The infamous Amityville home was sold to George and Kathy Lutz in December 1975 for $80,000.
The Amityville case began with a real mass murder and later became a famous “haunting” story whose accuracy is heavily disputed. On November 13, 1974, 23-year-old Ronald “Butch” DeFeo Jr. shot and killed his parents and four younger siblings with a rifle as they slept in their beds at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, Long Island; he was convicted of second-degree murder the following year and died in prison in 2021.
In December 1975, George and Kathy Lutz bought the Dutch Colonial house at a discount and moved in with their three children, only to flee 28 days later, claiming they had been driven out by violent paranormal events—waking every night at 3:15 a.m., swarms of flies, oozing slime, levitations, and demonic apparitions.
Their account became the basis of Jay Anson’s 1977 bestseller The Amityville Horror: A True Story, written largely from interviews with the Lutzes, and of the 1979 hit film starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder, which launched a long franchise of sequels and a 2005 remake.
The murders are undisputed, but the haunting story is widely regarded as exaggerated or fabricated: DeFeo’s lawyer later said he and the Lutzes invented much of it “over many bottles of wine,” investigators found major factual contradictions, and a judge described the book as largely fiction, even as the Lutzes continued to stand by their claims.
Adjusted for inflation, $80,000 in 1975 is equal to about $499,505 today.
