ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The man convicted of slaughtering his parents and four siblings in a home that later inspired the “The Amityville Horror” book and movies has died. The state Department of Corrections and Community Services Prison officials said Monday that Ronald DeFeo died Friday at Albany Medical Center. The 69-year-old was taken to the hospital Feb. 2 from a prison in New York’s Catskill Mountains. DeFeo was serving a sentence of 25 years to life in the 1974 killings in Amityville, on suburban Long Island. The home became the basis of a horror-movie classic after another family briefly lived there about a year after the killings and claimed the house was haunted.
Photo: FILE – In this Nov. 15, 1974 file photo, Ronald DeFeo Jr., center, leaves Suffolk County district court after a hearing, on New York’s Long Island. DeFeo, the man convicted of slaughtering his parents and four siblings in a home that later inspired the book and movie “The Amityville Horror” died Friday, March 12, 2021, at Albany Medical Center, where he was taken Feb. 2 from a prison in New York’s Catskill Mountains, prison officials said Monday, March 15. He was 69. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
