The Supernatural Murders

by Jonathan Goodman

  I have only outlined the Lutzes’ adventures. Anyone wanting every single detail of every single incident should find Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror1. It is an easy read. Anson had earned his living as a writer of screen documentaries, mostly for television, and his book seems to have been designed so as to be easily turned into a screen-play. There are many problems with the story of the Lutzes which are not fully considered in the book (the copyright of which, incidentally, was shared by Anson and the Lutz family; Father Mancuso contributed an introduction).

  According to the book, a brief comment made by a house-broker to George Lutz was, it seems, the only thing he had ever heard about the DeFeo tragedy before he bought the house. But it seems unlikely. The family moved there from Deer Park, in Suffolk County, which is the county in which Amityville is situated … the trial of Ronnie Jr was the longest in the history of Suffolk County, and the jury reached its verdict in November 1975 … Ronnie was sentenced just a fortnight before the Lutzes moved into the house …

  1. Bantam, New York 1977.

  Some of the phenomena seem rather unstrange. Several times, noises in the night caused George to go downstairs – and he was amazed that Harry the dog was sound asleep each time. Granted that dogs are supposed to stir when there are noises in the night, but on each of those occasions no human but George heard the noise; everyone other than George was asleep – and were not even woken by his downstairs investigating. This surely suggests that maybe there was no noise at all – that he imagined or dreamt one. Later on, the others claimed that they experienced various nocturnal phenomena – but then it was only when they were all wandering sleepy-eyed around the house that Harry bothered to get up as well.

  The smell of excreta (specified by the Lutzes and by Father Mancuso as being of the human kind) has a significance that is lost on people who are not versed in demonology. I should explain for their benefit that Satan’s presence is supposed to be revealed by such a smell. Therefore we are to conclude that all the troubles were caused by The Evil One. Well, maybe … but one does feel that that conclusion should have been verified – perhaps by a spare-time psychic who was a full-time sanitation engineer?

  There was criticism of the phenomenon from the start. In the Washington Post Book World, Curt Surplee raised doubts about the authenticity of aspects of the story; he had looked into the so-called history of the property, and learned, he said, that the Shinnecock Indians, indigenous to the Amityville area before the white settlers arrived, never had an enclosure for the sick or mad or dying or dead anywhere, let alone on or anywhere near where 112 Ocean Avenue now stood.

  Pete Stevenson, a reporter for The Morning Call of Allentown, Pennsylvania, checked up on an incident related in the book – a visit by an Amityville police sergeant, during which he observed that a door had been ripped off the boat-house and that there were pig-tracks outside the house (made by Missy Lutz’s paranormal pet?) Though the Lutzes had flown by the time that investigators for the Psychical Research Institute arrived at the house, a television company got them to conduct a seance there; they detected no sign of activity, supernatural or otherwise.

  The film version of Anson’s book, starring James Brolin as George and Rod Steiger as Father Mancuso, opened to mixed reviews in 1979. Janet Maslin, writing in the New York Times, awarded it ‘a definite B-minus’, saying of Steiger that ‘he bellows and weeps and overdoes absolutely everything’. The last of those criticisms of Mr Steiger’s performance might also be levelled at most of the accounts of ‘the Lutz phenomena’ written by people determined in their belief that the tale is true.

  A Last Angry Man

  Imagine that you are in the neigbourhood of what used to be 10 Rillington Place, West London; you tag on to a crowd of people who are watching a plaque being fixed to the structure that now occupies that spot. While still at the edge of the crowd, you wonder if the plaque notes the possible miscarriage of justice in the trial and execution of Timothy Evans, or if it is a memorial to Christie’s several undoubted victims. Having edged your way through the crowd, you read the following:

  On this site, in the year of Our Lord 1347 AD,

  stood the residence of Jasper Honeythumber, Esquire,

  who, when requested by His Lordship, the Lord

  Chancellor, to devise a means of raising the Royal

  Exchequer’s Funds, was inspired to invent Graduated

  Income Tax.

  Dedicated this day [whatever it is] by

  The Civil Service Association.

  Considering the very real tragedy of the women who were killed by Christie, and the possibility of a miscarriage of justice in the Evans case, you would, I believe, feel outraged that the site was being commemorated for the reason given on the plaque.

  Well, 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, is famous now, just like 10 Rillington Place, West London. There is a similarity in the number of victims at each location. But the fame – or should I say infamy? – of the Long Island address is all because of the so-called supernatural happenings after the DeFeo Massacre – and this writer is outraged at that. The real tragedy, the real Amityville Horror, has been shoved aside in favour of nocturnal marching-bands, green blancmange going globbedy-globbedy as it oozes through walls, a thunder-storm in a living-room, a little pig named Jodie that needs treatment for conjunctivitis.

  The fact that the house has been inhabited by an apparently still-happy family for some years indicates, at the very least, that whatever gave the Lutzes such a torrid time must have exhausted itself in the process. Did Jay Anson ever believe much of the story, one wonders? He never spoke about what he did or did not believe. Maybe he comforted himself with the thought that the story, far from harming anyone, brought enjoyment to some – after all, Ronnie Jr was safely tucked away in jail, none of the other DeFeos could complain, and the Lutz family, now safe and sound in California, got a share of the proceeds.

  Let us – please; even for God’s sake – get back to the real tragedy: the tragedy of a family named DeFeo. Ronald and Louise DeFeo ‘made it’ – in terms of living in a pleasant community, receiving a good income, and having four nice kids. But they had one kid who was lousy because they had failed to bring him up sensibly. I have no doubt that they loved young Ronnie – and little doubt that if they had been less anxious to get his love in return, they would have taken cruel-to-be-kind actions that might well have averted the tragedy. When the police arrested Ronnie for stealing the outboard-motor, when he was caught using drugs, when he lied about the money stolen from the auto dealership – each time his parents tried to save him from the punishment he needed. When, at last, they presented him with an ultimatum to reform or be thrown out, it was too late. The lousy kid had turned into a senseless egotist who much preferred to destroy those who loved him than to risk losing his comfort. His egotism strengthened his belief – based on experience – that he could commit crimes, any crimes, and get away with them.

  The Ghost of Sergeant Davies

  WILLIAM ROUGHEAD

  ‘You must not tell us what the soldier or any other man said, Sir; it’s not evidence.’

  BARDELL v PICKWICK

  FEW JUDICIAL UTTERANCES are better known or more widely quoted than this immortal dictum of Mr Justice Stareleigh. Yet there was precedent against his Lordship’s ruling, for in the year 1754 the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh had admitted as evidence what was said by ‘the soldier’s’ ghost! and so lately as 1831 the testimony of a voice from the other world was accepted in the Assynt murder case by the same tribunal. But English practice was no stricter, and although only two instances of spectral evidence occur in the State Trials, the research of Mr Andrew Lang has disclosed similar cases. Both of the Scots spirits spoke in Gaelic, which would seem to be an appropriate medium of communication but for the fact that the soldier, an Englishman, while in the flesh had no knowledge of that tongue.

  The case first mentioned arose out of the slaying of Sergeant Davies, and the trial of his murderers w
as privately printed for the Bannatyne Club at the instance of Sir Walter Scott. The time was some three years after the doleful day of Drummossie, the place a solitary hillside at the head of Glenclunie, in the heart of the Grampians. ‘A more waste tract of mountain and bog, rocks and ravines, extending from Dubrach to Glenshee, without habitations of any kind until you reach Glenclunie, is scarce to be met with in Scotland,’ writes Sir Walter; ‘a more fit locality, therefore, for a deed of murder could hardly be pointed out, nor one which could tend more to agitate superstitious feelings.’

  The swell following the great gale of the 1745 Rebellion had not subsided in the remoter Highlands; and bands of disaffected and broken men still lurked in security among the grim defiles and rugged fastnesses of that formidable land. The disarming of the Highlanders was a farce, as Prestongrange admitted to David Balfour. To stamp out the smouldering embers of the Rising, and to enforce the Disarming Act and that which proscribed the national dress, the Government still maintained garrisons throughout the suspected districts. From these stations small pickets were sent out to occupy various posts, whence they communicated with one another, and constantly patrolled the country.

  In the month of September, 1749, Sergeant Arthur Davies, with a party of eight men of the regiment of foot commanded by Lieutenant-General Guise, were quartered at Dubrach, a small upland farm near the clachan of Inverey in Braemar. They had marched thither in the previous June from their headquarters at Aberdeen. Another party of the same regiment, under the command of a corporal, guarded the Spittal of Glenshee, some eight miles off. In the course of patrolling the district, these two parties were wont to meet twice a week at a spot midway between their respective stations. During the three or four months in which Sergeant Davies had occupied the hostile territory, he seems to have discharged his onerous duties with tact and moderation, and though officially unpopular, had managed to obtain the goodwill of his subject neighbours. The private tastes and character of the man were likeable: he was of a genial disposition, a keen and indefatigable sportsman, fearless, thrifty, and particular in his dress. For one in his position, his circumstances were prosperous. He had been married for about a year to the widow of a former comrade, and his wife shared the responsibilities of his post. Beyond Dubrach and farther up Strathdee there was at that time no cultivated land, and it was the sergeant’s daily custom, combining business and pleasure, to wander by himself with rod or gun among the hills, glens, and streams of those inhospitable and lonely wilds. Though often warned of the risk to which such habits exposed him at the hands of lawless and desperate men, many of whom were then ‘in the heather’, the sergeant laughed at danger, and continued to ‘gang his ain gait’.

  His figure was a notable one in so poor a neighbourhood. His ordinary dress was ‘a blue surtout coat, with a striped silk vest, teiken breeches, and brown stockings’. He carried a green silk purse containing his little capital, fifteen and a half guineas in gold, and a leather purse with silver for current expenses. The existence of this green silk purse was a matter of common knowledge, for it was his kindly way, when playing with the children of the clachan, ‘to rattle it for their diversion’. He wore two gold rings, one plain, engraved on the inside with the letters D.H. and the motto, ‘When this you see, Remember me.’ This ‘posie’ had reference to the late David Holland, sometime paymaster of the regiment, and the sergeant’s predecessor in the lawful affections of his spouse. It would appear that he had no sentiment in such matters, for his brogues were enriched with a pair of large silver shoe-buckles formerly the property, and also bearing the initials, of the defunct. The other ring, which plays a part in the story, was of curious design, and had ‘a little lump of gold’ in the form of a heart raised upon the bezel. The sergeant, further, wore silver buckles at his knees, a silver watch and seal at his fob, two dozen silver buttons on his waistcoat, and carried in his pocket a penknife of singular form. His ‘dark-mouse-coloured hair’ was tied behind with a black silk ribbon, and his silver-laced hat, with a silver button, had his own initials, misplaced, cut on the outside of the crown. A gun with a peculiar barrel, given to him by a brother officer, completed his usual equipment.

  Thus accoutred and adorned, Sergeant Davies, very early on the morning of Thursday, 28 September 1749, bade farewell to his wife at the house of Michael Farquharson, where they lodged, and set forth in advance of his men to meet the patrol from Glenshee. Four of his party followed him soon after. This arrangement was not unusual, and on the return journey he would often ‘send the men home and follow his sport’. An hour after sunrise, he was seen and spoken to in Glenclunie by one John Growar, whom he had occasion to reprimand for wearing a coat of tartan, in contravention of the Act. With characteristic good-nature, Davies ‘dismissed him, instead of making him prisoner’. The four soldiers from Dubrach duly met the corporal’s guard from Glenshee; on their way they had a distant glimpse of the sergeant still pursuing his sport, and heard him fire a shot. They marched home in the afternoon without seeing anything further of him. After the patrols had separated, the Glenshee party encountered the sergeant at the Water of Benow, half a mile from the rendezvous. Davies informed the corporal ‘that he was going to the hill to get a shot at the deer’. The corporal thought it ‘very unreasonable in him’ to venture on the hill alone, as he himself was nervous even when accompanied by his men. To which the sergeant answered ‘that when he had his arms and ammunition about him, he did not fear any body he could meet’. Whereupon they parted company; and from that hour Sergeant Davies vanished from among living men, and his place knew him no more.

  Next day the news spread throughout the district that the sergeant had disappeared. The captain of the garrison at Braemar Castle sent a party of men on the Sunday to Dubrach, and on the Monday the whole countryside was raised to search for the missing man. After four days of fruitless labour, the search was abandoned; no trace of the sergeant could be found. From the first, his wife was certain that he had met with foul play. As she afterwards said, ‘It was generally known by all the neighbourhood that the sergeant was worth money and carried it about with him.’ She scouted the rumour that he had deserted, ‘for that he and she lived together in as great amity and love as any couple could do that ever was married, and that he never was in use to stay away a night from her; and that it was not possible he could be under any temptation to desert, as he was much esteemed and beloved by all his officers, and had good reason to believe he would have been promoted to the rank of sergeant-major upon the first vacancy.’ Her view came to be the accepted one, and the opinion of the country was that the sergeant had been robbed and murdered, and his corpse concealed amid the desolate high places of the hills.

  In June 1750, nine months after the disappearance, Donald Farquharson, the son of Michael, with whom Davies had lodged when on earth, received a message from one Alexander M’Pherson ‘that he wanted much to speak to him’. M’Pherson was then at his master’s sheiling (shepherd’s hut) in Glenclunie, some two miles distant from Dubrach. A few days afterwards, Farquharson went to see him as requested, ‘when M’Pherson told him that he was greatly troubled with an apparition, the ghost of the deceased Sergeant Davies, who insisted that he should bury his bones; and that he having declined to bury them, the ghost insisted that he should apply to Donald Farquharson, saying that he was sure he would help to bury his bones.’ The spirit’s confidence was misplaced, for Donald at first declined the office, and ‘could not believe that M’Pherson had seen such an apparition’. But on the ghost-seer stating that, guided by his visitant’s description, he had actually found the bones in question, and offering to take him to the spot, Donald reluctantly agreed to accompany him; ‘which’, as he naively says, ‘he did the rather that he thought it might possibly be true, and if it was, he did not know but the apparition might trouble himself.’

  M’Pherson led him to the Hill of Christie, between Glenchristie and Glenclunie, two or three miles from Dubrach, and about half a mile from the road ta
ken by the patrols between that place and Glenshee. The body, which lay on the surface of the ground in a peat moss, was practically reduced to a skeleton. The bones were separated and ‘scattered asunder’, but the ‘mouse-coloured’ hair of the unhappy sergeant, still tied with the black silk ribbon, was intact. Fragments of blue cloth, some pieces of striped stuff, and a pair of brogues from which the tags for the buckles had been cut, left little doubt as to the identity of the remains.

  M’Pherson told his companion that when he first found the bones, eight days before, they lay farther off under a bank, and ‘he drew them out with his staff’. Donald enquired, ‘If the apparition had given any orders about carrying his bones to a churchyard?’ and learning that the spirit had indicated no preference for any specific resting-place, he agreed to bury the bones on the spot. They accordingly dug a hole in the moss with a spade brought by M’Pherson, and buried therein all that they had found.

  Now, though M’Pherson does not appear to have told Farquharson at this time, he afterwards swore that the ghost, being pressed by him to disclose who had slain the sergeant, did, on the occasion of its second appearance, actually name the murderers. To this we shall return.

  Between the discovery of the bones and the communication to Donald Farquharson, M’Pherson had informed John Growar (the man to whom the sergeant had spoken about the tartan coat) both of his spectral visitor and of what he had found. ‘John bid him tell nothing of it, otherwise he would complain of him to John Shaw of Daldownie.’ To anticipate this, M’Pherson himself reported the circumstance to Daldownie, who ‘desired him to conceal the matter, and go and bury the body privately, as it would not be carried to a kirk unkent [unknown], and that the same might hurt the country, being under the suspicion of being a rebel country’. Later, M’Pherson showed Growar where he had found the bones. It was not far from the place at which John had met the sergeant on the day of his death.