The Devil I Know: My Haunting Journey with Ronnie DeFeo and the True Story ofthe Amityville Murders (20 page)

“A contract?”

“He pulled out a pen and a piece of paper. But I couldn’t read nothing on the paper. I don’t know what it was written in.”

“What did it look like?”

“A white piece of paper. It didn’t have no lines on it or nothing, and it was in black ink, but the way it was written, I couldn’t understand it. He said you’re signing a contract, I carry your soul around. Well, I’m glad someone’s interested in my soul, I said. I made a joke out of it.
He went on and on about the church and Jesus Christ, how they disowned him. I mean he went on and on. He said they don’t care about you or anybody else. He went on about people praying to statues. He said you need to take all them statues and smash ’em up. Take the stone dust, put it back into a refinery, and make, whatever, bricks out of ’em, because it ain’t doing anybody any good.

“There was ink on the paper, but it wasn’t written in English, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Maybe it was Latin. That’s their language, right? He says, ‘How did it get that way, the life you lived?’ He said, ‘Twenty-three years old, and you did more than people did during their whole lives.’ I said, ‘Yeah, well.’ He said, ‘You had everything. Cars, boats. You had too many girlfriends. You’re having sex with everybody. Your mother’s friends.’ Then he went on. ‘This is between you and me,’ he went on to say. ‘You’re lucky you didn’t go all the way with your first cousin.’ I come home real late at night, she was sleeping over, she was in my bed, naked. I mean, what the hell am I supposed to do?”

“Walk away?” I said. “That usually works.”

“I asked him about my father. He didn’t say a goddamn thing.”

“Why did you ask him about that?”

“All he’d have to do is apologize.”

“Who?”

“My father. Goddamn bastard. All he had to do is say he understood all the shit he did was bad, and he’s sorry. But that bastard ain’t sorry. I’m tired, Jackie.”

While telling me the story, Ronnie’s voice had become progressively weaker until it was no more than a wheeze. The shadow was beginning to envelop him fully. Each of our recent conversations had ended with Ronnie diving into a vigorous story and then quickly petering out. But it wasn’t exactly petering out; it was more like being snuffed out.

“It’s coming, Jackie. I’m sorry I pulled you into this. You tried to help, and I appreciate that.”

I’d faced off against evil before, but maybe, all this time, over all these years, only indirectly. After my mother’s spirit had been consigned to hell, after I’d seen her snatched from me, maybe I’d needed to stay close to death to try to cheat it myself. She was a prisoner for eternity, but I could beat the enemy by keeping it close. If I kept the darkness at my side, perhaps I could avoid becoming swayed by it. I could avoid becoming a medal on the devil’s chest by confronting his handiwork everywhere I could. Jackie the secret weapon, Jackie the NYPD’s covert helper. All those hideous acts: lost minds; dismembered bodies; murdered children. I kept it always in my view, dove willingly into every case, answered every plea for help after the disappearance of a missing loved one, took in every stray and cast-out drifter who wound up at my doorstep. If I embraced hell first, maybe I wouldn’t be dragged there.

The piles of
cases grew on my desk, as did my drive to help the lost and the grieving. My house began to look like a museum of death, with items belonging to murder victims
and heartbroken families, their tears wrapped up in little boxes, the only thing left of the person they’d adored. Copies of coroners’ reports, photos of autopsies, teddy bears no longer hugged but too painful for the families to keep.

Often while working a case, I’d feel I was challenging the demon on its own turf. While trying to close the wounds for families torn apart by grief, I’d felt the confrontation again and again. But I saw now that those had been individual battles, not the bigger war. The devil was strong. I had to be stronger. For better or worse, Ronnie DeFeo was a vessel. The demon had inhabited him in a cruel moment and started a domino tumble that would ultimately dictate the rest of his life. It had gone through his father, and, maybe, others in his family. It had lived at 112 Ocean Avenue for a long time. I knew that now.

But knowing wasn’t enough, nor were our phone dialogues. I had to engage fully with the entity that haunted this man. Letters and phone calls could reveal plenty on their own, but in the end they were still at a remove. Ronnie was bottoming out. The dark spirit had its hooks in him and was close to pulling him down into the abyss forever. The obligation became clear to me. I needed to place myself directly in the path of the devil and invite him in. I needed to take the demon spirit out of Ronnie DeFeo and try to pass it back where it belonged. I would have to meet the man.

I called Joanne into the room. My daughter, my assistant, my kindred spirit. I didn’t have to tell her anything.

“When do you want to go?” she said.

Before I could meet Ronnie DeFeo face to face, I
needed his full trust and complete faith. And there was only one way to achieve that. The next day, when the reliable midmorning call came, I spoke first.

“It’s time for us to talk about it, Ronnie.”

He knew what I was referring to. We’d danced around it for close to a year. He heard in my voice that there was to be no more stalling. I knew that if I pressed too soon, I might upset him and never find out the truth. I also knew that waiting too long might lead to the same result. I’d resisted asking the question until now because I feared he might suddenly withdraw if I forced him to return to the night that had set the rest of his life in motion.

But now, he seemed ready to tell. He’d told me nearly everything else already, had curled back over his many stories again and again. We were both quiet, the moment
hanging, and I think we both sensed this was the right time to finally broach the painful memory together.

“Dawn’s was the extra room in the house,” he began. “On the third floor. It was really the attic, but it was so big they made it a bedroom for her. And then she decides, that night, I mean, this whole thing was too obvious. I shoulda saw it coming, but I didn’t. She had an electric typewriter they bought her, and everything that goes with it, all the accessories.”

He was coming at the story from the side, but acknowledging to me that we had come far enough together, that he was ready—or at least that he might be willing to try.

“Who did she get along with best of the siblings?”

“At first, her and Allison shared a room.”

I flipped through the file again and reviewed the DeFeo family tree. Next to Ronnie “Butch” DeFeo was Dawn, the eldest daughter in the family. She was eighteen at the time, and the next oldest sibling, Allison, was thirteen. Then came Marc, twelve; and John, nine.

“Then Dawn got some heart and decided she was gonna move in the extra room by herself.”

“Was she nervous to do that?”

“Yeah, she was nervous. I don’t know why. You’re eighteen years old. She moved her stuff upstairs. But she still liked to come downstairs to sleep sometimes, to my room.”

“On the second floor?”

“On the second floor. I had a TV in my room. She didn’t have one. She liked to use my shower, too.”

“Why do you think she liked to use your shower?”

“Dawn was not a slob, but Dawn’s hygiene, Jesus. She didn’t want to take showers. I told her, ‘Use my bathroom; use my shower.’ But she just didn’t want to take showers. She would wash her hair in the sink. ‘Why don’t you just go in the shower and wash your whole body? I go in there twice a day,’ I’d tell her. ‘You’re having sex with all these guys; you gotta clean yourself.’ She got real tight. But she wasn’t a slob. Her clothes were always clean and fresh. Her room was immaculate.”

“Did she spend most of her time in Allison’s room?”

“Yeah. Dawn was around before Allison. Allison was born in Amityville, Dawn and me were born in Brooklyn. So it was really Dawn’s room. All the furniture in them, all that white furniture with gold trim—there’s a name for it, it’s very expensive furniture—that was all Dawn’s. She was going upstairs, downstairs, upstairs, downstairs; it was getting like a yo-yo. She was upstairs; her clothes were downstairs. She didn’t know whether she was coming or going. Hey, you don’t sound good, Jackie. You okay?”

“I’m fine.” I’d been trying to hide my coughing by covering the phone, but he’d heard it anyway. Will and Jo were looking at me with twin expressions of worry. I waved them off. “Keep talking, Ronnie. You need to tell me this. You need to say the words. I’m not a prosecutor or a judge. Remember that. I’m not asking you for a confession. But you need to tell me the story. I need to know. Others need to know.”

There was silence on the other end.

“What happened, Ronnie? Take me back to that night. What happened?”

“All that bastard would have had to do was apologize for the things he did. Then we’d all be okay. Never even said sorry. All he had to do was say sorry.”

“I know, Ronnie. What happened that night?”

“Last night I went and sat in the chair all night. I wrote you a letter. My hands were shaking. I’m tired, but I’m starting to feel lighter or something. I wanted to finish this shit once and for all. I’d even put the thing around my neck, but it broke. Just my luck.”

He was trying to unnerve me. But this was a childish trick. First, no one in their sound mind would give him a length of rope to do anything with. Second, I didn’t think he had the guts. “That’s not funny, Ronnie. And I know you’re lying.”

“Then I tried again a few nights after. I thought maybe it’ll work this time. I didn’t do it, though. He came at me in my cell again that night. Came and sat on me and wrenched my legs right up. I tried to run at him, but I went right through instead. That goddamn guy. That was the same night you told me you and Jo heard music coming from somewhere in your house.”

“That’s right. We were talking, and then a sound like an old clock radio just came on. It sounded like it was everywhere. We checked all around the house and never found the source.”

“Bastard was letting you know he was around.”

“It was a bad night. Two of three bathroom toilets just
started running and flushing on their own. The lights in Uncle Ray’s room were flashing on and off all night. Ray poured cold water on his face. But we made it through, Ronnie. We made it through that night like you’ve made it through all of the bad stuff. And now you and I have traveled this far together, and we need to take it the rest of the way.”

Ronnie went back to his story, as if our digression had never occurred. “Two fucking boyfriends she had, at least. Two at one time, got one guy murdered, God knows how many more she had.”

“Who, Dawn?”

“My mother. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Why did she have to pull that gun? She woulda never got shot. Three goddamn guys. The beautician, the priest, plus I think another guy. Fucking all of them. I mean, come on.”

Ronnie had spent three and a half decades in prison for murdering six people in cold blood. No one on earth knew what had actually happened. I asked again: “Ronnie, what happened that night?”

“And the goddamn screaming. That would drive anybody crazy. I think it drove my parents crazy. Or it was the devil teaching them a lesson for all the wrongs they done. Him with the beatings, her with the boyfriends. I mean, Jesus Christ. I’m supposed to live under that roof like a normal guy?”

“Tell me about the screaming, Ronnie. Do you mean voices in your head?”

“In my head? No! In their room. Their bedroom. I ain’t talking about in between my goddamn ears.”

“You would hear screaming in their bedroom? You mean they fought?”

“It wasn’t them. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. There was a man’s voice and a woman’s voice, but not my mother and father, different voices. The woman’s voice, Christ, it had a screw to it. Go right through you. And the man, it was like he was in pain, like he was being tortured. This would go on for an hour at a time. I couldn’t stand it. It went on right up until the day they died.”

“Up until the day they died? The day your whole family got killed?”

“Truthfully, I thought they were having sex, with all the screaming. Or somebody was killing them. Apparently the only one who heard what I heard was me. I asked Dawn if she heard it, and she said, ‘What are you, what’s the matter with you? Are you drunk again?’ I said ‘What are you talking about? I’m asking you a question.’ She said ‘No, I didn’t hear nothing.’ I asked every one of them kids, and every one of them said the same thing, ‘We didn’t hear nothing.’ I asked them again. ‘You didn’t hear nothing, huh?’ ‘Nope, nothing.’ That’s what they said. That was the first time.”

“There was more than one time?”

“The second time it was even worse. I said, ‘What are they, going at it again?’ This time I went to their bedroom to tell them to keep it down, and the door was open, a third of the way. I said, ‘They don’t even close the door? Jesus Christ.’ But when I reached for it the door closed, hard. I heard something slide across the floor, like they
were pushing something up against the door. I pushed against it from my side, but it wouldn’t move. I don’t know what they had behind that door, I assume it was the dresser. So I couldn’t get in, no one could get in. I had my hand on the knob and my foot ready to kick the door in. It’s locked. I couldn’t get in there. Then I got worried, ’cause my mother and father wouldn’t answer me, but that screaming was still going on. And I’m gonna tell you something, that screaming was not my mother and my father. Those voices were not coming from this world, they were some other thing. I ran downstairs and tried to look into their bedroom from outside. The curtain wasn’t closed all the way. I did a lot of peeking, but I couldn’t see anything other than a lot of candles lit. I said, ‘Son of a bitch, what the hell’s going on in there?’ Not one candle, a lot.”