(CNN) — Ronald DeFeo Jr., the killer in “The Amityville Horror” case, has died, according to a spokesperson for the New York State prisons department.
DeFeo, who was 69, was serving a sentence of 25 years to life for the 1974 murders of six members of his family. He had been incarcerated at Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, 30 miles west of Poughkeepsie, and he died on Friday, March 12, at Albany Medical Center, the agency’s spokesperson said.
His cause of death was not released. An autopsy will be conducted, and the Albany County Medical Examiner’s Office will decide whether the results will be made publicly available, the spokesperson said.
DeFeo was convicted of the fatal shootings of his father, mother and four siblings aged 9 to 18 inside their home in Amityville, on New York’s Long Island. He was 23 at the time of the killings.
No motive was ever determined for the crimes; his attorneys pursued an insanity defense during the trial in 1975. DeFeo was convicted on six counts of second-degree murder.
In his varying accounts of that night, DeFeo blamed his mother and his 18-year-old sister, Dawn, for some of the killings.
The house remained vacant for more than a year after the murders. In December 1975, George and Kathy Lutz and their three children moved in. They stayed 28 days and then fled, claiming they were terrorized by an evil spirit in the house.
Their account inspired Jay Anson’s 1977 best-seller “The Amityville Horror,” a fictionalized version of the events. The book spawned a series of spinoffs, including a 1979 hit movie starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder.
The home has since been occupied by a series of residents, none of whom have reported problems like the Lutzes’. It was most recently sold in 2017 for $605,000.
