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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show

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Speaker 2: that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating

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Speaker 2: facts and figures behind your favorite TV shows, movies, music,

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Speaker 2: and more. Where your two paranormal investigators are pretty interesting

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Speaker 2: trivia the Poltergeists of probing. Not that way. I'm Alex Hagel,

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Speaker 2: I'm Jordan run Tog and Jordan. Today we're talking about

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Speaker 2: one of the defining haunted house stories of the twentieth century,

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Speaker 2: the film that launched a thousand ripoffs literally and the

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Speaker 2: book that inspired it. And uh, I don't know, man,

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Speaker 2: I got like twenty one pages. We should not run

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Speaker 2: long on this in that's very true.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this is maybe one of the most insanity inducing

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Speaker 1: episodes we've ever done. I mean, the Titanic three parter

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Speaker 1: almost killed me. You got away fairly unscathed, but this

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Speaker 1: one nearly took us both down. Because you got the murder,

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Speaker 1: You've got the supposed real life haunting, you got the book,

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Speaker 1: you got the movie, you got the gazillion sequels, and

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Speaker 1: you've got just the flurry of lawsuits. It is a

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Speaker 1: wild ride. This is really I think one of the

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Speaker 1: craziest episodes we've ever done. How many episodes have we

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Speaker 1: done that have a haunted pig. It's kind of shocking

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Speaker 1: that we've made it to like episode one sixty without

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Speaker 1: a haunted pig.

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Speaker 2: I know, I know, I feel remiss about that. But Jordan,

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Speaker 2: what's your where do you get off on the old

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Speaker 2: Amityville Express? You know?

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Speaker 1: I mostly come at this through the real life murder,

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Speaker 1: which we'll talk about, the the fail murder, and the

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Speaker 1: I guess I have to say, alleged haunting that followed

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Speaker 1: in the aftermath, although you don't.

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Speaker 2: Well, there's that Jimmy Carr bitt that he's like joker.

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Speaker 2: He's like, there's actually a rather simple way to tell

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Speaker 2: if your house is haunted.

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Speaker 1: It isn't. I love Jimmy Carr. Yeah, I mean, okay,

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Speaker 1: So the phenomenon, shall we say, of the real life

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Speaker 1: house the book I'm sure I read at some point

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Speaker 1: the movie I probably saw twenty years ago. I haven't

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Speaker 1: seen since. Once it starts getting into the pop culture realm,

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Speaker 1: I tend to taper off a little bit.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, the murder and all.

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Speaker 1: The investigations done on the house out on Inanityville is

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Speaker 1: kind of what interests me. What are your thoughts on

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Speaker 1: the movie.

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Speaker 2: I mean, it has been a while since I've seen it,

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Speaker 2: but I don't remember it being particularly good.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I think what drew me to writing this and the

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Speaker 2: reason I did twenty one pages on it was it

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Speaker 2: is one of the most repellent cases of American and

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Speaker 2: or human nature that I think I've ever like, as

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Speaker 2: angry as I was at Jerry Springer by the time

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Speaker 2: I got done with that episode, I am angrier by this,

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Speaker 2: but I could not look away.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you were really It's funny for me.

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Speaker 1: I found this to be murderous, which is a really

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Speaker 1: sad qualifier, a sort of just uniquely American brand of hucksterism,

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Speaker 1: you know, like faking a haunted house essentially.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, to get out of your more. This really offended you, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: it does. I mean, I think it's a combination of

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Speaker 2: how much I hate d Lorraine Warren.

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Speaker 1: Famous pseudo psychic investigators that are okay, sure conn artists.

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Speaker 2: And if you believe the allegation, human monsters. So yeah,

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Speaker 2: I really hate them, and I hate George Lutz. It's

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Speaker 2: cosmically hilarious. His name rhymes with putts yes.

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Speaker 1: Because like the guy George Lutz, by the way, is

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Speaker 1: the guy who moved into the Amityville Horror House after

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Speaker 1: the murder's architect and claim the whole thing. Yeah, claim

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Speaker 1: that the house was haunted and sort of shining him,

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Speaker 1: like took over him and his family, nearly killed them

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Speaker 1: all and they fled in the dead of night after

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Speaker 1: only living there for four weeks.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and then like the next like the rest of

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Speaker 2: his life in half a century. Yeah, jealously guarding literally

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Speaker 2: like a little chihuahua, just like barking at people who

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Speaker 2: came close to this had no other skills. I hate it.

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Speaker 2: It's so gross and like, you know, we're perpetuating the cycle.

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Speaker 1: But like I think it's so fascinating though.

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Speaker 2: The fact that six people were like shot to death

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Speaker 2: in their home and then this guy moved in before

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Speaker 2: the trial was even done and was like with a

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Speaker 2: scam in place, Yeah, is utterly repellent. And then the

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Speaker 2: cast of care the lawyer of Weber, who will get

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Speaker 2: into like also repellent, And just.

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Speaker 1: Like should we be throwing more allegedlyies in here, because

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Speaker 1: I think he's still alive.

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Speaker 2: He's got to be he's got to be near death.

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Speaker 2: Right Also, like that's unless it's defamatory, which that's not

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Speaker 2: like libel. It's my opinion, Okay, I don't think he

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Speaker 2: could argue that I'm damaging his reputation more than he

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Speaker 2: has by calling him an opportunistic scumbag.

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Speaker 1: Well okay, let me ask you this. Do you think

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Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure there are that there are people

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Speaker 1: out there that genuinely believe that this house is overtaken

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Speaker 1: by supernatural phenomena.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there are people out there now

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Speaker 2: that I don't believe in some form of life after death,

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Speaker 2: like as we discussed. I don't actually know how much

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Speaker 2: of it you cut into the episode, but like, you know,

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Speaker 2: I believe that based on you know, the principles of

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Speaker 2: thermonuclear physics, like matter cannot be created or destroyed, just

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Speaker 2: changes forms. Like I do believe, you know, whatever our

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Speaker 2: brain or solely is is just like electrical impulses, so

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Speaker 2: that probably just goes into the world and comes back

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Speaker 2: in weird ways.

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Speaker 1: But no, I totally agree. Yeah, we talked about that

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Speaker 1: during the sixth Sense episode.

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Speaker 2: Right, yes, so yeah, I don't know, man, I just

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Speaker 2: this whole cottage industry of like ghost hunting and paranormal investigation.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I respect people who are more about it

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Speaker 2: being like drawing some kind of line and being like hard,

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Speaker 2: this is bullshit, versus people who are just like, well,

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Speaker 2: I'm just open to everything. Like as we'll discuss, one

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Speaker 2: of the debunkers of the Amityville story is a guy

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Speaker 2: who believes vampires are real and.

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Speaker 1: Let me get Manhattan.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, real and living in not in Brooklyn, curious but

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Speaker 2: Queen's the Bronx and Manhattan. Yes, it was just funny

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Speaker 2: because they were Eddie Murphy made a movie about it. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: I don't know, man, The whole thing is really interesting

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Speaker 2: to me. It's like, uh, it's a weird phenomenon. I

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Speaker 2: think it attracts weird people, and I think it is

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Speaker 2: ultimately about like money and cloud and.

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Speaker 1: We are some of the weird people following in their lineage.

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Speaker 2: Anyway, from the aforementioned haunted pig demon named Jody, to

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Speaker 2: the dedication of the con artist at the center all

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Speaker 2: of this to the record setting triumph of the film,

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Speaker 2: Here's everything you didn't know about the Amityville Whore Horror.

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Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to keep keeping an eye on my

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Speaker 2: regional accent there the Amityville Hohror. Her name was Jody. Anyway,

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Speaker 2: the basis for this book, film, and its descendants is

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Speaker 2: the case of the aforementioned Lutz family patriarch George matriarch

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Speaker 2: Cathy during the twenty eight days that they spent in

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Speaker 2: their Amityville, Long Island home at one one two Ocean

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Speaker 2: Avenue in December of nineteen seventy five, thirteen months before

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Speaker 2: the family moved in, twenty three year old Ronald de

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Speaker 2: Feo Junior murdered six members of his family in the house,

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Speaker 2: both parents and four siblings. Claiming that this had an

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Speaker 2: effect on the house and paranormal circumstances arose from it,

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Speaker 2: The lutz Is vacated the home in as mentioned, twenty

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Speaker 2: eight days in the dead of night, and yes, in

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Speaker 2: the dead of night, leaving their things to be auctioned

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Speaker 2: off later.

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Speaker 1: Never to set foot In't that possibly on that coast again?

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Speaker 3: Uh?

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Speaker 1: Maybe, I'm sure they moved to California soon after.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but with the volume of lawsuits, I'm sure he

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Speaker 2: was traveling back and forth. He had to be in

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Speaker 2: Brooklyn at one point at least. Anyway, we're putting the

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Speaker 2: whole the disgusting scam artist the head of the tragedy here,

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Speaker 2: which is that Thursday, November thirteenth, nineteen seventy four, at

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Speaker 2: an oft discussed window between two forty five and three fifteen,

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Speaker 2: am Ronald de Fayo Junior murdered his mother, father, and

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Speaker 2: four younger siblings, two brothers and two sisters with a

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Speaker 2: thirty five caliber Marlin rifle in the Amityville home with

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Speaker 2: the front yard sign that read high Hopes the family

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Speaker 2: had been living for nine years. He then showered, trimmed

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Speaker 2: his beard, dressed in his jeans and work boots, before

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Speaker 2: wrapping up his bloodied clothing and the rifle in a pillowcase.

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Speaker 2: Then he drove from Amityville to Brooklyn, where he threw

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Speaker 2: the pillowcase into a storm drain and drove back to

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Speaker 2: Long Island to report for work at his grandfather's Buick

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Speaker 2: dealership at six am. I'm trying not to get into

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Speaker 2: the like true crime podcast Cadence, but like I could

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Speaker 2: also refer some I could layer some sinister ambient music

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Speaker 2: in here. Oh, we think that'll juice the Noel Dafayo Junior.

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Speaker 2: Heretofore just to Fao repeatedly called his parents' house from

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Speaker 2: work before leaving around twelve pm. On his way back

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Speaker 2: to Amityville, he met up with his girlfriend Shelby, calling

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Speaker 2: his house from her apartment to demonstrate that no one

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Speaker 2: was answering, and then met up with his friend Bobby,

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Speaker 2: whom he explained the situation to, opining that there's something

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Speaker 2: going on over there. A few hours later, he went

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Speaker 2: out to a local bar, Henry's, where Bobby joined him.

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Speaker 2: Dafayo continually brought up the situation with the house and

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Speaker 2: told Bobby that he was going to drive over and

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Speaker 2: break in through a window. He left and returned shortly after, saying,

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Speaker 2: someone show my mother and father.

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Speaker 1: It really creeps me out all of the ways that

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Speaker 1: he laid an alibi, calling the house from multiple different places.

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Speaker 1: There's a record of him calling, doing it with witnesses there,

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Speaker 1: going to the bar and be like, yeah, that's the

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Speaker 1: weirdest thing. I don't know what's going on with my family.

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Speaker 1: Is nobody's answering like that? I mean they talk about later,

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Speaker 1: you know. Maybe he almost certainly wasn't being possessed by

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Speaker 1: the devil. He just had anti social personality disorder that

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Speaker 1: sounds like what it was. That's really scary. It's sociopathic,

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Speaker 1: psychopathic behavior. Obviously, you just shot his entire family. I

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Speaker 1: don't know why I feel you need to make that point,

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Speaker 1: but really creeps me out that part. It's all the

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Speaker 1: like premeditation that creeps me out about this.

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Speaker 2: This is where it gets a little.

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Speaker 1: Weird, though, and I'm curious about your take on this.

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Speaker 1: All the victims were found face down in their beds,

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Speaker 1: apparently undisturbed. There was a lack of defensive wounds. You

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Speaker 1: would think that the sound of these rifle blasts in

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Speaker 1: the house would have woken up some of the later victims.

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Speaker 1: The rifle didn't have any kind of silencer on it

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Speaker 1: or anything, but it doesn't seem like any of them

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Speaker 1: were disturbed. But there are theories that the bodies were

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Speaker 1: moved post mortem, and so maybe that was why they

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Speaker 1: were all in the face down position on all their

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Speaker 1: individual beds, but according to the official autopsy, they weren't moved.

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Speaker 1: There were also no traces of drugs in the victim's bodies,

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Speaker 1: because that would have been the other theory of that

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Speaker 1: he drugged them or something before before killing them. Also

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Speaker 1: interesting that none of the neighbors, because there werehouses nearby

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Speaker 1: reported hearing the dozen ish rifle blasts in the middle

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Speaker 1: of the night. So this gave rise to rumors of

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Speaker 1: the house's you know, evil satanic energy. It put up

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Speaker 1: some kind of a weird a baffler, a cone of silence,

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Speaker 1: an evil cone of silence during the time of the murders.

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Speaker 1: I don't know that is interesting, though. I do find

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Speaker 1: it strange that officially the bodies were not moved, which

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Speaker 1: means that they were all just you know, face down

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Speaker 1: in bed and nobody seemed to hear anything in the

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Speaker 1: house or any of the neighbors or anything either.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, you know, it's a big house built

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Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty three. I don't know how much sound

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Speaker 2: would have escaped it in is Amity Field rural. Is

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Speaker 2: it like a hamlet?

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Speaker 1: You know?

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Speaker 3: I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I think it's like a from what little of scene

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Speaker 1: of it, it just kind of looks like a New

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Speaker 1: England town to me in the little seaside village.

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Speaker 2: Okay, okay, okay, well that's all fine. About fifteen hours

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Speaker 2: after the murders had taken place, police had been notified

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Speaker 2: and by seven pm, police and neighborhood rubberneckers had descended

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Speaker 2: on the house. Suffolk County Detective Gaspar Randazzo incredible name.

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Speaker 2: This story has a lot of Italian American shame. He

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Speaker 2: was the first question to Feo, the massacre's soul survivor,

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Speaker 2: who volunteered one Lewis Fellini, a notorious mafia hitman, as

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Speaker 2: the likely culprit, based on an argument Fellini had had

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Speaker 2: with Ronald D. Fayo's senior years prior.

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Speaker 1: That's his dad. And it's also worth noting that the

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Speaker 1: the failed grandfather was evolved with the Geneveci crime family.

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Speaker 1: We'll touch more on that in the moment, but it

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Speaker 1: wasn't inconceivable that this could have been a mob hit

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Speaker 1: given their ties.

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Speaker 2: Sure, I mean you know in the moment to the detectives. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: based on his premise of mafia involvement, police took Dafao

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Speaker 2: into protective custody and he gave them a statement at

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Speaker 2: the station and went to sleep on a cot in

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Speaker 2: the back. Meanwhile, another detective at the Amityville house uncovered

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Speaker 2: a pair of cardboard boxes into Fayo's room, both with

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Speaker 2: labels describing their recently used contents. Marlin rifles, a twenty

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Speaker 2: two and a thirty five. The detective didn't know that

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Speaker 2: a thirty five caliber Marlin had been the murder weapon,

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Speaker 2: but took the boxes anyway, and at eight forty five am,

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Speaker 2: Detective George Harrison, not that one, not that one, and

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Speaker 2: not the first time this will happen in this episode.

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Speaker 2: Shurek da Fao awake. Did you find Felini yetd Feo asked,

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Speaker 2: deny till you die. But George Harrison, not that one,

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Speaker 2: was not there with any such news. He was there

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Speaker 2: to read to Fao his rights. Dafeo protested that he'd

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Speaker 2: been trying to be cooperative all along, and went so far,

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Speaker 2: doltishly as to waive his right to counsel in an

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Speaker 2: attempt to prove he was an innocent witness with nothing

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Speaker 2: to hide. A fresh set of detectives arrived and grilled

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Speaker 2: Dafao about the inconsistencies in his statement, which Dafao began

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Speaker 2: to alter as the interrogation went on. After a while,

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Speaker 2: they got him to confess. It all started so fast,

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Speaker 2: he said, Once I started, I just couldn't stop. It

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Speaker 2: went so fast.

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Speaker 1: This is known in legal circles as the pringles defense, can.

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Speaker 2: You put the taco bells on me? That I didn't

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Speaker 2: have it up?

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Speaker 1: People died and I still I still.

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Speaker 2: Couldn't six people in their bed.

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Speaker 1: Unsurprisingly, this all was traced back to Rondefao's dad, Rondefeo Senior.

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Speaker 1: He was apparently a demanding, raging f around the de

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Speaker 1: Feo household, known in legal circles as a mid century dad.

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Speaker 1: As as Ron Junior grew older, his anger and outbursts

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Speaker 1: continued in frequency and in intensity, and he also outgrew

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Speaker 1: his dad, which was tough. So their shouting matches then

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Speaker 1: turned into boxing matches around the house.

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Speaker 2: Do you ever have that moment with your dad?

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Speaker 1: He's still taller than me? Do you have any idea

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Speaker 1: how much that bothers me?

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Speaker 4: So?

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Speaker 1: No, I beat him in foosball though, Oh well that

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Speaker 1: counts right exactly. Yeah, that's actually it takes one. Oh.

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Speaker 1: The Dafaos sent Ron Junior to therapy, but that didn't

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Speaker 1: help because, in the tom Honor tradition of psychopaths, Ron

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Speaker 1: Junior just played the therapist and blamed everything on his parents.

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Speaker 1: So the Dafaios turned to the grand old tradition of

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Speaker 1: placating their Braddy little kids and simply spoiled him by

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Speaker 1: way of examp Apple Ron Jr. Was given a fourteen

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars speedboat for his fourteenth birthday. So that's like

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Speaker 1: sixties money too, So that's like one hundred grand.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, super cool. It's just super cool. I

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Speaker 2: love this. I love everything about that.

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Speaker 1: Your blood pressure is gonna spike so bad during this episode.

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Speaker 1: I thought, given it was horror, Jason, there's like spooky stuff.

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Speaker 1: I thought you would have been happy.

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Speaker 2: No, man, it just it just offends my oft commented

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Speaker 2: on sense of righteousness.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Rondefeo Junior was kicked out of his Catholic school

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Speaker 1: at the age of seventeen, having begun dabbling in what

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Speaker 1: you describe as more serious than usual teenage drugs like

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Speaker 1: LSD and heroin.

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Speaker 2: LSD. I give a watch. I give a pass too.

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Speaker 2: I regret that I had no intention of defaming Ellis Well.

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Speaker 1: It's a hero it's like good to have in your

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Speaker 1: brain still farming. I believe it's true, like post age

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Speaker 1: twenty isn't twenty six when your brain is officially stopped forming,

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Speaker 1: and then from that point it's like the Big Bang,

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Speaker 1: and it's reached the biggest show of getting and it

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Speaker 1: started shrinking for the rest of your life.

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Speaker 2: Sure, short, short, yeah.

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Speaker 1: And also he was involved in larceny schemes too. It's

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Speaker 1: good to have hobbies as a teen, and unfortunately, Ron

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Speaker 1: Junior's concerning behavior was no longer confined to just spights

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Speaker 1: with his dad. On a hunting trip with some friends,

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Speaker 1: he pointed a loaded rifle at a teen that he'd known

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Speaker 1: for years, watching him blankly as he ran away. When

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Speaker 1: the party caught up with a kid later that afternoon,

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Speaker 1: Ron Junior asked him why he had left so soon. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this has psychopath written all over it.

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Speaker 2: That is so chilling, just someone slowly aiming a gun

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Speaker 2: at you wordlessly and then being like what was wrong? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, this is really Yeah. Have you seen

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Speaker 1: interviews with him, like prison interviews. Oh, he's like, well's yeah,

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Speaker 1: he's really scary. He's like kind of a like like

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Speaker 1: a Brooklyn Charles Manson, Like he's got the like long

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Speaker 1: Island accent. But he talks about like I mean, we'll

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Speaker 1: give some quotes from him later about all this kind

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Speaker 1: of like quasi religious demonic mumbo jumbo.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Well, very scared at the edge of eighteen, Ron Junior

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Speaker 1: was given a cushy job at his grandfather's Buick dealership,

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Speaker 1: but as you write, he half asked even that and

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Speaker 1: continued drinking and doing heroin and speed. One evening, a

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Speaker 1: fight broke out between his parents, and Ron Junior grabbed

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Speaker 1: twelve game shotgun from his room, loaded it, and pointed

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Speaker 1: it at his father, yelling, leave that woman alone. I'm

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Speaker 1: going to kill you, you fat.

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Speaker 2: This is it? Oh I forgot, this is it.

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Speaker 1: He then pulled the trigger, but the gun mysteriously misfired,

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Speaker 1: after which he simply walked out of the room.

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Speaker 2: Do you think there were signs, yeah, you can do man,

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Speaker 2: I'd have that kid committed in a heartbeat, or at

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Speaker 2: least like under So, like your Long Island rich you know,

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Speaker 2: hires somebody to like follow him around and be like

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Speaker 2: make sure he doesn't murder me or anyone else.

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Speaker 1: I just had a thought go on. This story could

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00:19:12,480 --> 00:19:16,399
Speaker 1: have only come from one of two places. Either Ron Junior,

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Speaker 1: after his arrest, volunteered it, which clearly would have blown

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Speaker 1: up his whole the devil made me do it defense,

351
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Speaker 1: or his own parents told someone else that, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: our son had a loaded rifle and tried to fire

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Speaker 1: it at his dad and it just didn't go off,

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Speaker 1: because otherwise he killed everyone else in the house. That

355
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Speaker 1: story wouldn't been able to get out any other way

356
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Speaker 1: if it was a week before they were all murdered.

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Speaker 2: This is one of the most repeated quotes that I

358
00:19:43,840 --> 00:19:46,280
Speaker 2: can find from him, and it's been cited by a

359
00:19:46,280 --> 00:19:49,560
Speaker 2: lot of people in a lot of different works. But

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00:19:49,640 --> 00:19:51,760
Speaker 2: I do not have a source for it. And I

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Speaker 2: mean like real things, not like internet listicals, like you know, books.

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Speaker 1: Maybe he admitted to doing it. Maybe it was some

363
00:19:59,480 --> 00:20:01,320
Speaker 1: part of his fence at one point, because he changed

364
00:20:01,359 --> 00:20:03,440
Speaker 1: his story and we'll talk about many, many times. Yeah,

365
00:20:03,560 --> 00:20:05,399
Speaker 1: maybe it was like I was trying to defend my

366
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Speaker 1: you know, my mother and it just got out of control.

367
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Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, But the inciting incident for the

368
00:20:11,760 --> 00:20:15,080
Speaker 1: murders appeared to be when Ron Junior stole nearly twenty

369
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Speaker 1: three thousand dollars in checks from the car dealership where

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Speaker 1: he worked his grandfather's car dealership, claiming that he'd been

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Speaker 1: robbed on the way of the bank. When questioned about this, about,

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Speaker 1: for instance, why it had taken him an extra two

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Speaker 1: hours to return following the robbery, he just became obstinate

374
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Speaker 1: and enraged, causing his father the Friday before the murders,

375
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Speaker 1: mind you to tell him you've got the devil on

376
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Speaker 1: your back, to which Ron Junior responded, you fat prick,

377
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Speaker 1: I'll kill you.

378
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Speaker 2: And so you got to admire the consistency in messaging.

379
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Speaker 2: I mean he yeah, he had the makings of a

380
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Speaker 2: of a pr manager and he stayed on message. Stayed

381
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Speaker 2: on message, yeah.

382
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Speaker 1: Like you should lose weight before I kill you.

383
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Speaker 2: And I'll kill you. So case went to trial in

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Speaker 2: October of nineteen seventy five. His attorney, the aforementioned William Weber, a.

385
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Speaker 1: Big player in this episode, remember that name.

386
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Speaker 2: William Webber attempted to have the case thrown out based

387
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Speaker 2: on the fact that to Feo had waived his right

388
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Speaker 2: to counsel when he was first arrested before pivoting to

389
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Speaker 2: an insanity defense, and boy howdy, de Feo went in

390
00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:23,720
Speaker 2: on that he claimed he heard voices urging him to

391
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Speaker 2: commit the murders. At one point during questioning, he said

392
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Speaker 2: I killed them all, claiming bizarrely that it was self defense, continuing,

393
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Speaker 2: if I didn't kill my family, they were going to

394
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Speaker 2: kill me. And as far as I'm concerned, what I

395
00:21:35,880 --> 00:21:38,280
Speaker 2: did was self defense and there was nothing wrong with it.

396
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Speaker 2: When I got a gun in my hand. There's no

397
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Speaker 2: doubt in my mind who I am. I am God.

398
00:21:46,560 --> 00:21:49,080
Speaker 2: He then continued to dig himself deeper, saying that I

399
00:21:49,160 --> 00:21:51,800
Speaker 2: remember feeling very good when asked about his state of

400
00:21:51,800 --> 00:21:54,280
Speaker 2: mind post murders, and then going so far as to

401
00:21:54,320 --> 00:21:58,439
Speaker 2: threaten the prosecuting attorney by saying, if I had any sense,

402
00:21:58,760 --> 00:22:02,000
Speaker 2: which I don't, I'd come down there and kill you. Now,

403
00:22:02,920 --> 00:22:03,399
Speaker 2: I like that.

404
00:22:03,440 --> 00:22:06,520
Speaker 1: He added the which I don't, which really it lays

405
00:22:06,560 --> 00:22:10,359
Speaker 1: the groundwork for that insanity defasurers. Yeah, and this is

406
00:22:10,400 --> 00:22:12,800
Speaker 1: again what makes me think that he's in on it

407
00:22:13,440 --> 00:22:17,040
Speaker 1: one thousand percent. He will do or say anything that

408
00:22:17,280 --> 00:22:21,520
Speaker 1: you know absolves him of this, which is psychopathic behavior.

409
00:22:22,920 --> 00:22:24,680
Speaker 1: I guess one of the stories, I mean, his story

410
00:22:24,760 --> 00:22:26,520
Speaker 1: changed a bunch of times. One of the stories he

411
00:22:26,560 --> 00:22:28,679
Speaker 1: told about something like this. On the night of the murders,

412
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Speaker 1: he was asleep in the living room at home watching

413
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Speaker 1: a war picture on television after having taken quote some

414
00:22:35,600 --> 00:22:40,399
Speaker 1: drugs specifics were not mentioned. He then awoke at the

415
00:22:40,520 --> 00:22:42,479
Speaker 1: end of the movie to hear the voices of his

416
00:22:42,520 --> 00:22:45,840
Speaker 1: family in the other room conspiring to kill him. He

417
00:22:45,880 --> 00:22:49,040
Speaker 1: would add that a quote female with black hands or

418
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Speaker 1: a hooded, black handed demon passed him the rifle. Now

419
00:22:53,440 --> 00:22:56,640
Speaker 1: remember that hooded black handed demon thing, because we'll come

420
00:22:56,680 --> 00:22:57,160
Speaker 1: back to that.

421
00:22:58,200 --> 00:23:01,400
Speaker 2: What do you think was he was watching Glory Sanzevi

422
00:23:01,480 --> 00:23:03,480
Speaker 2: Regima Los Angels.

423
00:23:03,720 --> 00:23:05,639
Speaker 1: To Toro Tora. Okay.

424
00:23:06,800 --> 00:23:09,240
Speaker 2: Also not happy and not helping any of this is

425
00:23:09,280 --> 00:23:11,440
Speaker 2: the fact that at one point he asked police when

426
00:23:11,480 --> 00:23:14,280
Speaker 2: he could collect on his parents' insurance life insurance.

427
00:23:15,400 --> 00:23:18,399
Speaker 1: Do you think that like the Menendez brothers like studied this,

428
00:23:18,560 --> 00:23:20,359
Speaker 1: like okay, we don't do that. We don't do that,

429
00:23:20,400 --> 00:23:22,399
Speaker 1: we don't do that, but it does seem to work out. Okay,

430
00:23:22,560 --> 00:23:27,000
Speaker 1: what a bumbling mook. Anyway, none of this panned out.

431
00:23:27,480 --> 00:23:30,080
Speaker 1: His defense attorney called a psychiatrist who delivered a mini

432
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Speaker 1: lecture on psychosis, disassociation, and criminal insanity. The further the

433
00:23:34,520 --> 00:23:40,520
Speaker 1: prosecution psychiatrist would go with was antisocial personality disorder. Subsequently,

434
00:23:40,560 --> 00:23:44,040
Speaker 1: on Friday November twenty first, nineteen seventy five, Ronald Fao

435
00:23:44,119 --> 00:23:47,040
Speaker 1: Junior was found guilty of six counts of second degree murder.

436
00:23:47,600 --> 00:23:49,600
Speaker 2: Second degree I don't even know what you.

437
00:23:51,600 --> 00:23:54,560
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, but like it's got to be part of

438
00:23:54,560 --> 00:23:56,600
Speaker 1: the insanity defense in there. That had to be a

439
00:23:56,600 --> 00:23:57,399
Speaker 1: concession of that.

440
00:23:57,440 --> 00:23:59,640
Speaker 2: But if you're getting hung up with legal details at

441
00:23:59,680 --> 00:24:01,879
Speaker 2: this age in the podcast, this is going to be

442
00:24:01,920 --> 00:24:04,399
Speaker 2: a two parter. Two weeks later, he was sentenced to

443
00:24:04,480 --> 00:24:07,080
Speaker 2: twenty five years to life in prison on all six counts.

444
00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:09,560
Speaker 2: Immediately after the trial, he claimed to the press that

445
00:24:09,600 --> 00:24:11,840
Speaker 2: he'd pled guilty at the behest of his attorney, the

446
00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:15,120
Speaker 2: afore mentioned William Webber, saying he gave me no choice.

447
00:24:15,280 --> 00:24:17,240
Speaker 2: He told me I had to do this. He told

448
00:24:17,240 --> 00:24:18,840
Speaker 2: me there would be a lot of money from book

449
00:24:18,920 --> 00:24:20,920
Speaker 2: rights and a movie. He would have me out in

450
00:24:20,960 --> 00:24:22,880
Speaker 2: a couple of years, and I would come into all

451
00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:26,520
Speaker 2: that money. While in custody, De Fao continued to alter

452
00:24:26,640 --> 00:24:29,200
Speaker 2: his story. In a nineteen eighty six interview with Newsweek,

453
00:24:29,280 --> 00:24:31,440
Speaker 2: he claimed that it was actually his sister Dawn, who

454
00:24:31,600 --> 00:24:35,400
Speaker 2: killed their father before his distraught mother saw what she'd

455
00:24:35,400 --> 00:24:39,639
Speaker 2: done and killed the rest of the family except them.

456
00:24:40,680 --> 00:24:42,840
Speaker 2: He explained that he'd taken the blame because he was

457
00:24:42,880 --> 00:24:46,280
Speaker 2: afraid to say anything negative about his mother to her

458
00:24:46,359 --> 00:24:49,639
Speaker 2: father and his father's uncle, who was involved with the

459
00:24:49,680 --> 00:24:53,639
Speaker 2: Genevesei crime family. Later he switched to this having Dawn

460
00:24:53,720 --> 00:24:57,280
Speaker 2: as the perpetrator of all the murders before he killed her.

461
00:24:58,080 --> 00:25:00,640
Speaker 2: And this is probably the most plausible theory, right Jordan,

462
00:25:00,880 --> 00:25:01,520
Speaker 2: Dawn did it?

463
00:25:01,880 --> 00:25:04,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are a lot of stories that Ron Junior

464
00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:08,239
Speaker 1: and Dawn, his sister, were in cahoots together. They had

465
00:25:08,280 --> 00:25:12,360
Speaker 1: apparently a very close relationship. Some have even speculated that

466
00:25:12,520 --> 00:25:17,760
Speaker 1: there was some incests involved. I don't know. The story

467
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:20,320
Speaker 1: would be that they were plotting to kill their abusive father.

468
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:25,080
Speaker 1: But Dawn, for reasons I don't fully understand, got carried

469
00:25:25,080 --> 00:25:28,520
Speaker 1: away with this evil deed and killed everyone, maybe to

470
00:25:28,560 --> 00:25:32,600
Speaker 1: eliminate witnesses, I don't know. And then Ron was so

471
00:25:32,680 --> 00:25:35,320
Speaker 1: heartbroken by what she had done that he went and

472
00:25:35,440 --> 00:25:40,280
Speaker 1: killed her. It doesn't really hold up, but it is

473
00:25:40,359 --> 00:25:43,040
Speaker 1: interesting to note that her death appears to have been

474
00:25:43,040 --> 00:25:46,520
Speaker 1: the most violent, with her head being blown almost entirely

475
00:25:46,560 --> 00:25:48,040
Speaker 1: off by the rifle blast.

476
00:25:49,400 --> 00:25:50,120
Speaker 2: Here's where it.

477
00:25:50,080 --> 00:25:54,159
Speaker 1: Really gets weird, as if it wasn't. Oh yeah, I

478
00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:56,960
Speaker 1: guess we haven't gotten to the demonic pig yet. According

479
00:25:56,960 --> 00:25:59,960
Speaker 1: to author Rick Asuna in a two thousand and five documentary,

480
00:26:00,160 --> 00:26:04,600
Speaker 1: Real Amityville, horror. A criminologist hired by the defense team

481
00:26:05,119 --> 00:26:07,399
Speaker 1: told a closed court that there was evidence that the

482
00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:10,959
Speaker 1: bodies had been moved and staged post mortem, and that

483
00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:13,440
Speaker 1: there was evidence that more than one gun was used,

484
00:26:14,640 --> 00:26:16,760
Speaker 1: so that would give credence to the idea that there

485
00:26:16,760 --> 00:26:20,440
Speaker 1: were two people involved in the killings, which would make

486
00:26:20,520 --> 00:26:24,359
Speaker 1: sense if there weren't any defensive wounds on everybody, because

487
00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:26,760
Speaker 1: presumably somebody would have heard something and tried to run

488
00:26:26,800 --> 00:26:28,760
Speaker 1: for their lives. But it looks like that they were

489
00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:32,840
Speaker 1: all shot in their sleep, which seems impossible that nobody

490
00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:39,200
Speaker 1: would have woken up anyway. This gets extremely weird. Journalist

491
00:26:39,280 --> 00:26:42,239
Speaker 1: Rick Moran was contacted many years after the murder by

492
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:44,840
Speaker 1: a drug enforcement agent who told him that he had

493
00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:47,679
Speaker 1: the to fail home under observation at the time of

494
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 1: the murder, and he had seen don Defail leave the

495
00:26:51,840 --> 00:26:54,360
Speaker 1: house on the night of the murder with a rifle.

496
00:26:55,160 --> 00:26:57,480
Speaker 1: The agent said that he saw her put the rifle

497
00:26:57,480 --> 00:26:59,800
Speaker 1: in the back seat of her car and drive in

498
00:26:59,800 --> 00:27:03,240
Speaker 1: the direction of the city Dock, which was exactly where

499
00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 1: the weapon was found by police divers later, and this

500
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:10,280
Speaker 1: is really interesting, Down was dressed in a hooded jacket

501
00:27:10,280 --> 00:27:14,080
Speaker 1: in dark gloves, leading some to speculate that she was

502
00:27:14,119 --> 00:27:18,159
Speaker 1: the supposed hooded, black handed demon that Ron was referring to.

503
00:27:18,520 --> 00:27:21,520
Speaker 2: It's interesting because, like, based on Ron, you think he

504
00:27:21,560 --> 00:27:23,440
Speaker 2: would be the one who would be like low key

505
00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:28,200
Speaker 2: trafficking drugs. Don also had a boyfriend around this time

506
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:31,959
Speaker 2: who testified in an affidavit that she had been wanting

507
00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:34,880
Speaker 2: to leave and move to Florida. So maybe she really

508
00:27:34,920 --> 00:27:38,359
Speaker 2: was a burgeoning drug trafficker. Maybe, or maybe it was Rong.

509
00:27:38,400 --> 00:27:40,720
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know why the house was under surveillance.

510
00:27:40,720 --> 00:27:42,680
Speaker 1: I don't think that came up at least in my research.

511
00:27:43,480 --> 00:27:44,840
Speaker 1: It could have been wrong. It could have been Down.

512
00:27:45,200 --> 00:27:49,840
Speaker 1: But Don's night clothes apparently showed traces of unburnt powder,

513
00:27:49,840 --> 00:27:52,639
Speaker 1: which would indicate that she might have fired a rifle

514
00:27:52,680 --> 00:27:58,080
Speaker 1: that night. So your mileage may vary. It could have

515
00:27:58,119 --> 00:28:00,960
Speaker 1: been some sort of weird packed between brother and sister

516
00:28:01,040 --> 00:28:03,959
Speaker 1: that went awry at the last minute. I don't know,

517
00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:05,040
Speaker 1: We'll probably never know.

518
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:07,680
Speaker 2: Ricosuna released a book in two thousand and two called

519
00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:11,480
Speaker 2: The Night that Dafeo's Died, which is named after a

520
00:28:11,760 --> 00:28:18,360
Speaker 2: song that Down wrote as a teenager. Apparently, what Yeah.

521
00:28:18,119 --> 00:28:19,320
Speaker 1: One of the lyrics to that.

522
00:28:20,160 --> 00:28:22,040
Speaker 2: I think it had to have been like the night

523
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:25,360
Speaker 2: they drove Old Dixie down, or like a Bobby Gentry

524
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:28,840
Speaker 2: style like talk song that she like just did as

525
00:28:28,880 --> 00:28:31,800
Speaker 2: a bit, but it made its way into Rico soon

526
00:28:31,840 --> 00:28:36,560
Speaker 2: as book and he titled it after this. That's terrifying anyway.

527
00:28:37,200 --> 00:28:40,280
Speaker 2: This is one of the most coherent arguments that Don

528
00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:42,760
Speaker 2: was involved in the in the murders, among all of the

529
00:28:42,760 --> 00:28:44,920
Speaker 2: stuff that Jordan just talked about. Ossun it does say

530
00:28:44,920 --> 00:28:47,320
Speaker 2: that the mafia claim doesn't hold water because the killing

531
00:28:47,360 --> 00:28:51,040
Speaker 2: of children violates the code of the Italian mafia, which

532
00:28:51,640 --> 00:28:55,600
Speaker 2: sure man. But he does bring up a very useful

533
00:28:55,720 --> 00:28:59,680
Speaker 2: stat which is that at the time, Suffolk County Police

534
00:28:59,880 --> 00:29:07,000
Speaker 2: had an astronomical confession rate ninety five percent compared to

535
00:29:07,680 --> 00:29:11,240
Speaker 2: thirty five in the Bronx and twenty in King's County Brooklyn.

536
00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:16,560
Speaker 2: So soon it contends that Di Feyo, probably withdrawing from

537
00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:20,640
Speaker 2: any cocktail of drugs or just regular old alcohol, had

538
00:29:20,640 --> 00:29:22,959
Speaker 2: the crap kicked out of him in his cell and

539
00:29:23,040 --> 00:29:27,600
Speaker 2: confessed under those circumstances. Both the prosecutor and Amityville Police

540
00:29:27,640 --> 00:29:30,120
Speaker 2: has supposedly admitted on several occasions that the crime would

541
00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:33,920
Speaker 2: have required three people, and an independent investigation by retired

542
00:29:33,920 --> 00:29:39,560
Speaker 2: police detective Herman Race backed that up. Most importantly, o

543
00:29:39,720 --> 00:29:42,960
Speaker 2: Sooner recalls a moment when George Lutz told him clearing

544
00:29:43,040 --> 00:29:45,880
Speaker 2: up what happened isn't as important as making money with

545
00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:50,240
Speaker 2: the sequels, I kind of want to read this book anyway.

546
00:29:51,080 --> 00:29:53,800
Speaker 2: Getting back to Ronnie Boy on the he his nickname

547
00:29:53,800 --> 00:29:56,120
Speaker 2: is Butch. Butch, Yeah, I should have mentioned that earlier.

548
00:29:57,080 --> 00:29:58,800
Speaker 2: On the two thousand and six A and E special

549
00:29:58,880 --> 00:30:03,440
Speaker 2: First Person Killers, Ronald Dafeo, forensic psychiatrist doctor Stephen Hoge

550
00:30:03,600 --> 00:30:07,080
Speaker 2: said that after interviewing Ronald for several hours, he didn't

551
00:30:07,080 --> 00:30:10,640
Speaker 2: find anything credible about the Dawn story. Rather, he added,

552
00:30:10,880 --> 00:30:12,920
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be able to say this was absolutely true,

553
00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 2: but it made me believe that, in fact Ronald had

554
00:30:15,480 --> 00:30:19,920
Speaker 2: killed them. Not a great look either way. Ronald Dafeo

555
00:30:20,040 --> 00:30:22,680
Speaker 2: Junior was denied parole every single time he came up

556
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:25,320
Speaker 2: for it, and he died in prison in twenty twenty

557
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:27,680
Speaker 2: one at the age of sixty nine, and that was

558
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:35,360
Speaker 2: the end of that. Nice uh so. Speaking of George Lutz,

559
00:30:36,120 --> 00:30:39,800
Speaker 2: Land surveyor, George and his wife Kathleen bought the Amityville

560
00:30:39,840 --> 00:30:42,320
Speaker 2: House for what was considered a bargain prize of eighty

561
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:45,080
Speaker 2: thousand plush in an additional four hundred for much of

562
00:30:45,080 --> 00:30:49,680
Speaker 2: the furnishing. They'd married in July nineteen seventy five. Kathy

563
00:30:49,720 --> 00:30:53,360
Speaker 2: had three children from a previous marriage, Daniel, Christopher, and Melissa,

564
00:30:53,560 --> 00:30:55,959
Speaker 2: and they wanted to start fresh with their blended family

565
00:30:56,080 --> 00:30:59,360
Speaker 2: and their dog Harry. During their first inspection of the house,

566
00:30:59,360 --> 00:31:01,760
Speaker 2: the real estate broker told them about the Defayo murders

567
00:31:01,760 --> 00:31:04,040
Speaker 2: and asked if this would affect their decision, but apparently

568
00:31:04,120 --> 00:31:07,160
Speaker 2: it did not, and the Lutses moved in on December eighteenth,

569
00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:10,920
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy five, less than a month after Defair Junior's sentencing.

570
00:31:11,720 --> 00:31:14,000
Speaker 1: George would say that within the first hour of arriving

571
00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:16,600
Speaker 1: at the house, Harry the dog tried to hang himself

572
00:31:16,640 --> 00:31:19,760
Speaker 1: by hurling himself over the fence. His chain was too

573
00:31:19,800 --> 00:31:23,720
Speaker 1: short and he was hung by his neck. He survived.

574
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:26,200
Speaker 1: If you learned that the house you were looking at

575
00:31:26,480 --> 00:31:29,480
Speaker 1: was the site of a not just any murder, but

576
00:31:29,720 --> 00:31:32,440
Speaker 1: especially grizzly murder like this, would you have any.

577
00:31:32,280 --> 00:31:38,840
Speaker 2: Problem moving into a murder home? No, really, wouldn't bother me.

578
00:31:39,360 --> 00:31:42,320
Speaker 1: Really, Yeah, it was just I mean, you know, so

579
00:31:42,440 --> 00:31:45,240
Speaker 1: like a lightning won't strike twice kind of thing.

580
00:31:45,320 --> 00:31:48,400
Speaker 2: Or no, if all they're going to do is like

581
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:51,880
Speaker 2: turn the lights on and off and move some furniture around,

582
00:31:51,960 --> 00:31:54,640
Speaker 2: I'd be like, hey, guys, I'm really sorry. That's an

583
00:31:54,720 --> 00:31:59,240
Speaker 2: incredibly thing. Don't do it while company's over.

584
00:32:01,440 --> 00:32:03,840
Speaker 1: Serious. You wouldn't have any problem moving into a murder house.

585
00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:07,240
Speaker 2: I mean, how grizzly are we talking? There's a sliding scale.

586
00:32:07,280 --> 00:32:12,080
Speaker 2: I would draw the line at like rape, cannibalism, or

587
00:32:12,160 --> 00:32:15,480
Speaker 2: like a dungeon that some guy kept his secret family in,

588
00:32:16,320 --> 00:32:22,560
Speaker 2: or like really grizzly dismemberment, little rich kid taking nighttime potshots.

589
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:26,720
Speaker 2: I can live with that. Why is there a sliding scale? Dude?

590
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:27,400
Speaker 1: I just follow.

591
00:32:27,560 --> 00:32:30,000
Speaker 2: I just follow the muse. Sometimes I don't even think

592
00:32:30,040 --> 00:32:35,080
Speaker 2: about about what I'm doing. You know, I'm led by

593
00:32:35,080 --> 00:32:35,680
Speaker 2: my whims.

594
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:40,280
Speaker 1: Uh where do they move from?

595
00:32:40,880 --> 00:32:43,240
Speaker 2: I feel like that's an oversight on my part because

596
00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:48,400
Speaker 2: home buying in the nineteen seventies would have been slower, right,

597
00:32:48,520 --> 00:32:52,040
Speaker 2: So closing on this house moving in in December eighteenth

598
00:32:52,320 --> 00:32:56,680
Speaker 2: definitely presupposes that he had been looking into this for

599
00:32:56,800 --> 00:32:59,360
Speaker 2: like at least months prior, right.

600
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:02,760
Speaker 1: I would assume, so yeah, yeah.

601
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:05,000
Speaker 2: And gross scrubby little opportunist.

602
00:33:05,120 --> 00:33:06,960
Speaker 1: Oh did he die?

603
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:07,840
Speaker 2: He's super dead.

604
00:33:08,200 --> 00:33:11,240
Speaker 1: George Lut's die yeah and in hell? Oh okay, so

605
00:33:11,280 --> 00:33:12,640
Speaker 1: then I can say whatever I want about him.

606
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:16,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, brother. Anyway, the lutz Is sensibly decided

607
00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:18,600
Speaker 2: to have a priest come in to bless the house.

608
00:33:18,760 --> 00:33:23,080
Speaker 2: Another embarrassing Italian American brother, Ray Peccerero, arrived, and, as

609
00:33:23,160 --> 00:33:25,960
Speaker 2: Let's told ABC News in two thousand and two, the

610
00:33:26,000 --> 00:33:28,920
Speaker 2: priest said he felt an unseen hand slap him in

611
00:33:28,920 --> 00:33:32,280
Speaker 2: the sewing room and a voice say get out. Could

612
00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:33,960
Speaker 2: be a good thing. I mean usually priests are on

613
00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:36,920
Speaker 2: the giving end of uncomfortable touching, right, so maybe this

614
00:33:37,040 --> 00:33:40,760
Speaker 2: was a big shock to him. Per Lutz. Peccuerero then

615
00:33:40,800 --> 00:33:43,840
Speaker 2: became ill with flu like symptoms and his hands began

616
00:33:43,920 --> 00:33:47,880
Speaker 2: to bleed. I don't think stigmata is connected to haunting.

617
00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:50,640
Speaker 2: It's usually talked about in cases of like religious ecstasy.

618
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:54,400
Speaker 2: What a fuck dip God, I hate this dumb pots.

619
00:33:55,600 --> 00:33:58,520
Speaker 2: Let's also said an interview with movie Web that Kathy's aunt,

620
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:02,640
Speaker 2: an ex nun, also visited the house. Continuing to ABC,

621
00:34:03,240 --> 00:34:06,040
Speaker 2: he detailed the next twenty eight days. There were odors

622
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:08,799
Speaker 2: in the house that came and went. There were sounds,

623
00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 2: the front door would slam shut in the middle of

624
00:34:11,239 --> 00:34:13,480
Speaker 2: the night. I couldn't get warm in the house for

625
00:34:13,520 --> 00:34:16,280
Speaker 2: many days. He also told the network that they found

626
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:20,840
Speaker 2: quote strange gelatinous drops on the carpet in the mornings,

627
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:26,040
Speaker 2: which gross but attributed to any number of things gross,

628
00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:29,920
Speaker 2: and claimed that his wife was physically transformed into an

629
00:34:29,920 --> 00:34:32,920
Speaker 2: old woman with the face, hair, and wrinkles of a

630
00:34:33,000 --> 00:34:36,160
Speaker 2: ninety year old. Among his other claims were visits from

631
00:34:36,200 --> 00:34:40,400
Speaker 2: the aforementioned demonic pig Jody Green, ooze dripping down the walls,

632
00:34:40,640 --> 00:34:43,200
Speaker 2: the children's beds slamming against the floor, and what was

633
00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:46,560
Speaker 2: determined to be his final straw, Kathy levitating above her

634
00:34:46,560 --> 00:34:49,279
Speaker 2: bed one night. He also claimed to wake up each

635
00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:52,480
Speaker 2: night at three fifteen am, purportedly the time that the

636
00:34:52,520 --> 00:34:55,600
Speaker 2: Dafeo murders occurred, although I've also seen around two forty five.

637
00:34:55,640 --> 00:34:57,040
Speaker 2: It's a generous window.

638
00:34:57,600 --> 00:35:00,439
Speaker 1: That's really interesting the movie because I thought that they

639
00:35:00,840 --> 00:35:03,840
Speaker 1: never spoke publicly about what happened the night they fled

640
00:35:03,880 --> 00:35:05,360
Speaker 1: the house in the middle of the night, so I

641
00:35:05,360 --> 00:35:07,560
Speaker 1: don't know what the last straw was.

642
00:35:08,040 --> 00:35:11,919
Speaker 2: He has spoken constantly and in so many different variations

643
00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:14,640
Speaker 2: of it's true what happened, because his whole log line

644
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:17,239
Speaker 2: has been like, what happened in those twenty eight days

645
00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:20,359
Speaker 2: is true. Everything since then has been embellished, and I

646
00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:23,640
Speaker 2: am like a perfect, blameless angel in all of that.

647
00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:26,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, he would say that he got very sick in

648
00:35:26,800 --> 00:35:29,439
Speaker 1: the house and lost a lot of weight. He would

649
00:35:29,480 --> 00:35:34,360
Speaker 1: say that quote my own personal hygiene changed there. Not

650
00:35:34,520 --> 00:35:38,839
Speaker 1: totally sure what that means. He underwent personality changes. Supposedlyam

651
00:35:38,920 --> 00:35:40,919
Speaker 1: was quick to snap at his family while living there.

652
00:35:41,239 --> 00:35:43,240
Speaker 1: As you mentioned, he had a hard time getting warm

653
00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:47,400
Speaker 1: and was constantly outside chopping wood and building fires. It

654
00:35:47,520 --> 00:35:51,359
Speaker 1: was just such a hilariously mundane yet menacing thing the two.

655
00:35:51,760 --> 00:35:54,239
Speaker 1: It's just like angrily chopping wood outside.

656
00:35:55,600 --> 00:35:58,960
Speaker 2: That was supposedly an invention for the movie. But I

657
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:02,680
Speaker 2: find it funny that it is also the obsessive behavior

658
00:36:02,840 --> 00:36:07,400
Speaker 2: that Ralph Ineson experiences as the family patriarch in Robert

659
00:36:07,400 --> 00:36:10,040
Speaker 2: Egger's timeless classic The Vivich.

660
00:36:09,920 --> 00:36:12,759
Speaker 1: Doesn't Jack Nichols, Oh no, that's a different acts. Never mind,

661
00:36:12,840 --> 00:36:15,759
Speaker 1: he used an ax for different, different thing, different thing. Yeah,

662
00:36:16,280 --> 00:36:19,280
Speaker 1: Kathy Lutz reported being hugged by an old woman who

663
00:36:19,920 --> 00:36:24,040
Speaker 1: wasn't really there. They reported swarms of house flies infesting

664
00:36:24,120 --> 00:36:26,880
Speaker 1: only certain rooms, despite the fact that it was midwinter.

665
00:36:27,760 --> 00:36:29,719
Speaker 1: There were your standard run of the mill screams and

666
00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:33,120
Speaker 1: footsteps in the middle of the night, toilets turning black, china

667
00:36:33,239 --> 00:36:36,120
Speaker 1: turning black, which I've never heard of. But my favorite

668
00:36:36,280 --> 00:36:40,000
Speaker 1: is the aforementioned demonic pig named Jody. It was seen

669
00:36:40,080 --> 00:36:42,920
Speaker 1: by the Lutz's daughter, Missy, who claimed that she would

670
00:36:42,920 --> 00:36:45,239
Speaker 1: see its red eyes. Oh yeah, it has red eyes.

671
00:36:45,280 --> 00:36:48,759
Speaker 1: That's important, red eyes peering through her bedroom window on

672
00:36:48,800 --> 00:36:52,360
Speaker 1: the second floor. According to the little girl, Jody, the

673
00:36:52,400 --> 00:36:55,800
Speaker 1: pig told her that he it the pig, was glad

674
00:36:55,840 --> 00:36:58,399
Speaker 1: she was living there and that she would be living

675
00:36:58,440 --> 00:37:02,759
Speaker 1: there forever. That's so I love that. I love that

676
00:37:02,960 --> 00:37:03,600
Speaker 1: so much.

677
00:37:04,960 --> 00:37:05,640
Speaker 2: Hilariously.

678
00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:08,480
Speaker 1: It was later believed that Jodi was in fact a

679
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:12,120
Speaker 1: large Persian cat owned by a neighbor who was overfed

680
00:37:12,200 --> 00:37:16,160
Speaker 1: and known locally as Pig and had you know, cat's

681
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:18,280
Speaker 1: certain breeds have like reddish eyes.

682
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:21,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just at night when you look at when

683
00:37:21,080 --> 00:37:23,440
Speaker 2: the interior light would be shining out at them. Oh

684
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:23,839
Speaker 2: there you go.

685
00:37:23,960 --> 00:37:29,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. There was also apparently an innocent explanation of a

686
00:37:29,160 --> 00:37:32,480
Speaker 1: number of the supernatural these supposed all of it, okay, all.

687
00:37:32,320 --> 00:37:35,080
Speaker 2: Of it, there's explanations for all of it.

688
00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:38,560
Speaker 1: There were windows in one of the kid's rooms that

689
00:37:38,640 --> 00:37:41,799
Speaker 1: supposedly opened and shut on their own at random, and

690
00:37:41,880 --> 00:37:46,000
Speaker 1: investigators discovered that the windows were improperly counterbalanced, and all

691
00:37:46,040 --> 00:37:48,200
Speaker 1: he had to do was stand on a certain floorboard

692
00:37:48,600 --> 00:37:50,920
Speaker 1: to send them up and then release the floorboards.

693
00:37:51,200 --> 00:37:54,320
Speaker 2: Was built nineteen twenty three, and the guy like tripped

694
00:37:54,320 --> 00:37:56,600
Speaker 2: over his dick to get into it. Based on the

695
00:37:56,640 --> 00:38:00,160
Speaker 2: court case, like, of course, it's sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry sorry.

696
00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:02,800
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't really understand the physics, but apparently

697
00:38:02,840 --> 00:38:04,959
Speaker 1: that was the cause of the windows going up and down.

698
00:38:05,040 --> 00:38:08,560
Speaker 1: And one of the claims from George Lutz is that, oh, yeah,

699
00:38:08,600 --> 00:38:11,239
Speaker 1: like the windows slammed down on my little boy's hand,

700
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:12,560
Speaker 1: and I took him to the hospital.

701
00:38:12,840 --> 00:38:15,040
Speaker 2: And have they ever been in a pre war house

702
00:38:15,080 --> 00:38:17,759
Speaker 2: with those stupid Pulley window things, Like I sker from

703
00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:20,000
Speaker 2: my hands every time I get near one of them. Well,

704
00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:20,799
Speaker 2: it gets worse though.

705
00:38:20,800 --> 00:38:22,960
Speaker 1: He supposedly took his son to the hospital after the

706
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:26,080
Speaker 1: windows slammed on his fingers, and then somebody he was

707
00:38:26,120 --> 00:38:29,360
Speaker 1: debating on like one of those like debunkithon TV shows,

708
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:32,120
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, yeah, we're gonna subpoena the hospital and

709
00:38:32,360 --> 00:38:34,719
Speaker 1: have the hospital records. And then as soon as I

710
00:38:34,719 --> 00:38:36,640
Speaker 1: said that, he was like, well, I didn't actually take

711
00:38:36,680 --> 00:38:37,759
Speaker 1: him to the hospital.

712
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:40,680
Speaker 2: It was more single time he's pressed on it, he

713
00:38:40,800 --> 00:38:43,560
Speaker 2: backs off, which is so hilarious. Man, Like, at least

714
00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:46,799
Speaker 2: go through more trouble falsifying records, or even just do

715
00:38:47,160 --> 00:38:50,160
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe tried doing that. You would later

716
00:38:50,200 --> 00:38:53,280
Speaker 2: claim it's just such. I think it's because he's stupid.

717
00:38:53,480 --> 00:38:54,880
Speaker 2: That's what bothers me the most.

718
00:38:54,920 --> 00:38:56,839
Speaker 1: Actually, you want him to lie better. You don't care

719
00:38:56,880 --> 00:38:58,839
Speaker 1: that he lies. You want him to lie better. That's

720
00:38:58,840 --> 00:38:59,920
Speaker 1: really what it's all about.

721
00:39:00,120 --> 00:39:02,440
Speaker 2: You perfect Dunning crue a perfect example of the Dunning

722
00:39:02,480 --> 00:39:05,879
Speaker 2: Krueger effect, Like, oh, I'll just I'll just falsify this thing,

723
00:39:06,520 --> 00:39:09,640
Speaker 2: and like as it spins out of control, just keep

724
00:39:09,680 --> 00:39:12,760
Speaker 2: pathetically lying and then live the rest of my life

725
00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:17,439
Speaker 2: doubling down on it. I didn't realize he died, Moron, Yeah,

726
00:39:17,480 --> 00:39:19,160
Speaker 2: he died. He's in hell. I explained it.

727
00:39:21,719 --> 00:39:24,759
Speaker 1: Journalist Rick Moran would cite an estimated one hundred and

728
00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:28,320
Speaker 1: sixty obvious physical errors in the book The Aminual Horror,

729
00:39:28,760 --> 00:39:31,760
Speaker 1: and that doesn't even count trying to prove or disprove

730
00:39:31,840 --> 00:39:33,480
Speaker 1: the existence of psychic phenomena.

731
00:39:33,600 --> 00:39:40,279
Speaker 2: So yeah, as you meditate on that, we'll be right

732
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:41,880
Speaker 2: back with more too much information.

733
00:39:42,200 --> 00:39:56,080
Speaker 3: After these messages, George Lutz wasted very little time getting

734
00:39:56,120 --> 00:39:57,040
Speaker 3: experts involved.

735
00:39:57,120 --> 00:40:00,520
Speaker 1: After he fled his home, he contacted Stephen cap the

736
00:40:00,560 --> 00:40:04,160
Speaker 1: founder and director of the Vampire Research Center and the

737
00:40:04,160 --> 00:40:08,560
Speaker 1: Parapsychology Institute of America. He agreed to investigate the home

738
00:40:08,640 --> 00:40:12,919
Speaker 1: with some members of his Parapsychology Institute, which is they.

739
00:40:12,840 --> 00:40:14,399
Speaker 2: Were supposedly witches who showed up.

740
00:40:14,440 --> 00:40:15,440
Speaker 1: Oh okay, there you go.

741
00:40:15,640 --> 00:40:17,400
Speaker 2: I learned that recently. I didn't have time to edit it.

742
00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:18,239
Speaker 2: It's just hilarious.

743
00:40:19,640 --> 00:40:22,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, this guy was so convinced of the existence of

744
00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:26,520
Speaker 1: vampireism vampiresm A VAMPIRESM just vampires.

745
00:40:26,560 --> 00:40:28,960
Speaker 2: Oh okay, just say vampires.

746
00:40:29,160 --> 00:40:31,759
Speaker 1: Of vampires that in twenty ten he told The New

747
00:40:31,840 --> 00:40:35,120
Speaker 1: York Post that he was corresponding with four vampires in Manhattan,

748
00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:39,080
Speaker 1: one in the Bronx, and one in Queens, but shockingly

749
00:40:39,560 --> 00:40:42,160
Speaker 1: none in Brooklyn. Are you want to thought Bushwick? There

750
00:40:42,160 --> 00:40:45,160
Speaker 1: would have been some well there are now, oh yeah,

751
00:40:45,160 --> 00:40:48,000
Speaker 1: certainly it was twenty ten as well as that was

752
00:40:48,040 --> 00:40:50,839
Speaker 1: when they would have gotten there. Yeah, it was looking

753
00:40:50,880 --> 00:40:53,720
Speaker 1: for crack sorry, or house shows.

754
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:55,160
Speaker 2: Not at that point.

755
00:40:56,200 --> 00:40:56,520
Speaker 4: I don't know.

756
00:40:56,680 --> 00:40:57,680
Speaker 1: I mo've died here in twenty one.

757
00:40:57,719 --> 00:41:00,520
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, well, depending on what part Bushwick,

758
00:41:00,520 --> 00:41:03,400
Speaker 2: I feel like down by Knickerbocker was not like Gentrified

759
00:41:03,440 --> 00:41:06,040
Speaker 2: in twenty ten. You were there. I wasn't.

760
00:41:06,640 --> 00:41:10,920
Speaker 1: I was there at the first house show at the Lodge.

761
00:41:11,280 --> 00:41:11,920
Speaker 1: I was there.

762
00:41:14,040 --> 00:41:17,000
Speaker 2: I told Alex you'll never make it, never make a dime,

763
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 2: and you were right, and I was right.

764
00:41:21,480 --> 00:41:24,839
Speaker 1: All right, LCD Sounds System reference folks, thank you there.

765
00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:27,120
Speaker 2: We're white and we're white men.

766
00:41:27,239 --> 00:41:31,239
Speaker 1: And talking about twenty eleven in New York, George Lets

767
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:35,160
Speaker 1: requested that Kaplan, this vampire fetishist who had an.

768
00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:38,560
Speaker 4: Expert expert, thank you very much, who had a PhD

769
00:41:38,640 --> 00:41:41,880
Speaker 4: in sociology following his BA in the subject and a

770
00:41:42,040 --> 00:41:46,320
Speaker 4: master's in education that interdisciplinary studies from Sunny and Cunie

771
00:41:46,360 --> 00:41:50,640
Speaker 4: stone Brook, along with his associates at the Parapsychology Institute.

772
00:41:50,880 --> 00:41:53,399
Speaker 1: Why did you have me read all this investigate his home?

773
00:41:53,760 --> 00:41:57,200
Speaker 2: Well, because because he's actually credentialed in some way. It's

774
00:41:57,239 --> 00:42:01,000
Speaker 2: funny because like, so I'm getting ahead of myself. Damn

775
00:42:01,040 --> 00:42:01,720
Speaker 2: it goop.

776
00:42:01,640 --> 00:42:04,520
Speaker 1: Going Okay, So let's ask this guy who's credential to

777
00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:07,840
Speaker 1: investigate his home. Kapla wrote a whole book about the

778
00:42:07,840 --> 00:42:12,600
Speaker 1: whole Amityville situation, very tellingly called the Amityville Conspiracy, and

779
00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:14,800
Speaker 1: he recalled that during his short stay in the house,

780
00:42:15,280 --> 00:42:19,680
Speaker 1: Let's said, he'd read multiple books about the occult, which

781
00:42:19,760 --> 00:42:21,879
Speaker 1: I don't find to be a red flag if you're

782
00:42:21,920 --> 00:42:23,400
Speaker 1: in a home that you think is haunted and you

783
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:25,520
Speaker 1: want to learn more about haunted homes and why.

784
00:42:25,520 --> 00:42:29,000
Speaker 2: In twenty eight days while going to work or whatever,

785
00:42:29,200 --> 00:42:30,479
Speaker 2: like he was sick.

786
00:42:30,560 --> 00:42:32,280
Speaker 1: He was sick a lot.

787
00:42:32,760 --> 00:42:37,520
Speaker 2: He was researching his bullsh Caplin, Preston and George Let's

788
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:41,640
Speaker 2: recall the conversation with Ray Buckland, who Kaplin described as

789
00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:44,840
Speaker 2: a prominent witch in the area who ran the witchcraft

790
00:42:44,960 --> 00:42:48,759
Speaker 2: Museum in Bayshore before moving to New England, adding Ray

791
00:42:48,800 --> 00:42:50,879
Speaker 2: Buckland had been gone from New York for a year

792
00:42:50,960 --> 00:42:51,239
Speaker 2: or two.

793
00:42:51,280 --> 00:42:54,480
Speaker 1: Now, that would mean that George had researched his craft,

794
00:42:54,600 --> 00:42:57,320
Speaker 1: as is called with one of the most knowledgeable witches

795
00:42:57,360 --> 00:42:59,760
Speaker 1: in the country long before he bought the house.

796
00:43:01,239 --> 00:43:03,479
Speaker 2: If he was planning it and had read a bunch

797
00:43:03,520 --> 00:43:05,520
Speaker 2: of books, do.

798
00:43:05,520 --> 00:43:07,920
Speaker 1: You think that he was just like scanning the newspaper

799
00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:10,759
Speaker 1: for different horrific murders and was like, oh, that that

800
00:43:10,800 --> 00:43:11,719
Speaker 1: one fits the bill.

801
00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:14,560
Speaker 2: No, I mean, well, I don't know. It's an interesting question, like.

802
00:43:15,200 --> 00:43:17,440
Speaker 1: Or maybe he saw the devil maybe do a defense

803
00:43:17,560 --> 00:43:19,800
Speaker 1: in the newspaper and was like, oh, wait a minute.

804
00:43:20,440 --> 00:43:24,120
Speaker 2: I think one of the most prominent conspiracy theories, which

805
00:43:24,200 --> 00:43:27,000
Speaker 2: I think is by Aukham's Razor, is likely. The real

806
00:43:27,040 --> 00:43:29,480
Speaker 2: thing is that they he bought this place kind of

807
00:43:29,600 --> 00:43:33,279
Speaker 2: on a on maybe a whim, or to try and

808
00:43:33,280 --> 00:43:36,560
Speaker 2: profit off of it in a different way, but then

809
00:43:36,960 --> 00:43:41,560
Speaker 2: realize that the mortgage was like unsustainable and that.

810
00:43:41,600 --> 00:43:43,799
Speaker 1: Was like a bargain. I thought it was a really

811
00:43:43,840 --> 00:43:45,320
Speaker 1: diskoind of price because of the history.

812
00:43:45,360 --> 00:43:47,400
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know. I don't know what the

813
00:43:47,440 --> 00:43:52,360
Speaker 2: guy's income was. He was lazing around, you know, reading

814
00:43:52,360 --> 00:43:53,120
Speaker 2: occult books.

815
00:43:53,160 --> 00:43:55,000
Speaker 1: They like, well, what do we do?

816
00:43:56,160 --> 00:43:57,200
Speaker 2: Okay? Fair?

817
00:43:58,120 --> 00:43:58,400
Speaker 1: Uh?

818
00:43:58,480 --> 00:44:00,360
Speaker 2: No, I mean that's the theory is that they he

819
00:44:00,400 --> 00:44:02,720
Speaker 2: was trying to get out of the mortgage which was unsustainable,

820
00:44:02,840 --> 00:44:05,600
Speaker 2: and that he was like, I know, but I mean,

821
00:44:05,719 --> 00:44:07,279
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know. Man. The guy was such

822
00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:10,080
Speaker 2: a like bald faced liar for his entire life that

823
00:44:10,080 --> 00:44:12,839
Speaker 2: there's you'll never like and he's dead now and in hell,

824
00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:15,800
Speaker 2: so there's no way you'll ever get like him. To

825
00:44:15,840 --> 00:44:18,560
Speaker 2: pinpoint the time, like, oh, I researched a murder house,

826
00:44:18,560 --> 00:44:21,120
Speaker 2: thought I could profit off of it, got in trouble

827
00:44:21,200 --> 00:44:23,840
Speaker 2: with the mortgage, and then decided to fake a haunting

828
00:44:24,320 --> 00:44:25,160
Speaker 2: so we could leave.

829
00:44:25,360 --> 00:44:29,239
Speaker 1: You know, things stall out between Caplin and Lutz when

830
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:33,360
Speaker 1: Leut's asked about Kaplan's Institute's fee for investigating his house.

831
00:44:34,000 --> 00:44:36,440
Speaker 1: Caplain told him if they didn't charge for the investigation,

832
00:44:36,640 --> 00:44:39,000
Speaker 1: but that quote, if the story is a hoax, the

833
00:44:39,080 --> 00:44:43,359
Speaker 1: public will know. And shortly afterwards George Lutz called and

834
00:44:43,400 --> 00:44:47,200
Speaker 1: canceled the investigation, which is suspicious.

835
00:44:48,120 --> 00:44:50,200
Speaker 2: And the reason I was getting so angry earlier is

836
00:44:50,200 --> 00:44:53,320
Speaker 2: that the people that he called are Ed and Lorraine Warren,

837
00:44:53,640 --> 00:44:57,000
Speaker 2: who have achieved there. You know, their whole thing was

838
00:44:57,040 --> 00:45:00,680
Speaker 2: getting famous for being paranormal investigators and psych They never

839
00:45:00,840 --> 00:45:04,120
Speaker 2: charged for doing any of this, but they profited immensely

840
00:45:04,160 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 2: off of books and speaking engagements and the like. They

841
00:45:08,160 --> 00:45:11,800
Speaker 2: are probably the most famous paranormal investigators in American history

842
00:45:12,160 --> 00:45:14,919
Speaker 2: thanks to the Conjuring franchise, which, as we will get into,

843
00:45:15,080 --> 00:45:20,600
Speaker 2: contains some amazing liberties with their story mandated due to

844
00:45:20,640 --> 00:45:25,839
Speaker 2: their disgusting lives. So Ed Warren had like a long

845
00:45:25,880 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 2: standing grudge against Stephen Kaplan because Caplan's whole thing was like,

846
00:45:30,680 --> 00:45:32,759
Speaker 2: I will investigate this, but if it's a hoax, I

847
00:45:32,800 --> 00:45:35,919
Speaker 2: will reveal it, whereas the Warren's whole thing was investigating

848
00:45:35,960 --> 00:45:39,520
Speaker 2: things and then making up bullshit. They then, like you know,

849
00:45:40,040 --> 00:45:43,120
Speaker 2: continued to profit off of. So Ed Warren was like

850
00:45:43,719 --> 00:45:47,120
Speaker 2: in this one sided battle with Stephen Kaplan and just

851
00:45:47,239 --> 00:45:49,799
Speaker 2: constantly lying about him every time he got on a

852
00:45:49,880 --> 00:45:51,799
Speaker 2: microphone put in front of him, like that man has

853
00:45:51,840 --> 00:45:54,160
Speaker 2: no credentials. He like is blah blah blah, He's this,

854
00:45:54,239 --> 00:45:56,760
Speaker 2: he's that, and just carried on this personal attack because

855
00:45:56,800 --> 00:46:01,160
Speaker 2: they were the second choice for investigating and Amityville House

856
00:46:01,560 --> 00:46:08,560
Speaker 2: because they were credulous and also scam artists. Anyway, that

857
00:46:08,640 --> 00:46:10,200
Speaker 2: was all off the dome. I didn't even write that.

858
00:46:10,239 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 2: You just made me so angry. So Ed Warren supposedly

859
00:46:14,040 --> 00:46:17,480
Speaker 2: grew up in a haunted house in Connecticut, remembering paranormal

860
00:46:17,520 --> 00:46:20,000
Speaker 2: experiences from as early as when he was nine years old.

861
00:46:20,719 --> 00:46:23,080
Speaker 2: He enlisted in the Navy in September of nineteen forty

862
00:46:23,080 --> 00:46:25,600
Speaker 2: three after being rejected by the Marines for lying about

863
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:28,160
Speaker 2: his age. He was seventeen. I don't know if I

864
00:46:28,200 --> 00:46:31,400
Speaker 2: buy that sounds like something you'd lie about. Supposedly, a

865
00:46:31,480 --> 00:46:34,000
Speaker 2: ship Ed was on collided with an oil tanker in

866
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:36,719
Speaker 2: the North Atlantic in nineteen forty five, and after being

867
00:46:36,760 --> 00:46:40,200
Speaker 2: evacuated from the burning ship, Ed bobbed in the icy waters,

868
00:46:40,239 --> 00:46:43,480
Speaker 2: praying for help and was soon rescued. He returned home

869
00:46:43,600 --> 00:46:46,840
Speaker 2: and immediately asked Lorrain, whom he'd met when she was sixteen,

870
00:46:47,239 --> 00:46:51,400
Speaker 2: to marry her. Lorraine, unsurprisingly also remembered being psychic from

871
00:46:51,440 --> 00:46:53,640
Speaker 2: a young age, and less than ten years later, the

872
00:46:53,680 --> 00:46:56,480
Speaker 2: couple founded the New England Society for Psychic Research in

873
00:46:56,520 --> 00:46:59,680
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty two. After first attempting to make a living

874
00:46:59,680 --> 00:47:06,200
Speaker 2: off of Ed's paintings, It's just a frustrated Painter, turned

875
00:47:06,239 --> 00:47:10,200
Speaker 2: to manipulating people's feelings and histories.

876
00:47:10,280 --> 00:47:13,719
Speaker 1: Littered with frustrated painters. No good comps of it.

877
00:47:14,640 --> 00:47:15,120
Speaker 2: Nailed it.

878
00:47:15,440 --> 00:47:18,560
Speaker 1: Wait, folks will get that one on the way home.

879
00:47:21,920 --> 00:47:23,600
Speaker 2: You should probably just cut that in instead of having

880
00:47:23,600 --> 00:47:25,440
Speaker 2: me open and unlock my phone and pull up them

881
00:47:25,760 --> 00:47:30,320
Speaker 2: up every time. Anyway, they claim to have investigated thousands

882
00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:33,160
Speaker 2: of cases of paranormal phenomena. And while they didn't, as

883
00:47:33,200 --> 00:47:35,600
Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier, they didn't charge for investigations. But they

884
00:47:35,640 --> 00:47:41,840
Speaker 2: made a killing off of this muscle speaking engagements, yeah,

885
00:47:41,880 --> 00:47:43,680
Speaker 2: and books, and they were on talk They were all

886
00:47:43,719 --> 00:47:45,680
Speaker 2: over talk shows for a long time too. It was

887
00:47:45,719 --> 00:47:47,320
Speaker 2: just like a you know, in the kind of wild

888
00:47:47,360 --> 00:47:49,919
Speaker 2: West of seventies and eighties talk shows. If somebody needed

889
00:47:49,920 --> 00:47:52,400
Speaker 2: to plug something, they would just call up the Warrens

890
00:47:52,400 --> 00:47:53,839
Speaker 2: and be like, what have you done lately? And they'd

891
00:47:53,880 --> 00:47:59,160
Speaker 2: be like, well, there's a haunted doll. Uh, that's not

892
00:47:59,239 --> 00:48:01,880
Speaker 2: a joke, and I mean the number of sorry I'm

893
00:48:01,880 --> 00:48:03,920
Speaker 2: putting again, I'm putting the scammer again. Of the horse

894
00:48:05,280 --> 00:48:08,799
Speaker 2: Ed Lorraine were devout Catholics, and Lorraine often claimed that

895
00:48:08,920 --> 00:48:12,279
Speaker 2: atheism was what opened the door to demon experience and

896
00:48:12,320 --> 00:48:16,720
Speaker 2: paranormal what a bitch Ed claimed to be sometimes, along

897
00:48:16,719 --> 00:48:20,880
Speaker 2: with his wife, quote the only non clerical demonologists recognized

898
00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:23,640
Speaker 2: by the Vatican. Sometimes he would sub in the phrase

899
00:48:23,719 --> 00:48:27,680
Speaker 2: church approved. However, Brad Miner senior editor of a website

900
00:48:27,680 --> 00:48:30,360
Speaker 2: called The Catholic Thing and a senior fellow of the

901
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:33,240
Speaker 2: Faith and Reason Institute wrote in a twenty sixteen article,

902
00:48:33,600 --> 00:48:36,520
Speaker 2: if ever, there weren't actual recognition or endorsement by Rome

903
00:48:36,560 --> 00:48:40,279
Speaker 2: of their activities, I can't find it. The couple did

904
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:42,600
Speaker 2: work with local Catholic priests frequently during the course of

905
00:48:42,600 --> 00:48:46,480
Speaker 2: their investigation, and alleged to have received a personally assigned

906
00:48:46,520 --> 00:48:50,439
Speaker 2: exorcist from the Vatican to assist in one case, from

907
00:48:50,480 --> 00:48:54,040
Speaker 2: none other than the future Pope Benedict, then a sprightly

908
00:48:54,080 --> 00:48:57,160
Speaker 2: young Cardinal Ratzinger as he was known. That was the

909
00:48:57,280 --> 00:48:58,160
Speaker 2: Nazi youth guy.

910
00:48:58,080 --> 00:49:01,520
Speaker 1: Right, I think so, yeah.

911
00:49:00,600 --> 00:49:05,239
Speaker 2: Yeah great. The company they keep a's had from the

912
00:49:05,239 --> 00:49:07,720
Speaker 2: Amityville case. The Warrens were best known for their involvement

913
00:49:07,719 --> 00:49:10,120
Speaker 2: in a murder case in Connecticut in which the defendant,

914
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:13,040
Speaker 2: Arne Johnson, sought to argue that he had been possessed

915
00:49:13,080 --> 00:49:16,000
Speaker 2: by the devil. The judge in the case disallowed the argument,

916
00:49:16,040 --> 00:49:19,279
Speaker 2: and mister Johnson was convicted of manslaughter. That story has

917
00:49:19,320 --> 00:49:22,880
Speaker 2: been adapted into one of the installments of The Conjuring Franchise,

918
00:49:23,719 --> 00:49:26,920
Speaker 2: which I'm about to get to. The fine folks at

919
00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:29,719
Speaker 2: New Line Cinema, owned by Warner Brothers, are responsible for

920
00:49:29,800 --> 00:49:32,319
Speaker 2: not just the Conjuring franchise, which I think is three

921
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:35,640
Speaker 2: or four deep at this point, and they star in

922
00:49:35,680 --> 00:49:38,640
Speaker 2: these films. By the way, Patrick Wilson and Via Farmia

923
00:49:38,920 --> 00:49:42,800
Speaker 2: star as the Warrens and have a glowing, lovely, faith

924
00:49:42,800 --> 00:49:46,080
Speaker 2: informed relationship and are just like the Saints upon the

925
00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:49,040
Speaker 2: Earth combating the forces of the devil. This has since

926
00:49:49,080 --> 00:49:52,600
Speaker 2: sprawled into the Annabelle series, which is I think a haunted,

927
00:49:52,680 --> 00:49:55,360
Speaker 2: raggedy ann doll that they have in their museum of

928
00:49:55,360 --> 00:49:58,560
Speaker 2: bullsh that they probably charge people to get into, and

929
00:49:58,920 --> 00:50:03,000
Speaker 2: the Nun franchise Eyes. All of these has been responsible

930
00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:08,359
Speaker 2: for polishing the Warren's respond reputation, and we'll get into that.

931
00:50:09,400 --> 00:50:12,640
Speaker 2: Regardless of reviews on the Supernatural, this pop culture image

932
00:50:12,680 --> 00:50:16,359
Speaker 2: of them papers over a lot. First of all, they

933
00:50:16,360 --> 00:50:19,720
Speaker 2: were definitely con artists. The Warrens had a best selling

934
00:50:19,840 --> 00:50:22,000
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two book called In a Dark Place, which

935
00:50:22,040 --> 00:50:24,640
Speaker 2: was co written with author Ray Garton and eventually made

936
00:50:24,680 --> 00:50:27,000
Speaker 2: into the two thousand and nine horror film The Haunting

937
00:50:27,080 --> 00:50:32,239
Speaker 2: in Connecticut. Ray Garton has given multiple interviews stemming from

938
00:50:32,239 --> 00:50:35,240
Speaker 2: his hiring by the Warrens to ghost write this book.

939
00:50:35,760 --> 00:50:38,400
Speaker 2: He alleges that this has been the case with a

940
00:50:38,520 --> 00:50:42,040
Speaker 2: number of horr writers retained by the Warrens. Uses the

941
00:50:42,040 --> 00:50:47,680
Speaker 2: phrase nearly identical, and after approaching Ed with concerns about

942
00:50:47,719 --> 00:50:51,640
Speaker 2: the inconsistencies of the testimonies in the material, who's provided

943
00:50:51,800 --> 00:50:55,480
Speaker 2: to write the book was told by Ed, they're crazy.

944
00:50:56,000 --> 00:50:57,960
Speaker 2: All the people who come up to us are crazy.

945
00:50:58,239 --> 00:51:00,600
Speaker 2: That's why they come up to us. Just use what

946
00:51:00,640 --> 00:51:03,960
Speaker 2: you can and make the rest up. You write scary books, right,

947
00:51:04,320 --> 00:51:06,799
Speaker 2: We'll make it up and just make it scary. That's

948
00:51:06,800 --> 00:51:09,839
Speaker 2: why we hired you. Garton also added that there are

949
00:51:09,920 --> 00:51:12,560
Speaker 2: questions about the legitimacy of the Catholic priests who worked

950
00:51:12,560 --> 00:51:16,240
Speaker 2: with the Warrens, and that his motivation for spilling, he says,

951
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:18,759
Speaker 2: is that the book was marketed without his consent as

952
00:51:18,880 --> 00:51:23,520
Speaker 2: non fiction, as the Warrens had shifted from house hauntings

953
00:51:23,560 --> 00:51:27,360
Speaker 2: to the possessions after the popularity of The Exorcist, so

954
00:51:27,440 --> 00:51:29,800
Speaker 2: that guy at least has an axtra grind. But telling

955
00:51:29,840 --> 00:51:34,280
Speaker 2: stuff one family member of the devil made me do it. Case.

956
00:51:34,440 --> 00:51:37,640
Speaker 2: Carl Glatzel also sued the Warrens in two thousand and seven,

957
00:51:37,840 --> 00:51:40,000
Speaker 2: claiming that the book that they'd written was made of

958
00:51:40,120 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 2: complete lies and that the Warrens quote concocted a phony

959
00:51:43,239 --> 00:51:45,360
Speaker 2: story about demons in an attempt to get rich and

960
00:51:45,360 --> 00:51:48,480
Speaker 2: famous at our expense. He suggested then that the Warrens

961
00:51:48,480 --> 00:51:52,240
Speaker 2: slandered him by passing off his skepticism about the case

962
00:51:52,800 --> 00:51:56,239
Speaker 2: as merely a facet of the demonic entity's power over

963
00:51:56,280 --> 00:52:00,000
Speaker 2: the entire situation. What a convenient out hey, I think

964
00:52:00,000 --> 00:52:02,000
Speaker 2: thank you guys are both That's just what a devil

965
00:52:02,040 --> 00:52:06,279
Speaker 2: possessed man would say. Adding fuel to this, there's the

966
00:52:06,320 --> 00:52:09,600
Speaker 2: fact that the Warrens have never produced definitive proof behind

967
00:52:09,719 --> 00:52:12,960
Speaker 2: any of their cases. Their photos of the Amityville House

968
00:52:13,520 --> 00:52:16,800
Speaker 2: were fake, and in one nineteen ninety incident, Ed Warren

969
00:52:16,840 --> 00:52:19,760
Speaker 2: described a film that he took of a female spirit

970
00:52:19,960 --> 00:52:23,880
Speaker 2: haunting a cemetery. It was never made public and was

971
00:52:23,960 --> 00:52:27,920
Speaker 2: eventually allegedly revealed to be a woman named Judith Penny

972
00:52:28,360 --> 00:52:30,400
Speaker 2: wearing a white bed sheet over her head.

973
00:52:30,920 --> 00:52:34,040
Speaker 1: So they went full Scooby do ghost with this. Yeah,

974
00:52:34,080 --> 00:52:37,680
Speaker 1: they didn't even Ukka. So that name Judy Penny is

975
00:52:37,719 --> 00:52:41,920
Speaker 1: tremendously important because in twenty seventeen, the Hollywood Reporter published

976
00:52:41,920 --> 00:52:45,880
Speaker 1: a lengthy article about the fantastically profitable partnership between New

977
00:52:45,920 --> 00:52:49,239
Speaker 1: Line Cinema, who does all the Conjuring movies, and the Warrens.

978
00:52:50,520 --> 00:52:53,600
Speaker 1: As of that article's publication, the Hollywood Reporter suggests that

979
00:52:53,640 --> 00:52:56,879
Speaker 1: all Warren related films have grossed over one point two

980
00:52:57,160 --> 00:53:01,440
Speaker 1: billion billion with a B dollars world wide, and that

981
00:53:01,560 --> 00:53:04,680
Speaker 1: number is probably approaching three billion as of this podcast.

982
00:53:04,760 --> 00:53:08,440
Speaker 1: That is astonishing. The Hollywood Reporter contends that just weeks

983
00:53:08,480 --> 00:53:11,320
Speaker 1: after the first Conjuring movie hit theaters in twenty thirteen,

984
00:53:11,840 --> 00:53:15,200
Speaker 1: studio executives were made aware of allegations from Judith Penny

985
00:53:15,239 --> 00:53:18,400
Speaker 1: that in the early sixties, when she was fifteen years old,

986
00:53:19,239 --> 00:53:23,719
Speaker 1: Ed initiated a relationship her with Lorraine's knowledge, claiming in

987
00:53:23,760 --> 00:53:26,760
Speaker 1: a sworn declaration in November twenty fourteen that she lived

988
00:53:26,760 --> 00:53:30,600
Speaker 1: with the Warrens as Ed's lover for four decades. Thank

989
00:53:30,640 --> 00:53:32,120
Speaker 1: you for forcing me to save lover.

990
00:53:32,719 --> 00:53:35,560
Speaker 2: Which fine man, Whatever were you want to get up

991
00:53:35,600 --> 00:53:37,520
Speaker 2: to in the you know, in your own house is

992
00:53:37,600 --> 00:53:41,319
Speaker 2: fine with the consenting adult, not a teenager. But the

993
00:53:41,440 --> 00:53:45,560
Speaker 2: degree to which they've been lying about this go on.

994
00:53:45,719 --> 00:53:48,520
Speaker 1: Judith Penny alleged that she met the Warrens before they

995
00:53:48,520 --> 00:53:55,239
Speaker 1: were the Warrens internationally famous paranormal experts. I'll say, you

996
00:53:55,280 --> 00:53:58,560
Speaker 1: will say con artists. At the time, Ed Warren was

997
00:53:58,600 --> 00:54:02,080
Speaker 1: just a city bus driver for Bridge, Connecticut, and she

998
00:54:02,160 --> 00:54:04,440
Speaker 1: moved another home in nineteen sixty three.

999
00:54:04,520 --> 00:54:06,239
Speaker 2: He met her on the bus she took to get

1000
00:54:06,239 --> 00:54:06,920
Speaker 2: to high school.

1001
00:54:07,320 --> 00:54:13,760
Speaker 1: Oh my, oh wow. It gets allegedly so much worse.

1002
00:54:14,600 --> 00:54:17,440
Speaker 1: Judith Penny was arrested in nineteen sixty three after someone

1003
00:54:17,520 --> 00:54:20,359
Speaker 1: reported her relationship with Ed, and she spent a night

1004
00:54:20,400 --> 00:54:22,600
Speaker 1: in prison while police tried to get her to sign

1005
00:54:22,680 --> 00:54:26,120
Speaker 1: a statement admitting to the affair. She refused to cooperate

1006
00:54:26,200 --> 00:54:28,720
Speaker 1: and was ordered to report to a delinquent youth office

1007
00:54:28,800 --> 00:54:33,640
Speaker 1: every week for a month, which Ed dutifully drove her too,

1008
00:54:35,520 --> 00:54:40,480
Speaker 1: as good boyfriend material right there, keep going. Then, in

1009
00:54:40,520 --> 00:54:42,760
Speaker 1: May nineteen seventy eight, when she was in her thirties,

1010
00:54:42,920 --> 00:54:46,200
Speaker 1: Judith Penny said she became pregnant with Ed's child, and

1011
00:54:46,280 --> 00:54:49,279
Speaker 1: claimed Lorraine persuaded her to have an abortion because the

1012
00:54:49,320 --> 00:54:52,840
Speaker 1: birth of a child could become public and any scandal

1013
00:54:52,880 --> 00:54:55,600
Speaker 1: could ruin the Warren's business.

1014
00:54:55,360 --> 00:54:58,680
Speaker 2: Which again is predicated on their heartfelt Christianity. And that

1015
00:54:58,760 --> 00:55:01,280
Speaker 2: the idea that atheist a opens the door to the devil.

1016
00:55:01,640 --> 00:55:06,040
Speaker 1: I mean, as Judith Penny said, Lorraine's real god is money.

1017
00:55:07,719 --> 00:55:08,879
Speaker 2: Man. I set you up for that one.

1018
00:55:08,920 --> 00:55:12,680
Speaker 1: That was good. In her sworn statement, Judith Penny recalled,

1019
00:55:12,680 --> 00:55:15,000
Speaker 1: they wanted me to tell everyone that someone had come

1020
00:55:15,040 --> 00:55:17,560
Speaker 1: into my apartment and raped me, and I wouldn't do that.

1021
00:55:18,000 --> 00:55:19,799
Speaker 1: I was so scared. I didn't know what to do.

1022
00:55:19,920 --> 00:55:22,239
Speaker 1: But I had an abortion the night they picked me

1023
00:55:22,320 --> 00:55:24,640
Speaker 1: up from the hospital. After having it, they went out

1024
00:55:24,640 --> 00:55:28,759
Speaker 1: and lectured and left me alone. As if all this

1025
00:55:28,920 --> 00:55:32,000
Speaker 1: wasn't enough. She also alleges that Ed was physically abusive

1026
00:55:32,040 --> 00:55:36,000
Speaker 1: to his wife, Lorraine. Both Warrens had died by the

1027
00:55:36,000 --> 00:55:39,160
Speaker 1: time Judith Penny's sworn statement and the Hollywood Reporter article

1028
00:55:39,160 --> 00:55:40,600
Speaker 1: were publicized.

1029
00:55:40,719 --> 00:55:41,279
Speaker 2: And in hell.

1030
00:55:42,760 --> 00:55:46,799
Speaker 1: Their organization is currently run by their daughter, Judy. He

1031
00:55:46,880 --> 00:55:49,719
Speaker 1: named their daughter after the fifteen year old that he

1032
00:55:49,760 --> 00:55:51,920
Speaker 1: took in and had an affair with.

1033
00:55:52,320 --> 00:55:56,000
Speaker 2: Ah. Actually, let me check that real quick, because I

1034
00:55:56,000 --> 00:55:58,920
Speaker 2: didn't pick up on that. Honestly, I was so in

1035
00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:02,480
Speaker 2: the weeds. I was seeing so much read.

1036
00:56:02,960 --> 00:56:05,719
Speaker 1: Anyway, The folks running the Warren's estate now shot down

1037
00:56:05,840 --> 00:56:09,200
Speaker 1: Judith Penny's story telling their attorney. The Warrens opened their

1038
00:56:09,200 --> 00:56:12,279
Speaker 1: home to miss Penny when she was eighteen, then had

1039
00:56:12,320 --> 00:56:15,439
Speaker 1: noe else to live following a childhood of neglect. During

1040
00:56:15,480 --> 00:56:17,640
Speaker 1: much of their career, Eden Lorraine were on the road

1041
00:56:17,719 --> 00:56:20,640
Speaker 1: working on cases and giving lectures, and Miss Penny lived

1042
00:56:20,680 --> 00:56:21,840
Speaker 1: at and watched their house.

1043
00:56:22,120 --> 00:56:25,759
Speaker 2: Okay, so no, it was a complete coincidence that the

1044
00:56:25,960 --> 00:56:29,879
Speaker 2: teenage mistress that he bullied and sex trafficked was named

1045
00:56:29,920 --> 00:56:32,479
Speaker 2: after their first daughter, who was born in nineteen forty six.

1046
00:56:32,960 --> 00:56:36,840
Speaker 2: Oh And New Line Cinema outside council Michael O'Connor received

1047
00:56:36,880 --> 00:56:39,680
Speaker 2: a letter from an attorney named Sandford Dow, representing one

1048
00:56:39,680 --> 00:56:41,960
Speaker 2: of the two parties suing the studio. More on that

1049
00:56:42,000 --> 00:56:44,919
Speaker 2: in a minute in twenty fifteen that read, in part,

1050
00:56:45,280 --> 00:56:47,480
Speaker 2: mister Warren has been accused of being cut from the

1051
00:56:47,520 --> 00:56:50,840
Speaker 2: exact same cloth as convicted Penn State football child molester

1052
00:56:51,000 --> 00:56:55,160
Speaker 2: Jerry Sandusky and the accused sexual predator Bill Cosby. Missus

1053
00:56:55,239 --> 00:56:58,440
Speaker 2: Warren in both condoning and covering up these heinous acts

1054
00:56:58,560 --> 00:57:02,560
Speaker 2: is as complicit as her husband. Speaking of Lorraine, the

1055
00:57:02,600 --> 00:57:07,640
Speaker 2: Hollywood Reporter also delved into Lorraine's contract with Newline. The

1056
00:57:07,719 --> 00:57:11,240
Speaker 2: talent attorney that they contacted to review this for the piece.

1057
00:57:11,400 --> 00:57:14,160
Speaker 2: Jill Smith told them that it contained restrictions to a

1058
00:57:14,200 --> 00:57:18,120
Speaker 2: degree of specificity she had never seen before. To wit,

1059
00:57:18,880 --> 00:57:21,880
Speaker 2: Lorrain's deal with Newline to serve as consultant on or

1060
00:57:21,960 --> 00:57:27,440
Speaker 2: model for the Conjuring included some unusually specific restrictions. The

1061
00:57:27,480 --> 00:57:31,720
Speaker 2: film couldn't show her or her husband engaging in crimes sure,

1062
00:57:32,480 --> 00:57:39,320
Speaker 2: sex with minors okay, child pornography hmm, prostitution, or sexual assault.

1063
00:57:40,320 --> 00:57:43,800
Speaker 2: Neither the husband nor wife could be depicted as participating

1064
00:57:43,840 --> 00:57:47,520
Speaker 2: in an extra marital sexual relationship, which is like that

1065
00:57:47,600 --> 00:57:52,160
Speaker 2: tweet my not involved in human trafficking t shirt is

1066
00:57:52,720 --> 00:57:55,440
Speaker 2: raising a lot of questions already answered by my T shirt.

1067
00:57:56,360 --> 00:57:56,840
Speaker 1: Ah.

1068
00:57:56,880 --> 00:58:00,400
Speaker 2: And that is literally what Lorrain did with this enormously

1069
00:58:00,440 --> 00:58:04,320
Speaker 2: lucrative contract from Newline. So remember when I said two

1070
00:58:04,360 --> 00:58:08,880
Speaker 2: people were suing over this situation. Bolstering Penny's account of

1071
00:58:08,960 --> 00:58:12,200
Speaker 2: things is an author named Gerald Brittle. He's suing Newline

1072
00:58:12,240 --> 00:58:15,400
Speaker 2: in Warners, claiming that the Conjuring franchise rips off his

1073
00:58:15,480 --> 00:58:19,720
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty book The Demonologist. Part of Brittle's lawsuit alleges

1074
00:58:19,760 --> 00:58:22,480
Speaker 2: that the studio was complicit in covering up Penny to

1075
00:58:22,560 --> 00:58:25,960
Speaker 2: keep their franchise profitable, and his book even mentioned her

1076
00:58:26,080 --> 00:58:29,760
Speaker 2: by name in the context of a nineteen seventy four investigation,

1077
00:58:30,200 --> 00:58:32,880
Speaker 2: describing her as quote a young woman who works as

1078
00:58:32,880 --> 00:58:35,280
Speaker 2: a liaison when Ed and Lorraine are out of town.

1079
00:58:36,120 --> 00:58:39,800
Speaker 2: Producer Tony DeRosa Grund is also suing the studio over

1080
00:58:39,840 --> 00:58:43,000
Speaker 2: the conjuring, alleging that he alerted a number of top

1081
00:58:43,040 --> 00:58:46,560
Speaker 2: brass and creatives involved with the first film after its release.

1082
00:58:47,200 --> 00:58:49,640
Speaker 2: He wrote in an email Ed was a pedophile, a

1083
00:58:49,680 --> 00:58:53,360
Speaker 2: sexual predator, and a physically abusive husband. Lorraine enabled Ed

1084
00:58:53,440 --> 00:58:56,840
Speaker 2: to do this. She knowingly allowed this illegal, read criminal

1085
00:58:56,880 --> 00:59:01,000
Speaker 2: relationship to continue for forty years. They lied to the public.

1086
00:59:01,640 --> 00:59:04,160
Speaker 2: His lawsuit alleges that he's been locked out of prophets

1087
00:59:04,280 --> 00:59:07,200
Speaker 2: since the first film, although he hasn't crossed the rubicon

1088
00:59:07,280 --> 00:59:11,440
Speaker 2: of claiming that it's because he raised these objections. So

1089
00:59:11,520 --> 00:59:14,680
Speaker 2: that's all horrible. But back to the other amoral profiteers

1090
00:59:14,720 --> 00:59:17,120
Speaker 2: at the center of the story. In March seventy six,

1091
00:59:17,320 --> 00:59:19,960
Speaker 2: right about the time the Warrens got involved, William Webber,

1092
00:59:20,320 --> 00:59:24,120
Speaker 2: who you remember was Ronald de Fao Junior's attorney, sent

1093
00:59:24,200 --> 00:59:27,840
Speaker 2: a book contract to the Lutzes, which detailed a proposed

1094
00:59:27,880 --> 00:59:32,240
Speaker 2: company to be formed between Weber, two other paranormal specialists

1095
00:59:32,240 --> 00:59:35,320
Speaker 2: who investigated the house, not the Warrens, and a writer

1096
00:59:35,480 --> 00:59:38,720
Speaker 2: named Paul Hoffman. Weber, according to The New York Times,

1097
00:59:38,760 --> 00:59:41,680
Speaker 2: had met the Lutzes after they abandoned the house, and

1098
00:59:41,720 --> 00:59:44,200
Speaker 2: he was supposedly helping them out with their mortgage situation,

1099
00:59:45,040 --> 00:59:47,560
Speaker 2: but Weber also hoped to collaborate on a book about

1100
00:59:47,560 --> 00:59:50,360
Speaker 2: the murders, which was then titled Devil on My Back,

1101
00:59:51,280 --> 00:59:54,000
Speaker 2: alleging that the Lutzes, as he later testified in State

1102
00:59:54,080 --> 00:59:58,400
Speaker 2: Supreme Court, were interested in quote developing the demonism aspect

1103
00:59:58,480 --> 01:00:02,640
Speaker 2: of the case. D Fayo, from prison, asserted in a

1104
01:00:02,720 --> 01:00:05,840
Speaker 2: letter that Weber and the Lutzes were plotting all of

1105
01:00:05,840 --> 01:00:10,160
Speaker 2: this as my trial was in progress, and that the Lutzes, Weber,

1106
01:00:10,200 --> 01:00:13,920
Speaker 2: and the writer Paul Hoffman had allegedly had brainstorming sessions

1107
01:00:13,960 --> 01:00:17,000
Speaker 2: in January of nineteen seventy six, a month after they

1108
01:00:17,040 --> 01:00:17,360
Speaker 2: moved in.

1109
01:00:17,760 --> 01:00:21,320
Speaker 1: I don't understand how it's not a massive conflict of

1110
01:00:21,400 --> 01:00:26,200
Speaker 1: interest that a defense attorney who used the defense on

1111
01:00:26,200 --> 01:00:29,360
Speaker 1: one of his clients oh he was possessed by demons,

1112
01:00:29,960 --> 01:00:33,360
Speaker 1: could then get in contact with the person who bought

1113
01:00:33,480 --> 01:00:37,640
Speaker 1: the house and was claiming, oh yeah, the house is haunted,

1114
01:00:38,280 --> 01:00:41,120
Speaker 1: and then sought to profit off of that. I don't

1115
01:00:41,200 --> 01:00:43,160
Speaker 1: understand how that's in any way legal.

1116
01:00:43,480 --> 01:00:46,640
Speaker 2: Per Weber's proposal, the Lutzes were to receive twenty four

1117
01:00:46,680 --> 01:00:49,520
Speaker 2: percent of the shares in this corporation, while Hoffman, the writer,

1118
01:00:49,600 --> 01:00:52,960
Speaker 2: would get the largest at forty percent. This irked the Lutzes,

1119
01:00:53,200 --> 01:00:56,160
Speaker 2: who decided instead to partner up with author Jay Anson

1120
01:00:56,320 --> 01:00:59,760
Speaker 2: in March of nineteen seventy six. Primo lucrative fifty percent

1121
01:00:59,760 --> 01:01:02,280
Speaker 2: spe this is the guy who wrote the book that

1122
01:01:02,360 --> 01:01:05,760
Speaker 2: the movie was based on. Hoffmann, however, has the distinction

1123
01:01:05,800 --> 01:01:08,440
Speaker 2: of being the first person to publish anything about the hauntings,

1124
01:01:08,760 --> 01:01:11,280
Speaker 2: first in the New York Sunday News on July eighteenth,

1125
01:01:11,360 --> 01:01:14,080
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six, and then later in an April nineteen

1126
01:01:14,080 --> 01:01:19,400
Speaker 2: seventy seven issue of Hilariously Good Housekeeping. Jay Anson's only

1127
01:01:19,440 --> 01:01:21,680
Speaker 2: claim to any expertise in the paranormal was that he'd

1128
01:01:21,720 --> 01:01:24,120
Speaker 2: been working as a writer for a company that produced

1129
01:01:24,120 --> 01:01:28,640
Speaker 2: promotional material like behind the scenes shorts, essentially for films.

1130
01:01:29,160 --> 01:01:32,640
Speaker 2: He'd done around five hundred of them features for nineteen

1131
01:01:32,640 --> 01:01:36,560
Speaker 2: seventy one's Clute nineteen seventy two's Deliverance among them, and

1132
01:01:36,640 --> 01:01:38,959
Speaker 2: he was working on a short documentary about the making

1133
01:01:39,000 --> 01:01:42,080
Speaker 2: of The Exorcist when he met that film's technical advisor,

1134
01:01:42,200 --> 01:01:45,000
Speaker 2: father John Nicola. The two of them apparently got on

1135
01:01:45,040 --> 01:01:47,720
Speaker 2: like the proverbial house on fire, and they discussed writing

1136
01:01:47,720 --> 01:01:51,200
Speaker 2: a book tentatively titled Psychology of the Devil for publishing

1137
01:01:51,200 --> 01:01:54,920
Speaker 2: house Prentice Hall. That deal never came to pass, but

1138
01:01:55,080 --> 01:01:58,920
Speaker 2: years later an editor at Prentice Hall heard the Lutzes

1139
01:01:59,040 --> 01:02:02,840
Speaker 2: story imposedly from a friend of George Lutz who straight

1140
01:02:02,920 --> 01:02:05,760
Speaker 2: up walked into the Prentice Hall headquarters in New Jersey

1141
01:02:05,840 --> 01:02:09,720
Speaker 2: and asked how someone gets a book published, and then

1142
01:02:09,760 --> 01:02:13,720
Speaker 2: that editor called Jay Anson. In a nineteen seventy eight

1143
01:02:13,720 --> 01:02:16,479
Speaker 2: interview with The New York Times, Anson says he wrote

1144
01:02:16,480 --> 01:02:19,000
Speaker 2: the book from tapes that the Lots has made recalling

1145
01:02:19,040 --> 01:02:23,200
Speaker 2: their experiences, and from interviews with the local priest, Ralph J. Peccarero.

1146
01:02:23,440 --> 01:02:28,000
Speaker 2: The aforementioned Italian American embarrassment, one of he's fictionalized in

1147
01:02:28,040 --> 01:02:32,160
Speaker 2: the book as Father Mancuso, along with Marinan, the couple's relatives,

1148
01:02:32,240 --> 01:02:36,360
Speaker 2: and Suffolk County police, incredibly Anson had a heart attack

1149
01:02:36,440 --> 01:02:38,760
Speaker 2: shortly after accepting the gig, and wrote it during his

1150
01:02:38,840 --> 01:02:41,520
Speaker 2: three months of recovery. The Lutz has split his four

1151
01:02:41,560 --> 01:02:44,000
Speaker 2: thousand dollars advance with him and earned a share of

1152
01:02:44,000 --> 01:02:49,000
Speaker 2: the book's profits. Anson collected from paperback rights two hundred

1153
01:02:49,040 --> 01:02:52,920
Speaker 2: grand and then on the film rights two hundred thousand

1154
01:02:52,920 --> 01:02:57,600
Speaker 2: dollars plus his fee as a screenwriter. It's worth noting

1155
01:02:57,600 --> 01:03:01,560
Speaker 2: that he died shortly afterwards. I can't say whether or

1156
01:03:01,600 --> 01:03:03,720
Speaker 2: not he's in hell. I can.

1157
01:03:03,840 --> 01:03:07,040
Speaker 1: We'll touch on that later. There's some great quotes from him, Okay,

1158
01:03:07,400 --> 01:03:09,160
Speaker 1: but yeah, he didn't seem like a great guy.

1159
01:03:10,040 --> 01:03:12,440
Speaker 2: No. Almost. Yeah, he's like crowing about it in all

1160
01:03:12,480 --> 01:03:14,640
Speaker 2: of these interviews, like I got my first novel is

1161
01:03:14,680 --> 01:03:17,000
Speaker 2: an enormous hit. Who does that happen to it? It's like, well,

1162
01:03:17,360 --> 01:03:23,240
Speaker 2: you know, sensationalless profiteers, you hack the real life priest everything.

1163
01:03:23,320 --> 01:03:26,000
Speaker 2: He because all of the stuff that his defense of

1164
01:03:26,040 --> 01:03:29,919
Speaker 2: this book is so irking, which is that he's just like, oh,

1165
01:03:30,040 --> 01:03:33,360
Speaker 2: I think they believe it happened. I'm not claiming anything.

1166
01:03:33,880 --> 01:03:35,840
Speaker 2: But then like in another interview, when people are calling

1167
01:03:35,880 --> 01:03:38,640
Speaker 2: him on factual airs in it, he's like, I'm not perfect.

1168
01:03:38,760 --> 01:03:45,440
Speaker 2: Sometimes I make mistakes. Oh okay, anyway, Almost immediately people

1169
01:03:45,480 --> 01:03:48,920
Speaker 2: came for this book, which was subtitled A True Story,

1170
01:03:49,000 --> 01:03:51,200
Speaker 2: and it was published in September of nineteen seventy seven.

1171
01:03:51,600 --> 01:03:55,280
Speaker 1: Here is but a smattering the real life priest you

1172
01:03:55,320 --> 01:03:58,240
Speaker 1: just mentioned if. Father Pacarero said in an affidavit during

1173
01:03:58,280 --> 01:04:00,360
Speaker 1: one of the many lawsuits over the book that his

1174
01:04:00,400 --> 01:04:03,920
Speaker 1: only contact with the Letzes had been over telephone, so

1175
01:04:03,960 --> 01:04:06,800
Speaker 1: he hadn't actually set foot in the house and God

1176
01:04:06,920 --> 01:04:11,840
Speaker 1: is wrist slapped by a she demon, yes, as he claimed,

1177
01:04:12,440 --> 01:04:15,200
Speaker 1: although later he gave an interview on the nineteen seventy

1178
01:04:15,280 --> 01:04:17,960
Speaker 1: nine interview of In Search of hosted by Leonard Nimoy,

1179
01:04:18,320 --> 01:04:20,400
Speaker 1: and he recaned to this, saying that he was indeed

1180
01:04:20,440 --> 01:04:23,120
Speaker 1: slapped by an invisible force and told to get out

1181
01:04:23,200 --> 01:04:24,640
Speaker 1: by a disembodied voice.

1182
01:04:24,880 --> 01:04:25,400
Speaker 2: Wonderful.

1183
01:04:26,000 --> 01:04:29,400
Speaker 1: The homes next owners, Jim and Barbara Cromarty, who bought

1184
01:04:29,400 --> 01:04:31,800
Speaker 1: the home for fifty five thousand dollars in March nineteen

1185
01:04:31,840 --> 01:04:35,400
Speaker 1: seventy seven after the lots has fled, refuted claims that

1186
01:04:35,480 --> 01:04:38,600
Speaker 1: the homes doors, locks and windows had been damaged, saying

1187
01:04:38,600 --> 01:04:40,880
Speaker 1: that they appeared to all be the original items and

1188
01:04:40,920 --> 01:04:44,560
Speaker 1: not repaired. In other interviews, they said the house was

1189
01:04:44,600 --> 01:04:48,240
Speaker 1: in perfect condition, despite the Lutz's claims the.

1190
01:04:48,200 --> 01:04:53,040
Speaker 2: Door being ripped off, Yeah, by demonic forces.

1191
01:04:53,480 --> 01:04:56,520
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the quote unquote hidden red room in the book

1192
01:04:56,800 --> 01:04:59,800
Speaker 1: was a small closet in the basement that wasn't concealed

1193
01:05:00,200 --> 01:05:00,840
Speaker 1: in any way.

1194
01:05:01,160 --> 01:05:03,480
Speaker 2: Yeah. They make it out to be this whole doorway

1195
01:05:03,520 --> 01:05:05,240
Speaker 2: to Hell thing, and you get down there and it's

1196
01:05:05,240 --> 01:05:07,560
Speaker 2: just like a plumbing closet.

1197
01:05:08,400 --> 01:05:10,960
Speaker 1: Jim Crummarty would say of his ten year stay in

1198
01:05:11,040 --> 01:05:14,520
Speaker 1: the home, nothing weird ever happened, except for people coming

1199
01:05:14,520 --> 01:05:16,200
Speaker 1: by because of the book and movie.

1200
01:05:16,320 --> 01:05:19,760
Speaker 2: The book claims that the Amityville Historical Society told Lutz

1201
01:05:19,760 --> 01:05:22,040
Speaker 2: that his property was on or near land that the

1202
01:05:22,040 --> 01:05:25,640
Speaker 2: Shinnecock Indian nation had used as quote an enclosure for

1203
01:05:25,720 --> 01:05:29,040
Speaker 2: the sick, mad, and dying, But he goes on to

1204
01:05:29,040 --> 01:05:31,440
Speaker 2: claim that the tribe hadn't buried anyone there because the

1205
01:05:31,440 --> 01:05:35,400
Speaker 2: property was infested with demons. And he made the key

1206
01:05:35,440 --> 01:05:39,120
Speaker 2: mistake of coming after a historical society, because those people

1207
01:05:39,160 --> 01:05:43,200
Speaker 2: will wreck you if you misquote them. In an article

1208
01:05:43,240 --> 01:05:47,160
Speaker 2: for Newsday, the society's curator denied ever making such fantastic statements,

1209
01:05:47,320 --> 01:05:49,320
Speaker 2: and that the Shinnecock tribe was not known to have

1210
01:05:49,320 --> 01:05:52,200
Speaker 2: lived in the Amityville area. All of the Native Americans

1211
01:05:52,200 --> 01:05:54,720
Speaker 2: on Long Island were part of the Montucket Nation, but

1212
01:05:54,800 --> 01:05:57,560
Speaker 2: the massive Pequa tribe lived closest to Amityville.

1213
01:05:58,640 --> 01:06:01,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a Deep Tree rants medium who made

1214
01:06:01,200 --> 01:06:04,880
Speaker 1: similar claims. Basically, it's the old house was built on

1215
01:06:04,920 --> 01:06:09,560
Speaker 1: an old Indian burial ground routine. There was a local

1216
01:06:09,600 --> 01:06:16,480
Speaker 1: TV station that brought a whole crew of professional paranormal

1217
01:06:16,640 --> 01:06:21,680
Speaker 1: investigators aka Charlatan's to the property in the seventies, and

1218
01:06:22,280 --> 01:06:26,320
Speaker 1: one psychic recalls throwing holy water at invisible specters and

1219
01:06:26,360 --> 01:06:28,920
Speaker 1: seeing the water hiss as if we're thrown onto a

1220
01:06:28,960 --> 01:06:32,400
Speaker 1: hot stove. Lorraine Morin, of course, was present, and she

1221
01:06:32,480 --> 01:06:35,000
Speaker 1: recalled saying, I hope this is as close to Hell

1222
01:06:35,080 --> 01:06:35,840
Speaker 1: as I ever get.

1223
01:06:36,840 --> 01:06:40,080
Speaker 2: It would not be, because she's in Hell right now.

1224
01:06:40,680 --> 01:06:43,560
Speaker 1: It's just like the late era Lenny Bruce routines when

1225
01:06:43,560 --> 01:06:45,800
Speaker 1: he just gets up on stage with like transcripts of

1226
01:06:45,840 --> 01:06:50,160
Speaker 1: his obscenity trials, it just like quotes from it, just anchorly.

1227
01:06:50,560 --> 01:06:54,720
Speaker 1: He's like not telling jokes, He's just like furiously arguing

1228
01:06:54,760 --> 01:06:55,240
Speaker 1: his point.

1229
01:06:56,480 --> 01:06:58,200
Speaker 2: I just said, this whitewashing thing, it just.

1230
01:06:58,160 --> 01:07:04,000
Speaker 1: Drives me up a water No. Hilariously, though, the TV

1231
01:07:04,120 --> 01:07:07,240
Speaker 1: reporters claimed that while all these psychics around them were

1232
01:07:07,520 --> 01:07:09,800
Speaker 1: losing their mind when they went to investigate the house,

1233
01:07:10,640 --> 01:07:14,600
Speaker 1: none of the reporters themselves saw or felt anything shocker.

1234
01:07:15,200 --> 01:07:18,880
Speaker 1: A photo of this night appears to reveal the figure

1235
01:07:19,200 --> 01:07:21,800
Speaker 1: of a little boy peeking out from a bedroom where

1236
01:07:21,800 --> 01:07:25,040
Speaker 1: one of the failed children were killed. There were, in

1237
01:07:25,040 --> 01:07:27,320
Speaker 1: fact no kids in the house that night. The photo

1238
01:07:27,400 --> 01:07:29,720
Speaker 1: was shown to the Lutz's daughter, the same one who

1239
01:07:29,720 --> 01:07:33,200
Speaker 1: saw Jody the demon pig, and she apparently said, oh,

1240
01:07:33,240 --> 01:07:37,040
Speaker 1: that's the boy I used to play with, which was news,

1241
01:07:37,520 --> 01:07:42,160
Speaker 1: supposedly to George Lutz and his wife. What do you

1242
01:07:42,160 --> 01:07:45,640
Speaker 1: have to say about that these pictures were faked?

1243
01:07:47,280 --> 01:07:47,760
Speaker 2: Were they?

1244
01:07:47,960 --> 01:07:49,960
Speaker 1: It's a spooky photo? Have you seen picture?

1245
01:07:50,640 --> 01:07:50,880
Speaker 2: No?

1246
01:07:51,800 --> 01:07:53,680
Speaker 1: Do you want to see it? No?

1247
01:07:56,280 --> 01:08:00,480
Speaker 2: Those fairy kids in New in Britain like Pool, it

1248
01:08:00,560 --> 01:08:06,280
Speaker 2: was like a national national mind losing mass dellusion over

1249
01:08:06,400 --> 01:08:10,520
Speaker 2: fairies because they like held pasted images up on a stick.

1250
01:08:10,560 --> 01:08:13,120
Speaker 2: And it fooled Who did it fool? Like? C. S.

1251
01:08:13,240 --> 01:08:17,280
Speaker 2: Lewis right, somebody or the pediass the Peter panguy.

1252
01:08:17,439 --> 01:08:20,880
Speaker 1: I thought it was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote

1253
01:08:20,880 --> 01:08:21,920
Speaker 1: the Sherlock Holmes books.

1254
01:08:21,960 --> 01:08:26,040
Speaker 2: Oh you're right, yes, sorry, apologies to the pediast.

1255
01:08:26,360 --> 01:08:28,000
Speaker 1: Uh.

1256
01:08:28,400 --> 01:08:32,559
Speaker 2: Yeah. The Sherlock Holmes author was like, my god, what

1257
01:08:32,600 --> 01:08:35,720
Speaker 2: an incredible factual demonstration. And they were like they were

1258
01:08:35,800 --> 01:08:40,920
Speaker 2: paper cutouts. Researchers Rick Moran and Peter Jordan rejected the

1259
01:08:40,920 --> 01:08:43,559
Speaker 2: book's claim of cloven hoof prints in the snow on

1260
01:08:43,680 --> 01:08:46,360
Speaker 2: January first, nineteen seventy six, by simply pointing out that

1261
01:08:46,400 --> 01:08:49,559
Speaker 2: there had been no snowfall recorded during that time. No

1262
01:08:49,640 --> 01:08:52,200
Speaker 2: neighbors reported anything unusual during the time that the Lutzes

1263
01:08:52,240 --> 01:08:53,960
Speaker 2: were living there.

1264
01:08:54,240 --> 01:08:57,479
Speaker 1: It was so cold there that it snowed just over

1265
01:08:57,520 --> 01:08:59,960
Speaker 1: the house. Remember that's what happened. White houses are hot.

1266
01:09:01,040 --> 01:09:03,040
Speaker 1: I forgot about that. That's why he couldn't get warm.

1267
01:09:03,080 --> 01:09:07,040
Speaker 1: He was always outside chopping the wood because of Yeah, yeah, right,

1268
01:09:07,080 --> 01:09:07,920
Speaker 1: I forgot about that.

1269
01:09:09,040 --> 01:09:14,200
Speaker 2: Gee. Police officers are written about having visited the house

1270
01:09:14,240 --> 01:09:16,200
Speaker 2: in the book and the film, but records show that

1271
01:09:16,200 --> 01:09:18,920
Speaker 2: the Lutzes did not call the police. There was no

1272
01:09:19,000 --> 01:09:21,320
Speaker 2: bar in Amityville called the Witch's Brew. There was one

1273
01:09:21,360 --> 01:09:23,720
Speaker 2: called Henry's, but that's not quite as snappy as it

1274
01:09:24,120 --> 01:09:27,559
Speaker 2: and our old friend Stephen Kaplan the Vampire Guy, pointed

1275
01:09:27,560 --> 01:09:32,400
Speaker 2: out that the book's text evolved inconsistently with each new edition.

1276
01:09:32,800 --> 01:09:36,160
Speaker 2: Oh Wow. In the original hardcover edition, the priest's car

1277
01:09:36,400 --> 01:09:39,519
Speaker 2: is described as quote an old tan Ford, though in

1278
01:09:39,600 --> 01:09:43,280
Speaker 2: later editions the cars is Chevy Vega and then becomes

1279
01:09:43,320 --> 01:09:45,840
Speaker 2: a Ford again, that's hilarious. Part of the reason that

1280
01:09:45,840 --> 01:09:47,920
Speaker 2: there were so many editions that came out was because

1281
01:09:48,040 --> 01:09:50,599
Speaker 2: people who were mentioned in the book kept suing them.

1282
01:09:50,800 --> 01:09:53,920
Speaker 2: Marvin Scott, an anchorman for the local Channel five TV news,

1283
01:09:54,040 --> 01:10:01,400
Speaker 2: Steve Bauman, a reporter, and Sergeant Pat Kammodo, Italians of

1284
01:10:01,439 --> 01:10:05,240
Speaker 2: the Amityville Police Department all sued the publisher, so they

1285
01:10:05,320 --> 01:10:07,840
Speaker 2: had to keep writing these guys out in these new

1286
01:10:07,960 --> 01:10:11,400
Speaker 2: editions because of the litany of bullsh that's in there.

1287
01:10:11,960 --> 01:10:13,840
Speaker 2: Despite all of this, the book was a best seller

1288
01:10:13,920 --> 01:10:16,320
Speaker 2: upon its release in September of nineteen seventy seven. Who

1289
01:10:16,360 --> 01:10:18,799
Speaker 2: was It said, You never go broke, underestimating the stupidity

1290
01:10:18,800 --> 01:10:23,639
Speaker 2: of the American public anyway. By March of nineteen seventy nine,

1291
01:10:23,640 --> 01:10:26,840
Speaker 2: Writers Digest contended that it was on its thirteenth hardcover

1292
01:10:26,920 --> 01:10:30,920
Speaker 2: printing with at least two million in paperback sales. Hl

1293
01:10:31,000 --> 01:10:36,040
Speaker 2: Mencin by the way, oh Man Balmer icon hl Mencin also,

1294
01:10:36,160 --> 01:10:38,080
Speaker 2: I believe one of his notable quotes is there comes

1295
01:10:38,080 --> 01:10:40,879
Speaker 2: a man in every time's life when he is tempted

1296
01:10:40,920 --> 01:10:44,479
Speaker 2: to wash his hands, hoist the black flag and begin

1297
01:10:44,600 --> 01:10:47,800
Speaker 2: slitting throats. I don't know, I like hl Mencon.

1298
01:10:48,120 --> 01:10:50,120
Speaker 1: Every normal man must be temphed at a time, so

1299
01:10:50,240 --> 01:10:53,120
Speaker 1: spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and begins

1300
01:10:53,160 --> 01:10:54,920
Speaker 1: slitting throats. There it was.

1301
01:10:55,800 --> 01:10:55,920
Speaker 4: Uh.

1302
01:10:57,280 --> 01:11:00,000
Speaker 2: All of these reprints were mandated by this legal app

1303
01:11:00,560 --> 01:11:03,040
Speaker 2: which is why an executive for Bantam Books, who published

1304
01:11:03,040 --> 01:11:05,760
Speaker 2: the paperback edition, told The Washington Post in September of

1305
01:11:05,840 --> 01:11:09,080
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine, two years after The Amityville Horror was published,

1306
01:11:09,320 --> 01:11:12,720
Speaker 2: that quote, half the Western world is getting sued over

1307
01:11:12,760 --> 01:11:16,920
Speaker 2: the book. In addition to all the aforementioned lawsuits, The

1308
01:11:16,960 --> 01:11:19,760
Speaker 2: couple that moved into the house after the Lutzes, the Cromarties,

1309
01:11:19,840 --> 01:11:23,200
Speaker 2: sued the Lutzes, jay Ansen, and the publishers of Amityville Horror,

1310
01:11:23,200 --> 01:11:25,679
Speaker 2: alleging that the book wasn't just an invasion of privacy,

1311
01:11:26,040 --> 01:11:29,920
Speaker 2: but that quote false misrepresentations were made willfully and solely

1312
01:11:29,960 --> 01:11:34,240
Speaker 2: for commercial exploitation. This was, as will see, as a

1313
01:11:34,240 --> 01:11:37,760
Speaker 2: common theme settled out of court. The Crimarties, must be said,

1314
01:11:37,920 --> 01:11:41,280
Speaker 2: came at this thing from all angles. They supposedly after

1315
01:11:41,680 --> 01:11:44,280
Speaker 2: asked for too much money to allow the film to

1316
01:11:44,280 --> 01:11:48,080
Speaker 2: shoot at their house, and then a December nineteen eighty

1317
01:11:48,120 --> 01:11:50,439
Speaker 2: New York article reported that they had teamed with a

1318
01:11:50,560 --> 01:11:53,800
Speaker 2: producer and a New York Post reporter to craft their

1319
01:11:53,840 --> 01:11:57,000
Speaker 2: own film called The Amityville Horror Hoax, but that never

1320
01:11:57,040 --> 01:11:57,679
Speaker 2: got released.

1321
01:11:57,760 --> 01:11:59,879
Speaker 1: They are the people who bought the house after the Lutzes.

1322
01:12:00,120 --> 01:12:03,160
Speaker 2: Anson, for his part, never copped publicly to any of this,

1323
01:12:03,840 --> 01:12:07,200
Speaker 2: just unmitigated horse, claiming that he'd simply written from what

1324
01:12:07,280 --> 01:12:10,200
Speaker 2: Lutz had given him, and frequently repeating some variation on

1325
01:12:10,600 --> 01:12:12,960
Speaker 2: I believe that the lutz is believed that it happened.

1326
01:12:13,280 --> 01:12:16,439
Speaker 2: He's the guy who wrote the Amityville Horror Book. He

1327
01:12:16,560 --> 01:12:19,439
Speaker 2: lived just long enough to enjoy the book success, dying

1328
01:12:19,479 --> 01:12:20,759
Speaker 2: in March of nineteen eighty.

1329
01:12:21,920 --> 01:12:25,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was apparently a real, uh, real piece of work.

1330
01:12:26,439 --> 01:12:29,519
Speaker 1: A parapsychologist named Peter Jordan tells the story that he

1331
01:12:29,600 --> 01:12:32,719
Speaker 1: talked to Jay around the time the book was starting

1332
01:12:32,720 --> 01:12:35,760
Speaker 1: to blow up, and Jay told him, I predict one

1333
01:12:35,840 --> 01:12:38,479
Speaker 1: day you'll be sitting there broke writing your little not

1334
01:12:38,680 --> 01:12:41,080
Speaker 1: ghost stories, and I'm going to be on an island

1335
01:12:41,080 --> 01:12:44,320
Speaker 1: in the Bahamas with a truckload of cashmere sweaters.

1336
01:12:45,680 --> 01:12:46,679
Speaker 2: Cult machine though.

1337
01:12:46,520 --> 01:12:49,000
Speaker 1: And then and he later said this guy Peter Jordan

1338
01:12:49,080 --> 01:12:51,200
Speaker 1: later said yeah. When I heard that he died, I thought,

1339
01:12:51,200 --> 01:12:54,640
Speaker 1: oh no, he never got to enjoy those cashmere.

1340
01:12:54,240 --> 01:12:58,080
Speaker 2: Sweaters, Apex Petty, I love it.

1341
01:12:58,200 --> 01:13:02,880
Speaker 1: Yes. Jan also told journalist Rick Moran, I'm a writer.

1342
01:13:03,160 --> 01:13:05,479
Speaker 1: My only goal is to write a bestseller and build

1343
01:13:05,479 --> 01:13:08,120
Speaker 1: a house New Yorca and never have to write again.

1344
01:13:09,880 --> 01:13:11,639
Speaker 1: Lots of pieces of work in this story.

1345
01:13:12,040 --> 01:13:18,120
Speaker 2: I would say pride and greed are both deadly sins,

1346
01:13:18,120 --> 01:13:21,320
Speaker 2: so he's probably in hell as well, picking up my

1347
01:13:21,400 --> 01:13:28,800
Speaker 2: lapsed Catholicism. Just to dispel eternal damnation on people. Before

1348
01:13:28,800 --> 01:13:30,479
Speaker 2: we even get to the movie, we should settle the

1349
01:13:30,560 --> 01:13:34,720
Speaker 2: other cloud of lawsuits hanging over all of this. In

1350
01:13:34,760 --> 01:13:37,719
Speaker 2: May of seventy seven, George and Kathy Lutz filed suit

1351
01:13:37,920 --> 01:13:43,080
Speaker 2: against the aforementioned writer, Paul Hoffman, the attorney William Webber,

1352
01:13:43,479 --> 01:13:47,880
Speaker 2: these two paranormal investigators Good Housekeeping, The New York Sunday

1353
01:13:47,880 --> 01:13:52,160
Speaker 2: News and the Hurst Corporation because, as you recall, they

1354
01:13:52,240 --> 01:13:54,479
Speaker 2: pulled out of a deal with all of these people

1355
01:13:54,520 --> 01:13:57,120
Speaker 2: because they weren't happy with their split. And then Hoffman

1356
01:13:57,160 --> 01:14:01,320
Speaker 2: wrote some articles about it, regardless the invasion of privacy,

1357
01:14:01,600 --> 01:14:06,120
Speaker 2: misappropriation of name for trade purposes, and negligent infliction of

1358
01:14:06,160 --> 01:14:10,240
Speaker 2: mental distress, seeking four and a half million dollars for damages.

1359
01:14:10,320 --> 01:14:13,240
Speaker 1: They're public figures and somebody wrote a news story about them.

1360
01:14:13,240 --> 01:14:15,000
Speaker 1: That doesn't that makes no sense.

1361
01:14:15,400 --> 01:14:17,840
Speaker 2: Well is because they didn't have control over it, you see, Well,

1362
01:14:17,840 --> 01:14:19,920
Speaker 2: I know I see that. Otherwise they can't get off

1363
01:14:20,439 --> 01:14:24,719
Speaker 2: and that's what this is all about. Subsequently, Hoffman, Weber

1364
01:14:24,760 --> 01:14:28,360
Speaker 2: and Burton countersued them for like six and a half

1365
01:14:28,479 --> 01:14:32,880
Speaker 2: million dollars for fraud and breach of contract. The case

1366
01:14:32,920 --> 01:14:36,680
Speaker 2: went to trial with one judge who immediately dismissed the

1367
01:14:36,680 --> 01:14:39,559
Speaker 2: claims against the publishers of the story and then handed

1368
01:14:39,600 --> 01:14:43,000
Speaker 2: it off to another judge, Jack B. Weinstein. This guy

1369
01:14:43,040 --> 01:14:46,479
Speaker 2: is a minorly famous Brooklyn judge known as something of

1370
01:14:46,520 --> 01:14:51,559
Speaker 2: a hard ass, and hilariously he dismissed the Lutzes suit

1371
01:14:51,720 --> 01:14:56,360
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy nine, but allowed the countersuit to continue, saying,

1372
01:14:56,680 --> 01:14:58,240
Speaker 2: based on what I've heard, it appears to me that

1373
01:14:58,280 --> 01:15:00,360
Speaker 2: a large extent the book is a work of fiction,

1374
01:15:00,720 --> 01:15:03,879
Speaker 2: relying in a large part on the suggestions of mister Weber.

1375
01:15:05,520 --> 01:15:10,360
Speaker 2: So to reiterate, the Lutzes sued being read asked about

1376
01:15:10,360 --> 01:15:13,599
Speaker 2: their split over the publishing of this story, and then

1377
01:15:13,600 --> 01:15:17,120
Speaker 2: were countersuit, and a judge dismissed their claim for being

1378
01:15:17,160 --> 01:15:23,880
Speaker 2: horshed before allowing the countersuit to continue. That said, Weinstein

1379
01:15:23,920 --> 01:15:28,400
Speaker 2: took William Webber to task for ethical violations, saying there's

1380
01:15:28,439 --> 01:15:32,679
Speaker 2: a very serious ethical question when lawyers become literary agents,

1381
01:15:33,080 --> 01:15:35,960
Speaker 2: and proposed moving this whole thing up to the State

1382
01:15:36,040 --> 01:15:40,320
Speaker 2: Bar Association, at which point a rattled Weber settled his

1383
01:15:40,400 --> 01:15:44,479
Speaker 2: countersuit for a mere twenty five hundred dollars in what

1384
01:15:44,560 --> 01:15:47,680
Speaker 2: I have seen quoted as twenty four hours after this

1385
01:15:47,800 --> 01:15:51,280
Speaker 2: judgment was handed down. Before that suit was said, though,

1386
01:15:51,560 --> 01:15:55,000
Speaker 2: William Webber was maneuvering with yet another writer to get

1387
01:15:55,040 --> 01:15:57,840
Speaker 2: more cash out of this Dafayo case. In a letter

1388
01:15:57,960 --> 01:16:01,759
Speaker 2: to Dafayo in custody in June of nineteen seventy nine,

1389
01:16:01,920 --> 01:16:04,719
Speaker 2: Weber urged his client to participate with a guy named

1390
01:16:04,800 --> 01:16:09,360
Speaker 2: Hans Holzer, who is a paranormal investigator. Holzer was offering

1391
01:16:09,400 --> 01:16:14,280
Speaker 2: to pay Dafeo, another perianormal investigator, and naturally the attorney

1392
01:16:14,280 --> 01:16:17,479
Speaker 2: Weber two grand each for an interview to be used

1393
01:16:17,520 --> 01:16:21,600
Speaker 2: in televised special Holzer had authored over one hundred and

1394
01:16:21,600 --> 01:16:25,080
Speaker 2: forty books on ghosts, the afterlife, witchcraft, and so forth.

1395
01:16:25,720 --> 01:16:30,040
Speaker 2: He investigated the Amityville House with a medium named Ethel

1396
01:16:30,160 --> 01:16:35,040
Speaker 2: Johnson Myers in nineteen seventy seven. Holzer, apparently unaware that

1397
01:16:35,080 --> 01:16:38,599
Speaker 2: the Shinnecock tribe never lived in Amityville, wrote that his

1398
01:16:38,800 --> 01:16:44,320
Speaker 2: medium channeled the spirit of a Shinnecock chief named Rolling Thunder,

1399
01:16:45,800 --> 01:16:50,600
Speaker 2: like the Bob Dylan tour who'd gasp possessed Ronald D.

1400
01:16:50,720 --> 01:16:55,040
Speaker 2: Fayo to commit the nineteen seventy four murders. Rolling Thunder,

1401
01:16:55,240 --> 01:16:58,839
Speaker 2: speaking through this medium, explained that the house did indeed

1402
01:16:58,920 --> 01:17:02,280
Speaker 2: stand on an ancient in Da Indian burial ground, which

1403
01:17:02,600 --> 01:17:05,200
Speaker 2: contradicts the book's account that it was not used as

1404
01:17:05,200 --> 01:17:08,840
Speaker 2: a barioground because the vibes were too bad. Holzer took

1405
01:17:08,880 --> 01:17:11,679
Speaker 2: photographs of bullet holes from the nineteen seventy four murders,

1406
01:17:11,720 --> 01:17:16,080
Speaker 2: in which he claimed mysterious halos had appeared, and ultimately

1407
01:17:16,240 --> 01:17:19,639
Speaker 2: the guy got what he wanted out of this. He

1408
01:17:19,960 --> 01:17:24,479
Speaker 2: regardless of all this top to bottom, lying he wrote

1409
01:17:24,479 --> 01:17:27,160
Speaker 2: his own book about the situation, which was adapted for

1410
01:17:27,240 --> 01:17:31,760
Speaker 2: the Amityville Horse sequel nineteen eighty two's Amityville two, The Possession,

1411
01:17:32,320 --> 01:17:34,760
Speaker 2: and then he eked out two more novels about it,

1412
01:17:34,880 --> 01:17:38,440
Speaker 2: perhaps needless to say. According to the Amityville Historical Society,

1413
01:17:39,520 --> 01:17:42,320
Speaker 2: a guy named William E. Eardley was commissioned in nineteen

1414
01:17:42,400 --> 01:17:44,679
Speaker 2: thirteen by the State of New York to copy down

1415
01:17:44,800 --> 01:17:48,040
Speaker 2: old cey records because a lot of the Amityville cemeteries

1416
01:17:48,120 --> 01:17:51,360
Speaker 2: were either abandoned or neglected. His findings concluded that most

1417
01:17:51,400 --> 01:17:55,200
Speaker 2: of these cemeteries were moved or relocated to bigger incorporated cemeteries,

1418
01:17:55,280 --> 01:17:57,840
Speaker 2: but that there was no report or any indication of

1419
01:17:57,880 --> 01:18:01,080
Speaker 2: any cemetery of any kind resideing on or near the

1420
01:18:01,120 --> 01:18:01,920
Speaker 2: Amityville House.

1421
01:18:02,040 --> 01:18:05,479
Speaker 1: Isn't the Amityville House like on the water it is?

1422
01:18:05,600 --> 01:18:10,360
Speaker 2: It is a waterfront property in Long Island, which ain't cheat.

1423
01:18:10,280 --> 01:18:13,479
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, but I mean, isn't it Generally considered a

1424
01:18:13,520 --> 01:18:17,679
Speaker 1: bad idea to build cemeteries extremely close to the water

1425
01:18:17,720 --> 01:18:21,160
Speaker 1: because it tends to gosh an excellent point.

1426
01:18:21,000 --> 01:18:28,599
Speaker 2: Jordan, an excellent point. Wow. Anyway, attorney in scumbag William

1427
01:18:28,600 --> 01:18:31,240
Speaker 2: Webber learned his lesson from his court case, though, and

1428
01:18:31,240 --> 01:18:34,280
Speaker 2: subsequently gave a famous interview to People magazine in September

1429
01:18:34,320 --> 01:18:36,800
Speaker 2: of nineteen seventy nine. This is one of the most

1430
01:18:36,800 --> 01:18:40,599
Speaker 2: famous Amityville quotes. And he said, I know this book's

1431
01:18:40,600 --> 01:18:43,920
Speaker 2: a hoax. We created this horror story over many bottles

1432
01:18:43,920 --> 01:18:47,040
Speaker 2: of wine. I told George Lutz that Ronnie Defeyo used

1433
01:18:47,040 --> 01:18:49,400
Speaker 2: to call the neighbor's cat a pig. George was a

1434
01:18:49,439 --> 01:18:52,000
Speaker 2: con artist. He improvised on that, and in the book

1435
01:18:52,479 --> 01:18:56,639
Speaker 2: he sees a demon pig through the window in those

1436
01:18:56,720 --> 01:19:00,280
Speaker 2: halcyon days of May of two thousand and one, when

1437
01:19:00,320 --> 01:19:03,280
Speaker 2: a hopeful nation turned its eyes towards the twin towers,

1438
01:19:03,280 --> 01:19:06,719
Speaker 2: saying nothing will ever happen to them. Geraldine d Fao,

1439
01:19:06,960 --> 01:19:11,480
Speaker 2: who is ron Butch d'fayo's wife, requested that Judge Weinstein

1440
01:19:11,600 --> 01:19:15,559
Speaker 2: unseal the remainder of the lots versus Weber files. She

1441
01:19:15,600 --> 01:19:17,719
Speaker 2: had to prove, of course, that she was legitimately married

1442
01:19:17,760 --> 01:19:22,120
Speaker 2: to Ronnie Dafao, which was a whole thing, and she was.

1443
01:19:22,920 --> 01:19:25,440
Speaker 2: The judge granted the request and one of the unsealed

1444
01:19:25,439 --> 01:19:29,320
Speaker 2: files contained under oath testimony from Father Ray Pecquerero that

1445
01:19:29,400 --> 01:19:33,920
Speaker 2: the events described in Anson's book never transpired and speaking

1446
01:19:33,960 --> 01:19:36,599
Speaker 2: of Father Ray the year after, in May of two

1447
01:19:36,600 --> 01:19:40,000
Speaker 2: thousand and two, the Diocese of Rockville Center finally broke

1448
01:19:40,000 --> 01:19:42,720
Speaker 2: its years of silence, responding to a letter from our

1449
01:19:42,760 --> 01:19:46,080
Speaker 2: boy Rick Osuna, which read, in part, the diocese maintains

1450
01:19:46,120 --> 01:19:48,280
Speaker 2: that this story was a false report. In November of

1451
01:19:48,320 --> 01:19:52,479
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven, Diocenan attorneys prepare a substantial list to

1452
01:19:52,520 --> 01:19:55,479
Speaker 2: be submitted to the publisher of The Amityville Whore of

1453
01:19:55,600 --> 01:20:01,200
Speaker 2: numerous inaccuracies, factually incorrect references, and untrue statements regarding events, persons,

1454
01:20:01,240 --> 01:20:06,120
Speaker 2: and occurrences that never happened. It also adds that Pacquerero

1455
01:20:06,240 --> 01:20:08,400
Speaker 2: took a leave of absence in May of nineteen seventy eight.

1456
01:20:08,479 --> 01:20:11,519
Speaker 2: Some people have said he was defrocked and never returned

1457
01:20:11,520 --> 01:20:13,679
Speaker 2: to work for the diocese before his death in nineteen

1458
01:20:13,680 --> 01:20:20,760
Speaker 2: eighty seven. Lastly, Lutz's lies alliteration may have been cross denominational.

1459
01:20:21,280 --> 01:20:25,000
Speaker 2: Questioned about Ray Pacquerero in September of nineteen seventy nine,

1460
01:20:25,080 --> 01:20:27,960
Speaker 2: he told the Washington Posts that there were a number

1461
01:20:28,040 --> 01:20:31,080
Speaker 2: of priests involved who will never be told about. Also

1462
01:20:31,160 --> 01:20:35,200
Speaker 2: a rabbi just just doubling that hedge in his bets.

1463
01:20:35,920 --> 01:20:38,360
Speaker 2: I realized that people are going to tune out, even

1464
01:20:38,400 --> 01:20:40,559
Speaker 2: as good as as your edit well of this will

1465
01:20:40,600 --> 01:20:43,920
Speaker 2: inevitably and people are going to tune out because there

1466
01:20:43,960 --> 01:20:47,439
Speaker 2: is so much damn stuff out there about this. But

1467
01:20:47,560 --> 01:20:51,360
Speaker 2: this is a pile of unmitigated horse people. I cannot

1468
01:20:51,439 --> 01:20:55,200
Speaker 2: stress that enough before God and the courts of man.

1469
01:20:55,760 --> 01:20:59,880
Speaker 2: This stuff is all made up by a couple of grifters.

1470
01:21:01,280 --> 01:21:05,280
Speaker 1: God, it is shocking how few at the base of

1471
01:21:05,320 --> 01:21:08,240
Speaker 1: this there are, you know. And then they brought in

1472
01:21:08,280 --> 01:21:11,000
Speaker 1: all these other professional con artists who had a vested

1473
01:21:11,040 --> 01:21:13,920
Speaker 1: interest in playing along with it. But it really is

1474
01:21:13,920 --> 01:21:18,599
Speaker 1: astonishing how it's basically like the Lutzes and the attorney Weber.

1475
01:21:18,880 --> 01:21:20,599
Speaker 1: And then they got the Warrens in because they knew

1476
01:21:20,640 --> 01:21:22,880
Speaker 1: they play along with anything. And then a bunch of

1477
01:21:23,040 --> 01:21:26,160
Speaker 1: screenwriters and authors who are like, yeah, I want to

1478
01:21:26,360 --> 01:21:28,120
Speaker 1: sounds like it'll sell a lot of copies, you know,

1479
01:21:28,160 --> 01:21:28,839
Speaker 1: write whatever.

1480
01:21:28,600 --> 01:21:32,960
Speaker 2: You's what's it pay? Yeah, this is always the first question. Yeah,

1481
01:21:32,960 --> 01:21:35,120
Speaker 2: what's it? Pay the hear number. I'll do it.

1482
01:21:35,400 --> 01:21:40,800
Speaker 1: Yep, We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be

1483
01:21:40,880 --> 01:21:43,719
Speaker 1: right back with more too much information in just a moment.

1484
01:21:55,880 --> 01:21:57,919
Speaker 2: So how do we get a movie about this regional

1485
01:21:58,000 --> 01:22:00,240
Speaker 2: hoax and best selling book of lies?

1486
01:22:00,479 --> 01:22:04,519
Speaker 1: So glad you asked, Yes, largely, we have Samuel z

1487
01:22:04,840 --> 01:22:09,040
Speaker 1: Arkoff of American Pictures International to thank AIP is a

1488
01:22:09,080 --> 01:22:12,160
Speaker 1: classic B movie studio. They made a ton of movie

1489
01:22:12,160 --> 01:22:15,200
Speaker 1: with Roger Korman throughout the fifties and sixties, doing my

1490
01:22:15,240 --> 01:22:17,840
Speaker 1: beloved kitchy stuff like I Was a teenage werewolf in

1491
01:22:17,880 --> 01:22:21,360
Speaker 1: the Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon beach party movies. In

1492
01:22:21,520 --> 01:22:23,760
Speaker 1: the seventies, they were notable for releasing not just the

1493
01:22:23,760 --> 01:22:27,519
Speaker 1: Amityville horror but blaxploitation stuff like Blackula and Pam Griers

1494
01:22:27,560 --> 01:22:30,920
Speaker 1: early films. And I also imported the original Mad Max too,

1495
01:22:30,920 --> 01:22:35,040
Speaker 1: which is very cool. The Samuel Arkoff guy, he's pretty hilarious,

1496
01:22:35,439 --> 01:22:38,080
Speaker 1: not just for overseeing all of this, but also for

1497
01:22:38,880 --> 01:22:41,760
Speaker 1: coining and we use this term loosely a formula, and

1498
01:22:41,800 --> 01:22:45,160
Speaker 1: we use that term loosely for successful low budget movies.

1499
01:22:45,520 --> 01:22:49,080
Speaker 1: And he named this formula after himself. It's an acronym

1500
01:22:49,200 --> 01:22:53,800
Speaker 1: Arkoff a Rkoff, and it's a checklist. A is for action.

1501
01:22:54,800 --> 01:22:59,559
Speaker 1: R is for revolution, controversial themes or ideas. K is

1502
01:22:59,600 --> 01:23:03,400
Speaker 1: for kill, you know, a modicum of violence. Oh, it's

1503
01:23:03,439 --> 01:23:07,960
Speaker 1: for oratory, notable dialogue and speeches. F is for fantasy,

1504
01:23:08,120 --> 01:23:11,439
Speaker 1: acted out fantasies common to the audience. And the other

1505
01:23:11,600 --> 01:23:16,040
Speaker 1: F is for fornication because sex cells. Heigel, you have

1506
01:23:16,160 --> 01:23:19,639
Speaker 1: a checklist, a Higel checklist for when you do podcasts. Right,

1507
01:23:20,240 --> 01:23:28,000
Speaker 1: hate everything in great loudness. I was proud of that.

1508
01:23:28,720 --> 01:23:32,439
Speaker 2: He was good. No, I was good. I love this guy. Yeah, yeah,

1509
01:23:32,479 --> 01:23:35,040
Speaker 2: he's pretty funny. First of all, that's a great formula

1510
01:23:35,200 --> 01:23:40,400
Speaker 2: for a video, and second of all, coining an formula

1511
01:23:40,400 --> 01:23:42,920
Speaker 2: after your own, nat, I know as an acronym is

1512
01:23:43,600 --> 01:23:44,440
Speaker 2: what chutzpah.

1513
01:23:44,840 --> 01:23:50,360
Speaker 1: It's so good. Samuel Arkoff had supposedly been casting around

1514
01:23:50,360 --> 01:23:52,120
Speaker 1: for something he could do to hit on the order

1515
01:23:52,160 --> 01:23:55,720
Speaker 1: of Jaws, which basically invented the modern summer blockbuster when

1516
01:23:55,720 --> 01:23:58,680
Speaker 1: it was released in nineteen seventy five. He went off

1517
01:23:58,680 --> 01:24:01,400
Speaker 1: on vacation one year and left the copy of The

1518
01:24:01,400 --> 01:24:04,639
Speaker 1: Amityvole Horror on his kitchen table. While he was gone,

1519
01:24:04,640 --> 01:24:07,599
Speaker 1: his daughter read it, and when Arkoff returned, she had

1520
01:24:07,640 --> 01:24:11,920
Speaker 1: already enlisted Milton Moritz, he's senior VP of advertising in Publicity,

1521
01:24:12,120 --> 01:24:15,519
Speaker 1: is to convince her dad to pick up the rights. Arkoff,

1522
01:24:15,560 --> 01:24:19,320
Speaker 1: in a very crafty bit of maneuvering, contacted CBS asking

1523
01:24:19,360 --> 01:24:22,000
Speaker 1: to produce a film as a theatrical release, but he

1524
01:24:22,040 --> 01:24:24,559
Speaker 1: offered them rights to broadcast that on their network as

1525
01:24:24,600 --> 01:24:25,120
Speaker 1: a trade.

1526
01:24:25,800 --> 01:24:29,759
Speaker 2: Explain that, oh, well, I mean made for TV movies

1527
01:24:29,760 --> 01:24:31,640
Speaker 2: were a huge thing at this time, like you know,

1528
01:24:31,800 --> 01:24:34,920
Speaker 2: Salem's Lot, the Stephen King adaptation was like like Toby

1529
01:24:34,920 --> 01:24:37,880
Speaker 2: Hooper directed that. John Carpenter directed a made for TV

1530
01:24:37,920 --> 01:24:41,600
Speaker 2: movie around this time, so you know, presumably there was

1531
01:24:41,640 --> 01:24:43,519
Speaker 2: some calculus by the studio that was like, well, if

1532
01:24:43,560 --> 01:24:45,800
Speaker 2: we get exclusive rights to broadcast this week, can juic

1533
01:24:45,880 --> 01:24:47,640
Speaker 2: some ratings out of it and we'll just pick up

1534
01:24:47,680 --> 01:24:50,000
Speaker 2: the rights, which weren't that expensive as far as these

1535
01:24:50,000 --> 01:24:53,599
Speaker 2: things go. I don't know, two hundred thousand dollars and

1536
01:24:53,680 --> 01:24:54,439
Speaker 2: that's is that.

1537
01:24:54,800 --> 01:24:56,200
Speaker 1: In it's like two million.

1538
01:24:56,200 --> 01:24:59,960
Speaker 2: I guess that was two million today's money for book rights.

1539
01:25:00,240 --> 01:25:02,720
Speaker 1: Well, the film rights sold for what you note as

1540
01:25:02,760 --> 01:25:06,639
Speaker 1: a semi low two hundred thousand dollars, but most parties

1541
01:25:06,680 --> 01:25:09,959
Speaker 1: involved are in percentage splits as well. The book's author, Jaynsen,

1542
01:25:10,000 --> 01:25:12,040
Speaker 1: and it Are written a teleplay based on the book,

1543
01:25:12,120 --> 01:25:17,880
Speaker 1: but Arkoff subsequently hired screenwriter Sandor Stern, another incredible name,

1544
01:25:18,200 --> 01:25:21,639
Speaker 1: to rework Anson's teleplay for a feature film, all.

1545
01:25:21,640 --> 01:25:24,479
Speaker 2: Right, casting my voice is starting to wear out. Margot Kidder,

1546
01:25:24,479 --> 01:25:26,439
Speaker 2: who plays the family's matriarch, was then coming off the

1547
01:25:26,520 --> 01:25:29,519
Speaker 2: huge success of Superman, in which she obviously started as

1548
01:25:29,560 --> 01:25:32,760
Speaker 2: Lowis Lane Christopher Reeves Superman. Although she'd done a few

1549
01:25:32,760 --> 01:25:36,200
Speaker 2: horror films prior, like Brian De Palmer's Sisters and Black Christmas,

1550
01:25:36,200 --> 01:25:38,840
Speaker 2: which some people hails the first true slasher film, Hitter

1551
01:25:38,920 --> 01:25:41,160
Speaker 2: didn't seem to put too much stock in the Amityville Hohr.

1552
01:25:42,600 --> 01:25:46,479
Speaker 2: She told People magazine of the film, I suppose I

1553
01:25:46,479 --> 01:25:48,680
Speaker 2: believe in the possibility of many things, but I think

1554
01:25:48,720 --> 01:25:50,960
Speaker 2: pigs snorting in windows is taking it a bit far.

1555
01:25:51,360 --> 01:25:53,320
Speaker 2: But I laughed all the way through The Exorcist, so

1556
01:25:53,400 --> 01:25:56,040
Speaker 2: I'm not a good person to comment, and the Amityville

1557
01:25:56,040 --> 01:25:57,640
Speaker 2: Whore is extremely successful.

1558
01:25:57,880 --> 01:26:00,360
Speaker 1: In a later interview, she'd put it more simply. At

1559
01:26:00,360 --> 01:26:02,680
Speaker 1: that stage, she took the jobs you were offered and

1560
01:26:02,760 --> 01:26:05,439
Speaker 1: took the money. Do you know she was married to

1561
01:26:05,439 --> 01:26:07,760
Speaker 1: the dad from Home alone, John Hurd? They did not.

1562
01:26:08,160 --> 01:26:12,559
Speaker 1: They were separated six days later. She has three marriages

1563
01:26:12,600 --> 01:26:15,880
Speaker 1: that were shorter than one year under her belt, which

1564
01:26:15,920 --> 01:26:17,800
Speaker 1: is sad. Her whole story is sad.

1565
01:26:17,920 --> 01:26:18,800
Speaker 2: It's really sad.

1566
01:26:18,880 --> 01:26:22,680
Speaker 1: Yeah. After her death in twenty eighteen, she was cremated

1567
01:26:22,720 --> 01:26:25,200
Speaker 1: and her ashes were scattered by her brother in her

1568
01:26:25,240 --> 01:26:29,599
Speaker 1: favorite childhood locations in Canada and also in Montana, amongst

1569
01:26:29,720 --> 01:26:34,120
Speaker 1: lilies often eaten by grizzly bears, thus partially fulfilling her

1570
01:26:34,160 --> 01:26:37,000
Speaker 1: wish to quote, have her body just left out there

1571
01:26:37,040 --> 01:26:37,719
Speaker 1: for the bears?

1572
01:26:38,000 --> 01:26:39,080
Speaker 2: Why does it have to be bears?

1573
01:26:39,120 --> 01:26:41,080
Speaker 1: Man? Now I'm curious.

1574
01:26:42,680 --> 01:26:47,439
Speaker 2: Aip secured Stuart Rosenberg, who directed Freakin' Cool Hand Luke,

1575
01:26:47,800 --> 01:26:50,000
Speaker 2: as the director of the film. This ended up being

1576
01:26:50,000 --> 01:26:54,160
Speaker 2: his only horror film, which scans It's not good. Kiddo

1577
01:26:54,200 --> 01:26:56,120
Speaker 2: said that Rosenberg did as much as he could to

1578
01:26:56,120 --> 01:26:58,639
Speaker 2: help the atmosphere on set, and much of it related

1579
01:26:58,680 --> 01:27:02,120
Speaker 2: directly to your beloved Jodie. She said he tried to

1580
01:27:02,160 --> 01:27:04,240
Speaker 2: scare me all the time. In one scene, a pig

1581
01:27:04,280 --> 01:27:05,760
Speaker 2: was supposed to come at the window, and he had

1582
01:27:05,800 --> 01:27:08,040
Speaker 2: the prop department make a pig. It was a bright

1583
01:27:08,120 --> 01:27:11,160
Speaker 2: orange pig, like a soft animal with plastic eyes, and

1584
01:27:11,160 --> 01:27:12,760
Speaker 2: he would put it up at the window to scare me.

1585
01:27:13,000 --> 01:27:15,719
Speaker 2: But every time I saw it, I just laughed. And Jordan,

1586
01:27:15,800 --> 01:27:18,840
Speaker 2: I'm sure you'll be delighted to know that Fred J. Kuhnenkemp,

1587
01:27:19,160 --> 01:27:22,520
Speaker 2: who worked on The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno,

1588
01:27:22,680 --> 01:27:24,320
Speaker 2: was cinematographer on Amityville.

1589
01:27:25,040 --> 01:27:25,840
Speaker 1: That's amazing.

1590
01:27:26,600 --> 01:27:28,800
Speaker 2: I keep seeing this fact that's repeated about him, that

1591
01:27:28,880 --> 01:27:32,360
Speaker 2: he was like afraid of flies and had such a

1592
01:27:32,439 --> 01:27:34,840
Speaker 2: hard time filming all the scenes involving flies that he

1593
01:27:35,760 --> 01:27:38,439
Speaker 2: lost thirty pounds on set and couldn't even look through

1594
01:27:38,439 --> 01:27:40,559
Speaker 2: the lens. He would just point the camera at the

1595
01:27:40,560 --> 01:27:43,880
Speaker 2: flies and look away, hoping for a good shot. But

1596
01:27:44,320 --> 01:27:46,360
Speaker 2: I wasn't able to verify that, but it is funny.

1597
01:27:46,880 --> 01:27:49,200
Speaker 1: Apparently Margo just loved grizzlies. By the way, that's a

1598
01:27:49,240 --> 01:27:51,000
Speaker 1: quote from a brother. She loved grizzlies.

1599
01:27:51,400 --> 01:27:57,240
Speaker 2: Nice. The producer's job in swaying James Brolin, however, was

1600
01:27:57,280 --> 01:28:00,599
Speaker 2: made easier for them by a set of pants. As

1601
01:28:00,640 --> 01:28:02,840
Speaker 2: the star explained to the av Club, I love this

1602
01:28:03,720 --> 01:28:06,519
Speaker 2: other names floated bra Harrison Ford after the unexpected success

1603
01:28:06,520 --> 01:28:08,920
Speaker 2: of the First Star Wars, Burt Reynolds, James Kahn, and

1604
01:28:09,000 --> 01:28:13,559
Speaker 2: Christopher Reeve. Anyway, Brolin was shooting Robert Butler's neo noir

1605
01:28:13,720 --> 01:28:16,800
Speaker 2: action film Night of the Juggler, which is not a

1606
01:28:16,800 --> 01:28:19,880
Speaker 2: fever dream I just had. When someone told him about

1607
01:28:19,880 --> 01:28:23,519
Speaker 2: the Amityville project. He recalled being told, there's no script,

1608
01:28:23,600 --> 01:28:26,000
Speaker 2: but you ought to read this book, The Amityville Horror,

1609
01:28:26,280 --> 01:28:28,679
Speaker 2: because they'll have the script soon and they would really

1610
01:28:28,720 --> 01:28:31,080
Speaker 2: like to have you do it. Brolin went on to explain,

1611
01:28:31,560 --> 01:28:33,320
Speaker 2: So I was reading this novel at night and it's

1612
01:28:33,320 --> 01:28:36,160
Speaker 2: two in the morning. Well, I would hang my pants

1613
01:28:36,160 --> 01:28:38,080
Speaker 2: on the door of the bedroom. I'd throw them over

1614
01:28:38,160 --> 01:28:41,760
Speaker 2: the top corner of the main door coming into the bedroom. Yes, James,

1615
01:28:41,800 --> 01:28:44,880
Speaker 2: that's how that works. All of a sudden, the pants

1616
01:28:44,880 --> 01:28:47,759
Speaker 2: fell off the door onto the floor. How I didn't

1617
01:28:47,840 --> 01:28:50,080
Speaker 2: hit my head on the ceiling. I have no idea,

1618
01:28:50,280 --> 01:28:52,439
Speaker 2: Because I was at a scary part of this book

1619
01:28:52,720 --> 01:28:55,120
Speaker 2: and it so surprised me. I started laughing after I

1620
01:28:55,160 --> 01:28:58,080
Speaker 2: recovered and said, I've got to do this movie. And

1621
01:28:58,439 --> 01:29:02,400
Speaker 2: that's how that happened. James Brolin was kind of an idiot, right, Like,

1622
01:29:02,479 --> 01:29:05,040
Speaker 2: he just seems like a tall, benign dumb ass.

1623
01:29:05,479 --> 01:29:09,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, I from what little I know about him, that

1624
01:29:09,240 --> 01:29:12,840
Speaker 1: sounds about right, just a big sweamboat. Yeah.

1625
01:29:13,200 --> 01:29:16,360
Speaker 2: Everyone said how nice he was, totally but my god,

1626
01:29:18,520 --> 01:29:20,599
Speaker 2: my pants fell off the door. So I was moved

1627
01:29:20,720 --> 01:29:23,400
Speaker 2: to this movie.

1628
01:29:23,760 --> 01:29:26,640
Speaker 1: I've never heard of anyone in my entire life do

1629
01:29:26,720 --> 01:29:29,519
Speaker 1: that with their pants, have you, No, I mean in

1630
01:29:29,560 --> 01:29:31,920
Speaker 1: a pinch maybe, But it's just so funny how he

1631
01:29:32,040 --> 01:29:36,120
Speaker 1: like disgrace patiently went on to describe the process of it.

1632
01:29:36,760 --> 01:29:38,360
Speaker 2: And here's how I hung the pants.

1633
01:29:39,400 --> 01:29:39,599
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1634
01:29:41,560 --> 01:29:43,559
Speaker 2: Brolin took a lower payment up front for a cut

1635
01:29:43,560 --> 01:29:46,840
Speaker 2: of the profits, which obviously turned out really well for him.

1636
01:29:47,160 --> 01:29:47,400
Speaker 4: Uh.

1637
01:29:47,479 --> 01:29:52,040
Speaker 2: Fun fact, his brother, Brian Bruderlin, which is his name

1638
01:29:52,080 --> 01:29:54,799
Speaker 2: he changed it to Brolin, was used for an image

1639
01:29:54,840 --> 01:29:56,600
Speaker 2: of this of a bearded man coming out of the

1640
01:29:56,640 --> 01:29:59,400
Speaker 2: red room in the cellar who's supposed to be Ronald

1641
01:29:59,400 --> 01:30:02,040
Speaker 2: de Fayo. The studio wanted someone who bore a close

1642
01:30:02,080 --> 01:30:05,200
Speaker 2: resemblance to Brolin, discovered he had a brother and slapped

1643
01:30:05,200 --> 01:30:07,920
Speaker 2: a fake beard on him. So the gist is that

1644
01:30:08,240 --> 01:30:10,400
Speaker 2: Ronald de Faeo's demonic spirit is coming out of the

1645
01:30:10,439 --> 01:30:14,920
Speaker 2: Red Room, and Josh Brolin's character sees himself in it.

1646
01:30:15,400 --> 01:30:19,719
Speaker 2: Uh again, all Horse. An amazing bit of micro niche

1647
01:30:19,760 --> 01:30:22,719
Speaker 2: trivia is that Brutallyn was more of an audio guy

1648
01:30:22,800 --> 01:30:25,640
Speaker 2: than an actor. He owned a studio and was an

1649
01:30:25,680 --> 01:30:30,040
Speaker 2: engineer on, among others, nineteen seventy one's Merry Christmas from

1650
01:30:30,080 --> 01:30:30,759
Speaker 2: the Brady Bunch.

1651
01:30:30,800 --> 01:30:33,200
Speaker 1: That's incredible. I'm so glad. I never thought we'd get

1652
01:30:33,200 --> 01:30:35,880
Speaker 1: to the Brady Bunch with this. Yeah, I don't think

1653
01:30:35,880 --> 01:30:38,120
Speaker 1: there's a Beatles one later, though, I can force it.

1654
01:30:38,200 --> 01:30:40,360
Speaker 2: I'll force it. You'll force You'll force it. Yeah, I'll

1655
01:30:40,360 --> 01:30:43,320
Speaker 2: put about it. We'll force it, You'll force it. Brolin

1656
01:30:43,560 --> 01:30:46,280
Speaker 2: followed his marching orders, thought he was a good soldier.

1657
01:30:46,760 --> 01:30:49,479
Speaker 2: In interviews about the film, he dutifully repeats the book's

1658
01:30:49,479 --> 01:30:52,439
Speaker 2: falsehoods and goes to bat for the Lutz family. He

1659
01:30:52,520 --> 01:30:55,320
Speaker 2: told the Fort Lauderdale News in nineteen seventy nine, I'm

1660
01:30:55,360 --> 01:30:57,640
Speaker 2: not superstitious, but I have an open mind about what

1661
01:30:57,680 --> 01:31:01,240
Speaker 2: happened in that Emityville house. I simply ask why would

1662
01:31:01,240 --> 01:31:03,720
Speaker 2: George Lutz move out of his dream house, abandon a

1663
01:31:03,760 --> 01:31:06,360
Speaker 2: business which had been in his family for three generations

1664
01:31:06,720 --> 01:31:08,720
Speaker 2: and flee to San Diego with his wife and three

1665
01:31:08,760 --> 01:31:13,400
Speaker 2: children for nothing, just to have a book written about it. Yes, James,

1666
01:31:13,760 --> 01:31:15,000
Speaker 2: that's exactly what happened.

1667
01:31:15,040 --> 01:31:17,840
Speaker 1: I didn't know about the family business for three generations.

1668
01:31:17,840 --> 01:31:19,240
Speaker 1: Maybe he's natives.

1669
01:31:20,000 --> 01:31:23,360
Speaker 2: Did he know that? No, maybe he was a native

1670
01:31:23,360 --> 01:31:26,160
Speaker 2: New Yorker. But like I don't know, did Broland know

1671
01:31:26,240 --> 01:31:28,120
Speaker 2: that for a fact? Or was just something George Lutz

1672
01:31:28,120 --> 01:31:30,280
Speaker 2: told him on the set? Because as I mentioned in

1673
01:31:30,320 --> 01:31:34,040
Speaker 2: this next graph, Roland remarks in a Making of feature

1674
01:31:34,240 --> 01:31:37,559
Speaker 2: that George Lutz was quote a good salesman, and that

1675
01:31:37,600 --> 01:31:41,160
Speaker 2: the Lutz children responded to questions about the haunting as

1676
01:31:41,160 --> 01:31:44,960
Speaker 2: though they were citing a script rather than recalling real events.

1677
01:31:46,320 --> 01:31:49,519
Speaker 2: You know. The whole Amityville spirit of just lying continued

1678
01:31:49,520 --> 01:31:52,320
Speaker 2: in the film version, after tales of creepy occurrences on

1679
01:31:52,320 --> 01:31:54,560
Speaker 2: the set of The Exorcist and the omen part of

1680
01:31:54,560 --> 01:31:59,200
Speaker 2: American International Pictures press campaign entailed lying about such events

1681
01:31:59,200 --> 01:32:01,760
Speaker 2: that happened on the set of their own field professionally

1682
01:32:01,760 --> 01:32:03,720
Speaker 2: to the point as always, Margot Kidder would call in

1683
01:32:03,760 --> 01:32:06,320
Speaker 2: a two thousand and five interview. When we did Amityville,

1684
01:32:06,560 --> 01:32:08,960
Speaker 2: the producers told us we should all say these terrible

1685
01:32:08,960 --> 01:32:12,360
Speaker 2: things happened on the set. It was all bullsh nothing happened,

1686
01:32:12,400 --> 01:32:14,680
Speaker 2: but it was funny. Brolin did go along with the

1687
01:32:14,720 --> 01:32:17,080
Speaker 2: studio and say that all these terrible things happened, but

1688
01:32:17,200 --> 01:32:17,960
Speaker 2: it wasn't true.

1689
01:32:18,680 --> 01:32:21,120
Speaker 1: Margot Kidder would later allow that she and James Brolin

1690
01:32:21,160 --> 01:32:24,400
Speaker 1: were not an easy fit during filming. Her looser, more

1691
01:32:24,400 --> 01:32:27,839
Speaker 1: improvatory approach clashed with his rigorous adherence to the script,

1692
01:32:27,920 --> 01:32:30,519
Speaker 1: and she said, it's hard to read James Brolin. We

1693
01:32:30,560 --> 01:32:34,040
Speaker 1: didn't get very close, and he's very diplomatic, unlike me.

1694
01:32:35,760 --> 01:32:39,519
Speaker 1: She reminds me of Carrie Fisher. Oh well, no, never mind,

1695
01:32:39,640 --> 01:32:43,679
Speaker 1: never mind, I died. Didn't mean that. Didn't mean that.

1696
01:32:45,120 --> 01:32:47,000
Speaker 1: I was very full of myself and thought I was

1697
01:32:47,040 --> 01:32:49,720
Speaker 1: from the hip, young Hollywood and James Brolin. To me,

1698
01:32:49,720 --> 01:32:52,880
Speaker 1: it was from the old, stodgy Hollywood. Brolin's comment on

1699
01:32:52,920 --> 01:32:56,760
Speaker 1: that was in fact very diplomatic. He said, yeah, there

1700
01:32:56,760 --> 01:32:57,720
Speaker 1: were tribulations.

1701
01:32:59,520 --> 01:33:00,720
Speaker 2: This solid guy he was.

1702
01:33:03,200 --> 01:33:06,040
Speaker 1: Margot Kidder also mentioned that Rod Steiger, who played the

1703
01:33:06,080 --> 01:33:09,439
Speaker 1: movie's priest, now irish in what you describe as a

1704
01:33:09,479 --> 01:33:12,920
Speaker 1: grievous case of Italian American erasure. Although given all the

1705
01:33:13,000 --> 01:33:15,920
Speaker 1: shameful Italian Americans that popped up in this story. It's

1706
01:33:15,960 --> 01:33:16,759
Speaker 1: probably for the best.

1707
01:33:17,479 --> 01:33:19,400
Speaker 2: Also true, he was really into it.

1708
01:33:19,360 --> 01:33:22,320
Speaker 1: She said. He was really serious about it, about the story,

1709
01:33:22,439 --> 01:33:24,080
Speaker 1: and every time he talked about it to me, I

1710
01:33:24,080 --> 01:33:26,840
Speaker 1: couldn't help but laugh. This may have been due to

1711
01:33:26,840 --> 01:33:29,840
Speaker 1: Steiger's life at the time. The veteran actor's career was

1712
01:33:29,880 --> 01:33:33,160
Speaker 1: in low point in the late seventies following open heart

1713
01:33:33,280 --> 01:33:36,959
Speaker 1: surgery that left him both depressed and risky for studios

1714
01:33:37,000 --> 01:33:39,639
Speaker 1: to ensure, so he came to Amityville with the mindset

1715
01:33:39,680 --> 01:33:42,520
Speaker 1: of quote, this is my last maneuver in letting Hollywood

1716
01:33:42,560 --> 01:33:45,080
Speaker 1: know that I'm in good shape physically. He told that

1717
01:33:45,120 --> 01:33:47,000
Speaker 1: to Wilmington, Delaware newspaper.

1718
01:33:47,120 --> 01:33:49,160
Speaker 2: Yeah. I went really hard on the local newspapers for

1719
01:33:49,200 --> 01:33:50,480
Speaker 2: this one too.

1720
01:33:51,200 --> 01:33:54,439
Speaker 1: In an interview with a Spokane, Washington newspaper in nineteen

1721
01:33:54,479 --> 01:33:58,800
Speaker 1: seventy nine, Jesus, you really did, He described himself as agnostic,

1722
01:33:59,080 --> 01:34:01,960
Speaker 1: but he didn't need any help spiritually or otherwise. Filming

1723
01:34:01,960 --> 01:34:04,400
Speaker 1: the scene in which the father that he plays is

1724
01:34:04,479 --> 01:34:07,960
Speaker 1: swarmed by flies, he was no effect. He said. They

1725
01:34:08,000 --> 01:34:10,439
Speaker 1: squirted me all over my face with sugar and beer

1726
01:34:10,520 --> 01:34:13,720
Speaker 1: and then released about two thousand flies. From a screened cage.

1727
01:34:14,040 --> 01:34:17,599
Speaker 1: The worst of it so gross was their feet tickling

1728
01:34:17,640 --> 01:34:20,439
Speaker 1: my face and trying not to inhale or swallow any

1729
01:34:20,439 --> 01:34:20,760
Speaker 1: of them.

1730
01:34:21,439 --> 01:34:24,920
Speaker 2: Oh well, I'm surprised I didn't give him another heart attack.

1731
01:34:25,120 --> 01:34:26,160
Speaker 1: Ah.

1732
01:34:26,439 --> 01:34:28,920
Speaker 2: Needless to say, the residents of Amityville, who'd been through

1733
01:34:28,920 --> 01:34:31,559
Speaker 2: the Ringer twice with the initial murders and then the book,

1734
01:34:32,240 --> 01:34:35,320
Speaker 2: didn't want a film shoot coming in to complete the trifecta.

1735
01:34:36,080 --> 01:34:39,280
Speaker 2: Although supposedly, as I mentioned earlier, the Cromates were down

1736
01:34:39,400 --> 01:34:42,719
Speaker 2: for it. They simply asked for too much money. Producers

1737
01:34:42,800 --> 01:34:46,400
Speaker 2: Ronald Saland and Elliott Geisinger roamed from Maine to South

1738
01:34:46,439 --> 01:34:49,400
Speaker 2: Carolina until they found a stand in home in Tom's River,

1739
01:34:49,479 --> 01:34:53,200
Speaker 2: New Jersey, and leased the home for twelve thousand dollars

1740
01:34:53,280 --> 01:34:57,479
Speaker 2: from the owners. Principal photography started there in the last

1741
01:34:57,479 --> 01:35:01,719
Speaker 2: week of October nineteen seventy eight. Full author Who's Burning

1742
01:35:01,760 --> 01:35:05,000
Speaker 2: in Hell Jay Andsen even called the stand in quote

1743
01:35:05,080 --> 01:35:08,280
Speaker 2: a near perfect match to the original. This was, of course,

1744
01:35:08,320 --> 01:35:11,640
Speaker 2: after the production did about thirty thousand dollars worth of renovations,

1745
01:35:11,960 --> 01:35:14,920
Speaker 2: which basically came down to building a real boat house

1746
01:35:15,600 --> 01:35:19,200
Speaker 2: and of course the famous windows that lend the Amityville

1747
01:35:19,200 --> 01:35:21,720
Speaker 2: Home or lent, I should say some owners replaced it

1748
01:35:22,120 --> 01:35:26,440
Speaker 2: that lent the Amityville Home its distinctive Jack o' lantern appearance.

1749
01:35:26,880 --> 01:35:29,800
Speaker 2: Tom O'Neil, chief of the Toms River Fire Department, told

1750
01:35:29,800 --> 01:35:32,880
Speaker 2: the La Times that the town raked in and estimated

1751
01:35:32,920 --> 01:35:35,920
Speaker 2: two hundred grand from filming, with some of it going

1752
01:35:35,960 --> 01:35:39,519
Speaker 2: to a local forestry student named Thomas Hirschbond, a twenty

1753
01:35:39,520 --> 01:35:42,080
Speaker 2: two year old enlisted to teach James Brolin how to

1754
01:35:42,120 --> 01:35:45,760
Speaker 2: handle an axe. Brolin had confessed to filmmakers that he'd

1755
01:35:45,800 --> 01:35:49,439
Speaker 2: never even held one before, and so young Thomas was

1756
01:35:49,479 --> 01:35:53,639
Speaker 2: dispatched to teach Brolin how to hold an axe properly.

1757
01:35:53,960 --> 01:35:56,720
Speaker 2: After filming exteriors in Tom's River, production moved back to

1758
01:35:56,840 --> 01:35:59,679
Speaker 2: Los Angeles to shoot the interiors at MGM Studios, where

1759
01:35:59,680 --> 01:36:03,559
Speaker 2: filming concluded a week ahead of schedule on Soundstage twenty

1760
01:36:03,600 --> 01:36:07,760
Speaker 2: six at MGM on December twenty second, nineteen seventy eight,

1761
01:36:08,920 --> 01:36:12,200
Speaker 2: under two months and ahead of schedule. Aip Roger Corman

1762
01:36:12,240 --> 01:36:15,439
Speaker 2: style ye score for The Amityville Horror was by none

1763
01:36:15,439 --> 01:36:17,160
Speaker 2: other than our beloved Leilo Schiffrin.

1764
01:36:17,439 --> 01:36:22,599
Speaker 1: Oh my God, mission impossible and bull everything and Louke

1765
01:36:23,800 --> 01:36:27,880
Speaker 1: entered the Dragon, not the Exorcist famously, which explains this

1766
01:36:27,960 --> 01:36:28,439
Speaker 1: next bit.

1767
01:36:29,360 --> 01:36:31,639
Speaker 2: Shifferd I read interviews with him, whereas just blah blah

1768
01:36:31,680 --> 01:36:36,000
Speaker 2: blah blah blah like formed the instrumentation in developing the themes.

1769
01:36:36,080 --> 01:36:38,519
Speaker 2: Blah blah blah blah blah. The score is good. It's

1770
01:36:38,560 --> 01:36:41,840
Speaker 2: got a creepy children's choir thing going on and a

1771
01:36:41,840 --> 01:36:48,120
Speaker 2: lot of dissonant strings, influenced by Polish twentieth century composers

1772
01:36:48,200 --> 01:36:53,519
Speaker 2: like Penderreshki and Lyghetti. One of those interesting rumors about

1773
01:36:53,520 --> 01:36:55,519
Speaker 2: what's more interesting about this to me is that for

1774
01:36:55,640 --> 01:37:00,680
Speaker 2: years it was rumored that Schiffrin's rejected score for the excerph.

1775
01:37:01,640 --> 01:37:04,960
Speaker 2: As you'll remember from our episode on it, Exorcist director

1776
01:37:05,000 --> 01:37:09,240
Speaker 2: William Friedkin rejected figuratively and literally tossing the reels into

1777
01:37:09,240 --> 01:37:13,879
Speaker 2: a parking lot and calling it kin marimba music. Schiffrin

1778
01:37:13,880 --> 01:37:16,479
Speaker 2: has denied that he simply took that unused music and

1779
01:37:16,520 --> 01:37:20,559
Speaker 2: poured it over to the Amityville Horror. And you can

1780
01:37:20,600 --> 01:37:23,960
Speaker 2: hear at least six minutes of the scotched Exorcist score

1781
01:37:24,000 --> 01:37:26,880
Speaker 2: out there. Finally, and it doesn't sound anything like the

1782
01:37:26,920 --> 01:37:30,960
Speaker 2: Amityville one, so I believe him and his score got

1783
01:37:31,000 --> 01:37:32,920
Speaker 2: the film's sole Oscar nomination.

1784
01:37:33,160 --> 01:37:37,400
Speaker 1: Samuel Arkoff, the I would generally assume cigars chompinging studio

1785
01:37:37,400 --> 01:37:40,000
Speaker 1: executive would kick this whole thing off crowd to People

1786
01:37:40,040 --> 01:37:42,879
Speaker 1: Magazine in nineteen seventy nine, if there were an Academy

1787
01:37:42,880 --> 01:37:45,760
Speaker 1: Award for a publicity campaign, we should get it for this.

1788
01:37:46,680 --> 01:37:50,519
Speaker 1: They'd actually started trying to jump up buzz before filming

1789
01:37:50,560 --> 01:37:55,439
Speaker 1: even began. American International Pictures Creative Affairs VP Charles Glenn,

1790
01:37:55,680 --> 01:38:00,519
Speaker 1: who also oversaw The Godfather's pr blitz promo, handled a

1791
01:38:00,520 --> 01:38:03,840
Speaker 1: new tie in cover for another paperback printing and set

1792
01:38:03,880 --> 01:38:07,679
Speaker 1: eight copywriters to work on the movie campaign slogan. James

1793
01:38:07,720 --> 01:38:10,000
Speaker 1: Brolin and Rod Steger were joined by the Lutzes on

1794
01:38:10,040 --> 01:38:13,320
Speaker 1: a cross country tour along with what People Magazine called

1795
01:38:13,439 --> 01:38:17,760
Speaker 1: quote a publicity wise psychic research duo, which one would

1796
01:38:17,800 --> 01:38:19,240
Speaker 1: have to assume is the warrant?

1797
01:38:19,280 --> 01:38:20,120
Speaker 2: Who could that be?

1798
01:38:21,200 --> 01:38:25,520
Speaker 1: Newspaper ads began to appear appropriately on July's Friday the thirteenth,

1799
01:38:25,800 --> 01:38:29,960
Speaker 1: with the winning tagline for God's Sake, Get Out. This

1800
01:38:30,080 --> 01:38:33,599
Speaker 1: tagline was so successful that Samuel Arkoff joked people would

1801
01:38:33,600 --> 01:38:36,400
Speaker 1: call theaters and ask for when, for God's sake, get

1802
01:38:36,400 --> 01:38:39,639
Speaker 1: Out was opening. He probably was great joking. I'm sure

1803
01:38:39,640 --> 01:38:42,360
Speaker 1: that was true. It's a great techniqu Yeah, it is.

1804
01:38:43,040 --> 01:38:46,000
Speaker 1: When the film was actually released in Finland, it used

1805
01:38:46,040 --> 01:38:47,720
Speaker 1: that phrase for the title, which is good.

1806
01:38:47,720 --> 01:38:50,520
Speaker 2: So at least one person fell for it, yes, Finland.

1807
01:38:53,200 --> 01:38:56,640
Speaker 1: James Brolind Margot Kidder also visited the actual home at

1808
01:38:56,720 --> 01:39:00,480
Speaker 1: one twelve Ocean Avenue in Amityville, accompanied by the press.

1809
01:39:01,280 --> 01:39:04,320
Speaker 1: The Amityville Horror premiered at a gala at the Museum

1810
01:39:04,400 --> 01:39:08,200
Speaker 1: of Modern Art in New York City. Right, Okay, sure,

1811
01:39:08,400 --> 01:39:11,800
Speaker 1: all right, on July twenty fourth, nineteen seventy nine, to

1812
01:39:11,880 --> 01:39:16,160
Speaker 1: launch a retrospective of thirty eight American International Pictures films. Okay,

1813
01:39:17,120 --> 01:39:20,880
Speaker 1: The film raked in buckets. At the conclusion of a

1814
01:39:20,960 --> 01:39:23,840
Speaker 1: theatrical run. It had grossed a total of eighty three

1815
01:39:23,880 --> 01:39:27,080
Speaker 1: point four million dollars in the US and Canada, nearly

1816
01:39:27,120 --> 01:39:29,960
Speaker 1: twenty times its budget of six million dollars plus marketing,

1817
01:39:30,320 --> 01:39:33,240
Speaker 1: making it the second highest grossing film of nineteen seventy

1818
01:39:33,320 --> 01:39:38,320
Speaker 1: nine after Kramer Versus Kramer. I can't think of a

1819
01:39:38,360 --> 01:39:43,719
Speaker 1: more diametrically opposed movie to the Amityville Horror than Kramer

1820
01:39:43,800 --> 01:39:44,679
Speaker 1: versus Kramer.

1821
01:39:45,000 --> 01:39:46,800
Speaker 2: I like to think people who did like a you know,

1822
01:39:46,840 --> 01:39:50,720
Speaker 2: like a Barbon Diners the Amityville Kramer and I just

1823
01:39:50,760 --> 01:39:52,600
Speaker 2: double featured it one day.

1824
01:39:55,240 --> 01:39:58,320
Speaker 1: Oh, two different kinds of domestic horrors.

1825
01:39:58,880 --> 01:40:01,439
Speaker 2: Yeah. For while this was the the most successful independent

1826
01:40:01,520 --> 01:40:06,040
Speaker 2: film of all time, that supplanting Halloween, which had previously

1827
01:40:06,080 --> 01:40:09,920
Speaker 2: come out and earned that. Yeah, and it held onto

1828
01:40:09,920 --> 01:40:12,880
Speaker 2: the record until nineteen ninety, when it was supplanted by

1829
01:40:12,880 --> 01:40:16,680
Speaker 2: my beloved teenage mutant Ninja Turtles. Since then, the leaderboard

1830
01:40:16,680 --> 01:40:20,840
Speaker 2: has been completely screwy. I logged onto a German statistics

1831
01:40:20,840 --> 01:40:24,360
Speaker 2: site called Statista, and they, like a lot of other sources,

1832
01:40:24,400 --> 01:40:26,760
Speaker 2: have the passion of The Christ as the most successful

1833
01:40:26,760 --> 01:40:30,080
Speaker 2: indie movie of all time. Remember Gibson financed that himself.

1834
01:40:31,000 --> 01:40:32,800
Speaker 2: But all of these other lists have all kinds of

1835
01:40:32,880 --> 01:40:37,360
Speaker 2: other qualifiers, like was the film produced independently but distributed

1836
01:40:37,400 --> 01:40:39,240
Speaker 2: by a major, then it doesn't count this or that.

1837
01:40:39,560 --> 01:40:42,680
Speaker 2: By way of example, Statista's number two film on this

1838
01:40:42,760 --> 01:40:45,280
Speaker 2: list of most profitable indies of all time is The Graduate,

1839
01:40:45,640 --> 01:40:49,599
Speaker 2: which doesn't even appear anywhere on Wikipedia's top grossing independent list.

1840
01:40:49,840 --> 01:40:52,400
Speaker 2: So I just found that passinated regardless.

1841
01:40:52,880 --> 01:40:56,719
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, Forbes published an inflation adjusted list ranking

1842
01:40:56,760 --> 01:41:00,280
Speaker 1: horror movie film grosses based upon contemporary ticket price is,

1843
01:41:00,520 --> 01:41:03,280
Speaker 1: in which Amityville Horror ranked as the eighth highest grossing

1844
01:41:03,320 --> 01:41:06,240
Speaker 1: horror film of all time, with an adjusted gross of

1845
01:41:06,479 --> 01:41:09,479
Speaker 1: three hundred and ten point three million dollars at the

1846
01:41:09,479 --> 01:41:13,400
Speaker 1: time the article came out, Critics, however, were less kind.

1847
01:41:13,960 --> 01:41:16,200
Speaker 1: Rogeribert dreamed it, rod He Reeber.

1848
01:41:16,040 --> 01:41:16,599
Speaker 2: Did dream it.

1849
01:41:16,680 --> 01:41:17,439
Speaker 1: Maybe he did dream.

1850
01:41:17,479 --> 01:41:20,080
Speaker 2: Maybe we're all just living in Roger Ebert's fever dream

1851
01:41:20,120 --> 01:41:21,960
Speaker 2: about a movie called the Amityville Horror.

1852
01:41:22,040 --> 01:41:23,960
Speaker 1: He's just looking at a snow globe thinking about a

1853
01:41:24,000 --> 01:41:27,439
Speaker 1: movie called Amityville Horror that he he didn't really like

1854
01:41:27,479 --> 01:41:28,000
Speaker 1: that much.

1855
01:41:28,600 --> 01:41:32,200
Speaker 2: You didn't like it, but his powerful mind created a

1856
01:41:32,280 --> 01:41:36,800
Speaker 2: multiverse and we're just living in it. Wake up, Wake

1857
01:41:36,880 --> 01:41:40,400
Speaker 2: up Ebert. I went out of the Amityville Horror Universe.

1858
01:41:41,120 --> 01:41:42,160
Speaker 2: Can you hear me? Screaming?

1859
01:41:45,000 --> 01:41:49,880
Speaker 1: Roderrieber called The Amityville Horror dreary and terminally depressing. People

1860
01:41:49,960 --> 01:41:52,760
Speaker 1: Magazine to cried it as quote ridiculous, and singled up

1861
01:41:52,800 --> 01:41:59,040
Speaker 1: roth Steiger for overacting. The National Review. Famed right wing

1862
01:41:59,600 --> 01:42:03,040
Speaker 1: news Yeah News organ is charitable.

1863
01:42:03,160 --> 01:42:05,120
Speaker 2: Yeah called it quote dreadful.

1864
01:42:06,120 --> 01:42:10,280
Speaker 1: Just believe that Buckley went to go see the Amityville.

1865
01:42:10,280 --> 01:42:12,960
Speaker 2: And was moved to like, all right, I found this.

1866
01:42:13,120 --> 01:42:16,360
Speaker 5: I found this sign on film considering the popular and

1867
01:42:16,600 --> 01:42:20,719
Speaker 5: demonic positions unbearable, as anyone with even a passing knowledge

1868
01:42:20,720 --> 01:42:23,360
Speaker 5: of Protestant lore would That's very good.

1869
01:42:23,400 --> 01:42:26,160
Speaker 1: That's very good. An impression that four of our listeners

1870
01:42:26,200 --> 01:42:29,559
Speaker 1: were get. But I think that is that is truly incredible. Wow.

1871
01:42:30,920 --> 01:42:34,040
Speaker 1: Janet Maslin went hard at The New York Times, hitting

1872
01:42:34,080 --> 01:42:37,000
Speaker 1: it with so many horror movie clichs a bit assembled

1873
01:42:37,080 --> 01:42:39,360
Speaker 1: under the roof of a single haunted house, that the

1874
01:42:39,400 --> 01:42:43,439
Speaker 1: effect is sometimes mind bogglingly messy. There was apparently very

1875
01:42:43,479 --> 01:42:46,719
Speaker 1: little to which the director, Stuart Rosenberg will not resort.

1876
01:42:48,120 --> 01:42:50,719
Speaker 1: But the worst came, or at least the most famous

1877
01:42:50,760 --> 01:42:53,840
Speaker 1: pan came from tell them Heigel.

1878
01:42:54,280 --> 01:42:58,960
Speaker 2: Stephen King, our boy Stevie. Yes, that's Stephen King. He

1879
01:42:59,000 --> 01:43:01,320
Speaker 2: panned the film and Rolling Stone in a review of

1880
01:43:01,680 --> 01:43:03,439
Speaker 2: the horror genre in nineteen seventy nine. They must have

1881
01:43:03,439 --> 01:43:05,800
Speaker 2: asked him about like r end best List, but two

1882
01:43:05,880 --> 01:43:08,400
Speaker 2: years later he returned to it in his nineteen eighty

1883
01:43:08,439 --> 01:43:13,439
Speaker 2: one Foundational Tomb on scary stories as a whole called

1884
01:43:13,520 --> 01:43:16,600
Speaker 2: donce macabre. He analyzed the film as a meditation on

1885
01:43:16,640 --> 01:43:20,000
Speaker 2: the economic instability of the times, while still allowing that

1886
01:43:20,040 --> 01:43:24,160
Speaker 2: it was stupid and simplistic. Ultimately, he lauded it as

1887
01:43:24,200 --> 01:43:27,160
Speaker 2: a perfect example of the tale to be told around

1888
01:43:27,200 --> 01:43:31,160
Speaker 2: the campfire archetype, comparing it to classic urban legend the

1889
01:43:31,200 --> 01:43:33,280
Speaker 2: guy with the hook for a hand on the car

1890
01:43:33,360 --> 01:43:34,280
Speaker 2: roof or whatever.

1891
01:43:34,960 --> 01:43:36,200
Speaker 1: I don't know that urban legend.

1892
01:43:36,760 --> 01:43:38,800
Speaker 2: Oh it's it's like this couple are like neck in

1893
01:43:38,840 --> 01:43:40,400
Speaker 2: and the neck and in a car or whatever, and

1894
01:43:40,439 --> 01:43:43,080
Speaker 2: they keep hearing the scraping sound on the car hood

1895
01:43:43,080 --> 01:43:46,200
Speaker 2: and or wait, no, maybe I'm thinking of that's the

1896
01:43:46,240 --> 01:43:48,080
Speaker 2: one where the guy hung himself. The woman keeps hearing

1897
01:43:48,120 --> 01:43:50,200
Speaker 2: stuff outside and the guy's like, no, baby, this is

1898
01:43:50,200 --> 01:43:53,479
Speaker 2: the sixties, like let me make it with you. And

1899
01:43:54,479 --> 01:43:58,040
Speaker 2: you know, wow, moxie, you know whatever they said back then,

1900
01:43:59,160 --> 01:44:03,200
Speaker 2: and you know they eventually she like sours the mood,

1901
01:44:03,360 --> 01:44:06,320
Speaker 2: you know what, to kill joy and drives off and

1902
01:44:06,360 --> 01:44:10,080
Speaker 2: there's they find a hook, a hook hand, a hook

1903
01:44:10,160 --> 01:44:13,000
Speaker 2: for a hand dangling from the car door handle. And

1904
01:44:13,000 --> 01:44:15,160
Speaker 2: then they read the next day that an escaped mental

1905
01:44:15,200 --> 01:44:17,280
Speaker 2: patient with a hook for a hand had been roaming

1906
01:44:17,320 --> 01:44:19,040
Speaker 2: the very forest where they were necking.

1907
01:44:20,040 --> 01:44:21,240
Speaker 1: I've never heard that that's good.

1908
01:44:21,360 --> 01:44:23,000
Speaker 2: I was getting it conflated with the other one, which

1909
01:44:23,040 --> 01:44:26,120
Speaker 2: is like a similarly like teen necking set up. And

1910
01:44:26,160 --> 01:44:28,360
Speaker 2: then they keep hearing scraping on the roof of their car,

1911
01:44:28,400 --> 01:44:30,240
Speaker 2: and they get creeped out and leave, and it was

1912
01:44:30,280 --> 01:44:33,479
Speaker 2: a guy had hung himself in the tree, his toes

1913
01:44:33,560 --> 01:44:37,520
Speaker 2: scrape in the roof. Wow, no, your mileage.

1914
01:44:37,280 --> 01:44:41,280
Speaker 1: Mayververy I'm like getting this confused with the opening of Zodiac.

1915
01:44:41,560 --> 01:44:44,360
Speaker 2: Oh, when the couple just gets bluntly stabbed to death

1916
01:44:44,479 --> 01:44:45,400
Speaker 2: in full view.

1917
01:44:45,640 --> 01:44:47,720
Speaker 1: I thought shot. But yeah, your minagement.

1918
01:44:47,320 --> 01:44:54,559
Speaker 2: Firy anyway, the movie. The original film has received a

1919
01:44:54,560 --> 01:44:57,360
Speaker 2: critical reassessment in recent years, but it certainly never got

1920
01:44:57,400 --> 01:45:00,679
Speaker 2: one from Margot Kidder, who told the The Ivy Club

1921
01:45:00,680 --> 01:45:02,400
Speaker 2: in two thousand and nine that it was a piece

1922
01:45:02,439 --> 01:45:05,959
Speaker 2: of I couldn't believe that anyone would take that seriously.

1923
01:45:06,200 --> 01:45:08,000
Speaker 2: I was laughing my whole way through it, much to

1924
01:45:08,040 --> 01:45:11,000
Speaker 2: the annoyance of Rod Steger Steiger, who took the whole

1925
01:45:11,000 --> 01:45:15,400
Speaker 2: thing very seriously. And then, in a barn burning quote,

1926
01:45:15,439 --> 01:45:17,640
Speaker 2: she says it was the crazy Christians who made it

1927
01:45:17,640 --> 01:45:20,040
Speaker 2: a hit. They wanted people to believe in the devil

1928
01:45:20,080 --> 01:45:23,920
Speaker 2: in possessions and haunted houses and all that hooey. Tall

1929
01:45:23,960 --> 01:45:27,760
Speaker 2: handsome idiot, but nice guy. James Brolin subsequently blamed the

1930
01:45:27,800 --> 01:45:30,040
Speaker 2: film for a two year career slump and said he

1931
01:45:30,120 --> 01:45:30,960
Speaker 2: was type.

1932
01:45:30,640 --> 01:45:36,599
Speaker 1: Cast as a tall, handsome idiot, just.

1933
01:45:36,560 --> 01:45:42,320
Speaker 2: A benign moron. Since then, Amityville has just become this

1934
01:45:42,479 --> 01:45:46,439
Speaker 2: collective describer for spooky. So it's hard to get an

1935
01:45:46,479 --> 01:45:51,320
Speaker 2: accurate count of quote unquote true Amityville horror sequels. Because

1936
01:45:51,320 --> 01:45:53,519
Speaker 2: the original was a huge success, that obviously meant that

1937
01:45:53,560 --> 01:45:57,400
Speaker 2: they quickly pumped out I guess quote unquote canonical sequels

1938
01:45:57,640 --> 01:46:01,519
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty two's Amityville two The Possession and Amityville three D,

1939
01:46:02,760 --> 01:46:06,919
Speaker 2: which is apparently followed in Paranormal Investigators as they encountered

1940
01:46:06,960 --> 01:46:09,599
Speaker 2: hauntings the house, so they'd already even discarded the lutzes.

1941
01:46:09,840 --> 01:46:14,280
Speaker 2: The made for TV fourth film, Amityville four, The Evil Escapes,

1942
01:46:15,120 --> 01:46:18,000
Speaker 2: was written and directed by the original film screenwriter the

1943
01:46:18,040 --> 01:46:21,880
Speaker 2: aforementioned Sandor Stern. This came out in nineteen eighty nine,

1944
01:46:22,120 --> 01:46:25,800
Speaker 2: and I am not joking. Followed a cursed lamp like

1945
01:46:26,160 --> 01:46:26,559
Speaker 2: a like.

1946
01:46:26,520 --> 01:46:27,519
Speaker 1: A table escaped.

1947
01:46:28,080 --> 01:46:32,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's like the Family Guide joke about Stephen King, Yes, exactly. That.

1948
01:46:33,160 --> 01:46:34,799
Speaker 1: Don't forget Amityville the musical.

1949
01:46:35,000 --> 01:46:37,840
Speaker 2: No, it's it's truly wild man. I mean. So the

1950
01:46:37,920 --> 01:46:42,799
Speaker 2: fact that you can't copyright protect public a public place.

1951
01:46:42,920 --> 01:46:45,120
Speaker 2: You know, you can't copyright New York. This means that

1952
01:46:45,120 --> 01:46:47,439
Speaker 2: filmmakers were just free to attach the name of their

1953
01:46:47,479 --> 01:46:55,000
Speaker 2: town to any project that's paranormal. That as Amityville became

1954
01:46:55,040 --> 01:46:58,439
Speaker 2: this cultural thing, lets deserves it. That's such a great

1955
01:47:00,160 --> 01:47:02,960
Speaker 2: it's so turn about as fair play. So there's films

1956
01:47:03,000 --> 01:47:07,400
Speaker 2: like Amityville Bigfoot and Amityville Shark House. Other notable Amityville

1957
01:47:07,439 --> 01:47:12,679
Speaker 2: films kitchi or otherwise include Amityville Vibrator, Amityville Christmas Vacation,

1958
01:47:13,200 --> 01:47:20,559
Speaker 2: Amiteville in Space, Amityville Elevator, Amityville Karen, and Amityville Gas Chamber.

1959
01:47:20,800 --> 01:47:23,240
Speaker 2: Jacob Awler, the movie's editor at Pascet till the New

1960
01:47:23,320 --> 01:47:26,240
Speaker 2: York Times in twenty twenty four. If you can't afford

1961
01:47:26,280 --> 01:47:28,599
Speaker 2: an ip, Amityville is just a name you can get

1962
01:47:28,640 --> 01:47:31,000
Speaker 2: for free. Slap anything on the end of it. Just

1963
01:47:31,000 --> 01:47:33,000
Speaker 2: grab a theme out of the ether and someone will

1964
01:47:33,000 --> 01:47:36,719
Speaker 2: stream it. Iconic horror magazine Fangoria even added a Best

1965
01:47:36,840 --> 01:47:41,160
Speaker 2: Amityville Film category to its Golden chainsaw Awards last year.

1966
01:47:41,320 --> 01:47:42,080
Speaker 1: That's hilarious.

1967
01:47:42,640 --> 01:47:45,120
Speaker 2: That's so good it is, I mean, it's wild. Yeah,

1968
01:47:45,400 --> 01:47:48,000
Speaker 2: so yeah, there is something like I think that people

1969
01:47:48,080 --> 01:47:53,599
Speaker 2: have estimated between forty five and fifty four films as

1970
01:47:53,640 --> 01:47:58,600
Speaker 2: part of the quote unquote Amityville Family of both. There was,

1971
01:47:58,640 --> 01:48:00,639
Speaker 2: of course, also the two thousand and five Ryan Reynolds

1972
01:48:00,720 --> 01:48:04,200
Speaker 2: starring reboot during the era of Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes

1973
01:48:04,320 --> 01:48:07,719
Speaker 2: flood of remakes of classic horror films. You may remember

1974
01:48:07,800 --> 01:48:11,040
Speaker 2: he did Fight of the Thirteenth, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hitcher,

1975
01:48:11,160 --> 01:48:14,840
Speaker 2: The Talent, Dreaded Sundown, I Think, and the Original Nightmare

1976
01:48:14,840 --> 01:48:17,840
Speaker 2: on Elm Street. Dur Awll varying degrees of bad and

1977
01:48:17,840 --> 01:48:20,439
Speaker 2: at least some of the old aip razzle dazzle spirit

1978
01:48:20,560 --> 01:48:23,560
Speaker 2: survived into the aughts. Ryan Reynolds himself claimed in the

1979
01:48:23,560 --> 01:48:26,679
Speaker 2: press that people shooting on set frequently woke up at

1980
01:48:26,880 --> 01:48:30,800
Speaker 2: three point fifteen am, the spooky time that was supposedly

1981
01:48:30,800 --> 01:48:34,800
Speaker 2: linked to the first killings. Those filmmakers apparently went so

1982
01:48:34,840 --> 01:48:37,679
Speaker 2: far as to credit both George and Kathy Lutz as writers,

1983
01:48:38,320 --> 01:48:41,840
Speaker 2: although Cathy died the first week of filming and George well,

1984
01:48:41,880 --> 01:48:43,120
Speaker 2: he bit the hand that fed him.

1985
01:48:43,400 --> 01:48:45,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, he hated that movie. He didn't really much like

1986
01:48:45,479 --> 01:48:48,439
Speaker 1: the original one with James Browlin either, but he really

1987
01:48:48,520 --> 01:48:49,519
Speaker 1: didn't like this one.

1988
01:48:49,680 --> 01:48:52,200
Speaker 2: Yes. The nicest thing that I can say about George

1989
01:48:52,200 --> 01:48:54,920
Speaker 2: Slutts is that he confined his grift to just one

1990
01:48:54,960 --> 01:48:57,920
Speaker 2: story and clung to it like a rat, rather than

1991
01:48:58,000 --> 01:49:01,160
Speaker 2: the Warrens, who spanned there entire brand of lies and

1992
01:49:01,200 --> 01:49:06,799
Speaker 2: abuse over a half century and an entire country. Lots otherwise,

1993
01:49:06,840 --> 01:49:09,760
Speaker 2: scans largely as a grubby, little opportunist who jealously tried

1994
01:49:09,760 --> 01:49:12,000
Speaker 2: to control the one moderately interesting thing he ever did

1995
01:49:12,000 --> 01:49:16,360
Speaker 2: with his entire life. Lots ultimately, though, embodied the Seinfeld

1996
01:49:16,360 --> 01:49:19,439
Speaker 2: bit about a lie is the truth if you believe

1997
01:49:19,479 --> 01:49:23,960
Speaker 2: in it enough. By way of example, in nineteen seventy nine,

1998
01:49:24,000 --> 01:49:28,680
Speaker 2: the Washington Post quoted Chris Gougis, a Los Angeles polygraph specialist.

1999
01:49:29,120 --> 01:49:32,599
Speaker 2: He tested the Lutzes separately. An associate worked with Kathy,

2000
01:49:32,680 --> 01:49:35,200
Speaker 2: asking her about the levitation incidents, her whole thing about

2001
01:49:35,200 --> 01:49:38,720
Speaker 2: turning into a nine year old woman, etc. Gougis told

2002
01:49:38,760 --> 01:49:42,040
Speaker 2: the paper they both answered truthfully, they were pretty frightened

2003
01:49:42,600 --> 01:49:44,759
Speaker 2: and it took us nearly two hours to get George

2004
01:49:44,760 --> 01:49:48,280
Speaker 2: calmed down. But what they told us they believed. Gugis

2005
01:49:48,400 --> 01:49:50,840
Speaker 2: added that he had run similar tests on people in

2006
01:49:51,160 --> 01:49:54,720
Speaker 2: other occult paranormal cases, finding that some were lying outrageously,

2007
01:49:54,760 --> 01:49:56,920
Speaker 2: but that some were telling the truth. This guy is

2008
01:49:56,920 --> 01:50:01,639
Speaker 2: something of a famous polygraph dork. He also lists tests

2009
01:50:01,680 --> 01:50:05,200
Speaker 2: on James Earl Ray and the actress Terry Moore, whom

2010
01:50:05,560 --> 01:50:09,599
Speaker 2: he confirmed in her claim to be Howard Hughes's first wife.

2011
01:50:10,800 --> 01:50:14,560
Speaker 2: Gugas is an XCIA guy and wholeheartedly believed in the

2012
01:50:14,600 --> 01:50:18,680
Speaker 2: polygraph But it is worth noting that the Lutzes contacted him,

2013
01:50:19,160 --> 01:50:22,000
Speaker 2: not the other way around, and given their commitment to

2014
01:50:22,040 --> 01:50:24,519
Speaker 2: the BIT, we're probably aware of how to manipulate a

2015
01:50:24,520 --> 01:50:27,800
Speaker 2: polygraph test. Goug has estimated in nineteen seventy nine that

2016
01:50:27,840 --> 01:50:31,519
Speaker 2: across three thirty thousand tests he administered, seventy percent of

2017
01:50:31,560 --> 01:50:34,480
Speaker 2: people were probably telling the truth, and he said polygraphs

2018
01:50:34,479 --> 01:50:36,719
Speaker 2: were ninety five to ninety seven percent accurate.

2019
01:50:36,840 --> 01:50:38,200
Speaker 1: That's not true.

2020
01:50:38,560 --> 01:50:41,880
Speaker 2: Yes, First of all, polygraph results are not admissible in court.

2021
01:50:41,960 --> 01:50:46,479
Speaker 2: They're simply to help elicit a confession during interrogations. A

2022
01:50:46,560 --> 01:50:50,640
Speaker 2: laythy article by the American Psychological Association debunks all of this,

2023
01:50:50,840 --> 01:50:53,080
Speaker 2: pointing out largely that all a polygraph does is just

2024
01:50:53,080 --> 01:50:57,000
Speaker 2: measure physiological responses that are subjectively interpreted by the guy

2025
01:50:57,080 --> 01:50:59,920
Speaker 2: running the test. There's a huge set of factors that

2026
01:51:00,080 --> 01:51:04,080
Speaker 2: can affect both the person being tested and the testee. Anyway,

2027
01:51:04,560 --> 01:51:07,200
Speaker 2: speaking of James RL Ray, your friendly reminder that the

2028
01:51:07,240 --> 01:51:08,599
Speaker 2: FBI killed Martin Luther.

2029
01:51:08,439 --> 01:51:11,880
Speaker 1: King, Yeah, I mean polygraph tests they basically just measure

2030
01:51:12,320 --> 01:51:16,120
Speaker 1: skin response and for sweat and heart rate. I mean,

2031
01:51:16,200 --> 01:51:18,639
Speaker 1: so if you put I think there's like a famous

2032
01:51:18,640 --> 01:51:20,280
Speaker 1: story where if you put like a tack in your

2033
01:51:20,320 --> 01:51:23,240
Speaker 1: shoe or something, and they ask the control question at

2034
01:51:23,280 --> 01:51:26,439
Speaker 1: the beginning, which is like you know, are you in

2035
01:51:26,479 --> 01:51:28,360
Speaker 1: this room right now, or like something dumber did you

2036
01:51:28,360 --> 01:51:32,479
Speaker 1: eat today or something like that. If you like prick

2037
01:51:32,560 --> 01:51:34,600
Speaker 1: your toe and cause your heart rate to spike for

2038
01:51:34,640 --> 01:51:36,400
Speaker 1: the control question, then.

2039
01:51:36,280 --> 01:51:38,200
Speaker 2: That's the baseline. That's the baseline that.

2040
01:51:38,160 --> 01:51:40,840
Speaker 1: They go from. So when you lie and your heart rate,

2041
01:51:41,080 --> 01:51:43,280
Speaker 1: you know, kind of imperceptibly goes up when you lie,

2042
01:51:43,479 --> 01:51:45,640
Speaker 1: it'll just seem the same throughout all the rest of

2043
01:51:45,680 --> 01:51:46,679
Speaker 1: the test. It's dumb.

2044
01:51:47,800 --> 01:51:51,759
Speaker 2: It is dumb. Thank you for saying that. Jordan Let's,

2045
01:51:52,320 --> 01:51:55,240
Speaker 2: as I've mentioned so many times, zealously protected his claim.

2046
01:51:55,680 --> 01:51:59,840
Speaker 2: He sued Orion Pictures and Dino de Laurentis, which could

2047
01:52:00,120 --> 01:52:02,800
Speaker 2: luck Pal talk about a guppy and a shark tank

2048
01:52:04,120 --> 01:52:05,880
Speaker 2: he see them in nineteen eighty nine because he felt

2049
01:52:05,880 --> 01:52:09,360
Speaker 2: the original film's two sequels had quote so diluted the

2050
01:52:09,439 --> 01:52:14,479
Speaker 2: value of his proposed sequel that his plans to produce

2051
01:52:14,520 --> 01:52:17,880
Speaker 2: it had collapsed. Many of these counts were dismissed, but

2052
01:52:17,920 --> 01:52:21,800
Speaker 2: the original judgment allowed certain aspects of it to continue.

2053
01:52:22,240 --> 01:52:25,000
Speaker 2: Lutz himself said that the deal o Reentis case dragged

2054
01:52:25,000 --> 01:52:29,000
Speaker 2: on twelve years and ended in a settlement. He and

2055
01:52:29,080 --> 01:52:32,920
Speaker 2: Kathy divorced in nineteen eighty eight, and at some point this,

2056
01:52:33,200 --> 01:52:35,680
Speaker 2: along with the futility of trying to combat the mushrooming

2057
01:52:35,720 --> 01:52:39,120
Speaker 2: Amiteyville cations, must have sunk in. Because he seemed to

2058
01:52:39,120 --> 01:52:41,960
Speaker 2: have stopped trying throughout the nineteen nineties, or he fell

2059
01:52:41,960 --> 01:52:43,320
Speaker 2: off the grid. I could not find a lot of

2060
01:52:43,320 --> 01:52:45,559
Speaker 2: stuff about him from this time. Maybe went back to

2061
01:52:45,680 --> 01:52:46,439
Speaker 2: land surveying.

2062
01:52:46,520 --> 01:52:49,439
Speaker 1: He did do an interview for the two thousand and

2063
01:52:49,479 --> 01:52:50,839
Speaker 1: five documentary I watched.

2064
01:52:51,120 --> 01:52:53,080
Speaker 2: Yes, Well, he got back up to things around the

2065
01:52:53,120 --> 01:52:55,880
Speaker 2: turn of the millennia, perhaps motivated by nine to eleven,

2066
01:52:56,120 --> 01:52:59,120
Speaker 2: you know, which taught us all to just commit to

2067
01:52:59,160 --> 01:53:06,679
Speaker 2: our bit. Yeah. So, around the turn of the millennia,

2068
01:53:06,720 --> 01:53:09,840
Speaker 2: LUTs had gotten around to more practical legal measures. He

2069
01:53:10,160 --> 01:53:14,120
Speaker 2: trademarked The Amityville Whore in two thousand and two with

2070
01:53:14,240 --> 01:53:17,719
Speaker 2: the United States Patent and Trademark Office because he wanted

2071
01:53:18,040 --> 01:53:21,519
Speaker 2: to run a series of quote unquote nonfiction books about

2072
01:53:21,520 --> 01:53:24,680
Speaker 2: the paranormal. The same year, Let's sign an agreement with

2073
01:53:24,760 --> 01:53:29,280
Speaker 2: this company called Barstow Productions to allow a sequel to proceed,

2074
01:53:30,240 --> 01:53:32,519
Speaker 2: but it included the provision that the film could not

2075
01:53:32,720 --> 01:53:38,400
Speaker 2: intentionally defame or libel George Lutz. Long story short, The

2076
01:53:38,479 --> 01:53:43,439
Speaker 2: Barstoo Production's rights were subsequently transferred to Dimension Films, which

2077
01:53:43,439 --> 01:53:47,439
Speaker 2: were under Miramax under Disney. Lutz alleges that as much

2078
01:53:47,439 --> 01:53:50,280
Speaker 2: as he tried to get involved with the two thousand

2079
01:53:50,280 --> 01:53:53,080
Speaker 2: and five remakes, the remake that came out under Platinum

2080
01:53:53,080 --> 01:53:56,680
Speaker 2: Dooms itself a subsidiary blah bla blah blah blah, that

2081
01:53:56,760 --> 01:53:58,320
Speaker 2: he was shut out. He said he tried to get

2082
01:53:58,320 --> 01:54:00,240
Speaker 2: in contact with anyone, and they kept saying, Oh yeah,

2083
01:54:00,240 --> 01:54:01,479
Speaker 2: we'll bring you in to meet them, and they're like,

2084
01:54:01,520 --> 01:54:04,920
Speaker 2: we'll send you a free swag bag or a crew

2085
01:54:05,040 --> 01:54:08,920
Speaker 2: jacket or something. But that he was shut out, and

2086
01:54:08,960 --> 01:54:13,080
Speaker 2: this resulted in the Ryan Reynolds starring remake being just

2087
01:54:14,200 --> 01:54:17,360
Speaker 2: balls to the wall more intense than the original. It

2088
01:54:17,400 --> 01:54:20,400
Speaker 2: of course starts with the classic based on a true story,

2089
01:54:20,840 --> 01:54:26,040
Speaker 2: but it also depicts Lutz as killing his dog, building

2090
01:54:26,080 --> 01:54:29,240
Speaker 2: coffins for his wife and kids, choking and later attempting

2091
01:54:29,280 --> 01:54:32,440
Speaker 2: to drown his wife, shooting at his wife and kids,

2092
01:54:32,760 --> 01:54:35,480
Speaker 2: and attacking his son with an axe. This was all

2093
01:54:35,520 --> 01:54:38,360
Speaker 2: a bridge too far for George Lutz, who sued on

2094
01:54:38,400 --> 01:54:42,280
Speaker 2: the basis of defamation and oh yeah, also on the

2095
01:54:42,320 --> 01:54:46,760
Speaker 2: basis that Dimension hadn't honored his original agreement with Barstow

2096
01:54:47,120 --> 01:54:51,280
Speaker 2: and he was getting screwed on the money. MGM's countersuit

2097
01:54:51,480 --> 01:54:53,400
Speaker 2: and Let's died the year after in two thousand and six,

2098
01:54:53,440 --> 01:54:56,400
Speaker 2: so that put an end to that. Let's his trademark

2099
01:54:56,400 --> 01:54:58,800
Speaker 2: on the Amityville Horror phrase laps in two thousand and eight,

2100
01:54:58,840 --> 01:55:00,960
Speaker 2: and as we will get into, his estate was not

2101
01:55:01,040 --> 01:55:04,440
Speaker 2: interested in continuing this, and so MGM picked it back

2102
01:55:04,600 --> 01:55:09,120
Speaker 2: up in twenty twenty three. Let's step kids have since

2103
01:55:09,120 --> 01:55:13,200
Speaker 2: come into the spotlight a little more, and consequently, and unsurprisingly,

2104
01:55:13,280 --> 01:55:16,760
Speaker 2: he looks even worse. Perhaps I should have mentioned that

2105
01:55:16,800 --> 01:55:20,200
Speaker 2: in the interim between Let's trademarking the phrase Amityville Horror

2106
01:55:20,320 --> 01:55:22,480
Speaker 2: and suing over the two thousand and five remake, he

2107
01:55:22,560 --> 01:55:26,480
Speaker 2: also sued one of his own step kids, Christopher Quarantino,

2108
01:55:27,040 --> 01:55:30,120
Speaker 2: who changed his name. He ran away from home at sixteen.

2109
01:55:30,160 --> 01:55:33,120
Speaker 2: He was in the army. This situation really did a

2110
01:55:33,200 --> 01:55:35,040
Speaker 2: number on him, and he did not want to be

2111
01:55:35,040 --> 01:55:40,280
Speaker 2: associated it. So in two thousand and three, Quarantino hears

2112
01:55:40,280 --> 01:55:43,280
Speaker 2: that George is planning yet another movie in which the

2113
01:55:43,400 --> 01:55:47,720
Speaker 2: character quote unquote of Christopher returns to the original Amityville house,

2114
01:55:48,040 --> 01:55:52,520
Speaker 2: becomes possessed and kills his father. So Christopher, none too

2115
01:55:52,520 --> 01:55:56,040
Speaker 2: pleased about this, preempted his father by buying the domain

2116
01:55:56,200 --> 01:55:58,000
Speaker 2: Amityville Horror dot com.

2117
01:55:58,120 --> 01:55:59,320
Speaker 1: Petty but effective.

2118
01:55:59,520 --> 01:56:06,200
Speaker 2: Yeah. Lutz countersued for trademark infringement and fraud. Eventually they

2119
01:56:06,240 --> 01:56:10,560
Speaker 2: settled and George got the site. What a guy. Quarantino

2120
01:56:11,040 --> 01:56:15,040
Speaker 2: eventually described Lutz more neutrally in the documentary Amityville An

2121
01:56:15,080 --> 01:56:18,600
Speaker 2: Original Story saying Lutz was a man figure that was

2122
01:56:18,640 --> 01:56:20,920
Speaker 2: there and kind to us, and mom liked him.

2123
01:56:21,040 --> 01:56:23,720
Speaker 1: That was that, you know, everyone could be a father,

2124
01:56:23,840 --> 01:56:25,440
Speaker 1: but not everyone can be a man figure.

2125
01:56:27,880 --> 01:56:30,840
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, but both the kids who have come out

2126
01:56:30,880 --> 01:56:33,560
Speaker 2: about this movie maintained an interest. They tow a very

2127
01:56:33,560 --> 01:56:40,120
Speaker 2: interesting line. Christopher maintains that the house was haunted and

2128
01:56:40,160 --> 01:56:43,480
Speaker 2: that George Lutz merely exacerbated conditions by dabbling in the

2129
01:56:43,520 --> 01:56:47,600
Speaker 2: occult and then playing up the results for profit. Christopher

2130
01:56:47,600 --> 01:56:50,360
Speaker 2: called Lutz quote a professional showman in an interview with

2131
01:56:50,400 --> 01:56:52,520
Speaker 2: the Seattle Times in two thousand and five, and recalled

2132
01:56:52,560 --> 01:56:56,480
Speaker 2: his stepdad being extremely curious of everything paranormal when they

2133
01:56:56,560 --> 01:56:59,560
Speaker 2: moved in in nineteen seventy five, even trying to summon

2134
01:56:59,600 --> 01:57:03,400
Speaker 2: super natural beings on his own by chanting I don't

2135
01:57:03,400 --> 01:57:05,160
Speaker 2: know that I call it black magic, but it was

2136
01:57:05,240 --> 01:57:08,240
Speaker 2: a way to call up spirits. Christopher said, I was

2137
01:57:08,480 --> 01:57:09,000
Speaker 2: a spirit.

2138
01:57:09,800 --> 01:57:10,680
Speaker 1: I a spirit.

2139
01:57:11,560 --> 01:57:17,800
Speaker 2: I want work anymore. Christopher again rebukes a lot of

2140
01:57:17,840 --> 01:57:20,600
Speaker 2: the bullet in the book, like the ghostly forces that

2141
01:57:20,680 --> 01:57:22,680
Speaker 2: sent the front door to the house flying from its hinges,

2142
01:57:23,040 --> 01:57:26,480
Speaker 2: but he added in the in the repeated in interviews

2143
01:57:26,640 --> 01:57:29,000
Speaker 2: that he had personal run ins with the paranormal in

2144
01:57:29,040 --> 01:57:32,640
Speaker 2: the house. He once saw a presence quote as definite,

2145
01:57:32,640 --> 01:57:34,440
Speaker 2: as a shadow in the shape of a man that

2146
01:57:34,480 --> 01:57:38,120
Speaker 2: moved towards him and dissipated the other Amityville kid who's

2147
01:57:38,120 --> 01:57:41,240
Speaker 2: come forward. Eldest son Daniel had an entire movie made

2148
01:57:41,240 --> 01:57:45,960
Speaker 2: about him in his experience, and it is harrowing twelve

2149
01:57:45,960 --> 01:57:49,720
Speaker 2: as document I've seen in clips. I haven't sat down

2150
01:57:49,680 --> 01:57:52,320
Speaker 2: and watched the whole thing, but it's it's a rough

2151
01:57:52,360 --> 01:57:56,720
Speaker 2: watch man, honestly. This is a twenty twelve documentary made

2152
01:57:56,720 --> 01:57:59,600
Speaker 2: by an Amityville super fan named Eric Walter. It's called

2153
01:57:59,640 --> 01:58:04,080
Speaker 2: My Medieville Whore. Walter was actually contacted by friend of Daniels,

2154
01:58:04,360 --> 01:58:06,600
Speaker 2: who was at the time living in Queens and either

2155
01:58:06,640 --> 01:58:10,040
Speaker 2: working as a ups driver or a stonemason. According to

2156
01:58:10,080 --> 01:58:15,840
Speaker 2: different sources, Danny's presence in the film is disturbing. He's chainsmoken,

2157
01:58:16,400 --> 01:58:21,760
Speaker 2: becomes quite literally furious at anything George Lutz was involved in,

2158
01:58:22,520 --> 01:58:27,880
Speaker 2: and just he's a generally haunted mien, I'll say. But

2159
01:58:28,880 --> 01:58:32,080
Speaker 2: he also said that paranormal experience happened in the house,

2160
01:58:32,560 --> 01:58:36,720
Speaker 2: whispering voices, moving furniture. But more pertinently, he describes George

2161
01:58:36,800 --> 01:58:39,880
Speaker 2: Lutz as a vain, controlling man who kept his family

2162
01:58:39,920 --> 01:58:43,600
Speaker 2: on a tight leash. He claims Lutz was abusive both

2163
01:58:43,720 --> 01:58:48,760
Speaker 2: verbally and physically. Indie Wire in the review wrote, Daniel's

2164
01:58:48,840 --> 01:58:52,640
Speaker 2: stories seemed less like tales of supernatural tear and more

2165
01:58:52,720 --> 01:58:55,200
Speaker 2: like the coping mechanism of a young boy who has

2166
01:58:55,240 --> 01:58:58,800
Speaker 2: been sexually assaulted by a parental figure. So I I

2167
01:58:58,840 --> 01:59:04,480
Speaker 2: couldn't find anything else about sexual abuse specifically, But between

2168
01:59:04,520 --> 01:59:08,800
Speaker 2: Christopher and Daniel both having these definite, quote unquote definite

2169
01:59:08,800 --> 01:59:12,800
Speaker 2: memories of the paranormal, but also both hating their dad,

2170
01:59:14,000 --> 01:59:17,960
Speaker 2: it stands to reason that this entire thing with something

2171
01:59:17,960 --> 01:59:22,320
Speaker 2: that he just berated them into believing, which is horrifying.

2172
01:59:23,280 --> 01:59:26,480
Speaker 2: There's a psychiatrist in the film who was later quoted

2173
01:59:26,520 --> 01:59:31,080
Speaker 2: as saying this is reminiscent of cases of sexual abuse

2174
01:59:31,680 --> 01:59:34,760
Speaker 2: in which kids are because kids of a young age

2175
01:59:34,760 --> 01:59:38,120
Speaker 2: are malleable, and if you get at them from a

2176
01:59:38,120 --> 01:59:42,440
Speaker 2: certain angle with repetition or abuse or physical verbal abuse,

2177
01:59:43,400 --> 01:59:47,040
Speaker 2: they will believe something that's been planted into them for

2178
01:59:47,120 --> 01:59:51,280
Speaker 2: the rest of their life. And that's just that's why

2179
01:59:51,320 --> 01:59:53,600
Speaker 2: I have it out for old Georgie, a man like

2180
01:59:53,640 --> 01:59:55,960
Speaker 2: the fact that you had these young kids who were

2181
01:59:56,000 --> 02:00:01,760
Speaker 2: not yours, so fervently believing in the normal while also

2182
02:00:01,880 --> 02:00:05,800
Speaker 2: hating your guts for whatever you did to them. That

2183
02:00:05,960 --> 02:00:09,280
Speaker 2: is a crime beyond the pale.

2184
02:00:10,480 --> 02:00:12,320
Speaker 1: Well, the only way we can really get out of

2185
02:00:12,320 --> 02:00:20,520
Speaker 1: this really sad, horrific, depressing anecdote is real estate, historic,

2186
02:00:20,640 --> 02:00:25,600
Speaker 1: real estate, and architecture. We're going to talk about the

2187
02:00:25,680 --> 02:00:31,120
Speaker 1: true star of this episode, the Amityville Horrhouse, the nineteen

2188
02:00:31,240 --> 02:00:34,520
Speaker 1: twenty seven Dutch colonial house at one one two Ocean

2189
02:00:34,520 --> 02:00:38,120
Speaker 1: Avenue by bedroom, four bathroom gets a great light ocean front.

2190
02:00:38,320 --> 02:00:40,520
Speaker 1: Look at that, What a great place. In a two

2191
02:00:40,520 --> 02:00:43,320
Speaker 1: thousand interview with The History Channel, Kathy Lutz claimed that

2192
02:00:43,360 --> 02:00:46,480
Speaker 1: a tragedy befell every family that ever lived in the house,

2193
02:00:47,360 --> 02:00:52,320
Speaker 1: which is another complete lie. Jay Andsen's book suggests that

2194
02:00:52,360 --> 02:00:54,920
Speaker 1: the property is cursed because it had once belonged to

2195
02:00:55,080 --> 02:00:59,120
Speaker 1: John Ketchum, a suspected witch who had fled Salem, Massachusetts

2196
02:00:59,160 --> 02:01:03,160
Speaker 1: before taking up press. And it's in Amityville.

2197
02:01:03,560 --> 02:01:07,600
Speaker 2: Not not true, unsurprising.

2198
02:01:07,680 --> 02:01:07,800
Speaker 4: Yes.

2199
02:01:08,400 --> 02:01:10,840
Speaker 1: James Cromarty, who bought the house with his wife after

2200
02:01:10,880 --> 02:01:13,839
Speaker 1: the Lutzes, said it in August nineteen seventy nine press conference,

2201
02:01:14,080 --> 02:01:16,680
Speaker 1: I was born in Amityville. I knew every family that

2202
02:01:16,720 --> 02:01:19,040
Speaker 1: grew up in this house. The lets to say that

2203
02:01:19,120 --> 02:01:21,280
Speaker 1: every family that was brought up in this house had

2204
02:01:21,320 --> 02:01:23,800
Speaker 1: bad things happen to them. It happens to be a

2205
02:01:23,800 --> 02:01:26,160
Speaker 1: fact that only one family had a tragedy happened to

2206
02:01:26,200 --> 02:01:29,440
Speaker 1: them in that house. The Cromarties remained in the house

2207
02:01:30,160 --> 02:01:34,040
Speaker 1: without anything especially evil happening until nineteen eighty seven, when

2208
02:01:34,040 --> 02:01:38,880
Speaker 1: it was purchased by Jean and Peter O'Neill. They this

2209
02:01:38,960 --> 02:01:41,320
Speaker 1: is unforgivable as far as I'm concerned. They changed the

2210
02:01:41,320 --> 02:01:45,600
Speaker 1: famed eye windows to square ones that gets to attract

2211
02:01:45,800 --> 02:01:50,760
Speaker 1: fewer onlookers, and filled in the Dafayo's pool. Almost ten

2212
02:01:50,840 --> 02:01:54,520
Speaker 1: years later, on June tenth, nineteen ninety seven, Brian Wilson,

2213
02:01:54,960 --> 02:01:58,480
Speaker 1: No not that one, purchased the house for approximately three

2214
02:01:58,560 --> 02:02:02,440
Speaker 1: hundred and ten thousand dollars. He remained there for thirteen years,

2215
02:02:02,440 --> 02:02:04,560
Speaker 1: putting the house up for sale in twenty ten for

2216
02:02:04,680 --> 02:02:07,520
Speaker 1: one point one five million dollars. It didn't sell for

2217
02:02:07,560 --> 02:02:10,120
Speaker 1: that though. It was purchased for nine hundred and ten

2218
02:02:10,160 --> 02:02:13,600
Speaker 1: thousand by Caroline D'Antonio and her husband David, who lived

2219
02:02:13,600 --> 02:02:16,360
Speaker 1: there until twenty sixteen, when it went on the market again,

2220
02:02:16,920 --> 02:02:20,040
Speaker 1: listed for eight hundred and fifty thousand. It again didn't

2221
02:02:20,040 --> 02:02:22,880
Speaker 1: make market price and was eventually sold in March twenty

2222
02:02:22,960 --> 02:02:27,640
Speaker 1: seventeen or six hundred and five thousand dollars, which I

2223
02:02:27,680 --> 02:02:30,240
Speaker 1: don't oh Man for Ocean Front and Long Island.

2224
02:02:30,240 --> 02:02:36,000
Speaker 2: That's a bar bar haw right, thank you home. You

2225
02:02:36,040 --> 02:02:39,600
Speaker 2: know we joke, We joke here on TMI Jordan. Would

2226
02:02:39,600 --> 02:02:39,920
Speaker 2: you agree?

2227
02:02:39,960 --> 02:02:41,680
Speaker 1: I think we do. Yeah, we joke.

2228
02:02:42,120 --> 02:02:45,600
Speaker 2: But remember at the heart of this six people were

2229
02:02:45,640 --> 02:02:50,200
Speaker 2: shot in their beds at night. To that end, the

2230
02:02:50,240 --> 02:02:54,240
Speaker 2: Amityville saga is a truly American one. Rich kids offering

2231
02:02:54,280 --> 02:02:58,000
Speaker 2: their parents for money, grubby opportunists coming in and peddling

2232
02:02:58,040 --> 02:03:02,160
Speaker 2: lies to profit from a genuine tragedy. Hollywood, a succession

2233
02:03:02,160 --> 02:03:05,560
Speaker 2: of lawsuits, But the most resonance that I find with

2234
02:03:05,600 --> 02:03:07,920
Speaker 2: it at this point is the constant churn of these

2235
02:03:08,000 --> 02:03:10,600
Speaker 2: new low rent films that are just tagged with the

2236
02:03:10,600 --> 02:03:14,240
Speaker 2: Amityville name. Four of them came out this year alone, Wow,

2237
02:03:14,960 --> 02:03:17,240
Speaker 2: and researching the varying lists of them that have been

2238
02:03:17,280 --> 02:03:21,040
Speaker 2: compiled online starts to resemble the infinite scroll experience of

2239
02:03:21,080 --> 02:03:25,560
Speaker 2: social media. That's the most American thing about it. Tragedy

2240
02:03:25,640 --> 02:03:31,760
Speaker 2: becomes farce, becomes just content, an entire cottage industry of

2241
02:03:31,840 --> 02:03:34,680
Speaker 2: low effort nonsense built on a lie started by a

2242
02:03:34,680 --> 02:03:39,920
Speaker 2: couple of carnival barkers. What's more haunting than that? I'm

2243
02:03:39,960 --> 02:03:43,480
Speaker 2: Alex Sigel. This has been too much information, and.

2244
02:03:43,480 --> 02:03:46,320
Speaker 1: I'm Jordan run Tag. We'll catch you next time.

2245
02:03:51,640 --> 02:03:54,800
Speaker 2: Too Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio. The show's

2246
02:03:54,800 --> 02:03:58,200
Speaker 2: executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtogg. The show's

2247
02:03:58,240 --> 02:04:02,040
Speaker 2: supervising producer is Michael All. Through June, the show was researched,

2248
02:04:02,160 --> 02:04:05,160
Speaker 2: written and hosted by Jordan Rundgg and Alex Heigel.

2249
02:04:05,000 --> 02:04:08,240
Speaker 1: With original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra.

2250
02:04:08,560 --> 02:04:10,600
Speaker 2: If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave

2251
02:04:10,680 --> 02:04:11,160
Speaker 2: us a review.

2252
02:04:11,400 --> 02:04:15,760
Speaker 1: For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

2253
02:04:15,960 --> 02:04:17,680
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.