The Real Story_4of5_The Amityville Horror
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00:00This is the birthplace of a movie legend, the Amityville Horror.
00:21The supernatural events said to have happened inside this house inspired a best seller book
00:26and a box office hit.
00:30Allegedly based on true events, some believe this is the story of America's most terrifying
00:36haunting, a family driven from their home by demonic forces.
00:41I said, I hope this is as close to hell as I ever get.
00:46It's like evil personified.
00:51The story of the haunting of the Lutz family terrified a country.
00:56But some believe the Amityville Horror is nothing more than an elaborate deception.
01:00As far as I'm concerned, it's a hoax.
01:03It always has been.
01:05Or is there another story, a case of a family haunted by their own fears?
01:11There are no haunted places, only haunted people.
01:15What happened inside this house tore apart this quiet corner of suburbia.
01:21It was shocking.
01:24I don't know the words to tell you what it felt like.
01:31For those that lived through it, this is the story of the Amityville Horror.
01:54Amityville Village on the south shore of Long Island, New York, home to the most notorious
02:09haunted house in the world, still privately owned today.
02:19In 1965, Ronald DeFeo Sr. and his wife Louise moved into 112 Ocean Avenue with their five
02:26children.
02:36They were second generation Italian-Americans from Brooklyn looking to start a new life
02:41in the peaceful suburbs of Amityville.
02:46The DeFeos named their home High Hopes.
02:50It symbolized everything they had ever worked for.
03:00As a child, Patrick O'Reilly lived next door to the family.
03:05He became close friends with the younger DeFeo children and often stayed over at their house.
03:10They were really nice people.
03:13They were loving people.
03:14And they treated everyone just wonderfully.
03:18Everyone who came into the house was treated the same way.
03:21They remodeled the house and put a pool, a built-in pool, in the backyard.
03:27So some of us were jumping off the diving board and screaming yippee yappie yahooey
03:31all day long.
03:32I just pretty much became part of the family.
03:39But in the early hours of November 13, 1974, the DeFeos' lives were brutally cut short.
03:49The mother, father, and four of their five children were found murdered in their beds.
03:58Local reporter Joel Martin was one of the first journalists on the scene.
04:03We're talking about six murders, a whole family wiped out.
04:08Shock doesn't begin to describe the way people felt about it.
04:14It was national news from the first moment because amity, which is a word for calm or
04:21peaceful, kind of represents what this town was all about.
04:26Nobody ever, ever dreamed something like this could happen.
04:36Amity was just 14 at the time of the tragedy.
04:39This is the first time he has spoken publicly of the murders.
04:45The prefect of my dormitory came in and said, Patrick, I need you to come and talk with
04:51me.
04:52I went to the prefect's room, sat with him, and he told me that he had some terrible news
05:00to tell me, that, uh...
05:26It was horrific.
05:27He told me that my, uh, sister and brother would be up to collect me.
05:36That's how I found out.
05:51It was quite a spectacle around my house.
05:54Tremendous amount of police at the house.
05:57There was a lot of reporters.
06:03You couldn't go to the house, and that was hard because it's where you wanted to be.
06:17I guess a lot was disbelief.
06:19You didn't believe it was true.
06:22I think I felt that way for years.
06:26I just remember just, you know, sitting around, waiting for news, you know, who did it, you
06:32know, how did this happen, you know.
06:39The next day, police took in the only surviving son for questioning.
06:46Twenty-three-year-old Ronnie DeFeo, nicknamed Butch by his friends, confessed to shooting
06:52his parents and siblings with his father's shotgun.
06:58Standing about 20 feet away, he aimed the gun in the dark and, uh, shot and killed both
07:05parents.
07:10Then he went into his brother's room, and he shot both of them.
07:17And then he went up into his sister's room and killed them.
07:29After that, he cleaned up as best he could.
07:34He washed himself.
07:49But a question remained.
07:51All the bodies were found face down, with no signs of struggle.
07:56An autopsy revealed the family had not been drugged.
08:00Weber believes DeFeo could not have acted alone, a mystery that was never solved.
08:07It was my assertion that more than two people did this.
08:11It's impossible for this crime to have been committed the way the police say Ronnie DeFeo
08:15did it.
08:18But what is known is that Ronnie discarded the murder weapon in the creek behind the
08:22DeFeo home.
08:25And later that day, he went to work as usual.
08:29When he came home, he walked into the house, saw his family members, and went to the local
08:36bar where he hangs out, screaming, my family, my family had been shot, they'd been killed.
08:46With Ronnie awaiting trial, the press started to speculate on the motive for the murders.
08:54Some reports claimed he wanted to cash in on his family's life insurance policy.
08:59Other rumors suggested he had been tipped over the edge by witnessing repeated domestic
09:04violence, an allegation that Patrick O'Reilly adamantly denies.
09:10I read a lot in the papers how the DeFeos were not only loud, but they were brutal.
09:19That Mr. DeFeo slapped Mrs. DeFeo and slapped the kids.
09:25Why I think this was written, I don't know.
09:29But it just wasn't true.
09:31Mr. DeFeo was a strict man, but he was also a very religious man.
09:36He wanted the best for his kids.
09:38I never saw him raise his hand.
09:50As the defense team prepared for the trial, it emerged Ronnie had a history of drug abuse
09:56and regularly took heroin and LSD.
10:01The night of the murders, he claimed to have heard voices telling him to commit the crime.
10:08The defense ultimately chose a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.
10:17The evidence that I produced stated that Ronnie was insane, that he didn't understand
10:22the nature of his act when he was doing it, and that he had completely disassociated himself
10:29from the murderous acts that he was performing.
10:40But Weber lost the case.
10:45In November 1975, a year after the murders, the jury found Ronald Butch DeFeo guilty.
10:56He was sentenced to six life terms in prison.
11:02Ronnie was guilty and Ronnie went away, and that's what I thought and everybody else thought.
11:08That's where this horrible story would end.
11:11I never dreamed that this story would go on forever.
11:16Never ever thought that.
11:26With Ronnie behind bars, back in Amityville, the DeFeo family home stood empty.
11:34It was put on the market at a bargain price.
11:38For newlyweds George and Kathy Lutz, 112 Ocean Avenue was their perfect family home
11:45and at a price they could afford.
11:51Although aware of its tragic history, they decided it was something they could live with.
11:56We went home and we sat around as a family and talked about it for quite a while.
12:02And it was decided that it would be okay.
12:10On December 18th, the Lutz family and their three children moved in.
12:19But soon after, they claimed a series of strange events started to haunt the family.
12:26Strange fluctuations in temperature.
12:35The house was taken over by the stench of fetid odors and cheap perfume.
12:42A strange slime began to appear on the walls.
12:46The slime was like gelatin, like drops of gelatin on the carpet going from room to room.
12:56George discovered a mysterious red room hidden in the basement.
13:04Alone in the house, Kathy said she felt an invisible presence touch her.
13:15She heard loud scrapes and bangs in empty rooms.
13:28Day by day, they claimed these mysterious noises became more violent.
13:45Missy, their youngest daughter, began playing with an imaginary friend called Jody that
13:50started to haunt the family.
14:12George repeatedly woke up around 3.15, close to the time of the DeFeo murders.
14:24He heard the sound of an orchestra tuning up.
14:32Then, on one night, the terror intensified.
14:40The house was gripped by poltergeist activity and inexplicable sounds.
14:52George claimed he felt a heavy, invisible weight pinning him down in his bed.
15:03I'm laying in bed.
15:05I'm unable to get up.
15:06I can hear my children's beds overhead of me, slamming up and down on the floor,
15:15and I can't get up to help them.
15:20On the 28th day, they abandoned their new home in terror, leaving all of their possessions behind.
15:28They never set foot inside the house again.
15:33Journalist Laura DiDio was the first reporter to talk to the Lutzes about their experiences.
15:39I think something did happen to them, and I think it was cataclysmic, especially that
15:44last night where they literally fled the house with just the clothes on their back.
15:51All the food was in the refrigerator, all their clothes were in the closet.
15:55You know, it just looked as though your house or mine when you leave for work in the morning.
16:02Whatever happened to the Lutzes, it's enough to make them believe that the same supernatural
16:06forces that drove them out may have also driven Ronald DeFeo to murder.
16:12We realized there was something so wrong there that it would be inhuman, it would be improper
16:18to just let him rot in jail.
16:22Within days of fleeing the Amityville house, they arranged to meet DeFeo's defense attorney,
16:26William Weber.
16:33They verbalized to me that they had had unusual experiences in the house, and they thought
16:37that by letting me know about it, that this could possibly be an avenue for a new trial
16:45for Ronald DeFeo.
16:53But Weber spotted another opportunity, a commercial venture that could make him money.
16:59He hoped to write a book on the back of the DeFeo murders and include the Lutzes' story.
17:06Before the Lutzes came into the picture, it would have been whether he was criminally
17:11insane or he was a cold-blooded killer.
17:14When the Lutzes came into it, they threw this third aspect into it, which, let's face it,
17:20pizzazz, that could make this an attractive item for the general public.
17:27And that was possession.
17:29Was there any supernatural phenomena going on in the house?
17:33And I put the cards on the table and said, listen, I have a commercial venture in this,
17:39and maybe talk with other people, why don't we join together?
17:44On the 16th of February, 1976, the Lutzes held a press conference with William Weber
17:49to announce a joint collaboration on the book.
17:54Their story immediately became hot property.
17:58I don't think that the Lutzes expected this big reaction from the press conference, and
18:04I think that they were totally unprepared for and very ill at ease with the press coming
18:10after them.
18:19With interest in the Amityville case building, local New York news station, Channel 5, decided
18:24to launch an investigation into the Lutzes' claims.
18:31The race was on to try and get a hold of the Lutzes.
18:35It was going to be a ratings grabber.
18:37I mean, all of the elements were there.
18:40This house had been the scene of a very brutal, even by New York standards, of six murders
18:47the year before.
18:49Now you have this family that moves out in terror, they've had their life savings sunk
18:54into this house, so what's there?
18:58DiDio eventually managed to gain the trust of the Lutzes.
19:02They struck me as very ordinary, down-to-earth, normal people.
19:08There was nothing extraordinary about them, other than the fact that they had been frightened
19:14by their experience.
19:22Channel 5 decided to test the Lutzes' claims with an audacious stunt, a TV special of their
19:28own supernatural investigation.
19:32They called in paranormal experts Ed and Lorraine Warren.
19:36Ed, a religious demonologist, passed away in 2006.
19:40Come on, here's your grapes, honey.
19:45Today, Lorraine lives alone in Connecticut, where she runs a museum dedicated to the occult.
19:59We have been involved in 52 exorcisms throughout the world.
20:07We have been involved in many poltergeist cases, movement of objects, we have been involved
20:14in many diabolical hauntings, and we have been involved in many human hauntings, where
20:20spirits for one reason or another do not leave their homes and can cause havoc and upset
20:27in the house.
20:29Experts Ed and Lorraine Warren arranged a seance in the house.
20:36They wanted to contact the source of the demonic activity that haunted the Lutzes.
20:42If it worked, it would be the first time TV cameras had ever captured such a moment.
20:52Marvin Scott was sent to report from the scene.
20:57It was a cold night, and it was after I had anchored the evening news broadcast.
21:02A crew, three-member crew and myself, went to the house.
21:08And at that point, there were a number of parapsychologists, demonologists, psychics,
21:14and they were going to try and bring forward that energy, that force, they said, that was
21:20in that house.
21:22I had never attended a seance, and I'm a little excited about it.
21:26You know, what was I going to experience?
21:33The vibrations were outrageous.
21:43How anybody could have spent 28 days in that house is beyond anybody's comprehension.
21:52What I could perceive in there was so dark and so negative, I didn't really want to
22:00look at it.
22:01It was so bad.
22:03In this clip from the actual seance, one of the mediums becomes upset.
22:08Whatever it's here, it's something that comes at you and makes your heart speed up, that
22:18In the early hours of the morning, the seance moved to a bedroom where two of the DeFeo
22:27children had been murdered, and the Lutzes reported haunting activity.
22:39He asked me, what do you feel in here?
22:42And I said, I hope this is as close to hell as I ever get.
22:47I said, it's like evil personified.
22:51She said she had never felt such a horror that was in her body.
22:57When she started crying and screaming, I feel it, it's here, it's here.
23:02I felt nothing except the pain that she was feeling.
23:05I really did not.
23:08I do remember at about three in the morning, Marvin Scott turning to me and saying, I don't
23:13think we have it, meaning what you would like to see, the exorcist on television, levitations,
23:21things flying across the room, any physical manifestation of some sort of psychic or supernatural
23:29presence.
23:30It just wasn't there.
23:32I was prepared for anything, and matter of fact, what reporter would not love to have
23:36an exclusive interview with a ghost?
23:39The only voices I heard that night was that of my crew, one on the one where you can eat
23:42the sandwiches we brought along, saw no oozing of any substance from the walls, the toilets,
23:49no flies.
23:50We saw none of that.
23:57Although the television crew didn't capture any strange activity on the night, this photo
24:02taken in the early hours of the morning apparently did.
24:08We were all very surprised when there was this clearly very distinct photo of a little
24:14boy standing in the doorway with big round eyes and, you know, sort of spooky looking.
24:19There is no explanation for it.
24:23People have asked me, do I think the photo was faked?
24:25No, I don't think so.
24:33Some speculated the little boy was the imaginary friend of the Lutz's daughter, Missy.
24:45Skeptic Joe Nickel has been investigating paranormal mysteries like this for the last
24:49four decades.
24:50Of course, I'm suspicious of this photo because it would be the simplest matter to fake this.
24:58I mean, it looks like a fake picture.
25:01The least likely explanation for that is that it's a, for the first time ever, a real
25:07photograph of a demon child.
25:10That's not likely.
25:17The broadcast of the seance only added fuel to the fire.
25:21The Lutz's story was now firmly in the media spotlight.
25:28But as it gathered momentum, in May 1976, the Lutz family moved to Los Angeles to start
25:35a new life.
25:39It's here they were introduced to Hollywood author Jay Anson.
25:44He persuaded them he should write the account of their experience and made them an offer
25:49too good to refuse.
25:53This meant ending their book deal with William Weber, leaving him in the lurch.
25:58Unwilling to lose out on his own commercial enterprise, Weber decided to organize his
26:03own supernatural investigation into the Amityville house.
26:10He hoped to provide evidence for his book that demonic possession may have driven Ronnie
26:15DeFeo Jr. to murder his family.
26:19We were at that point looking into the supernatural aspect of the case and I wanted to get some
26:24people who had recognition in the media, at least, to participate in it.
26:32Weber brought in this man, renowned paranormal expert Hans Holzer.
26:38Now 88 years old, he has made the supernatural his life's work.
26:44What you need is a really good experience, deep transmedium and nothing else.
26:51Holzer turned to deep transmedium Ethel Johnson Myers to try and discover what was haunting
26:57the Amityville house.
27:00But instead of finding a demonic presence, they found what they believed was a different
27:05kind of supernatural power.
27:08They claimed to have contacted the angry spirit of a Native American buried underneath the
27:13Amityville house.
27:14As soon as she got into the house, without knowing anything about its history, she said,
27:21there's an Indian here, an Indian, it's buried here.
27:28Myers and Holzer can be heard in this recording of the seance.
27:33Why are they angry?
27:36This has been a sacred place and this is over a very, very special chief.
27:43Oh, I can't move my face.
27:47When she goes into deep trance, her own personality vanishes and she takes on another personality.
27:55What does he make them do?
27:57Violence of death.
27:59I don't know, my skull's cracked and my neck's stretched.
28:06What will the male do under those circumstances?
28:09Anything the Indian desires him to do.
28:17With yet another investigation of the house, the explanations into what was behind the
28:22alleged haunting were starting to become more bizarre.
28:30And then, in September 1977, the book, The Amityville Horror, was published for the first
28:36time.
28:37Marketed as a true story, it was an instant bestseller.
28:42Two years later, the movie followed.
28:53Within 40 days of its release, it took over $46 million at the box office.
29:04Often I'm asked if I was scared that night I spent in the house in Amityville.
29:08No, to be quite honest, it was much more fearful the night I spent watching the film with a
29:17pot-smoking, rowdy, disruptive audience.
29:24The success of The Amityville Horror turned the Lutzes into media stars.
29:29George and Kathleen Lutz are with us this morning to talk about what happened during
29:32those 28 days in Amityville.
29:34But with their fame, they began to face intense scrutiny from both the public and the press.
29:44Did they really encounter an evil presence that drove them to flee the Amityville house?
29:49Or had they made the whole experience up?
29:53Was this nothing more than a money-making publicity stunt?
29:58The Lutzes admitted the book and the film exaggerated many of their claims.
30:03But they also believed they were victims of a media frenzy that blurred the line between
30:08their fact and fiction.
30:15Among the doubters, the first family to move into the house a year after the Lutzes moved
30:20out.
30:22The Cromerties tried to put an end to any suggestion that the building was haunted,
30:26saying they never experienced anything strange.
30:31This house is not haunted.
30:33It never was haunted.
30:34It was a money-making fraud.
30:38Defense attorney William Weber also spoke out.
30:41Despite his own investigation that seemed to blame a Native American spirit for the
30:45haunting, he suddenly claimed that he himself had invented many of the Lutzes' stories,
30:51among them the green slime that appeared in the house.
30:55He says, well, we saw green slime coming out of the doors.
31:01I says, you didn't see green slime coming out of the doors.
31:04You probably saw residue of the fingerprint powders that were left all over the house.
31:11And since you were the first people to reside in the house since the police investigation,
31:16that's probably what you saw.
31:21In the film, Missy's imaginary friend Jody appears as a demonic pig at the bedroom window.
31:29I think I was the one who told them about having things appear on the window from outside.
31:34They said, what do you mean?
31:35I says, well, I knew from the neighbors that they had a cat that was able to jump up to
31:42the window on the second floor.
31:47Many times people used to walk into the room and see the cat from the outside and get scared
31:53for the moment.
31:58In one of the most famous scenes from the film, the priest encounters swarms of flies
32:03as he blesses the house.
32:10They said that there are constant flies up in the room that used to be Dawn's.
32:15And I said, well, you know, coincidentally, the police indicated when they found the body
32:20that the flies were swarming around also.
32:26The Lutzes also claimed they had discovered a sinister red room hidden in the basement.
32:32The movie portrays this as the source of the supernatural entity haunting the Amityville
32:37house.
32:44But childhood friend of the DeFeos, Patrick O'Reilly, has a very different take on the
32:49story.
32:51I do remember why that room was red, Mr. DeFeo.
32:56And myself and Mark were down there, and he grabbed a gallon of paint and brought it out
33:01and brought three brushes and rollers and said, here you go, boys.
33:05This is going to be your toy closet area.
33:07Help me paint it.
33:08And we did.
33:10And why was it red?
33:12Because that's the paint he had on hand.
33:14If he had blue paint, it would have been the blue room.
33:19Very unsinister.
33:20You know, it was a toy closet.
33:23That was all it was.
33:37So was the haunting of the Amityville house nothing more than a money-making hoax made
33:42on the back of a horrific crime?
33:48When the Lutzes first met with William Weber, they recorded their conversation.
33:55George Lutz took out the bottle of wine, which we finished right away, took out the second,
33:59the third.
34:00I'm pretty sure we finished four bottles of wine over a long period of time.
34:04There was a lot of giddiness, a lot of laughing, a lot of jokes, and this is despite their
34:14alleged experiences at the house.
34:18No one knows the whereabouts of the original tapes or what happened to them, but Laura
34:23DiDio is one of the few people to have ever heard them.
34:28Before I even listened to the tape, both Kathy and George Lutz said to me, we're not very
34:33proud of this.
34:34They were talking about, I guess, how you could expand on the events, make it more lurid,
34:42more fit, more like The Exorcist, if you will.
34:47There's no question in my mind that they pulled off a successful commercial hoax that
34:54generated a lot of money for a lot of people.
34:58But the Lutzes denied this.
35:00They maintained the core of their story was the truth.
35:07In response to reports they were lying, Kathy and George undertook a lie detector test.
35:16After seeing it, Chris Gougas, a one-time CIA official, considered the world expert
35:22in polygraph readings.
35:24Both of us were subjects of a polygraph test, and we both passed with flying colors.
35:33In their minds, there was no doubt the events at the Amityville house were real.
35:39I do think that the Lutzes, particularly George, after telling the story and repeating it over
35:43and over and over again, really came to believe something happened in that house.
35:54Families reporting hauntings are not unusual.
35:58In 2005, a Gallup survey revealed three out of four Americans believe in the paranormal.
36:09If the haunting of the Amityville house wasn't a simple hoax, could there be another explanation
36:15for the Lutzes' claims?
36:18I think there's no doubt that a place that has a powerful tragedy like the Lutzes' house
36:26is going to influence how people respond to it.
36:30Dude, a guy killed his whole family, doesn't that bother you?
36:35Sure, but houses don't have memories.
36:39Even people who say they've put it out of their mind, as George Lutz is recorded as
36:44having said, oh, it didn't bother him, and so forth, well, maybe.
36:48But it also might be that at the subconscious level, it is affecting you.
36:56God bless this house and all the people that dwell within it.
37:01Blessed be the Lord.
37:03When they moved in, Kathy Lutz was worried enough by the history of the DeFeo murders
37:08to have the house blessed by the family priest, Father Pecoraro.
37:18It was in one of the bedrooms where the DeFeo children were murdered that he was said to
37:22have heard a voice telling him to get out.
37:26He heard the words get out very strongly, he became ill, he had flu-like symptoms, his
37:33hands bled openly for a while.
37:37While his diocese denied this ever happened, reporter Laura DiDio disagrees.
37:44That was not an exaggeration.
37:45I spoke to Father Pecoraro, who has also since died, at the time, and he confirmed that story.
37:58It's not insignificant that the Lutzes were Catholic, because it's in the Catholic tradition
38:05that you see exorcisms, that you see an emphasis on demonic possession.
38:15Some polls show that Catholics may be among the groups that are higher in believing in
38:20ghosts, for example, because they have a rich tradition of apparitional experiences.
38:32Several other key factors may have also made the Lutzes susceptible to believing in the
38:37paranormal.
38:40In England, Professor Richard Wiseman specializes in the psychology of hauntings.
38:48Some people are fantasy prone.
38:50They really do find it difficult to tell the difference between something they've imagined
38:54happening and that thing actually happening.
39:02So it can be an absolutely terrifying experience, but there's no reason to think these things
39:07are actually happening in the real world.
39:13It becomes a snowball effect.
39:15For example, no longer is a noise simply some creaking of an old house.
39:21It's the footsteps of the ghost.
39:27If you have an experience, and it's quite a scary one, you become hypervigilant.
39:32So once you kick this thing off, it can become very contagious, not only for yourself, but
39:36those with you.
39:39George and Kathy were not the only witnesses inside the Amityville house.
39:44Also there, the Lutze children, Danny, Christopher, and Missy.
39:50While they have never given an in-depth interview about the 28 days they spent in the house,
39:55they do claim the family experienced strange activity.
40:01And that included 5-year-old Missy, who began playing with an imaginary friend called Jody.
40:09This isn't unusual for a young child.
40:12Two-thirds of children under the age of 7 at some time develop imaginary friends.
40:19But in the Amityville house, it was interpreted as a sign of the demonic.
40:25One can only imagine the terror for children in a situation in which they're led to believe
40:31that there are sinister sort of boogeymen at work in a house.
40:46Children have fears of demons under their beds and they have bad dreams and so forth.
40:52And of course the adults are supposed to go comfort them.
40:56What happens if the adults need comforting?
41:00You have maybe the worst of all possible situations.
41:12Some of George Lutze's most terrifying experiences happened in the early hours of the morning
41:17when he describes being pinned to the bed.
41:22But could they have been the result of a disturbed sleep pattern called a waking dream?
41:28Whenever we dream, essentially the brain paralyzes the body so we don't act out the dream and
41:32injure ourselves.
41:33Now what's interesting is sometimes that system can kind of get out of sync and so the brain
41:39can paralyze the body, but we wake up from the dream.
41:42We're conscious, but completely paralyzed.
41:45And that can be a terrifying experience for people.
41:50There's all sorts of extreme imagery that can go through their minds.
41:53So if they're drifting into sleep, it's called hypnagogic imagery.
41:56As they're coming out, it's hypnopompic.
41:58Either way, you can see, you know, animals, demonic entities, figures in the room.
42:04So they're laying there, they can look around, they can't move a muscle.
42:08And one way of interpreting that is there's some kind of spirit form maybe sitting on
42:12top of them and holding them down.
42:14And of course if you don't realize that essentially the brain is tricking your perception, you
42:18can think those things are actually there and that your house is haunted.
42:26No one will ever know for sure what happened to the Lutz family inside the Amityville house.
42:34But with the success of the film, the sleepy village of Amityville paid a heavy price as
42:39it became inundated with tourists.
42:44On some days, the population nearly doubled to 20,000 people.
42:49There was one point that I went by that house and I literally saw 50 buses, people coming
42:55to see the Amityville house.
43:06Former village mayor Emil Pavlik witnessed the impact firsthand.
43:13The people that live here, you know, they could hardly get in and out of their own houses.
43:19Some of them got out a little hatchet and wanted to take a piece of the house with them.
43:25And that was stopped, of course.
43:28Then there was people that wanted to become overnighters because for some reason they
43:32thought that the spirits would emanate at night into the day and they would see them
43:40rise in the morning and rise out of the house.
43:43People would be sleeping and they would wake up in the morning and there's a group of people
43:47camped on their lawn.
43:51The village resisted turning the site into a tourist attraction.
43:55And since the Lutzes fled two decades ago, several families have owned the house.
44:01None of them reported any haunting activity.
44:08The Amityville Horror was the first of nine movies and two books all inspired by the events
44:13at 112 Ocean Avenue.
44:18But while tens of millions were made off the back of their story, the Lutzes claimed they
44:23made very little themselves, just $300,000 from the original movie and book.
44:30Once that movie came out, even more than the book, they lost control.
44:36I mean, they just basically faded back into the fabric of anywhere USA.
44:43The copyright to their story became the subject of several bitter court cases.
44:48Eventually, the couple divorced.
44:53In 2004, Kathy died, followed two years later by George.
44:59To the end of their lives, they maintained they were telling the truth, despite heavy
45:03criticism that their story was driven by financial greed.
45:08Lutzes, you never can predict how a jury is going to vote.
45:13There was no way that the Lutzes could have predicted that it would become this international
45:20phenomenon that it did.
45:24The psychological evidence suggests that, far from being victims of demonic entities,
45:30the Lutzes were victims of their own fears and anxieties.
45:40Whatever did happen, the Amityville Horror is a story that struck at the core of the
45:45American dream and the sanctity of family life.
45:50I guess it was the perfect confluence of events.
45:52Sure, it was unique.
45:54I don't think that's going to happen again.
45:55I doubt you're ever going to see a recipe like that.
46:00It's a great story, if you can tell it right.