Welcome to this episode of Horrific History and Hauntings.

I'm Beth.

And I'm Ramey.

We're your hosts, here to talk about the stories that the history books ignore.

From horrific epidemics and ghostly hauntings to the catastrophes and tragic events that have sickened humanity.

We're back.

We missed an episode because of the hurricane and all the power outages.

We had no power, and I didn't realize the power was going to be out so long, so I used our backup battery that I use for recording to power other things in the house.

Yes, we.

Beth couldn't even do research.

Yeah, we were really lucky, though.

Nothing got hurt in this side.

Our neighbors and other towns got washed.

Away completely, and trees down all over the place.

I got stuck out in it for a while because I had to go get bottled water.

Let me tell you, if you have one of those filtered pitchers, be sure you always have a case of water or jugs of water on hand, because if you're like us and you have well water, when the power goes out, the water goes out, and you need water.

Well, the people up north from us can't drink the town water either.

They had a boil warning, and then they had a no warning.

So.

Yeah.

Feel really bad for.

And Damascus was tore up, too.

Oh, yeah.

Washed away.

Yeah.

Joey's been with his two different fire departments.

He works for helping to clean up around Holston, Lake Hazmat cleaning and around Damascus.

Be careful.

Drinking this dirty water can give you other things.

Mainly I worry about cholera.

I don't want to die rid of death.

We were lucky.

Very lucky.

Yeah.

Oh, well, during the outage, um, we decided to replace our mailboxes because they were falling apart due to all the rot and the wood.

And I was trying to start a chainsaw.

I don't use the chainsaw.

I don't like chainsaws.

But I was going to start it for someone who can't start it, who does like to use it.

So I was pulling on the cord, and it exploded in my hand like fire.

It was a bomb.

I threw it down, said, run for your lives, and it sat there and burned.

Cause we couldn't put it out.

We tried dropping it into, you know, the flooding creek, and it didn't go out.

That's the fuel for you.

It could have been me.

That's the last time they'll ask me to start something like that.

So I did have my own little tragedy.

I could have been much worse as well.

I got lucky both times with the flood and with the fire?

No, I was really surprised.

Cause we're normally fine.

Cause we lived on a little hill when it comes to floods, but around us we have a couple of creeks that if it does flood, you can usually tell it's like raging water.

Not bad.

It wasn't that bad down here, was it?

This was not bad around where we were, which was extremely surprising.

Cause right down in Damascus, the town beside of us, I was listening to Joey's fire department, Abingdon radio.

It was chaos.

They.

The whole main street was underwater.

Yeah, the whole main street.

I don't know where this one.

If it was glade or Damascus or which area, because they pretty much had to make lists to keep up.

There was fires from power lines down and transformers.

Yeah, yeah.

And transformers were going down, causing fires.

And then I knew it was getting really bad when I heard on the radio.

I don't know where it was from, which county or which area.

One of them said, we need to turn around and get the hell out of here.

We're losing the bridge.

And I was like, they just said hell, yeah, on the radio.

They must.

They are having trouble.

Damascus was so busy that the Abingdon and other fire departments had to go help them.

They were trying to get people evacuated.

They had to take boats to get them evacuated.

I understand that Asheville and I think it was black Mountain, they have so much damage, but you don't really hear about the little small towns like Damascus that also got badly affected by it.

The only reason I think we do is because we live.

We live so close to it.

Yeah.

But I was really surprised that those creeks around us that normally do flood when there's a lot of rain was just fine.

It's so confusing.

And if you want to help, there's a lot of different sites.

Taking a charity for this kind of stuff, and we don't need it, of course, but I.

Neighboring towns do need some help.

I got a email from the treasurer.

Yeah, I think everybody in the area did.

And I was like, well, I don't need it.

All I lost was three little ziploc bags of frozen potatoes and a half a bag of pepperoni that was about to go bad.

Anyway.

We lost over 150 eggs and all the deer meat that Scott had collected.

That's sad.

I mean, that's not terrible.

I didn't eat either of them.

Everybody else around here did.

But other than that and the time and the power, you know, our neighbor, literally, our neighbor is on a different power line than we are because of the way the town's borders work.

Yeah.

And theirs is out.

They've been on a generator for weeks.

I keep hearing it.

We are very, very lucky, even compared to the people at.

Besides.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So if you.

If you do want to help, I'm not going to offer any in the description.

Cause I don't know which ones.

Yeah.

Are great.

I don't know if it's true or not, but I've heard that some people on TikTok have been taking donations, but not making proof videos of where those donations are going.

Like, they vanish afterward, which is pretty fucked up.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Yeah, I wouldn't do that.

Wouldn't be comfortable doing that.

Find a reputable one if you want to help him do that.

I would never say don't.

Yeah.

But.

Well, I was thinking, if Joey to talk to both of his fire chiefs, where he works at, the two different fire departments and they're helping out, we could at least give to Damascus.

Okay.

Because they're going there.

Yeah.

Okay.

But if he does that, I'll have a link in the description to which ones the fire department recommends.

How about that?

Yeah.

Okay.

If it's not there, then we couldn't get one because they didn't send us something.

But if they do, I will put.

It down there, but at the moment.

And it won't go to us.

Whatever you put, we'll send a link directly to the site.

Not us.

No.

At the moment, a lot of Damascus roads, from what I understand, are gone.

There's half of it, and then the rest of it is river rock.

Yeah.

Scott's family's on a hill in Damascus, the middle of Damascus, pretty much as you go in.

And they were lucky, but everything else was just.

Yeah, a mess.

And I normally don't have a problem with storms, but when I was out there and I called you up because there were so many trees down and every single way, I knew home, which is a lot, because I'm used to riding around just for fun.

And I was like, I can't get home.

I told you, you have to go the long way.

I did, but at the time, there was a tree, but by the time I got back, they had cut it to where I could go around some.

But at the time, that's why I chose the other many ways.

And I was like, every single road to get home has trees in it or power lines.

Are we going to cover what happened today in history?

Yes.

See, I haven't been adding anything on TikTok or Pinterest or anything like that because, well, honestly, I don't know.

I've been kind of out of it since all that happened.

If I was going to do something, I would want it to be about an Appalachia so that more people would be into learning more about Appalachia and what's going on here.

Oh, I have created a Facebook group for the Horrific History and Hauntings podcast.

So if you want to follow that, I'd like to have more people join and enter.

I just started it.

We had, when we first started this, created a Facebook account just for the podcast.

But Facebook kept taking down all of our podcast links, thinking they were spam because they came from captivate, which is our host.

So I've started linking it from one of the podcast players.

I use Pocketcast.

So if you see an episode, if you want to follow us there, there's a good way to reach out once you join, if you're into Facebook.

I thought a lot of people had left Facebook, so I hadn't really focused on it much, but apparently still a lot of people use it.

So, yeah, if you want to follow us, look up that it'll be a group, not an account, because if the account shows up, we don't even have access to it no more because they thought it was a scam account.

That's odd.

I was complaining about it.

Why?

I don't know, but they let me keep my instagrams and everything and share the podcast there.

Oh, yeah.

Well, if you join that group, maybe we can find other people to reach out to and talk to.

That'd be nice.

As it is, I've just been posting older episodes up because I'm trying to catch up with the all the episodes.

So about one or two episodes pop up a day, as well as any interesting history, things I can find.

But yeah, join up.

I'd like to have more people hop in there.

Beth won't be there because she don't have Facebook, but I will be.

He can send a message along, as.

Probably will dakota from leveling duo, the other podcast we do.

He'll be in there, have a community that way.

Oh, I put the link in the link tree to the Facebook group.

It'll be like the second link right below the home webpage for gruesome gaming group podcast.

Yeah.

Okay.

I figured I should say that now.

So I don't forget it later.

But our main topic is going to be the Amityville horror.

And this is from the notes that mom had in that folder that she printed off of spooky stuff.

But we have it today.

In history.

It's October 5.

European nations were in a race to control the skies.

In the 1920s, they were building huge airships to try to dominate the air traveling industry.

Great Britain came up with the r 101.

It was described as a behemoth of an airship that stretched 777ft long and weighed 150 tons.

It was powered by six Rolls Royce engines and was designed to carry 100 passengers in luxurious comfort.

Sounds wonderful.

Yeah.

During the r 100 one's maiden voyage in 1929, it had immediate engine trouble.

Oh, terrible.

It's like the Titanic.

Well, of the air.

It didn't really have that much.

I mean, it did have trouble, but it had to stay on the ground for about a year.

On October 5, 1930, the R 101 set off on a trip to the far east.

It was carrying Lord Thompson, which was a member of parliament who pushed for the 101 Reals return to service.

I think he also had something to do with the air force, maybe something like that.

It also was carrying a crew of 52 and a handful of passengers.

This voyage was pretty much screwed from the start.

An accidental release of counterweights, which the stuff that they used to help stabilize the weight of, along with the decision to fly straight into a storm, caused the 101 reals to struggle to maintain altitude while flying over France.

She could handle it.

Let's go.

That's pretty much what happened there, I bet.

Yeah.

It was flying at 250ft above the town of Pouyx.

Apologies if we mispronounced that.

Yeah.

I don't know French.

It skimmed the treetops before striking a small ridge.

The impact ignited the hydrogen supply and caused the r 101 to be engulfed in flames.

Of the 56 people on board, only seven survived.

Lord Thompson was one of the many who did not make it.

Well, that was interesting.

I'd never heard of that.

Yeah.

Now to the Amityville horror.

This is gonna be.

This is great for October.

Yeah.

It's gonna be a multiple part, by the way.

Probably just two parts, but I used Google Docs and I didn't make it to where I could go offline.

And I didn't have power to continue the notes.

In a quiet Long island town on the night of November 13, 1974, a young man named Ronald Butch DeFeo junior went on a shooting spree.

That just rolls off the tongue.

No, I had to look that one up.

He killed his entire family in their sleep.

He claimed the voices in the house made him do it, but he was also known to use lsd and heroin, which might explain some of that.

It's a fun ghost story.

Until you found that out.

He brutally murdered his entire family.

They were all found in their beds, face down with their hands above their heads.

His mom and dad, Ronald Sr.

And Luis Defeo.

Two sisters, dawn and Allison.

Dawn was 18 years old.

Allison was 13, and two brothers, Mark and John Matthew.

Mark was twelve, and John Matthew was seven.

DeFeo stated that once he started, he couldn't stop a little bit about the family.

Now we're going to go into a little bit about the family.

To the outside world, the DeFeo family seemed to be living the american dream.

Ronald DeFeo Sr.

Was raised in Brooklyn and had worked his way up at his father's Buick dealership, and he eventually achieved his own success.

This allowed him to move his family to the long island town of Amityville, where they settled into the large house at 112 Ocean Avenue.

It had two stories, an attic, plenty of rooms for the family, and even a boathouse on the Amityville river.

However, a darker reality was beneath the surface of this seemingly perfect family.

It turns out Ronald Defeo Sr.

Despite his outward success, had fits of rage and violence.

The Defeo household was often filled with tension, as Ronald Sr.

And Louise Freemande frequently fought, and the children lived in fear of their father's temper.

Butch, who was the eldest, bore the brunt of his father's high expectations and violent moods.

He was a withdrawn and troubled boy who was frequently bullied at school.

And his father, instead of offering support, would berate him for not standing up for himself.

This was.

Except, of course, when it came to standing up to Ronald Sr.

Himself.

Yeah, he's a bully.

Yeah.

Back talk and disobedience was not tolerated.

As Butch grew older, he also grew stronger and larger, and his tolerance for his father's rage dwindled.

Their verbal altercations escalated into physical fights.

Even Ronald Sr.

With his own anger issues, began to realize that his son's temper and violent outbursts were beyond the normal.

He and Louise arranged for Butch to see a psychiatrist, but their efforts did no good.

Butch insisted that there was nothing wrong with him, and he refused to cooperate with the counselor.

Yeah, daddy, you go, too, and I will.

I mean, Sarah, therapy, this is.

This is all reasonable requests.

If he hadn't made them.

Yeah.

The Tafeos resorted to buying Butch whatever he wanted.

At the age of 14, his father, in an attempt to appease his increasingly violent son, gifted him a speedboat so he could roam around the Amityville River.

I thought it was always a lake in the movies.

I did, too.

It looks very wide in the movies, it does.

This is what the movies do to you, though.

Don't trust movies.

If he wanted money, he would receive it whenever he demanded it.

By the time Butch turned 17, he had been expelled from school due to drug use, and his behavior had become increasingly erratic and violent.

With psychotic outbursts becoming more frequent, the clashes with his father grew more intense and dangerous.

One night when Butch was 18 years old, during a heated argument between Mister and misses defeo, Butch, in a fit of rage, grabbed a shotgun from his room.

He loaded it and stormed downstairs.

Without hesitation, he pointed the weapon at his father and pulled the trigger.

But, yes, for some reason, the gun did not fire.

Ronald Sr.

Just froze in fear as he watched his son lower the gun and walk away and seemed to be completely unfazed by the fact he had nearly killed his father.

He might have not actually thought it was loaded himself.

I don't know.

Maybe that's how I would see that.

But, of course, lawyers wouldn't say it that way unless it was his lawyer.

Yeah, he had some bad habits.

I don't know why they thought spoiling it would make it better.

In the weeks leading up to the murders, the already strained relationship between Butch and his father reached a boiling point.

Butch was dissatisfied with the money he, quote, earned from his father, so he came up with a plan for more money.

He had been given a cushy job at the dealership, along with a generous allowance, which he spent all of it on drugs and alcohol.

Oh, that's one does.

Butch staged a robbery on his way to deposit money at the bank.

Ronald Sr.

Was at the dealership when his son strolled in with his story of getting robbed at gunpoint.

Oh, so it was that kind of robbery?

Yeah.

Oh, blame it on someone else easy.

Yeah.

Ronald got pissed off about it and began to blame the employee who handed Butch the money in the first place, which.

Yeah, I can understand that.

Not who you should be completely blaming, but I can understand that.

Of course, the cops got called, and things got worse from there.

They started grilling Butch, questioning him, wanting to search him and such, and he got more and more agitated.

I mean, he probably shouldn't have kept it on him, if that's what he.

He didn't think nothing through, really.

Well, I'm not saying you should if you're a crook.

Of course, he probably was high.

Probably.

When the cops began accusing him of lying about the robbery, Butch completely lost it and began banging on the cars in his grandpa's lot.

What did grandpappy do?

Didn't tell the police.

To stop asking about all their stolen money.

By that time, if he didn't suspect it already, Ronald Sr.

Realized Butch was lying and had stolen the money.

I suspect he suspected.

Yeah.

So that was a little bit about their history.

Not all peachy.

No, not great.

This doesn't seem like that far fetched of a.

Just a murder case.

Yeah, as it did in the movies.

Yeah, in the movie, I haven't read the books, but in the movie, I.

Didn'T know there was books.

Oh, no.

Apparently there is a book, according to this sheet that mom printed off.

Yeah, there's a book, but I don't know.

The movies just make it look like he was hearing voices, which he might have been with all the drugs he was doing went crazy.

Or it was something paranormal that made him do it.

But he seemed to be probably because of the drugs.

A kind of a jerk to begin with.

Just a bit.

Yeah.

So he decided to do a good old family massacre.

On the night of November 14, everyone in the house was asleep except for Butch.

He had been wrestling with his thoughts for a long time.

And as the hours took by, he came to the decision that he was going to end his problems.

So he decided to retrieve a 35 caliber marlin rifle from a storage area that contained several weapons.

He silently made his way to his parents bedroom, opened the door, and raised the rifle.

Then he pulled the trigger.

The first shot tore into his father's back, ripping through his kidney and exiting his chest.

Butch fired again, and this bullet was lodged into his father's neck.

Louise was awake by this point, but she sadly had no chance to react before Butch turned his weapon on her.

He fired twice, causing her shattered ribs and a collapsed right lung.

Despite the sound of gunfire, the other family members remained asleep.

Butch continued his rampage, targeting his two brothers.

Next, he entered the bedroom they shared and fired a single shot into each of them as they slept.

Mark was killed instantly, while John tragically suffered a severed spinal cord.

And after a few moments of involuntary movement, lay still.

The gunshots still hadn't awakened the remaining family members.

The two sisters, I don't know how.

Very heavy sleepers in this family, apparently.

Butch entered the bedroom where his two sisters, dawn and Allison, were sleeping.

As he walked in, Allison stirred and looked up just as he aimed the rifle at her and fired.

His younger sister was killed instantly.

Butch then turned the weapon to dawn and aimed for her head.

He fired and blew off the left side of her face.

It was just after 03:00 a.m.

in about 15 minutes, Ronald Butch Defeo Junior had murdered his entire family without much notice from anyone.

Nope.

He then showered, trimmed his beard, and changed into clean clothes.

He gathered up the evidence, the bloody clothes and the rifle, wrapped them in a pillowcase, and left the house.

Minutes before sunrise, Butch drove to Brooklyn and disposed of the pillowcase and its contents in a drain.

A storm drain.

He then returned to Long island and went to work at his grandfather's Buick dealership.

As if nothing happened.

Of course.

Hi, grandpa.

How you doing?

At least grandpa survived.

Yeah.

They weren't in the house.

Yeah.

After his father failed to show up to work, Butch called his home several times.

He acted bored and ended up leaving work early that day to hang out with his girlfriend, Sherry Klon.

When he got to Sherry's house, he casually mentioned his unsuccessful attempts to reach his family on the phone.

And then he tried to call them again in front of her to keep up his act.

Uh huh.

Throughout the afternoon, Butch and Sherry went shopping and later met up with Butch's friend Bobby at a local bar.

It was there that Butch started expressing concern about not being able to get in touch with anyone at his home.

He told those around him that he was going to check on his family, and a short time later, he returned to the bar in an agitated state.

He claimed that he needed help because someone had shot his parents.

You don't say.

Yeah, someone.

A small group from the bar, along with Butch and Bobby, piled into Butch's car and headed to the defeo home.

Upon arrival, Bobby rushed upstairs to the master bedroom, where he made the gruesome discovery of Ronald Sr.

And Louise sitting, well, I guess, laying in their blood soaked bed.

He returned downstairs to find Butch seemingly overwhelmed with grief.

Someone had found the phone in the kitchen and called the police.

Officer Kenneth Gaguski was the first to arrive.

Butch was sobbing uncontrollably.

The officer went inside and called headquarters from the kitchen.

Butch, still crying, was now sitting at the kitchen table.

As Officer Kenneth relayed the information about the murdered parents and brothers, Butch happened to mention that he also had two sisters.

So the officer immediately put down the phone and rushed back upstairs with another patrolman who had just arrived.

Together, they found dawn in Allison's room.

The scene was so gruesome and there was so much blood that it was impossible to determine what kind of gun had been used at the time.

By 07:00 p.m.

the neighborhood was buzzing with talk of the gruesome event.

The house was crawling with cops while a crowd of onlookers watched from the lawn.

Detective Jaspar Rendazzo began to question Butch, who was giving a tale of a mafia hitman with a grudge against him, his family, and.

Sorry if I mispronounced those two detective names.

I looked them up and listened to them, and I put them in quotations on how to pronounce them.

But I'm not perfect.

Detective Gerald Goetzaloff suggested Butch could still be a target if this crime was, in fact, linked to the mafia, just in case.

Yeah.

He suggested they continue the interrogation at police headquarters, where they were joined by Joseph Napolitano.

Apologies.

We're gonna just say sorry now for all the names.

How about that?

Yeah.

And I have that one in parentheses as well for the pronunciation, but I just have trouble with that.

I really am sorry.

At police headquarters, Butch said he was home earlier and stayed up until 02:00 a.m.

watching tv.

Then at around 04:00 a.m.

he claimed he heard the upstairs toilet flush, and then he decided to go to work early.

He went on to describe the rest of his day, how he left work early to hang out with his girlfriend, and how he grabbed drinks with his buddy Bobby.

He also mentioned trying to contact his family over the phone several times.

That part wasn't a lie.

Yeah.

Butch submitted his signed statement.

As the detectives pressed on for further information, Butch pointed the finger at Louis Leflini, which I don't think is a real name, because I looked that one up, and nothing came up of how to pronounce that.

And I'm sorry if it is a real name, but I couldn't find anything.

A shady character who he said once stayed with the family.

He told of a secret hiding spot for gems and cash in the basement that his father and Fellini carved out.

Oh, it's Fellini.

I accidentally made a typo on the first one.

Okay.

Butch revealed a falling out with Fellini over an argument about some work that Butch had done at the dealership.

While Butch stayed at police headquarters, he played the part of a cooperative witness, which left the detectives with no reason to suspect him of the murders.

But this began to change as investigators dug deeper.

They found a box of Marlin 35 caliber ammunition that that Butch had left in his room.

Wasn't very bright.

No, it was obviously the same kind that matched the murder weapon.

While questioning his buddy Bobby, they also discovered that Butch had an obsession with guns and also about how he staged the robbery at the Buick dealership.

Recently, the detectives started to doubt Butch's innocence.

Fascinating.

Yeah.

They had a hunch that he was hiding crucial information about the murders.

At 08:45 a.m.

detective George Harrison woke Butch up.

Butch asked if they had captured the killer, but Harrison wasn't there for that.

Instead, he began reading Butch his rights.

Yes, I did, son.

And you have to write your main side.

Butch continued to put on a show of innocence and protested his cooperation and even waived his rights to counsel.

This was an attempt to desperately try to convince them he was just an innocent witness with nothing to hide.

Probably not a good idea.

No.

The questioning was passed to Lieutenant Robert Dunn and Dennis Rafferty.

After the other two needed time to rest, Rafferty reread Butch's rights and zeroed in on the timeline of the murders.

He poked holes in Butch's claim of being up at 04:00 a.m.

and hearing his brother in the bathroom.

Under pressure, Butch's story began to unravel.

Dunn and Rafferty hammered at the inconsistencies and forced Butch to confront the evidence.

As the true time of the murders came into focus, Butch's alibi crumbled and his physical presence at the scene became undeniable.

In a desperate attempt to save his story, Butch claimed he had only entered the bedroom after the murders.

Rafferty then revealed the discovery of the ammunition in Butch's room.

So he spun another web of lies, claiming he had been awakened by Fellini or whoever this fake person was.

Wow.

With a gun pressed to his head.

He might as well have just stuck with his original story.

Yeah.

He said he was forced to witness the horrific slaughter of his family.

As Fellini moved from room to room, the police let Butch continue his charade.

He rambled on about disposing of the evidence, all of the while digging himself into a hole.

Finally, they confronted him, asking if that's really how the event happened.

And that's when Butch confessed that the killings had started impulsively.

And once he began, he could not stop.

And that's the end of part one.

Woohoo.

Next up will be the trial and the spooky haunting part of it.

Yeah, that's when things get real good.

Yeah, this is just a casual true crime and very badly done, one at that.

But the fun part comes next.

Well, that was exciting.

Thanks for listening.

Don't forget to check out the Facebook group and the link tree link in the description if you like what you heard here.

We're part of the gruesome gaming Group podcast network.

We have other podcasts like Brother Nose Quest about D and D, or other tabletop role playing games.

I talk about here at Bethenne and we have a leveling duo, which is a much less often podcast that we talk about video games.

We like me and Beth, or me and my friend Dakota, sometimes all three of us.

We have a nice episode about the satanic panic and D and D.

If you'd like to reach out, use any of the contact methods, including the emails in the description or the social links and the link tree.

The Facebook group would be a good way to do it.

Let us know what you think.

Let us know what we should cover.

We like having fans send us stuff.

Thanks for reviews.

Pocket casts, if you use that, lets you give stars to podcasts now, like some on there.

If you would like to do that for us, we really appreciate it, wouldn't we, Beth?

Yes.

Also iTunes, Beth.

Been collecting all those from iTunes and other apps and we occasionally reread them off.

If you want us to do that, make sure you leave your name and tell us that we can, because we won't use it if you don't tell us we can.

There's a link in the description if you want to leave donations, and there might be a link in the description if we can get the fire department's donation link so you can help the people of Damascus or other parts of Appalachia that have been hit by floods.

Uh, if that's not down there, that's because we couldn't get the link and we don't want something that's just gonna come straight to us.

Yeah.

Especially with what I've heard on tick tock.

I definitely don't want to get blamed for.

Yeah, that's fraud, isn't it?

Yeah.

Wouldn't that be considered fraud?

I think it should be, yeah.

I'm not an expert, but I would say so.

And other than that, that's about all.

Thank you for listening.

I've been Ramey and I'm Beth.

This has been hhnh bye.