I have never been convinced Ronald "Butch" DeFeo Jr acted alone in this crime. But its possible. Since he keeps changing his story we will never know. It was an extremely dysfunctional family home with a very abusive father.
"Butch DeFeo has told at least a dozen different versions of the events of that fateful night. Some of them have been downright ridiculous, including his claims that his own mother, Louise DeFeo, was involved. However, the one common thread to all of DeFeo's stories include reference to his sister Dawn being involved. To not investigate Dawn’s alleged involvement would be to ignore a huge facet of the story, so yes, it was examined extensively, along with other versions of the murders."
You are falling for revisionist claims. His story only changed a decade after he was convicted. He met a fellow con-artist and they concocted a scam to try to get the DeFeo estate by claiming they were married and her daughter was his child. At that point he claimed his mother killed the kids and when that went over poorly he changed to claiming his sister did it and used that in a motion he filed to try to get trial. After that motion failed he and his friends admitted they lied. His fake wife admitted it before the hearing and refused to testify.
His fake wife tried peddling her story to different people and eventually hooked up with Ric Osuna and together they wrote a book that is basically pure fiction. She tells fairy tales about interacting with the victims and made up how dysfunctional the family was the only dysfunctional one was Ron Jr. He was basically a bum who wanted people to think he a bigshot and was very jealous of his younger siblings. To give you an idea just how jealous he was, he was mad that his father bought his brother both crutches and a wheelchair and felt that his father should have given him the same amount of cash spent on such.
Anyway the fake wife and Osuna took some of the old claims DeFeo used in his motion and other claims he didn't use but was toying with and made up additional ones and crafted an entire story in which the fake wife was the star though she never even met the victims and the entire tale was fantasy. She even took real stories and inserted herself in place of DeFeo's actual girlfriend of the time.
You might say why did they think they could get away with such nonsense- simple the public is gullible and loves conspiracies and most into conspiracies are too lazy to do much research. It worked because a large number of people feel for it, so much so that a producer who published a version of the book decided to make a docudrama based on it. It was very poorly done and so much of a flop that they haven't even bothered to finish the last installment but it still has a following.
DeFeo was unable to sue for defamation because he had no good name to injure he was ruled defamation proof and of course the victims could not protect their own reputations. .
The conartist woman (Geraldine Gates) died recently. Her son spoke out against her lies and was actually sued by the producer of the documdrama to try to silence him. A lot of the research that I did along with others was taken by the son or his pals and placed on a facebook page called Amityville Murders Fact checker.
The documents and many of the points were cut and pasted from the Amityville FAQ forum.
My largest contribution was refuting the lies about another gun being used in the murder and obtaining documents proving that Geraldine Gates fraudulently obtained an ID under the name Geraldine DeFeo. This ID was what Ric Osuna held out as proof she was indeed his wife. Prior to DeFeo's Motion the press and police learned that the marriage certificate was forged. hey took Geraldine's marriage certificate from her first husband and erased the groom and "6" in "1964" and then typed in DeFeo's name and a 7 so it read 1974. Naturally NJ vital statistics found no record of this marriage and the certificate number matched the 1964 wedding. This is what caused Geraldine Gates to give police an affidavit admitting everything was a lie and why she refused to testify in his favor at the hearing. Anyway the application I obtained a copy of proves she used the forged marriage certificate to get the ID in the last name DeFeo and she listed a false address even on the application. The county never checked with NJ to see if it was valid. That is why no one outside the county would accept the ID, it was considered a joke.
I left out that in 1989 while still married to her third husband she married DeFeo. In 1989 New York law changed by permitting inmates to marry. They took advantage and he married her thinking somehow that would bolster his claims of them being married at the time of the murders. New York didn't check with other states to see if she was already married. That is why bigamy is possible states don't communicate with one another about such. She never took on the DeFeo name officially since the marriage was bigamous and back at home none of her neighbors even knew she married him. She continued living with Gates till she died. They even filed bankruptcy together. After the bid to get released failed DeFeo found a new woman he wanted to marry and he asked Geraldine to divorce him but she refused to do so. She still wanted to try making money from the sham marriage.
DeFeo didn't know she was married at the time and that he easily could have just had the marriage voided. He ended up fighting for the right to divorce her even though NY law didn't permit incarcerated spouses to sue for divorce. New precedent was set letting him divorce because they met, courted and married while he was in jail and her refusing to visit him was considered abandonment. While she was busy fighting the divorce she filed for Bankruptcy jointly with husband Gates! Under federal law spouses can file together.
If you ever want to read a book about the real events the book High Hopes by the prosecutor who tried the case is it. That was written well before the soap opera idiocy that was made up decades later.
