‘Amityville Horror’ killer Ronald DeFeo Jnr dies in prison
- Ronald DeFeo was convicted of killing his mother, father, two brothers and two sisters in 1974
- The murders inspired the 1977 book ‘The Amityville Horror’ and a cult film by the same name
The man convicted of slaughtering his parents and four siblings in a home that later inspired the The Amityville Horror book and films has died, prison officials said on Monday.
Ronald DeFeo, 69, died on Friday at Albany Medical Centre, where he was taken February 2 from a prison in New York’s Catskill Mountains, the state Department of Corrections and Community Services said. The cause of his death wasn’t immediately known.
DeFeo was serving a sentence of 25 years to life in the 1974 killings in Amityville, on suburban Long Island.
The home became the basis of a horror-movie classic after another family briefly lived there about a year after the killings and claimed the house was haunted. A book and two films – the 1979 original, starring James Brolin, Margot Kidder and Rod Steiger, and a 2005 remake – portrayed a home with strange voices, walls that oozed slime, furniture that moved on its own, and other supernatural features.
DeFeo had pursued an insanity defence at his trial, saying he heard voices that drove him to kill his family.