(24:17):
with the Amityville Horror book got the Lutzes away from
William Weber and his book Ida and Proposal, and he
got cut out of the deal. Just put that in
your bonnet and smoke it and save it for later, Okay.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Yeah, and supposedly left because again they didn't want to
give DeFeo a cut or they just wanted a bigger
cut themselves. Yeah, at this point, it's a it's all
about money, right, But jumping back or forward, can't remember
where we are in time, but they're all over the country,
all over the news.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
This would have been about nineteen seventy seven to seventy eight.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Yeah, they're on MERV Griffin. There's they had a ghost
team of ghosts TNS come by from Channel five in
New York. Yeah, WPIX 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, but you
take a picture of anyone in black and white in
(25:15):
the dark, poking their head around a corner, and it
looked creepy.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
So let me I want to comment on that picture.
Have you seen it?
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Oh creepy.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
It is creepy. The the it's chalked up to some
of the paranormal investigators, one of like one of the
men who was at that WPIX seance fest at the
house getting in front of the camera.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Yeah, they're saying that one of the uh Paul Bart's
that it was just one of the ghost hunters.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
So that was a grown man. Whoever's in the picture
is a kid, just plain as day. There's no there's
no confusing that for a grown man.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
I think so. So unless he was had a boyish face.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
I think it's a very bizarre picture.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
I mean no, I think it's bizarre.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And supposedly it was taken with infrared film in the dark,
and again it doesn't look like a man.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Which is that's why the eyes are glowing, right.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
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?
Speaker 3 (26:15):
I'm trying to find that picture again.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
It's clearly the face of a boy that's not a
man's face. That's the thing that sticks out to me.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Yeah, I mean it certainly looks like a boy. Man,
it is creepy and also so it's got to be
a boy.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
And that's what it looks like to me, and it's
got to be. This picture was debuted in the nineteen
seventy seven seventy eight by George Lutz on the MERV
Griffin Show.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
But they could have set that up. Could have been.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
They could have and we we say, whatever, have you
seen the conjuring?
Speaker 3 (26:47):
I think I've seen parts of it. But that's the
real life couple.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah, Ed and Lorraine Warren.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Yeah, who hooked up with these I mean this is
where they got their start kind.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Of right, kind of They basically had like an occult museum.
They were like a psychic and psychic investigators in Connecticut
like you do. And the guy Marvin Scott who was
the anchor who investigated the Amityville Horror for the WPIX
local Channel five station, Yeah, he invited them to come
out to this seance and it was like a series
(27:17):
of siances that they filmed and you can actually see
this look up WPIX News eleven Marvin Scott Part one,
and it's like a nineteen ninety eight 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
(27:37):
obviously real. And during these seances, supposedly the psychics started
to feel sick. Lorrain Warren said she felt an evil
presence from the bowels of the earth in the house.
And then that picture, that famous photograph was taken.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
So I think the Warrens are the ones too that
said why would they leave all of their stuff behind? Sure,
and they also said, well, we would not be involved,
that this was some sort of a hoax.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Right exactly.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Don't you know who we are proof positive?
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Right?
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
But the yeah, the real life Warrens were. They did
investigate the Sanityville House in the early seventies or mid seventies,
early on after the story broke.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
You also know it was the seventies because they were
featured on Leonard de Mooy's Great show in Search of Love,
which we both used to love, and of course they
covered that in nineteen seventy nine, supposedly got the priest
on there, even though he wanted to be kept anonymous,
and he or whoever it was, kind of reinforced this
(28:35):
cold room get out scream.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Yeah, it just went just double down on it. His
face was hidden in the book, I think the jaynsm book.
There were three source materials that came out about this story,
all within a couple of years of each other. There
was a Good Housekeeping article which is hilarious. Yeah, there
was the JAYANSM.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Book, and then there was a book, and then there.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Was a movie. Yes, and 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, 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.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
The book said it was a true story. But Leonard on.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
The cover, I just I just I expected more from
Leonard Neimoy than that. He says, unequivocally, it's a true story.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
That's because that's what the script, the teleprompter said.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Well, anyway, that was a great episode of In Search
of anyway.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Yeah, So in nineteen seventy nine, the very famous film
adaptation of this book comes out, starring James Berlin and
Margo Kidder as the Lutzes, and it was a big,
big hit, eighty million dollars in domestic release, which was
I didn't do the conversion, but a very good haul
(29:56):
for nineteen seventy nine, one of the smash hits. Yeah
of that year, for sure.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
I think it was close to three hundred million probably.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Oh yeah, yeah, good money.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah, I mean this is back in the time when
like movies didn't routinely make a billion dollars in an
opening weekend, right, that was a ton of cash.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
There were a lot of really bad sequels that, no doubt,
just kind of threw out the whole legend of the
house and just did whatever they want with that name.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Have you seen any of them? I haven't.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
I haven't seen any of the sequels, Nor did I
see the remake recently.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
With Ryan Reynolds.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Yeah, did you see that?
Speaker 4 (30:31):
No?
Speaker 3 (30:31):
I don't remember the original movie that much, and to
be honest, I don't know if ever saw it all
the way through. I mean I was way too young
to see anything like this. So it would have been.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
It's still around. They didn't burn a whole copy.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
It's worth seeing. It's a great horror film.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Like I've seen a lot of the parts.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
James James Beard, Little Miss for Jodie's Friend is a
little creep show.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
And who played Jody. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Who played her, but like, yeah, the kids did good.
Rod Steiger was the priest. He was great.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
I remember seeing that scene, so I've definitely seen parts
of it.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yule Brenner was the good voice.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Was he really.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Sorry that.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
They actually didn't shoot at that Ocean Avenue house? Though,
of course, you know with a movie like this, the
law is kind of usually not true, and the law
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 superstructure around the house to make it
(31:42):
look like the other house, which was just like a
couple hours from there.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Right the town of Amityville said no, we don't want
anything like this, no publicity like this. Please. This was
a tragedy. We like our quiet, sleepy town the way
it is. No, we're not giving you a permit to
shoot here.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Yes, so, but Tom's River was like bring it.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, nobody knows about us. Who's Tom anyway? We don't
know does a 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 that that the Amityville Hohrror became part of American
popular culture. Like yeah, it was cemented into it. And
(32:27):
it was also cemented in that this is based on
a true story. Maybe the movie blew at a little
labor 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?
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah? And it was that period in the late seventies where,
like we talked about it with the Bermuda Triangle was
a big deal.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
And waterbeds were huge.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
Waterbeds were big, But I feel like there was just
there wasn't as much stuff. There wasn't as much content,
a bigger deal. Yeah, 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.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
It was like part of the fabric of America.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
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 over over here,
look over here, we're here, Like it could like really
kind of ruminate on something and let it like stew.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Yeah, like now a show can win Best Show Emmy
Award and you're like, I've never even heard of that.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Too much stuff, A lot of stuff out there, But
is that better or worse?
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Like I feel like 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 or
not right now, who knows. I don't think anybody's ever
lived long enough to be like, I'm a thousan years
old and it is way worse these days than it
(34:02):
was five hundred years ago.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
Now, are you talking about entertainment content or.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Just general culture everything being alive.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
See, I think entertainment wise, it's better because yeah, yeah,
I mean back then it was just like everyone got
obsessed with Amyville because it was the 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.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
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 around for a year and
really really be into the Amityville or rather than you know,
like the cameraman missed that shot by like an eighth
(34:51):
of an angela. 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
but I think that's my point.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Plus, we were all doped up.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Yeah, 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.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
All Right, so maybe we maybe we can take a
break now and then we can start poking holes in
this thing. Start, Does that sound good?
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (35:39):
Stop?
Speaker 3 (35:50):
Should I should know? All right? So I insists we
have not poked any holes yet.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
There's some dents in there that we've kind of put
our fingers in.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
I've just been snidely laughing at everything we say, like yeah, right, yeah,
but here's some of the holes and there are quite
a few. Yeah, I kind of mentioned before. Neighbors say
that they left like a week and a half enter
their stay in this house. The let's just said twenty
eight days.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
So right out of the gate, you've got a discrepancy.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
Yeah. And the.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Kind of what the thinking was and 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 this story.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah, but imagine figuring that out in ten days. That's
a little weird.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Well, and I also don't know how that would get
them out of their mortgage, just defaulting on it, yeah,
because it's haunted.
Speaker 2 (36:41):
Yeah, just walking away like can't get blood from a stone.
Go take the house if you want it back.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Yeah, but could they claim that it wasn't disclosed? If
it was disclosed, like, how could they literally get out
of the mortgage.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
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.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Credit, right, just walk away.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
And just walk away, like then you don't have to
make payments anymore. Yeah, 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.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Right, that's incredible. The great show from nineteen eighties. You
just watch that.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Yeah, I watched the episode that this was on.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
But did you watch it as a kid? U A great,
great show and on this show.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Sorry, it was really positive. Do you remember it seemed
pretty upbeat.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Well, it's called that's incredible, not like that's crappy.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
The cameraman missed that shot and it was.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
I think it even had an exclamation point, didn't it. Yeah,
at the end of the title. Yeah, so that's incredible.
Barbara Camardi owned the house at the time of this episode,
walks them through and shows like close up. So the
hinges of that front door. Yeah, and these windows that
are still sealed. It was like these things didn't blow.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
No, she went out of her way to 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.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
But Leut's also said though, that no, no, no, there were
pictures in the newspaper of that front door blown out.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Have you seen the picture?
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Well, no, I didn't think anyone could find it.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
It's a screen door that's kind of like hanging open. Yeah,
I'm not kidding. That's the picture from what I understand.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
All right, so it's all falling apart, then.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
Right, oh yeah, it's all falling apart. For 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, the
book got a bunch of stuff wrong. The movie got
a ton of stuff wrong. Because I think the Ryan
Reynolds remake of the movie was supposedly build is this
(39:01):
is way more true to the book. Oh really, 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. So George
Lets would say, all these people got all these details wrong,
but this this stuff we said happen really happened. Part
(39:21):
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?
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (39:29):
I saw an interview where he said that in public
on camera.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Yeah, he really like, kudos to him for sticking to it. Yeah.
I would say deathbed is a perfect time to be like,
guess what everybody isn't Everyone would be like yeah, no, no,
like you guys knew.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
No, s I love that this is a family show.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
So George Lets went to his grave saying, no, this
is this is for real. William Webber, Bill Webber, the attorney,
did quite the opposite of that.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Well, he said, and of course LUTs will paint. This
is probably painted. This is sour grapes. Sure, because Weber
was cut out of the money deal, but as soon
as they left and made their own book deal, he
started barking that this is all bs, this is a
hoax that we made up.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
He totally did that. He said that over about three
bottles of wine, he and George and Kathy Lutz concocted
the story out of whole cloth.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
And then had a smoking night of love making the
three of them.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
On their waterbed. Geez took a sexy turn all of
a sudden. Sure, so yeah, Bill Weber, he said that.
He said, Hey, I was just looking to get another
trial from my client, who I think was innocent and insane.
What the Lutzes were doing was going after money. But
(40:57):
you can also look at it like running to fay
was the greatest thing that ever happened to Bill Weber'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 worth more than anything Ronnie to Fao could
ever give me. Yeah, so the idea of reviving interest
in the case would probably help his case load as well.
(41:18):
Who knows the point is? William Weber hired a guy
named Paul Hoffman I think his name was, and he
wrote the Good Housekeeping article. And when that Good Housekeeping
article came out. The Lesses 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
(41:41):
using the courts. Like if you have a life story
and some lawyer comes along and hires somebody to write
that story, Yeah, that's invasion to 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 I don't want
to say ballsy gutsy.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
Yeah. And speaking of lawsuits, I mean, we won't go
through the merriad lawsuits, but there were it felt like
more than a dozen lawsuits over the years.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, they sued Weber sued them.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
People were suing everyone. People were suing cops. Cops were
suing the family, The.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Cro Marty's were suing the Lutzes for even making the
thing up in the first place.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
And to me, this is what is sort of proof
positive that the whole thing is rotten to begin with.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Sure, when the lawsuits start flying.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
Yeah, everyone had their hand out. This father of Peccerero
in court documents said that you know what, I never
went there and blessed the house right 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.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Because she was talking to a doll I think had
a dog, Harry.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
But it creaked me out.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Nonetheless, I always wanted to be played by Rod Steiger,
so I went for it.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
But yeah, I mean, it just it all sort of
fell apart.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
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 if there are some
demons here. But the priest really confounds things. Not because
it's like it was a Catholic church really trying to
keep this quiet, more like why did this priest lie
(43:21):
so overtly on in search.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Of Well, he may have had some skin in the game.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Maybe maybe, so maybe you're right.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
But the Warren said, in addition to him, you know,
experiencing that in the house, 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.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
I love it. I love that we're treating In Search
Of as if it was this you know, no, no,
highly regarded. I mean it was, it was great, but
it was schlocky 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.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
No, No, it was the guy who in court documents
that was the guy on in.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
Search Of But they blacked his face out right, But.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
I mean, like they that's the guy. That's the guy.
He was revealed later on. The guy on in Search
Of was revealed later on to be father Pecqerero, and
he was on in search Of back before anyone ever
knew the name Pecquerero. He was called in the book
father man q Soo. All right, But as far as
I know, that is the same guy.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
And that he was just on TV lying through.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
His teeth, that's what I saw.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
Or he could have been just handed a script by
Nimoy's team.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
It's possible it was the seventies and America went we'll
believe anything you say.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
A couple of years ago, actually just last year, in
twenty seventeen, it was sold for about six hundred grand
the house, which is a couple one hundred less than
they were asking for it. They're asking around eight.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 3 (45:06):
And apparently it's not had nothing that the only had
to do with the price 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
ooze and flies and devil pigs coming out of you know,
(45:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
There it is. It's at one.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
Oh wait, they must have moved it. That still cracks
me up.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Yeah, but yeah, that's the thing. That's why the house
is still selling for less than it ever was before.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
And 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.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
I don't know that maybe utterly true.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
Who knows it says that they did. He did admit
to getting about one hundred grand from the book and
another hundred from the film.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
That's not that much money, No, but this is nineteen
seventies money. Those some money.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
Yeah, but it's not like kickback and retire money. Sure,
you know.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Sure. One of the probably the most telling thing about
the Luts's story being a hoax, the whole thing being
just one big hoax, is that no one, no other
person owner, anybody who was associated with that house after
the Lutz family left, ever reported anything even remotely supernatural
(46:39):
like this nothing. Yeah, And of course Lorraine Warren had
a pretty good explanation for that, which is what she said. Well, then,
obviously one of the exorcisms was successful, because that's the
only way job, that's the only way to explain why
the hauntings went away. Yeah, and like it, that's the
only way to explain it. Huh.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
The LUTs is also never called the which was a
big hole people poke into it. Like if all this
stuff was going on, like at some point you're going
to go to the police, right, and even if it's
ten days and not the twenty eight You're not just
gonna just quietly be haunted by the demons of hell,
right and not not sweat it with the cops.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
Sure, at least call them once and be like, you
guys do anything about demons?
Speaker 3 (47:21):
No, okay, even if it's a crank call. Sure, what
do you think? I mean? This is getting a little philosophical,
I guess, But do you think what do you think
about bad juju in a in a home where six
people were murdered? Like I'm a I'm a totally agnostic
(47:42):
non believer 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
the air, which sounds hokier than anything I've made fun of.
I think, so you know, what's the Josh clarkway dot com?
Speaker 2 (48:08):
What's the what's the word? Oh, placebo? I think it's
a placebo effect.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
Okay, so you know that something happened here. If you
didn't know anything, you would never notice anything.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
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. You could be like, well
there's a shadow over there something like that. You can
freak yourself out, even in a house like that that
you didn't know was haunted or said to be haunted.
But I think if you know a house is said
(48:39):
to be haunted, if you are just your brain's working
overtime and you're going to produce those things that you
think you see, well that's why I create 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 from people to exercise
(49:01):
stuff like that, then I have a problem with you.
But I don't think a lot of people are out
there doing it. I think most people just believe one
way or another.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
You know, yeah, interesting, Yeah, I want to know that boy.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
Is in the picture, it's Jody the pig Demon. If
you want to know more about the Amityville horror, you
can type those words into the Internet. Actually, you can
type it into how stuff works and it will bring
up an article by our own former own Matt Hunt.
Speaker 3 (49:29):
I remember that guy.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
He wrote the Amityville article on the website.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
What's he up to now? Any idea?
Speaker 2 (49:35):
I don't know, and he's continuing his investigation into the
Amityville horror.
Speaker 3 (49:39):
He was never heard from again.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
Right since I said that it's time for the listener mail.
Speaker 3 (49:46):
I'm gonna call this follow up on the homelessness episode
we re ran that one for selects. Got a better
response this time.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
Yeah, I was really looking out for somebody, but I
guess they learned their lesson or ell stop listening to
us by now.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Yeah. Well, and I set it up too, because it
was my pick with like, hey, this is what happened
last time. Oh right, so you know I dare you
it right in this time?
Speaker 2 (50:09):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
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 dress on a bench
for heading for home. That realizing it, I had accidentally
let one of the leashes slip out of my hand. Unfortunately,
Sophia noticed her leash was free at about the same
(50:33):
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. As she ran down the sidewalk,
a few 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
(50:55):
both directions, Sprinting to try and catch up. I watched
in horror as she ran out into the street chore.
I was about to see my dog get killed by
an oncoming car. It was right about then that a
homeless man that we had previously seen around town rode
up on his bicycle right in the middle of the road,
keeping himself between my dog and the cars flying by.
(51:16):
Weren't for him doing that, she would surely have been
run over. 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 a dream? That's me talking? He had put
himself in harms way to save my dog's life and
(51:37):
then just quietly ridden away when he saw that she
was safe. Don't know his name, never saw him again
to thank him. Sophia 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.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
That was a great story.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
Love it.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
Thanks a lot, Ali, thanks for sharing that one. See
everybody we told you. If you want to send us
an email like Ali did or get in touch with this,
you can go to our website stuffyshouldo dot com. I
also have a website called the Josh Clarkway dot com
if you want to check it out, and you can
send an email to Chuck, Jerry and Me plus Frank
the chair, guests producer Roll everybody. Send that email to
(52:18):
Stuff Podcasts at HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it HowStuffWorks dot com
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