Talking with Serial Killers

by Christopher Berry-Dee

  But what had happened to the State’s psychiatrist? Again, unknown to the jury, Dr. Robert B. Miller had concurred with the defence expert’s assessment and, in his report to the State’s Attorney a year prior to the trial, had concluded, ‘Were a specific diagnosis to be attached to Mr Ross’s condition at the time of his offences, it would be, in DSM-111,302.84, Sexual Sadism.’ He added that, notwithstanding this diagnosis, he believed that Ross could still conform his behaviour to the requirements of the law.

  Some time later, Dr. Miller explained that he had suffered sleepless nights, having been influenced by the media reports of the case, and the awfulness of the crimes. This, he claimed, had coloured and tainted his otherwise professional opinion. His conscience now weighed heavily on him, for his diagnosis could help a man into the electric chair. This was something the doctor said he could not live with, and if the State had its way, they might as well be using him to push the switch.

  To rectify his error of judgement, and to clear his conscience, just days before the trial, Dr. Miller wrote a letter to the Judge explaining his reason for having to withdraw from the case. In due course, this distasteful issue was brought before the State of Connecticut’s Supreme Court for a ruling, and the prosecution came in for a roasting. In their summation, the justices ruled in Ross’s favour, to the effect that his illness, that of sexual sadism, was a mitigating factor after all. ‘The State’ they said, ‘was able to seize upon inflammatory connotations of the sexual sadism diagnosis to turn a legally mitigating factor into an aggravating factor … and the judgment of the court is reversed.’

  So, Ross had won the day, and with no experts to disagree with the defence, the law now pronounced that Ross had mitigation for his crimes, that he had been suffering from overpowering, uncontrollable, sexual urges, and that all of the rapes and murders were one continuous act.

  Of course, Ross claimed successfully that he was not only unable to control his sexual desires, but also the need to inflict suffering as well. In other words, he was a walking time-bomb – 99 per cent unstable for most of the time, requiring the slightest jolt to set him off. But, is there any real substance to his claims that the problem is like an intrusive roommate who lives inside his head? There is some sense in thinking that people like Michael Ross are, simply, wrongly ‘wired-up’.

  The hypothalamic region of the limbic system is the most primitive and important part of the brain. The hypothalamus serves the body tissues by attempting to maintain its metabolic equilibrium and providing a mechanism for the immediate discharge of tensions. It appears to act rather like an on/off sensor, on the one hand, seeking or maintaining the experience of pleasure and, on the other, escaping or avoiding unpleasant, noxious conditions. Hence, feelings elicited by this part of the brain are very short-lived; neither can it bear a grudge, and the feelings generated may disappear completely after just a few seconds, although they may last much longer. This is much the way Ross described his thoughts.

  So the limbic system mediates a wide range of simple emotions. Because it controls the ability to feel pleasure and displeasure, it is able to generate and use these emotions to meet a variety of its needs, be they sexual, nutritional or emotional. That is, it can reward or punish the entire brain, thus the individual. If, for example, the hypothalamus experiences pleasure, be it from satisfying a craving for chocolate, drugs or sex – even the need for sadistic sex and murder – it will switch on ‘reward’ feelings so that the person continues engaging in the activity desired. If it begins to feel displeasure, it will turn off the reward switch. But, if the switch jams half-way, so to speak, the limbic needs go unmet, and the individual will experience depression, anger or even homicidal rage.

  The person who feels sexual desire, and abstains, may feel tension. Paradoxically, the only way to reduce this tension is by increasing it until orgasm, and thus tension release is obtained. Under normal circumstances, this would be considered quite acceptable; however, if satyriasis becomes linked with sexual sadism, a very different problem emerges altogether. Wrap this package up with an antisocial personality disorder, and an unstable situation is created which could erupt, for no apparent reason, at any given time.

  Even in perfectly normal people, emotions elicited by the hypothalamus are often triggered reflexively and without concern or an understanding of the consequences. The hypothalamus seeks pleasure and satisfaction, and whether the stimulus is thirst or sexual hunger, the basic message from the hypothalamus is ‘I WANT IT, NOW!’ There is no consideration of the long-term consequences of its acts because it has no sense of morals, danger, values, logic or right and wrong.

  If the limbic system is physically damaged, feelings of love, hate, affection and even sexual responsiveness and desire may be abolished, or become severely abnormal. It is not necessary to suffer physical damage to this area to experience these types of altered responses, for electrical stimulation of the limbic centre can also cause feelings of violence, which can lead to murder. Moreover, if certain regions in the limbic system (such as the amygdala) are damaged, heightened and indiscriminate sexual activity can result, including excessive and the almost constant need for masturbation. A need which Ross exhibits to this day.

  It is interesting to note that the FBI found that 81 per cent of the serial murderers they interviewed indulged in compulsive masturbation.

  Like the hypothalamus, the pleasure principle, or the drive to fulfil needs and obtain pleasurable satisfaction, is present at birth. Indeed, for some time after birth, the infant’s search for pleasure is unrestricted and intense as there are no forces other than ‘mother’ and ‘father’ to counter it, or help it achieve its strivings. If the child’s bonding with its mother is satisfactory, and it is brought up in a healthy environment, then the child goes through a healthy development process. If the opposite occurs, the child may be psychologically damaged beyond repair.

  Put another way, imagine a complete amateur building a complex computer without any previous experience and little understanding of the complicated instruction manual. Inevitably in such a case, there will be a pile of chips, nuts, bolts and wiring left over, and when the computer is switched on it is bound to malfunction, and continue to produce erroneous calculations, no matter what inputs are entered via the keyboard. While the machine might appear quite normal from the outside, the electromechanical switching systems inside are inherently flawed. For basic functions, it might even work quite well for some of the time, but it will break down when more complicated calculations are required of it. This seems to illustrate what has happened to Michael Ross.

  * * *

  Michael Ross lives today in limbo because the Connecticut Supreme Court has reversed his death sentence after having found a mitigating factor in this killer’s antisocial behaviour. But he is not yet off the hook. With the evidence Ross gave, during his interviews for this book, concerning the anal rape after killing Leslie Shelley, the State is asking for another trial.

  For his part, he has volunteered for execution because, he says, he doesn’t want to put his victims’ families through a court case again. This begs the question – why did he allow his attorneys to argue the mitigation issue in the first place?

  But will Connecticut execute their only convicted serial killer? The general concensus of opinion is ‘no’. Of course, the supreme penalty is firmly on statute, but finding the will to use it is another matter. As a retired judge explained, ‘Ross will probably outlive everyone else involved with his case. If he really wants to be executed that bad, then he should kill himself.’

  Michael Ross is the boy-next-door who turned into a monster, and his own words leave an indelible mark: ‘You know, they [medical examiners] found strangulation marks around the neck of Wendy Baribeault. They called them multiple strangulation marks ’cos they were kinda all around her throat. An’ they got confused. I knew that she was struggling and my hands kept cramping up. I kinda laughed at them for that. I thought that was funny.’

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sp; Yet his chilling sense of priorities is masked by the impression he gives to outsiders. Karen BClarke, an experienced New York journalist, who visited Michael in Somers Prison, said, ‘Michael Ross looks so normal he could be the guy next door. If I was walking down a dark alley at night, heard footsteps behind me, and turned around, well, I would have been relieved to see Michael Ross. That’s how normal the guy looks.’

  This chapter is based on video and audiotape Death Row interviews between Christopher Berry-Dee and Michael Bruce Ross within the Osbourne Correctional Institute, Somers, Connecticut, commencing 10.15am, Monday, 26 September 1994, and several years correspondence.

  Michael welcomes correspondence, and his address is: Inmate #127404, Death Row, Osbourne CI, PO Box 100, Somers, CT 06071.

  RONALD

  JOSEPH

  ‘BUTCH’

  DeFEO JR.

  USA

  ‘I’ve been fuckin’ waiting for two hours for you. Who’d do ya think I am? I got better things to do.’

  RONALD DEFEO’S LESS-THAN-WELCOMING GREETING ON FRIDAY, 23 SEPTEMBER 1994, PRIOR TO HIS INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTOPHER BERRY-DEE AT THE GREENHAVEN CORRECTIONAL FACILITY, STORMVILLE, NEW YORK

  If it were not for a sensational best-selling book and a subsequent motion picture called, The Amityville Horror along with several sequels, the village of Amityville, Long Island, and the story of the slaughter that occurred at the DeFeo house, would hardly evoke any public interest. As it is, Amityville has become identified with what was marketed as an outstanding true horror story but which, in the final analysis, is only a well-publicised, run-of-the-mill haunted house story with overtones of mass murder. Did the evil spirit of a dead Indian chief haunt the house? Was the property built on the site of an ancient Indian burial ground? Did green slime ooze from the walls and blood pour from taps? Is Ronald DeFeo Jr the son of Satan?

  Because of the horrific events that took place in Amityville during the night of 13 November 1974, one thing is certain – Amityville will never be the same again, so I set out on an equally terrifying journey to find out why.

  My journey started in the sleepy, Long Island village of Amityville, then to call upon several of the drug-crazed friends of Ronnie DeFeo. I met with a bunch of crooked and brutal cops, a biased ‘whip ’em and hang ’em’ judge, and I examined vital evidence that the police had ‘lost’, then mysteriously found. Finally, I met the monster they call ‘The Amityville Horror’, behind the grim walls of his prison in up-state New York. This is the true story of ‘The Amityville Horror’ and you can believe every word.

  * * *

  Ronald Joseph DeFeo, Jr was born on 26 September 1951 at the Adelphi Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. He was the first of five children and, his father, Ronald Sr, then a textile worker, was 20 years old. His mother, Louise, was still a teenager.

  A short and porky child, Ronald Jr’s classmates nicknamed him ‘Butch’, a soubriquet that has stayed with him until the present day. He was a sullen, troublesome and lazy pupil who caused trouble, not only to his teachers, but also to other students with whom he was always fighting. He was always coming home bruised black-and-blue and, on one occasion, he suffered a superficial stab wound in the back when another lad attacked him with a knife.

  In the early ’70s, Ronald Sr started working for his father-in-law, and appears to have been well paid for his labours. Deciding that their Brooklyn apartment was now too small, and with Louise expecting her fifth child, they moved out to the more affluent surroundings of Long Island and, after a little house-hunting, they chose the sleepy waterside village of Amityville.

  The name ‘Amityville’ suggests peace and contentment and, at the very least, friendship. The township is home to around 11,000 residents, many of whom commute daily to New York, 35 miles to the west. Amityville straddles the Great South Bay on Long Island, and is a popular boating centre because its proximity to ocean beaches attracts a large influx of summer residents.

  Local history began in the 1650s, when settlers from Connecticut and eastern Long Island first came to what is now called Huntington. Before that, King Henry VII of England, and his successors, claimed tithe to the area by right of discovery, resulting from John Cabot’s voyage of discovery in 1496. ‘Until the DeFeo massacre,’ said one resident, ‘about the only crimes were when vandals ripped small boats from their moorings in the bay nearby.’

  On 28 July 1965, Ronald DeFeo Sr attained a trophy-sized piece of the American dream when he purchased a two-and-a-half storey, Dutch Colonial-style house from Joseph and Mary Riley. Paying an unknown amount, he acquired the splendid clapboard property, at number 112 Ocean Avenue, with a swimming pool and private dock backing into a protected canal. Initially, the family was overwhelmed with the house and its amenities but they soon began to find their feet in their new surroundings and grew accustomed to life in suburbia. But not everyone in Amityville was happy that the loud and flashy DeFeo’s had chosen to live in their quiet community, and gossip was rife that the family had links with organised crime.

  Symbolising his family’s new life, Mr DeFeo placed a sign in their front yard that read ‘HIGH HOPES’. To distinguish themselves even further, he commissioned an artist to create life size portraits of the family, which eventually hung on the walls of the staircase. In one, father and son, Ronald Sr and Butch, sit side-by-side, smiling at the artist, while father pours a glass of wine for his son. In another, the two daughters pose on a love seat, half-smiles on their faces. In a third painting, the two young brothers pose with Mark’s arm on John’s shoulder. Appropriately perhaps for such a paternalistic family, there was no portrait of the mother, Louise.

  The interior of the house was made even more explicit, with its expensive furnishings, crystal chandelier and alabaster fireplace. All of this gave solid substance to the DeFeo’s middle-class family life. But if the façade the family presented to the outside world was a ‘tasteful’ expression of middle-class family values, the actual relationships within the family were quite the opposite.

  Ronald DeFeo Sr was the son of Rocco and Antoinette DeFeo. According to those who knew him, Ronald was a physically imposing man who ruled his family with an iron fist and demanded respect. He would change from a civil person into a savage animal at the slightest infraction, and everyone in the household knew that nothing could stop the man when he lost his temper.

  Louise DeFeo was the youngest daughter of Michael and Angela Brigante. She was a gentle person, and loyal to her husband. He did not share these warm feelings, believing that his wife was enjoying a string of affairs, including a dalliance with the painter who had produced the family portraits. Although there was no evidence of adultery, mere suspicion seemed to merit beatings, and she experienced these on a regular experience basis.

  Beneath the veneer of success and happiness, then, Ronald DeFeo Sr was a hot-tempered man, given to bouts of rage and violence. There were stormy fights between him and Louise, and he loomed before his children as a demanding authority figure. As the eldest child, young Ronald bore the brunt of his father’s temper and attempts to impose discipline. Bullied at school, his father encouraged him to stick up for himself. While this advice pertained to school problems, it did not apply to the way Ronald was being treated at home. DeFeo had no tolerance for backtalk and disobedience, keeping his eldest son on a short leash, and refusing to let him stand up for himself in the way he was commanded to at school.

  After moving to Long Island, Ronald’s first school was the Junior High in Riverhead. As he matured into adolescence, he gained in size and became less of a sitting duck for his father’s abuse. There were frequent shouting episodes which often degenerated into boxing matches, as father and son came to blows with little provocation. While DeFeo Sr was not highly skilled in the art of interpersonal relations, he was astute enough to realise that his son’s bouts of temper and violence were highly irregular, and of a different kind to his own. After Butch seriously beat up his sister, Dawn, he and his wife arranged for him
to visit a psychiatrist. This was to no avail because Butch simply employed a passive-aggressive stance with his therapist, and rejected any notion that he needed help.

  In the absence of any solution, his parents employed a time-honoured strategy for placating unruly children by buying Butch anything he wanted and giving him money. His father presented his 14-year-old son with a $14,000 speedboat to cruise the Amityville River. Whenever Butch wanted money, all he had to do was ask, and if he wasn’t in the mood to ask, he just took what was lying around.

  When this strategy failed, Butch was packed off to St Francis Prep in Brooklyn, where he was thrown out at the end of his ninth grade. Finally, he attended the Amityville High School and, at the age of 17, left the school system for good. On the same day, his father bought him a car.

  By this time, he had begun using drugs, such as heroin and LSD, and had also started dabbling in schemes involving petty theft. His behaviour was becoming increasingly psychotic as well, and not confined to outbursts within his home.

  One afternoon, while out on a hunting trip with a few friends, he pointed a loaded rifle at one member of the party, a young man he had known for years. He watched with a stony expression as the young man’s face turned white before his fear made him take flight. At this point, Butch calmly lowered his gun and when they caught up with each other later that afternoon, Butch asked, sneeringly, why his friend had left so soon.