Still, looking up at the large moose head jutting from the wall above us, I did feel a bit eerie being in a house where six people had been murdered a little over a year earlier.
* * *
It didn’t take police long to determine that 23-year-old Ronald DeFeo Jr. had murdered his mother, father, two brothers and two sisters as they slept. DeFeo himself, in fact, confessed to the murders almost immediately. At the time, some suggested he was simply crazy, or high on drugs; others, however, saw something more sinister in his sudden murderous rampage.
“Ron was into some very dark things,” Lorraine Warren told me. “He was into occult practices.” Her husband, famed demonologist Ed Warren, agreed, adding, “Ronnie told me there was a dark black mask or shadow that was obsessing his thoughts and telling him to kill everybody.”
DeFeo had indeed claimed that he had heard voices. But his defense attorney, William Weber, never believed his client was possessed, declaring instead that DeFeo was insane. Weber attempted to use that alleged insanity as a defense at DeFeo’s trial, but a jury found DeFeo guilty on all counts, and he was sentenced to six life terms. Despite his initial confession, DeFeo’s story has wavered over the years, accusing various others, including the mob, of having committed the murders while he was in the basement smoking marijuana. In correspondence with me, he suggested that it was his sister Allison who killed everyone, and that he killed her while wrestling for the gun.
There were a few longstanding mysteries in the case, one of them being the fact that none of the family members or neighbors had been awakened by the initial blasts of DeFeo’s carbine. Ed Warren theorized that this was because the family had been under psychic paralysis at the time.
“That’s why they didn’t run,” he said. “That’s why they didn’t yell out.” Many more such theories arose after the Lutzes’ story came out. Some believers in the occult suggested that the infamous negative force in the house came from the angry spirit of a Native American entombed in an old burial ground beneath the house. For her part, Lorraine Warren believed DeFeo’s actions had been influenced by demonic forces within the house, and claimed she felt them directly.
“Whatever is here is, in my estimation, most definitely of a negative nature,” she told me. “It is right from the bowels of the earth.”
* * *
It was just before three in the morning when Lorraine nudged me off the sofa to join her upstairs in the sewing room. This had been the bedroom of two of the murdered DeFeo children, and the place that supposedly held the strongest demonic force. At 3:15 a.m., the exact time DeFeo had begun executing his family, we sat on the floor in front of candles and a crucifix, and another séance was conducted. This second séance was as uneventful for me as the first; again I felt nothing unusual. Yet a trembling Lorraine Warren did.
“I hope this is as close to hell as I ever get,” she exclaimed. “It’s like evil personified.”
If there was a demonic force in the Amityville house that night, it certainly didn’t manifest itself to me. To be frank, I didn’t experience anything I considered unusual throughout my whole experience there. My cameraman, Steve Petropolis, claimed he felt a rash of heart palpitations and shortness of breath while climbing up to the second floor, in the same spot where Lorraine Warren had previously said she became ill—and Petropolis, an avid runner who was in good health, said he had never experienced anything like this before. But I felt nothing like that. The parapsychologists suggested that this was because the house had been neutralized, or that the atmosphere wasn’t right at the moment, or that perhaps the demons had been scared off by all the people and television cameras.
The question often arises of whether the Lutzes’ tale meets muster. To this day, DeFeo’s attorney William Weber remains convinced it doesn’t.
“It’s a fraudulent story,” he told me. “The Lutzes took advantage of an unfortunate incident in that house, and built a supernatural story around it.” Ronald DeFeo himself, in letters to me from prison, also claimed the story was a hoax.
“It’s all about money, an industry,” he asserted. Yet he claimed that his attorney had been in on it as well, and took advantage of him. DeFeo showed me documents that indicated that Weber had been looking for lucrative book and movie deals, and accused the lawyer of starting the Amityville hoax. Weber confessed that he had played a part in the story’s creation.
“I contributed, absolutely,” he said. He explained to me that he had met with George and Kathy Lutz to discuss a book idea. “We sat down and talked over some wine—I think three bottles of wine,” he confided, going on to admit that “the story grew with each bottle of wine...each bottle it became a better story.” The Lutzes acknowledged the meetings with Weber, but until their dying days stuck to their story of demonic happenings in their house. However, at one point they did admit to my colleague Laura Di Dio that many aspects of the story were exaggerated.
Weber offered more plausible explanations for every unusual incident in the house. Speaking about the mysterious swarm of flies, Weber said he had told the Lutzes the insects were in the house where the bodies had been, and that the couple “took those flies and created a complete supernatural scene around them.” He explained that the green slime they reported seeing oozing from the walls was actually fingerprint powder and other substances used by police in their forensic investigation. As for the mysterious red room found behind a door in the basement, a boyhood friend of DeFeo’s remembered the senior DeFeo giving the kids a can of red paint to add a splash of color to what had been a toy closet.
Others, too, have taken pains to debunk the story. While the Warrens never recanted their belief that it was demonic forces that drove the Lutzes from their house at 112 Ocean Avenue, four families who have lived there since have reported no strange occurrences. One of the subsequent owners, Barbara Cromarty, tried to put an end to the frenzy surrounding the house, and called a news conference to proclaim the whole Amityville frenzy an unequivocal hoax.
Of course, none of this has stopped the curious from driving by for a look-see at the house, which has since undergone a transformation. Gone are the eerie eye-shaped windows in the attic; the dark shingled siding has been replaced with a much lighter shade; and the address has been changed from 112 to 108 Ocean Avenue, in hopes of deterring onlookers.
* * *
For four decades, the Amityville story has terrified, captivated and thrilled millions around the world. Americans love a good ghost story, and are endlessly intrigued by the occult. A Gallup poll once showed that three out of four Americans believe in the paranormal, which explains why the Amityville story has generated millions of dollars in revenue for half a dozen films, a dozen books and numerous television shows—even though, for all they claim to have endured, the Lutzes reportedly received only $300,000 from it.
Because of my one-night experience in the house, and because I was referred to in the epilogue of Jay Anson’s book, albeit inaccurately, I myself have been enlisted for appearances on half a dozen documentaries and films about Amityville. At least once a year, a letter from somewhere in the world—incorrectly addressed—will find me, sent from an Amityville believer who wants to hear my take on it all. Understandably, most often I’m asked if I was scared the night I spent in the house. Quite honestly, the two hours I spent watching the film with a rowdy, pot-smoking audience was much more of a horror than the six hours I spent in that house in Amityville.
6
THE BRAVEST PERSON I EVER MET
Stephanie Collado was vibrant and spiritual at the age of 12 when she appeared on one of my broadcasts just months after surviving a heart transplant.
Courage is a seven-letter word synonymous with Stephanie Collado. She embodied the very definition of courage as the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger and pain without fear. Hers is the uplifting tale of a brave young girl who needed a heart, and touched mine.
Of the more than 35,000 people I have intervi
ewed during my career, Stephanie stands out as the most inspirational. Through most of her young life, even in the face of adversity and on the threshold of death, she held onto her faith in God, and it was this spiritual positivity that sustained all of those around her.
I first met Stephanie’s family in 1998, when they reached out publicly to find a donor heart for their 11-year-old daughter. The girl’s own heart was failing due to a complex medical condition, and they needed to find a donor fast. The family had been waiting for months; they needed a miracle.
The miracle was answered. Stephanie received her new heart, from the young victim of an automobile accident; and on her 12th birthday she was wheeled out of the intensive-care ward at Babies and Children’s Hospital at Columbia Presbyterian in New York. Her room was filled with flowers, balloons and birthday cards—and lots of loving relatives.
Still weak and hooked up to numerous tubes and medical equipment, Stephanie managed a slight smile, and in a faint voice told me, “I want to thank God for my new life.” Too often such stories end tragically early, and it was a joyous moment to see this young girl beat the odds and find a new beginning, with a new heart beating in her chest. She could barely speak, but when I asked her what she thought had enabled her to survive, she managed an answer. “Everybody has to have a lot of faith in God,” she declared.
As she left the hospital, her new life looked bright and full of promise. “I’ll miss you,” she joked with the nurses, “not the building.” She bubbled over with joy outside as she released her balloons into the air, telling us, “I feel happy. I feel good. I feel like jumping.”
In surviving as she did, Stephanie touched many hearts, and raised an awareness of the pressing need for organ donors. At her elementary-school graduation in Brooklyn, the sixth-grader told me that “God has organ donors in a special place, for when he needs them.” Tears filled her eyes as teachers praised her for her “will to face something terrifying with courage and strength.”
“You faced your greatest fear, and you triumphed,” they told her, and added, “Miracles do happen.”
Given her own turn to speak, Stephanie looked into the crowded auditorium and told her teachers and classmates about her will to survive. “I fought with love, because that’s what I felt helped me get through this,” she said, giving special thanks to all of those who had prayed for her.
As she resumed her normal life, Stephanie was like a flower in the wind, blossoming from childhood to young womanhood and always looking toward the brightness of tomorrow. We stayed in touch over the years. Stephanie had been far more than just another news story for me. She was someone special, someone I greatly admired for her strength, her courage, her wisdom and her dogged determination to stay alive and stay positive.
Though Stephanie and her mother moved to Florida, we never lost contact with one another. I made it a point to call Stephanie on her birthday each year, and she and her mother Juana would occasionally exchange letters and calls with me at other times. It’s unusual for reporters to strike up such a bond with the subjects of their reports, but Stephanie was different; she and her family were true friends of mine, and a constant source of inspiration.
Stephanie appeared to be doing well. Eight years after her initial surgery, she had a job, a steady boyfriend and a full life ahead of her when her donor heart began to fail. Again, she needed a new heart. I called her on a Friday night to let her know I would be flying down to the hospital at the University of Florida with a crew the following week, to tell her story once again. Though she sounded weak and in pain, I could still hear the smile in her voice; more than anything she sounded upbeat, confident that her faith and prayers would once again help her beat the odds.
But it was not to be. The heart she needed never came, and in the end Stephanie’s pain and illness overpowered her. Her distraught mother called in the morning to inform me that Stephanie had passed during the night. “She was so happy you were coming to visit,” she told me. “She even picked out the dress she wanted to wear.”
Mark Twain wrote, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” Stephanie Collado faced her fear stoically and bravely. She wanted to live, but faced the alternative with faith and resolution. To her own mother she insisted that if she died, it would be the will of God. And in her final days, she was ready.
“I don’t want to stay in this world no more,” she cried, “because I feel the suffering is too much, and I don’t feel God wants that from me anymore.” Prophetically, she added, “I hear His voice every night. He doesn’t want me here anymore; He wants me with Him.”
At the funeral service, I delivered the eulogy in celebration of the life of a young girl who was now one of God’s angels. Stephanie was only 20 years old.
crime and punishment
7
“GOING TO HUNT HUMANS”
Filing my report from the scene of bloody McDonald’s massacre in San Ysidro, CA, July 1984. Crazed gunman James Oliver Huberty told his wife he was going to “hunt humans.”
I had just finished interviewing a delegate on the floor of the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, when I was frantically summoned by my news director. There had been a horrific mass shooting in southern California, and he wanted me on the next plane to San Diego to cover the story. By the time I arrived, the shooting had stopped, leaving 21 people dead—five of them children—and 19 others wounded at a McDonald’s restaurant in suburban San Ysidro, a border community just north of Tijuana, Mexico.
On arrival I hooked up with a colleague from a local TV station, who took me to the scene of the shooting. It was chaos there, with bodies scattered inside and around the fast-food restaurant. Dozens of people had gone to that McDonald’s for a late-afternoon snack, only to encounter a madman who was armed to the hilt and determined to kill as many people as he could before he was stopped. The restaurant’s plate-glass windows were riddled with bullet holes, a testament to the 245 rounds the murderer had fired from three different weapons over the course of his rampage.
As he walked out of his house that sunny afternoon, 41-year-old James Oliver Huberty—a man others had described as angry at the whole world—told his wife, “I’m going hunting for humans, and I won’t be back.” Etna Huberty didn’t take him seriously. Minutes later, he strode into the McDonald’s two blocks from his home, wearing army fatigues, a black T-shirt and glasses. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and dozens of customers were there, having burgers and fries or ice cream.
Suddenly, the tall, gaunt man screamed the chilling words, “Everybody get down, or I’ll kill somebody.” All of the restaurant’s patrons complied, but he began to kill them anyway. Armed with an Uzi submachine gun, a 12-gauge shotgun and a nine-millimeter Browning semiautomatic pistol, Huberty opened fire on men, women and children, strolling among the tables and shooting anyone who moved. Witnesses said that at one point he blurted, “I killed a thousand in Vietnam. I’ll kill a thousand more.” Despite his claim, it was later learned that Huberty had never served in the military.
As Huberty continued his killing spree, his 12-year-old daughter Zelia watched the deadly saga unfold from a neighbor’s nearby apartment, unaware that it was her father who was doing the shooting. After losing precious minutes by being dispatched to a wrong McDonald’s location, the local SWAT team arrived and set their sights on taking down the gunman. But they were initially unable to get a clear shot at him. The cries of frightened children and people begging for their lives were heard as the carnage continued. At one point Huberty took aim at an 11-year-old girl, but her aunt, 18-year-old Jackie Reyes, jumped in front of his Uzi and took all 48 of the bullets he fired. Beside her body, her 8-month-old son Carlos sat up crying, and Huberty shot him dead.
As three boys approached on their BMX bikes for an afternoon fix of ice cream, Huberty fired through the window, killing David Flores and Omar Hernandez, both 11. The third boy, Joshua Coleman, played dead and survived. He later told me
from his hospital bed, “I kept thinking he was going to come and shoot me. I kept looking back at my two friends who were lying behind me.” A McDonald’s employee, 17-year-old Wendy Flanagan, heard the burst of gunfire, grabbed a coworker’s hand and shouted, “Run, Maggie, run!” As they ran, Maggie let go of Wendy’s hand and fell to the floor. She was dead. Several others survived the rampage by taking refuge in a closet near the kitchen.
On hearing a wounded teenager moaning in a booth, Huberty turned to him and shot him in the head, then fired on several others before pausing again. By now a sea of blood covered the floor, and the restaurant grew silent. Huberty had killed everybody there, or thought he had. The siege had gone on for 78 minutes when a police sharpshooter, perched on a building across the street, finally had a clear shot at Huberty and took it, killing the gunman with a single bullet to the chest.
The aftermath of Huberty’s rampage was ghastly. Even from a distance, I knew I hadn’t seen carnage like this before—so many bodies were visible at the scene. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. As a reporter covering it, it was impossible for me not to feel all the overpowering emotions of that moment. As quickly as I could, I scripted my story and edited the tape to feed back to the Independent Network News in New York. The events of the day were weighing heavily on me and I needed a momentary break. My colleague and I crossed the border into Tijuana and had tequila shots and dinner as we watched the vibrant sun slowly sink into the clear blue Pacific Ocean. It was a much-needed moment of tranquility to cap an otherwise dark day.
As I Saw It Page 4
