Last Update on the Left - Episode 10 - Amityville Reloaded

Summary

Last Podcast On The Left: "Last Update on the Left - Episode 10 - Amityville Reloaded"

Release Date: January 2, 2026
Hosts: Marcus Parks, Ed Larson, Travis McElroy

Main Theme / Purpose

This episode of the "Last Update on the Left" revisits and expands upon the infamous Amityville case, blending true crime and paranormal mythology. The hosts dissect the story's evolution—from the real and brutal DeFeo family murders to the media phenomenon of the Amityville haunting and the Lutz family's claims. They reflect on their own changing perspectives, how myth overtakes truth, and cultural impacts, all spiced with comedic banter and personal anecdotes.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Re-examining Amityville: From Series Coda to Expansion

• Marcus Parks positions this episode as a blend of ‘update’ and ‘expansion’—taking a deeper, evolved look at the Amityville story beyond their original series.
  • [04:13] “I wouldn’t necessarily say this is an update... another way to refer to this show... is last expansion on the left.”
• Comparative framework with other Last Podcast Network shows and how certain details are often left out initially but are worth revisiting.

2. Origins of the Myth: The DeFeo Murders

• The hosts recount the facts of the 1974 murders committed by Ronald “Butch” DeFeo Jr.—who killed his entire family in their beds at 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville.
• The setting of Amityville itself is discussed as a working-class, now affluent, Long Island neighborhood, dispelling earlier beliefs that it was always affluent.
  • [10:59] Ed: “We said the Amityville house was in an affluent neighborhood... and now we’re not as broke...”

The Crime Scene Breakdown

• Details of how the bodies were found, the method of killing, and the disturbing element: no one in the house appeared to resist or escape being shot in their sleep.
• The hosts debate plausible explanations—paranormal, psychological, and practical—for how six people could be shot in their beds without anyone waking up or escaping.
  • [17:41 Travis]: “How do you execute six people and no one gets out of bed?”
  • [17:52 Marcus]: “That’s been the question behind the Ronnie DeFeo murders for, you know, going on almost 50 years now.”

Explanations Considered

• Psychological states during traumatic events, the unfamiliarity of gunshots, and familial dynamics.
• The notorious “demon” explanation as part of later defenses.

3. Myth-Making: From True Crime to Paranormal Blockbuster

• The Lutz Family moves in after the murders—beginning the paranormal claims soon after arrival.
• Initially, the hosts themselves leaned toward belief in the haunting, only to later realize the legend was largely constructed for profit and legal strategy.
  • [08:08 Marcus]: “I remember... looking into this story and being like, flabbergasted that the whole thing was kind of a hoax on the part of the Lutzes. Or rather... blown out so much.”

Linking to Broader Pop Culture

• Influence of "The Exorcist" (1973) on the Amityville narrative and America's appetite for demonic or haunted house stories in the 1970s.
  • [35:21 Ed]: “I actually blame a lot of paranormal stories from this time period on the goddamn Exorcist...”

4. Expose the Hoax: Collaborations and Contradictions

• Lutzes’ collaboration with Ronald DeFeo’s defense attorney, William Weber, to merge haunting claims with legal defense, strengthening an insanity plea and boosting book/movie deals.
  • [34:06 Marcus]: “They were in contact with Butch DeFeo’s defense attorney... he wanted to combine their stories to create an insanity plea.”

The Making and Selling of a Modern Haunting

• The Lutzes quickly sought media and legal partnerships after leaving the house, recording tapes and working toward a marketable story.
• Later, former family members, especially Christopher Lutz (under “Christopher Quarantino”), publicly contested key details, asserting their memories drastically differed from the book and films.

5. Memory, Trauma, and Narrative Ownership

• Discussion of memory reliability, especially in children (Christopher was only 7), and how growing up within a myth shapes identity and personal recollection.
  • [45:07 Ed]: “It’s not about what he directly remembers... but then it’s written in a book... turned to nine movies... your childhood home is the picture of haunted houses... you’ve made that memory real.”
• Christopher’s criticisms: The haunting story was exaggerated and altered for mass appeal; real traumatic events (for example, the dog nearly choking itself out of fear) were omitted or simplified.

6. Dissecting Motivation and the Lutz Legacy

• George Lutz’s Occult Interests:

  • George is described as more an occult “dabbler” than devout Christian, with a mix of spiritual practices that may have influenced the story’s shape.
  • Family dynamics included abuse, and the suggestion that George’s own behavior may have invited further strangeness—per Christopher, “George Lutz invited a demonic entity into the house.” [51:21 Marcus]

• The Drive for Profit:

  • The Lutzes’ financial distress and quick pivot to commercialization of their experiences.
  • Reminder that none of the later owners ever reported paranormal happenings, and neighbors dispute the wilder claims.
    • [34:41 Travis]: “No one else has felt paranormal in the house since.”
    • [34:46 Marcus]: “No, no, no. Everyone who’s ever lived there... refuted a lot of George Lutz’s claims... None of that shit happened.”

• Litigation and Tragedy:

  • George Lutz’s later years dominated by court feuds—even suing his stepson over the “Amityville Horror” brand.
  • He died in 2006, coincidentally on the day a lawsuit was settled.
    • [56:36 Marcus]: “And on the day that it was settled in 2007, George Lutz died.”
    • [56:44 Marcus]: “You spend your life in litigation and then you become a ghost. Wow.”

7. The Ongoing Spectacle: Amityville in Pop Culture

• The Amityville series has spawned at least ten films (originally more than the hosts realized), remakes, and endless direct-to-video spinoffs—ranging from "Amityville 3D" to "Amityville Dollhouse."

  • [57:25 Ed]: “Yeah, dude. And they’ve all got... Amityville 3D I liked.”
  • Full litany of titles and even the ongoing use of the Amityville name in unrelated horror properties.

• Local reaction: The town of Amityville largely dislikes the association, as it draws true crime/horror tourists and morbid curiosity.

  • [59:10 Marcus]: “They do not [love it]... No one does. Their name being a byword for haunted house.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Marcus Parks [08:08]:
  “The myth often persists so much longer than the truth... one myth turns into another, and before you know it, everyone thinks Ed Gein’s a cannibal when he’s not.”
• Travis McElroy [17:41]:
  “How do you execute six people and no one gets out of bed?”
• Marcus Parks [34:41]:
  “No, no, no. Everyone who’s ever lived there... refuted a lot of George Lutz’s claims... None of that shit happened.”
• Ed Larson [35:21]:
  “I actually blame a lot of paranormal stories from this time period on the goddamn Exorcist.”
• Marcus Parks [45:07]:
  “Yes, it’s not about what he directly remembers, but also... the narrative not just is created by your father... but then it’s written in a book, blown out into a movie... you’ve made that memory real.”
• Marcus Parks [56:44]:
  “You spend your life in litigation and then you become a ghost. Wow.”

Lighter/Comedic Moments

• Extended riffing on New York and Long Island family habits (plastic covers on furniture, inheritance jokes).
• Personal childhood tales about teachers, fighting, and birthday parties—showcasing classic Last Podcast chemistry and tangents.
• Recitation of the many unintentionally hilarious Amityville sequel titles, with mockery and affection.

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 04:13 – Framing the episode: "Last Expansion on the Left"
• 08:08 – Initial discoveries about the Amityville “hoax”
• 10:14–12:42 – Anatomy of the DeFeo murders; crime scene details
• 17:41–20:04 – How did the killings occur without any resistance?
• 23:42–24:23 – DeFeo’s background, shifting explanations, and mafia connections
• 34:06 – Lutzes collaborate with DeFeo’s attorney for legal/financial gain
• 34:41 – Refutation of paranormal claims by subsequent owners
• 35:21 – The Exorcist’s influence on paranormal storytelling
• 45:07–47:15 – The fallibility of memory, especially for Christopher Lutz
• 51:21 – Christopher Lutz's version: George Lutz as occult dabbler/invoker
• 56:36–56:44 – George Lutz’s litigious legacy and death: “You become a ghost.”

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Flow & Tone

• The episode is conversational, comedic, and frequently irreverent, sticking to the show’s signature blend of gallows humor and genuine research.
• The hosts balance myth-busting with empathy for the real traumas at the story’s center.
• Throughout, personal experiences and 'off-topic' bits add color and context, while the core focus stays on the untangling of fact, fiction, and cultural impact.

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Conclusion / Takeaway

"Amityville Reloaded" is a critical retrospective on an American true-crime legend, shining light on how myth overtakes reality in both popular media and personal memory. Through a mix of skepticism, empathy, and humor, the hosts reveal that the Amityville haunting was less a supernatural event and more a product of cultural moment, media sensationalism, and opportunistic myth-making. Yet—whether real, imagined, or somewhere in-between—it left an indelible mark on America’s horror consciousness.

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Transcript

[Travis McElroy]

What's wrong with Ben? In Primate, a beloved family chimp suddenly turns everything they taught him, he's now using against them. Primate is smart, intense and packed with jaw dropping moments. Ben is calculating, powerful, and disturbingly human. This is the kind of horror film that shocks you when you least expect it. It's already sitting at 92% on rotten tomatoes and premiered to reviews at festivals worldwide. Go see Primate in theaters January 9th when it hits theaters. Do not wait. Grab a seat and bring someone you can squeeze during the scary parts. America, America, you used to be so.

[Marcus Parks]

Fun but now you go to bed.

[Travis McElroy]

At night scrolling on your phone.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, listen up, America. Carnival is here with words, world class brew and ropes course too. And comedy and snorkeling and dining like everything from the sea to shining sea.

[Ed Larson]

Find your fun [e-mail]. carnival is calling ships registry Bahamas in Panama.

[Ad Read Voice]

My name is special agent Rebecca Henderson.

[Ed Larson]

Thursday on NBC.

[Ad Read Voice]

There was an explosion at a top secret prison. Some of the most infamous killers broke free.

[Ed Larson]

The hunting party is back.

[Marcus Parks]

We're going in loud.

[Ed Larson]

FBI.

[Travis McElroy]

The stakes have never been higher.

[Ad Read Voice]

The longer they're out there, the more dangerous they're gonna become.

[Travis McElroy]

And the kill.

[Marcus Parks]

Never seen anything like this before. Not even close.

[Ed Larson]

Have never been more twisted. This is Next Level. The Hunting Party.

[Travis McElroy]

The thrilling season premiere Thursday on NBC.

[Marcus Parks]

That's when the cannibalism started.

[Ed Larson]

Last update on the left. Honestly, if I came for money, I think everyone would know.

[Marcus Parks]

The rings.

[Ed Larson]

Do they talk? Sorry, sorry. My bracelet cut. Your daughter. She shouldn't be trying to get past me in the Starbucks line. It's my bracelet. I don't care. I don't care. I can make coffee at home.

[Travis McElroy]

Sure.

[Ed Larson]

Better coffee than this because of my $1 million coffee machine. But unfortunately, no. I'm here amongst the villagers.

[Marcus Parks]

Welcome to last update on the left. I'm Marcus Sparks with the Nepo baby.

[Ed Larson]

Henry Zapraski. Yeah, just me, Sydney Sweeney, hanging out with old fashioned Paris Hilton and Kirk Douglas.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, you're just sitting there on all your that whacking hut money. Yeah, you're just sitting there. Oh, man. You guys have no idea what kind of inheritance you can get off of NYPD pension.

[Ed Larson]

Yep, it's actually not that bad. Well, no, it is.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Travis McElroy]

Jersey cops pension's pretty good.

[Ed Larson]

It's fine. But at least I know thanks to my mom. She says don't worry, your funerals are paid full.

[Travis McElroy]

Agree.

[Marcus Parks]

And we're here with Ed Larson, who, as I understand, paid for his mother's.

[Travis McElroy]

Funeral and my Father's.

[Ed Larson]

Wow. You're like an executive producer.

[Marcus Parks]

It was. Your mother's funeral was the funniest funeral I've ever attended.

[Travis McElroy]

Thank you. It was a good one. I had some jokes, we had some movies, Moves. Had a good time, passed out some Reese's, but Peanut Butter Cups.

[Ed Larson]

It was awesome.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, really. Honestly, it was a really good show.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, bro, it was an awesome funeral.

[Travis McElroy]

It really was the best one I've ever been to.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, it really was. You threw a great funeral.

[Travis McElroy]

Pizza and shit.

[Ed Larson]

I can't wait to get to do another one. And I can't wait till I get to do yours.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah, well, you wait. You wait. There's going to be some people dying soon.

[Ed Larson]

Really excited. Really getting into the year. Yeah, I'm ready for 2024.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

In June.

[Ed Larson]

I'm ready. Get me out there. I started at the gym. Nice. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, today, the subject that we are revisiting, and this is. I wouldn't necessarily say that this is an update. I would say that another way to refer to this show is not just last update on the left, but last expansion on the left.

[Ed Larson]

Interesting, because I love the playfully expanded band things with my friends.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Travis McElroy]

Well, also, you're explaining it to me, so that's good.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, yes, we're also explaining all of this stuff. Much of this stuff is brand new to Ed, so, you know, we're. We're bringing him in. But, yeah, this is. It's kind of a lot like how on no Dogs will do, like, kind of coda episodes to series where.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, because they'll think there'll be cool things that, you know, we'll have to cut out. Like, for example, like, one of the cool things that we're having I think we might have to cut out of Cannes is that the lead singer of can was also in a German production of Hair with Donna Summer. And Donna Summer's first ever single was a German version of the Age of Aquarius called Das Vossa man, which translates literally to the water man.

[Ed Larson]

That's incredible.

[Marcus Parks]

It's the. It's a fucking. Dude in this version. It's so fucking good. It's Donna Summer. It's like a decade before I feel love.

[Ed Larson]

What?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Travis McElroy]

Oh, wow.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's really. I mean, it's fucking incredible. That's. Actually, if we. I may get a little bit more.

[Ed Larson]

Into that already here you have jumped into the thing you were cutting from no dogs, and you're putting it onto this show, and we're probably. And we're gonna have to cut this probably this time from this episode.

[Marcus Parks]

No, this is just something that is a little bit. We're just gonna give you a little bit of a freebie. A bit. A freebie? Yeah. Donna Summer, it's already free.

[Ed Larson]

I will say no. No dogs is free. We have a podcast. You can get them.

[Marcus Parks]

That's right. Donna Summer, her name actually comes because she or the name Summer comes from the German man that she married because she lived in Germany for, like, many, many, many years. She married a man named Sommer. And when her first single was released, it was misprinted as Summer. And so she figured, that sounds a lot better. That looks a lot better. And so she was dawn of Summer from then on.

[Travis McElroy]

Oh, I just thought it was because she was hot.

[Ed Larson]

So was she shot in the head by Ronnie Defeo?

[Marcus Parks]

No, but it's very possible that right before Ronnie Defeo killed his entire family, he may have been listening to I Feel Love. He may have been listening to Donnie Summers.

[Travis McElroy]

He could have been on at the bar when he went and was like, oh, my God, my family. I almost defecated.

[Marcus Parks]

So.

[Ed Larson]

I love Donna Summer, though.

[Marcus Parks]

I love Donna Summer's incredible.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah. What's not to love?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Well, okay, so let's go through. Why don't we. Like, how do I want to do this? Do we want to just kind of.

[Travis McElroy]

Go through the Amityville overview?

[Marcus Parks]

Overview.

[Ed Larson]

Because when we first.

[Travis McElroy]

Surprisingly enough, I've never even seen the movie.

[Ed Larson]

Whoa, you've never seen the am.

[Travis McElroy]

It's like the one, like, classic horror movie I've never seen.

[Ed Larson]

It's wonderful. You should really watch it. It's one of the best haunted house movies ever.

[Marcus Parks]

I'll actually say, I think it's a little overrated.

[Ed Larson]

I'm better at this. I like it. I think it's good. We'll just know. When we covered the Amityville horror back in the day, we started realizing, as we researched, because just so you. Just to catch you up on before we Catch Eddie up. Is that when we did that series, partially, it was. We were at the time totally convinced that it was one of the most legit hauntings of all time, because that's all we had ever heard. We had heard it from the news, we had heard it from her parents. We had heard from our kids, friends. It was throughout all of pop culture that the look of that house with the two eyes that look like the two windows that look like eyes, it haunted entire generations and then generations after. And we thought, like, oh, this will be great, because we're always looking for good, meaty paranormal stories to tell on the store, on the show. And it was, for us, a very significant story because it was probably one of the first times that we popped open the guts of a story and we realized, like, oh, it's actually not about the haunting at all. It's about the true crime story that's at the center of this.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Travis McElroy]

Nothing scarier than real estate.

[Ed Larson]

Hey, anytunes.com.

[Marcus Parks]

But, yeah, we did. Really did. Like, I actually remember, like, starting to look into this story and being, like, flabbergasted that the whole thing was kind of a hoax on the part of the Lutzes. I mean, not necessarily a hoax, but rather was blown out so much by the Lutzes and how this had kind of been common knowledge for many years. But that's one of the things that we sort of find on last podcast again and again, is that the myth often persists so much longer than the truth. But, you know, one myth turns into another, turns into another, and before you know it, everyone thinks Ed Gein's a cannibal when he's not. Yeah. So to give you a little bit of an overview of what happened before the Lutzes moved in, the story that the Lutzes built upon was the murder perpetrated by Ronnie Butch Defeo.

[Ed Larson]

I love a Butch. Yeah, Yeah, I know. Uncle Butch.

[Marcus Parks]

How was he? He was alive.

[Ed Larson]

He was. Honestly. Loved him. Yeah, Loved him. He was great. Super fun. He always gave me a lot of money. Christmas. Yeah. Yeah. He was in the. He was in the sanitation department.

[Marcus Parks]

Management.

[Ed Larson]

Good money.

[Marcus Parks]

Did that mean. Does that mean that he got, like, some fun off of the sidewalk?

[Ed Larson]

Yes. He always had free. Weird. I remember he had a big flat screen TV that he fixed. I always remember that. I always, like, he gave us toys that he got out of the dump. That's great. It was awesome. It was all fixed. Yeah, he went and got it fixed. Yeah, he's got stuff.

[Marcus Parks]

Got stuff out of the dump. You fix it up. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

But also largely, he was in management by the time he got to management. You make good money.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Like six figures. Especially back in the 80s. That was good money.

[Travis McElroy]

Especially when you hide bodies.

[Ed Larson]

There's nothing wrong with the New York City sanitation department, I think. What an efficient system.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, speaking of bodies, at 6:30pm on November 13, 1974, the patrons of Henry's Bar in Amityville, New York, were alerted to Ronnie Butch DeFeo Jr. Yelling, You gotta help me. I think my mom and dad were shot.

[Ed Larson]

So One of my favorite act outs I got to do. Yeah. Of him coming in and fighting all the men. Because when we did the original series and he comes at me like, you got happy. And it was like all the guys trying to help him park. Long island is a special, special dumb place, you know, Rob, I love Long Island. Long Island. For me, from being from Queens, Long island was like the Hamptons to me.

[Travis McElroy]

Long Islands are in Long island, technically.

[Ed Larson]

I know. Don't tell them. Don't tell people in the Hamptons actually.

[Marcus Parks]

Being Carolina, like when we got. When we finally bought a car, like after Covid, we would go out to Long island because that's what the good grocery stores are.

[Travis McElroy]

That's what fancy.

[Marcus Parks]

That's where it was fancy.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

But the.

[Ed Larson]

But now I know it was not. Now I know it's just a working class neighborhood.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

We thought that was a correction. I'll give immediately. We said the Amityville house was in an affluent neighborhood. And I think that was because we were really, really, really broke.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

We did the episode and now we're not as broke.

[Travis McElroy]

House, bedrooms.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I went in like 2022. It was. I thought it was a super nice neighborhood.

[Ed Larson]

People got. I got a lot of shade on. I think it's because there's you guys. Long Island. Everybody has a different. Everybody gets to fight.

[Travis McElroy]

There is a boathouse. It's nice.

[Ed Larson]

Neighborhood. It is a nice neighborhood.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's nice. Now, thank you for coming in. Rob saying that it's nice.

[Ed Larson]

It's very nice. Island expert. I've been there several times. Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

And it's nice.

[Ed Larson]

It's very nice.

[Marcus Parks]

All right. It's nice.

[Travis McElroy]

Can I. Because the Long island medium. Ever been to the Amityville house?

[Ed Larson]

Actually, it's a really good question. Continue on. I'm gonna look it up.

[Marcus Parks]

All right. Well, the funny thing about him coming in and saying, like, you gotta help me, everyone help me, is he came in, like, panting, like he just run from his house. Yeah. And everyone's like, all right, great, let's go outside. And he's parked right in front of the bar. So he sat out in front of the bar, psyching himself up and like, okay, how's it gonna look? I need to look as panicked as possible. Yeah. So immediately under suspicion. And so he asked everybody to help come help him. Five guys he brought to his home. And they, of course, discovered that Ronnie DeFeo's entire family was dead. They said they were overwhelmed by the stench of death as they reached the second floor. Because everyone had been dead for a couple of days. They fucking turned on the light switch. Immediately found Ronnie Sr. And Luis dead in their bed. Ronnie Sr. Had a gunshot wound in the center of his back. Luis was face down. They were both shot twice. Luis was positioned where her chest was slightly raised. The medical examiner believes she may have been alive for several minutes after being shot and her position indicated she may have been awoken, raised her body and looked toward the killer before she died.

[Ed Larson]

Well, according to. This is the only island. This is the only answer I got from the Long island medium visiting the Amityville said mostly about her having dinner. And so I'm hearing here, recording to her. This was. This is. Before you go, I just want to read this statement from her, which I. Which I love. People ask me that question all the time when I'm over for dinner. Are they getting anything from my house? But nine times out of 10, it's just their loved ones that they are feeling. I have a cousin that passed away and he was a plumber. So when my toilet runs randomly, I know it's him. But sometimes it is more than that. I walked into a home, and all I saw at first was a white light, a flash of blood on the walls, and a priest standing in the corner. I asked about the history of the home, and it turned out that there had been a murder and a suicide there, but the house had been blessed by a priest. It was a beautiful home. It was full of positive energy. It's not haunted.

[Marcus Parks]

Wait, so she said that even though it was, but she still saw the blood stain?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, the massacre.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, the massacre. And she saw. And she saw the priest, too?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

So what did it. So the priest. All the priest did was add to the haunting?

[Ed Larson]

Yes, but. Oh, but it's nice. It's comforting. I just love to see him. I love McCalla.

[Marcus Parks]

My God. You know, they had the shag carpeting in there, which I think is sometimes trashy, but when it's white, it's. You can keep it clean.

[Ed Larson]

If you could just get this. Damn these animals. These kids. Animals coming in here. Yeah, that's why I got the plastic sheeting on this plastic sheeting? This plastic sheeting over the television. I got plastic sheeting over all the plants. I got plastic seating over the lamp. He said, nice. Did you have plastic sheeting on the lamps?

[Travis McElroy]

No, but my family, my grandmother had a bunch of plastic sheeting on a bunch of stuff.

[Ed Larson]

It was. The plastic sheeting was on the lamps. It was. I mean, it. There was a plastic cube over the Television. And I don't know what. It's not like we were a bunch of elephant seals. Yeah, like I know what she thought we were gonna.

[Travis McElroy]

To the surface of the television, the.

[Ed Larson]

Glass cube in the middle of the living room.

[Marcus Parks]

Wait, so you had to wa. You had to watch TV through a sheet of plastic?

[Ed Larson]

It was like an encasement. It was in this like thing.

[Marcus Parks]

But I remember the screen was not obscured by the classic.

[Ed Larson]

No, but the thing, the top of it was. It was in this plastic hutch and there was plastic on the couch and there was literally plastic on the car.

[Travis McElroy]

There was plastic on everything in those houses.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, pristine.

[Travis McElroy]

And all the closets were filled with mothballs.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. And it was. Nothing was used. It was good. Plates that couldn't be used because we were good enough.

[Travis McElroy]

Rooms you weren't allowed in.

[Ed Larson]

Couldn't go into them. Couldn't. That was that.

[Travis McElroy]

My grandmother had a room we weren't.

[Ed Larson]

Allowed to enter because just of my fat legs, just my shitty little mouth would ruin that place. Yeah.

[Travis McElroy]

And all those houses, they also have like a room before you even get in the house.

[Ed Larson]

Anteroom.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I am so glad I grew up in dirt.

[Ed Larson]

It's just like I just like, just.

[Marcus Parks]

Like, just thinking back on just like how fucking and filled our houses were with like sand and dirt.

[Ed Larson]

My mom and grandmother would happily have vacuumed me every morning. They would have happily have honestly cleaned my very body inch by inch.

[Travis McElroy]

Wow.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. I mean, not even. Not the dick.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, I got hosed off plenty.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, that's different. Oh, we weren't hosed. We were threatened with the hose.

[Travis McElroy]

I've been hosed off.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah, it was fun.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's great.

[Ed Larson]

It's covered in ants.

[Marcus Parks]

So. So they discovered Ronnie's parents upstairs. Dead, gunshot wound.

[Ed Larson]

Honestly, how would you even know if a Long island father was planning to kill the whole family if the whole place was covered in plastic? It already is.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah, that's a great idea.

[Marcus Parks]

Right.

[Travis McElroy]

That's why they do it. Just in case they kill their family.

[Marcus Parks]

So they go into the boy's bedroom. They found the bodies of 9 and 12 year old John and Mark Defeo, that's Ronnie Defeo's brothers. They're both lying face down with a single bullet shot wound. And the reason why I'm going through all the, you know, where everybody was found and how they were found, it's very much germane to the arguments that are made later on as to who perpetrated these crimes and who all was involved in these crimes.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

So those boys were both killed at close range. And then they found the two girls. They found Allison and Dawn. They were both found face down in their bed. Allison, 13, was once shot in the face. Bullet entered the left cheek, moved into her right ear, tore through her brain. The bullet exited, ripped through the mattress, hit the wall, and r. Ricocheted on the floor. Don, 18, was shot in the back of the neck. Bullet entered below her left ear and blasted through the left temple onto the pillow. Left side of her face collapsed, and brain particles and blood saturated the pillow. So they walk in, everybody is dead in their beds.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And they've all been killed the same night. Yes.

[Ed Larson]

And he goes, oh, no. Oh, my God. Who could have. Oh, it's me.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. But.

[Travis McElroy]

All right, I have a question. How do you execute six people and no one gets out of bed?

[Marcus Parks]

And that's been diamonds.

[Ed Larson]

It's a demon.

[Marcus Parks]

And that's been the question behind the Ronnie Defeo murders for, you know, going on almost 50 years now.

[Ed Larson]

Do you understand how often it happens in family annihilations? It actually happens way, way more often than you think. And partially. I was reading about this. This because I wanted to know. Because recently I read this horrific story about a British multimillionaire who, you know, obviously fucked everything up, had an. You know, was embezzling, all very standard. Was about to lose everything. They all knew it was all coming crashing down. And so he killed his wife and his daughter. And then what he did was that he parked an RV in the driveway to the mansion where you'd have to come in so that the people couldn't come in. And then what he did is he shot all the animals, he shot all the horses. He shot all everything else that lived on. The entire pool thing. He set the whole place on fire. But part. And then he said they burned down a hellacious inferno. Everybody died inside. Same thing. The kids were shot, and not one didn't hear. And the other one were. It was, like, not far from each other. And they talk about. They believe there's a phenomena of something being so far outside of what you experience. Like when you ask a person that has never heard a gunshot what a gunshot sounds like, they say a bunch of different things. They see stuff on movies. That's not what a gun really sounds like. A gun kind of sounds like a clap.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, Right.

[Travis McElroy]

Like crack.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

It also depends on the type of gun. It's like a. It was a marlin rifle.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. But if you don't know the sound and you've Never thought that this would be something that was something that you would ever experience. You'd actually be very surprised how much just you need your brain, the very brain itself, trying to keep the status quo of your reality together and intact, even when you're asleep. That. That it might. You might ignore something like that because it's so far outside. It's how people, like, accidentally sleep while their house sets on fire and stuff like that. It's because there's all of these. It's just. It's not. You're not expecting it, so you don't even think that it's gonna happen to you. And so it's like you kind of don't see it.

[Marcus Parks]

And it also could be, you know, your super mean drug addict brother. You know, you hear a noise like, hey, what was that? And you hear your fucking super mean brother. Go, go back to sleep.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

And you're like, all right.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, right? And then you go back to sleep.

[Ed Larson]

Because you're a little kid.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Except for dawn, of course. But we'll get to dawn later.

[Ed Larson]

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[Travis McElroy]

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[Marcus Parks]

And the thing is, as far as motive goes, you know, everyone knew, like Ronnie Defeo Senior, physically and mentally abusive towards his entire family. Butch kind of inherited that temper. They had altercations throughout his life. Then Butch started abusing both acid and heroin at the same time. And it said that just finally one day, Butch decided to kill everybody. You know, nobody really knows what, like Butch himself has given multiple explanations as far as why he killed everybody in the house. Yeah. He has said that it was a mob hit, that it was some sort of like.

[Travis McElroy]

Well, they were connected, the family.

[Ed Larson]

Right? Family was super connected. Yeah, dude.

[Travis McElroy]

Fucking.

[Ed Larson]

He was. Yeah, he was a weirdo.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Well, so as far as how Butch started off, like, he told police he was home from work with an upset stomach. The day before, he stayed up late watching a Burt Lancaster movie. I don't know which movie it would have been, though. But do you know much about Burt Lancaster.

[Ed Larson]

I'll tell you one thing. I got to tell you because of. I do Dana Carvey's impression of Burt Lancaster.

[Travis McElroy]

I know he was in a movie called Atlantic City.

[Marcus Parks]

Okay.

[Travis McElroy]

Which hadn't come out yet. So you didn't watch that.

[Marcus Parks]

All right.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, my God. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you straight.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, he said that he fell asleep in the TV room around 2am Woke up around 4am with stomach pains, saw his brother's wheelchair outside of the bathroom. His brother had just broken his leg. So he's in a wheelchair. And Butch heard the toilet flush. And the next morning, he decided to go back to work. After work, he saw his girlfriend and some of his friends. He was complaining throughout November 13th to his girlfriend and friends that he was unable to get ahold of his parents. So he's kind of setting an alibi there. Cars are in the garage, but no one's answering the phone. And so he was taken to the police station for his own protection. Because he suggested to the police at first, like, hey, you know, not for nothing, but my family pissed off this Mafia hitman named Louis Philippe Fellini. Maybe you ought to go look into Louis Fellini. I might be in trouble here. I might be in danger.

[Ed Larson]

You gotta have to come up with a better fake mafioso name than Louis Fellini. I feel like it's. Like it's essentially called him Theo Spaghetti. Like, that is a very energy racist name.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, no, these are real people.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah, he made Americord.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I know. Also, but also I find that I forget, though, being from Queens, the kids I grew up with were like, Anthony and Moret. Bobby Babarisi. Yeah, I miss those names.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Well, Fellini and his family were family friends. They lived with the DeFeo's for some time after their home in Brooklyn burned down and Fellini buried a box of money and jewels in the DeFeo home. Apparently, Butch got into an argument with Fellini after Fellini criticized a paint job that Butch did for him. Butch threw a paintbrush at Fellini, broke a window and called him a cocksucker.

[Ed Larson]

Whoa. That's how you get whack.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. And Ronald Sr. Is like, yeah, that's a professional hitman. You don't want to be fucking with that guy. And Ronald Sr. Complained two weeks before the murders that he lost a friend, that he had to tell Fellini that Ronald would murder Fellini's entire family if something happened to Butch. And, you know, so on and so.

[Ed Larson]

Forth, Bada bing, Bada boom.

[Marcus Parks]

All of a sudden.

[Travis McElroy]

No.

[Ed Larson]

The guy, he's getting shot, and you. The guy, he's yelling at everybody at the.

[Marcus Parks]

And Butch admitted, like, he's on probation. He admitted he was a heroin user. He said, yeah, I burglarized neighbors houses, and I steal antiques. When they asked him how he passed his drug test, he admitted, like, my sister used to piss in a bag, and I'd take that. And so basically, the police are just kind of softening him up. They see immediately, like, oh, this guy killed his entire family. Yeah, they're just trying to soften him up, trying to get him to. Trying to just admit to, like, one thing, and then the next thing and the next thing, and then finally he was like, yeah, if I'm telling you all that stuff, I may as well be honest.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I murdered my family.

[Marcus Parks]

It was me. I murdered everybody. They said that.

[Ed Larson]

Killed them all, of course.

[Marcus Parks]

Killed them all.

[Ed Larson]

Kill them all.

[Travis McElroy]

That's good. Yeah, we're good.

[Marcus Parks]

No, I've been. It's like, actually been my. I've been doing it, like, with Carolina, like, all.

[Ed Larson]

All the. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Hi, it's Bob.

[Ed Larson]

It's Bob.

[Marcus Parks]

I couldn't see who could write something like that. Well, before Butch finally did come out and say, look, all right, I killed my family, he kept telling police, like, look for Fellini. Look for Fellini. And Butch, at the same time, he would start to, you know, he would say his mother was a lousy cook. He'd say his brothers were fucking pigs.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, sure. Yeah. He was not a nice guy. He wasn't a good brother.

[Marcus Parks]

No, no. Called his sister a fat fuck who played her music, too.

[Ed Larson]

Lo just know it's not a good reason to kill your sister.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And when they told Butch, they found the murder weapon and the bullets.35 Marlin rifle. Butch said that Fellini had an accomplice who forced Butch to watch as he murdered his family. So it's. The story just keeps changing, keeps evolving.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And they asked if Fellini forced Butch to participate. Butch put his head in his hands, asked for a minute, and then confessed to murdering his entire family. And of course, immediately after, Butch's attorney mounted an insanity defense, claiming that DeFeo heard voices who told him that his family was against him, that he was possessed. And he claimed that he killed them in self defense because the demons were telling him that they were going to hurt him. And that was around the time that this attorney got a hold of the Lutz family.

[Ed Larson]

Now, this is when the story was concocted, which is it Is interesting because the Lutz family, they were also strange. They were very religious. I believe that he had, like. Didn't he. George Lutz?

[Marcus Parks]

He was. No, he was way into the occult.

[Ed Larson]

Well, that was the kind of. It started with that. He got really. George Lutz was kind of. He's a very weird man.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Because he was really into, like, transcendental meditation and mantra chanting and shit like that.

[Ed Larson]

He had a Christian stripe. It's a very 80s New York version of religion that my mom had, too, where it was like she had a lot of Christian iconography mixed into, like, weird Wiccan stuff.

[Travis McElroy]

Oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Like chanting the name. Because that what George Def. Or what George Lutz used to do is, like, he would sit and, like, chant, like, find demon names and, like, chant demon names over and over again.

[Ed Larson]

I mean, I take that with a grain of salt, because I think that what he actually did was stuff that like. My. One of my best friends, Jeff Nitzberg, his dad was what they called the Juu, which is Jewish Buddhist. And he went full on into Buddhism.

[Marcus Parks]

And then I never heard that.

[Ed Larson]

It kind of honestly made him an. Because he started believing that nothing existed. So then he would say stuff like, why are you guys making art and movies? Because it doesn't matter because life isn't real, and stuff like that. It was. It was rough.

[Travis McElroy]

That's two Buddhists.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Two Buddhist. Two Buddhists.

[Marcus Parks]

Seems to be just a weird interpreter from my study of Buddhism. It seems to be, like a weird interpretation of it and just an excuse. He doesn't sound like a Buddhist. He sounds like a nihilist.

[Ed Larson]

He was. Yes.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Travis McElroy]

He was Buddhism as a reason. He was poor.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Weapon against, you know, he was very rich, actually. He did very, very well. He was using it to attack his children and his children's friends.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

But at the same time, he had gotten all these mantras. That's what he would do. So he would go and do his meditation all day.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

So he'd go near the room. You just hear, like, from the other room. So I could see that. I could see George Lutz doing that. Never been. Like, he's an occult master. Meanwhile, like, all he did was go to one weird thing in Queens. Like, he saw some guy. Some. Some weird. Yeah, some guy taught him how to meditate.

[Travis McElroy]

All into it in the Northeast. You know, my whole Catholic family. The Catholic side, not the Jewish side, is super ghosts.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, yeah.

[Travis McElroy]

Mediums to come by the house all the time.

[Ed Larson]

And it is a very. It is very. Catholicism is a Very much a slippery slope to the occult.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Because it is the occult.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

It's a fucking grimoire. We talked about this. You do a Catholic exorcism, you arrive with the spell book and you're. You have all the accoutrement and you're doing spells. Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. You've got your special, like, you know, you have your holy water, which might as, you know, your alcohol alchemist's pouch, you know, like it's. Yeah, it's all the same. It's all the same occult trappings.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

They all use the same thing, but.

[Ed Larson]

I feel it's a slippery slope. But that's where it kind of started. He had this kind of fascination with the occult. Now, where did they. Where did they say the actual phenomena began?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, they say that it actually began as soon as they moved in. Like, you know, that Father Ray heard the deep voice saying, get out. You know, and then when closing the window after the blessing, the eldest Lady Lutz boy had his hand crushed in the windowsill. Like, the windowsill came down and crushed the boy. And then, you know, and then they started experiencing strange phenomena. The daughter, Missy, she had a. An imaginary friend, they called it a mysterious pig friend named Jody.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, everyone. Oh, we love ghost pigs.

[Marcus Parks]

We love ghost pigs.

[Travis McElroy]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

And, you know, the ghost pig spoke to her and told her of a little boy who lived in the house, met a brutal death, you know, so on and so forth. You know, they had all sorts of shit where there's, you know, they said a ceramic lions bit George on the cap. Doors and windows would open and close randomly. The boys beds moved on their own, you know, and then after 28 days in the home, you know, very famously, they left with no more than the shirts on their backs. They ran out of the house. They ran out of the house. And as it turned out, all this was, of course, bullshit. We talked about this. We talked about this recently on the Warrens, and this is partly why we're talking about this is because we did just recently cover, you know, Amityville partly on the Warrens, and we can kind of. Of expand a little bit more on what George Lutz did afterwards. Afterwards he went out and recorded a series of 26 cassette tapes, talking about what happened while they were in the house. He was drinking most of the time when he was recording, and he reportedly wanted to have seances in the house. And By February of 1976, the Lutzes were. But before all that, before he started recording shit, like less than a month after, they ran out of the house. They were in contact with Butch DeFeo's defense attorney, William Weber, and he wanted to combine their stories to create a insanity plea.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, and to make a lot of money in the process because they're.

[Ed Larson]

Setting up for the fucking.

[Travis McElroy]

The.

[Ed Larson]

The sale of. The story of the haunting of the Amityville house.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And because that's the thing is, I do believe that the Lutzes experience something like something happened in that house.

[Travis McElroy]

I mean.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Travis McElroy]

Six people were brutally murdered.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. I mean, it's. It's got There.

[Travis McElroy]

It's got bad juju.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. It's got bad vibes.

[Ed Larson]

We talked about this recently when we did the Herbaumeister series, about how, like, it's one of those places that if there. If there were going to be a place where there was going to be paranormal activity would be here. Yeah.

[Travis McElroy]

But I don't want to skip ahead too much. But no one else has felt paranormal in the house since.

[Marcus Parks]

No, no, no, no. Everyone who's ever lived there. And they also. They refuted a lot of George Lutz's claims where he said, like, you know, window shutters would fly off the walls, doors would fly off the walls. And these are like, every single thing in here looks original. None of this was, you know, like, this door looks like it's been here on these hinges for 20 years. None of that shit happened.

[Ed Larson]

And I also think when it comes to paranormal activity, we could look to. We talked a little bit about the lead poisoning, the. How lead poisoning in the boomers is probably what led to the serial killer, like, fucking epidemic of the 1970s.

[Marcus Parks]

We're pretty certain in 80s and 90s.

[Ed Larson]

It's got something to do with lead poisoning. I actually blame a lot of paranormal stories from this time period on the goddamn Exorcist. They look at immediately. The exorcist happened in 1973. So once the exit, that. That's when that came out. The Amityville murders happened in 74. And everything happened after the fact. So as soon as they saw this, it was already still Exorcist fever. Like, technically, when the. The tech. Technically, I believe the Oscars had just happened, which I believe the Exorcist was nominated.

[Travis McElroy]

It was nominated for best Picture.

[Ed Larson]

And so it got huge. A huge amount of attention.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And so demons made me do. It was pretty popular.

[Ed Larson]

Sound like it was going to make some money.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Travis McElroy]

But also, it's like, I mean, obviously these people have no moral compass, but, you know, as much as you want to, like, sell your new House that you probably, you know, needed to unload because you couldn't afford to buy it in the first place.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, that is what happened with Lutz. Yeah, that's what.

[Travis McElroy]

That's what it seems like to me.

[Ed Larson]

It is utterly. That is, you are sort of jumping ahead. But. Yes, he does. He completely destroyed his finances and he. The house was like three times upside down.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah, but in order to do that, you have to free a six time murderer.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, but you see, we. As we noticed, sometimes you got to go all the way to the top to make it all work out.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, I mean, the kids who were a part of the Amityville story, a couple of them have come out and spoken publicly. Specifically Christopher Lutz, who changed his name to Christopher Quarantino, which is a fun name.

[Ed Larson]

Christopher Quarantino.

[Marcus Parks]

Christopher Quarantino.

[Ed Larson]

What?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I think it's. Quarantino was the name of his mother's first husband.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, okay. It's a real name.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, Quarantino. It was the.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah. It sounds like an. An Italian special. During COVID He stayed six feet over there.

[Travis McElroy]

I throw carrots on and open mouth.

[Ed Larson]

Don't you cough. Don't you cough. You don't do make my sick. Really fun stuff. Really top tier material for me today.

[Travis McElroy]

Quarantino special is nice, but yeah, this.

[Marcus Parks]

Guy, he changed his name for anonymity, but it said that he took a lot of flack when he was a kid because everyone's like, your mom's a liar, your dad's a liar. All this stuff is bullshit. But this all happened to him when he was seven years, which is kind of interesting. Yes, because the age is very interesting because I don't know about you guys, but my memory from when I was seven is hazy to say the least.

[Ed Larson]

Well, I remember my seventh birthday because that's the story I had from when Michelangelo came and then from the Ninja Turtle.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

And Michelangelo came to my seventh birthday party.

[Travis McElroy]

It's not real, Henry.

[Ed Larson]

No, I know, I know. But the thing that was more remarkable about it was that I'll always remember because, like, I grew up in New York at a fairly diverse group of friends. We're all like, kind of careful.

[Travis McElroy]

I remember first, like one was even a Ninja Turtle.

[Ed Larson]

But then Michelangelo showed up, and April o', Neill, that was accompanying Michelangelo, was being portrayed by a black woman. And we were all like, really confused as kids. And it really created this very interesting conversation about colorblind casting and. And race where she had just trying to explain because, like, all these kids are all like, excuse me, ma'.

[Ad Read Voice]

Am.

[Ed Larson]

April o' Neal's white. And she was like. Literally. You got to understand. See, sometimes April o' Neal can be black like she was. And we're all like, did she have red hair?

[Travis McElroy]

What? Did she have red hair?

[Ed Larson]

No, we were just like. But we just went with it. They taught us karate, and those are the last thing I remember.

[Travis McElroy]

At least she's wearing.

[Marcus Parks]

As long as she's wearing the costume.

[Ed Larson]

Costume on.

[Marcus Parks]

Didn't show up wearing a pantsuit.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah, it showed up full tits out. It was awesome. Yeah. Then she started stripping.

[Travis McElroy]

That's amazing.

[Ed Larson]

She gave all the kids a lap dance. My dad. You'd be crazy. What cops used to get. Yeah, that's what I remember from being seven.

[Marcus Parks]

Well. Yeah, I don't remember a whole lot. I remember being paddled by my teacher at seven.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah, I was it.

[Marcus Parks]

I mouthed off. I mouthed off a lot when I was a kid. And I got. And I got paddled a lot as a result because I had a. I had a big mouth.

[Ed Larson]

Do you think it made your butt big? Strong?

[Marcus Parks]

Is that why. Is that why my butt's big is because when I was a kid, I got paddled a lot, and then my. And my body, in order to protect itself, made my butt. Made more butt. Made my butt bigger? Yeah, that's probably it. You fucking idiot. Yeah, that's probably the reason why I got a big butt, is because I got paddled a lot when I was a kid because I had a big mouth.

[Travis McElroy]

You know, I was hit by a teacher at seven.

[Ed Larson]

Really?

[Travis McElroy]

In second grade.

[Marcus Parks]

But was it part of the punishment, or was it, like. Did she just fly off the handle and smack you?

[Travis McElroy]

I dropped my pencil box. She said it was on purpose. I said it wasn't. And she hit me. Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

Like, in the face.

[Travis McElroy]

She slapped my arm.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, okay.

[Travis McElroy]

No, no, I got Sister Dolores.

[Marcus Parks]

No. Okay, That's. And that's a nun. That's totally different. No, for me, it was a full wooden paddle by a public. By a government employee. Oh, yeah.

[Travis McElroy]

No, no, no. It wasn't like that. It was a rash decision.

[Ed Larson]

No, I was celebrated by my school.

[Marcus Parks]

No, that's nice.

[Ed Larson]

Everywhere I went.

[Travis McElroy]

That's why I got the public school. In private school, they hated me.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I could see.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. You look like you look like a child prisoner. I've seen those pictures. Right. You look like. You look like you'd be currently fighting Ukraine.

[Travis McElroy]

Oh, my God.

[Ed Larson]

And if you were born in Russia at that time as that child, man.

[Travis McElroy]

The day I Found out that I can just kick the shit out of anyone who badmouthed me. It was a great day.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, I bet. Oh, wow. These hands. These hands.

[Marcus Parks]

See, I kind of found out the opposite, that anyone could kick the shit out of me if I badmouth.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah, really bad.

[Marcus Parks]

I was a really tiny child.

[Ed Larson]

But that's why you'll become razor quick with your wit. Oh. Because you'll see that actually a few barbs are just as well effective as a few well placed kicks, my friend.

[Marcus Parks]

My audience was not that smart. All he had to do is funny voices and impersonate Jim Carrey.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, it worked out. Somebody, a stunt man that helps a lot of people beat up. I remember.

[Travis McElroy]

I know this is way off topic and we should probably cut it, but I remember I. I beat up one kid because I was shaking a tree and he's like, hey, don't shake that tree. And I just beat the out of him.

[Ed Larson]

Wow. Incredible lesson.

[Marcus Parks]

Actually, the only kid that I like could beat up, but yeah, the one kid that was weaker than me is that he was stomping on ants and I told him, hey, stop stomping on the ants. He told me to shut up and I beat the out of hell.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Travis McElroy]

Jesus Christ.

[Ed Larson]

I just made him laugh. I just sang songs and I did impersonations of the teachers.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, no, I did impersonations of the teachers too. But yeah, no, impersonations were big. Okay, so back to the defense.

[Ed Larson]

That was quite a side jump.

[Travis McElroy]

From your grave.

[Ed Larson]

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[Marcus Parks]

You can do it.

[Ed Larson]

And so therefore it has become my favorite app. So you go to wherever the Sling is, find Sling, and you can go to see your pretty faces going to hell on it. And that's all that matters. We're show people your pretty faces going to hell. Okay? So go get Sling. Great app. How I've organized my channel lineup is I've put your pretty faces going to hell five times on it. So go check it out. Choose and customize your channel lineup or pause and watch for free. Sling lets you do that. Visit sling.com to learn more Get a.

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[Ed Larson]

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[Travis McElroy]

Right?

[Ed Larson]

But I hope that better help can provide you an unbiased perspective on your life. Life. So you can head into the new year taking only what truly serves you. You can't step into a lighter version of yourself without leaving behind what's been weighing you down. Therapy can help you clear space. Sign up and get 10 [e-mail] LastPod that's better. H lp.com LastPod so Christopher, I guess.

[Marcus Parks]

We'Re back on the Lutzes.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, Christopher here.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, a seven year old's memory of all this is interesting because you know, you don't want to tell this guy that he's a liar. Of course not. But memory is very fallible. And when you're a kid dealing with something so insane, especially when your father is kind of insane too because you know, George Lutz had, he had a reputation for also being a very abusive person. Very, very insane, very physically abusive, very emotionally abusive. And it is kind of freaky when your dad's sitting in a room for hours alone chanting the name of a demon over and over and over again.

[Ed Larson]

It doesn't set you up maybe. Great. I mean, I don't know if he explained what was going on. He was cool about it, maybe it would be awesome. But he's haunted. This kid's haunted. I. It's. I find it.

[Marcus Parks]

Man is haunted.

[Ed Larson]

Man is haunted. I find it interesting that he. Yes, it's not about what he directly remembers, but also remember then the narrative not just is created by your father to you alone in a home, but then it's written in a book, and then it's written, blown out into a movie, and then it's turned to nine movies and it's in. This story has become so ubiquitous with haunted houses. And the house, your childhood home, is the picture of haunted houses that eventually, whether or not you like it or not, you've made that memory real. That is just. There is no way around it. That is how memory works. You tell yourself your memories are just the stories you tell yourself that you've decided are the way it has ended. That is how you. You're the final dragon craft of the stories you tell about yourself.

[Travis McElroy]

Imagine being a teenager and seeing that Simpsons episode about your house.

[Ed Larson]

I think it otherizes you. I think it makes you something else. I think you walk around all day saying, like, I'm supposed to be this sort of purveyor of a secret knowledge. I'm supposed to have experienced something that most people don't experience until they die. A touch with the paranormal. But I'm supposed to be that. But I'm now what he actually, he.

[Marcus Parks]

Says he didn't read the Amityville Horror until 1999.

[Ed Larson]

I'm just saying it everywhere. It's just in the air. It's in the air everywhere you go. It's very much so. It's the context with which you arrive everywhere.

[Marcus Parks]

But what's most interesting about his story, and this is what I find fascinating about it, is that he read the Amityville. Like he. For his whole life, he's like, yes, like, absolutely happened there. Paranormal activity happened there. And he read the Amityville Horror and he was like, that's not how it happened. Yeah, he was like, his memories of it were completely different from how it was portrayed in the Amityville horrors. Like, that's not how it happened at all. He's like, they added some shit and then completely left other things out. He's like, they left out the story of, like, how our dog almost fucking was almost hung because it was thrown over the fence and it was hanging by its fucking leash and almost choked it.

[Ed Larson]

Death.

[Marcus Parks]

Like, you know all these. He's like, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

And whether or not it just jumps because it was freaked out itself, honestly, that's enough for me. Like, what if it just saw something? This poor cat.

[Marcus Parks]

That is actually what he said is that he. The dog was so scared it jumped the fence and choked itself. But they rescued it, thankfully, yes.

[Ed Larson]

Because cats, dogs see there. They see all the ghosts.

[Marcus Parks]

Yep. And like, he said that he saw like a dark human, like, figure appearing in his bedroom doorway. Didn't see the feet. All this shit is very, very scary to him. But that's what's fucking fascinating is that there was a paranormal. According to this guy, there was a paranormal story here. It's just not the one that they told. It's not the one that Jay Anson told. Because I think he had his own narrative in mind. Because George Lutz did record over 20 hours of testimony of like, shit that he said happened in the house. But the thing is that through all the lawsuits that came afterwards that we talked about in the Warren series, like, including lawsuits that involved his own family members, like, George Lutz was forced to say again and again, like, no, most of it was fiction. Most of it was made up. Wow. Yes.

[Ed Larson]

He had to. It is interesting, but we did it. When we just talked about the Warrens. There's so many of these where there's something at the core, which is why we don't trust these stories. It's why we are as a whole, like, both as a society, it feels like we're more quote, unquote, open to it than ever before. But the skeptic side of it, like, I guess it's cringe, I think is the term to be too much of a believer. Everybody has to have a foot outside the door to kind of feel cool and good and of normal society. I try to at least, but.

[Travis McElroy]

Well, that's how you actually become a believer, is you are a skeptic and you're proved wrong.

[Ed Larson]

But these stories, the problem is that all the lies on top of these stories are what makes people not belief is that it's. They. It's all of the monetization. Again, capitalism kind of it up because it takes what is supposed to be this beautiful. I. I don't know. I think it's interesting, like the way they talk about the haunted house that we covered, where they talked about how they were happy with the ghosts before they left, where they were just. They created a relationship with the. The poltergeist. I think it was in the Warren series.

[Marcus Parks]

The Peron.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

The parent family.

[Ed Larson]

They knew the ghost, and they were fine with it. And there's something about that. But I feel like that used to be way more common, that this. The. This type of phenomenon would kind of happen quietly in. In your home, basically, your family.

[Marcus Parks]

Basically the end of Beetlejuice.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Travis McElroy]

Well, yeah, you hear that story a lot. We're like, you know, someone will be in the kitchen, and, like, the bread flies off the counter, and they're like, all right, Jerry, stop it. You know, and it's like. Then it stops.

[Ed Larson]

I love Sit. Like, I love shit like that.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, this guy Christopher, he says that what he was most frustrated with is that the book, Jay Anson's book, the Amityville Horror, it portrays George Lutz as a victim of the house. It portrays him as, like, this paternal hero. And how Christopher remembered it, what he believed happened, is that George Lutz invited a demonic entity into the house. He turned it into this entirely different kind of story where George Lutz was, like, kind of an occult dabbler who put his hands into some shit that he shouldn't have put his hands into.

[Travis McElroy]

Why else would he buy the fucking murder house?

[Marcus Parks]

There you go.

[Ed Larson]

There you go. Because it sound like he was. Didn't have as much cash as he wanted, and he got a house that. For a great neighborhood, which was huge.

[Marcus Parks]

And a good price. I mean, for very cheap. Yeah, 80 grand.

[Ed Larson]

But he still couldn't afford the 80 grand. So.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah. And if you're a big fan of this kind of stuff, you're like, oh, I can get this house. I'll get a story out of it.

[Ed Larson]

Or make a book maybe, or maybe. Or you just want to be in it. I'm one of those. I just want to be in it.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, if he did go into it thinking I could get a book out of this, he would have definitely been, like, a hell of a businessman. But, yeah, the Amityville Horror was, like. It was the first of its kind.

[Travis McElroy]

Okay.

[Marcus Parks]

Of the. Of this shit, you know, like, there had been, of course, you know, the.

[Ed Larson]

Exorcist, but not like that. Yeah, this was a book.

[Marcus Parks]

But I mean, like, nonfiction, you know, like a nonfiction book, like, at that point, the biggest nonfiction true crime. I mean, the only thing you could maybe compare it to is, like, In Cold Blood.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, which, of course, was a massive hit, and that had been about 10 years earlier somewhere on there. So I guess there was some appetite for true crime, but for paranormal stuff, for haunted house stuff, like, I don't think there had been something like that before. Amityville.

[Ed Larson]

No, it was a. In terms of that level of, like, based on a true story style.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

So I.

[Marcus Parks]

With the true crime angle also added to it of like a national news story.

[Ed Larson]

I personally believe that he did not come in there with a plan. I don't think that he had. I don't think, as you can see by his finances, I don't think he was much of a planner. And so I think that you just need one little kick. And then everything else happened because it was. Because it had. It had the goods, you know what I mean? And had the bright bones for the story. And so, yeah, you start to see some weird shit. And then I kick this little ball, it's going to turn into a fucking avalanche. Real easy, because there's a lot of meat here.

[Travis McElroy]

What happened to Lutz after all this?

[Marcus Parks]

He basically got. Spent the rest of his life in litigation in one way or another. Like, he even sued Christopher at one point because he sued his stepson.

[Ed Larson]

A stepson.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, he sued him in 2003. Because Christopher, because he wanted to get a little bit of the Amityville money, he's like, if I'm gonna fucking. If this is gonna be my life, I'm gonna make a little bit of money doing it. Yeah. He created the domain name amityville horror.com, but George had trademarked Amityville Horror the year before. And so he sued his stepson in Nevada district court. Christopher countersued, noting that the trademark concerned a brand name of nonfiction books. But that got George to publicly admit that the books were fiction. Yeah, this big fucking got him. But then they settled the suit. Christopher turned over the domain name. But around the same time, Christopher learned that George was workshopping a new movie. And this is, of course, this is very George Lutz. The plot of the movie was that Christopher would be using his name, you know, his likeness returned to the house years later, became possessed, and killed his father. Of course, Christopher is like, take this is. Is this very long Island Rob, like these guys, like, passive aggressively telling stories about each other.

[Ed Larson]

That makes sense. It sounds like Long Island.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Sounding more and more like long is where it's like they get into this fight and it's like, I'm gonna make a movie about you in which you're the asshol and say, oh, you got to make a movie about me, which I'm the asshole. I'm going to fucking take you to court. But then, out of nowhere, MGM announced their remake. The 2005 remake of the Amityville Horror, which I'VE never seen. I did not know Ryan Reynolds starred in an Amityville horror remake.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, he did. It was before. He was everybody's favorite Deadpool. He literally did a bunch of. A lot of bad stuff. Yeah, that was. He was. That's a bad.

[Marcus Parks]

Between Van Wilder and Deadpool.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Green Lantern was.

[Ed Larson]

We all know.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He did a bunch of garbage in between. You know what they. Why did they not get Josh Brolin? I mean, I know you can't just.

[Marcus Parks]

Choose, but that would have been great.

[Ed Larson]

I don't know.

[Travis McElroy]

That would have been.

[Ed Larson]

I honestly don't know. Because the original Brolin. James Brolin, is great.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

He's so good. Because he's scared. He's a very good, scary dad.

[Travis McElroy]

Oh, yeah. He's got that big head.

[Marcus Parks]

He's definitely big. That big.

[Ed Larson]

Got that serious hair.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah. No, you could take a shovel to the face and just start laughing.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, he's a serious beard. I love it. Well, we really did it. Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, we really did it. We brought it back, but that's it. But to wrap it up, George filed a suit against MGM for libel, claiming that the new movie made him look like a homicidal maniac. No, because in the Ryan Reynolds movie, George Lutz is portrayed as killing his dog with an axe, attacking his son with an ax. Coffins for his wife and children. Trying to drown his wife. Chasing his wife and children on a roof in a rainstorm.

[Travis McElroy]

I mean, you gotta make it better.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah. They're trying to. They pumped up the action and they made it. Evil Daddy. And then Daddy's like, oh, who's that evil?

[Marcus Parks]

Mm. Well, he contends that when he signed the rights in 1979, there wasn't anything that prohibited him from filing defamation in connection with any subsequent movie. The suit was unsuccessful. And on the day that it was settled in 2007, 6. George Lutz died.

[Travis McElroy]

He should have been happy with the abs they gave.

[Ed Larson]

That literally is the saddest. The saddest way to end the ghost stories. That you just become a ghost.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, that you. You spend your life in litigation and then you become a ghost. Wow. That's it. That's. That is. That's the expansion of the Amityville. And, you know, there's. So far, there's been 10. 10Amityville horror movies. The original and nine. There's been 10.

[Travis McElroy]

I didn't know there's been 10.

[Ed Larson]

I would have guessed four, including. There was many. There was many. What's the spots? There was many schools. Oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Many yeah. Many sequels.

[Travis McElroy]

I remember seeing sequels. I didn't know it got to nine.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, they're all the remakes. Like, you know, there's been, I think, two remakes. And there was supposed to be, like, Amityville. The Awakening was supposed to be, like, last decade. Like.

[Ed Larson]

Like.

[Travis McElroy]

Oh, wow.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, there's.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, dude. And they've all got.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, there's Amityville. Yeah, I forgot. Amityville.

[Ed Larson]

3D. Yeah, 3D I liked.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. No, these actually. Let's go through the names to round this whole thing up. There's the Amityville Horror. Amityville 2. The possession.

[Travis McElroy]

That's.

[Marcus Parks]

That's more about Ronnie Defeo.

[Travis McElroy]

And that's the one the Warrens had their hand in.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, actually, the Warrens had their hand in every single one of these. They were. They were listed as consultants. Least There was Amityville 3D. There was Amityville 4. The evil escapes. The Amityville Curse. This is my favorite one. Amityville. It's about time.

[Ed Larson]

It's about time. And it's actually just all about clocks.

[Marcus Parks]

Amityville. A New generation. Amityville Dollhouse.

[Ed Larson]

That's right.

[Marcus Parks]

And then the. And then they say that was stop motion.

[Ed Larson]

No, that. No, no. I wish that was the one where there is a dollar house shaped like the Amityville house that is also haunted.

[Travis McElroy]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that was 1996. I actually remember.

[Ed Larson]

Watch, man.

[Marcus Parks]

I forgot. I just. Totally real. Yeah. 99. 1996. That's when I was watching every horror mov. Every horrible horror movie that came across. Pay per view. Because it cost, like, $2, of course. Yeah. And so, yeah, I saw Amityville Dollhouse.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah, I saw. I remember that. It's like a blast from the past.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, man. It's like.

[Travis McElroy]

What was it?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's like at the same time. What was that other Bloodstone.

[Ed Larson]

We should watch these all together.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, we should watch it. Yes. And then, of course, in 2005, it restarted. And then people just started using the Amityville name. Amityville Haunting. Amityville Asylum. Amityville Death House. Amityville Playhouse. Amityville No Escape. And then Amityville Exorcism. And then finally, in 2017, Amityville, the awakening. That was the last one.

[Travis McElroy]

Is the town. Amityville. Feel about.

[Marcus Parks]

About all this.

[Ed Larson]

They love it.

[Marcus Parks]

They do not. Oh, Kurt.

[Ed Larson]

They don't love it. They don't love it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Kurt Wood Smith was in Amityville the Awakening.

[Travis McElroy]

There you go.

[Marcus Parks]

He's great. No.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

They don't love it. They don't have, like. Yeah, they don't really enjoy. No one does. Their name being a byword for haunted house.

[Ed Larson]

Not celebrated. It's not celebrated, unfortunately, as much as I. I think that everybody gets sick of it. Because you know what it really is, Honestly? It's me. It's people like me.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

That arrive in front of your home going, yeah, they killed the girl in this room and then they killed the wife in this room. Like me pointing out, being like, her brains are splatter everywhere. And I bet you. I bet you wanted to do other things to her corpse. You didn't get a chance to. Over here's where the brothers were shot.

[Travis McElroy]

Have you heard of Marvin?

[Ed Larson]

Hey.

[Marcus Parks]

And that's been this episode of Last. Update. On the left.

[Ed Larson]

You've been updated and thank us. Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Patreon.com lastpodcast on the left is where you can watch episodes and hear interviews outside of the lp. On the left is where all our socials are. Tick Tock, Instagram, lpn, lpntv, Twitch tv. LPN tv.

[Ed Larson]

We do a lot of stuff.

[Travis McElroy]

Listen to the Brighter side, for fuck's sake.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And last podcast.com for shows. And. And they're all there.

[Ed Larson]

So you've been updated. And you. Shout out to Ronnie. Miss you, buddy.

[Marcus Parks]

Jennifer Jason Lee. Also an Amity of the Awakening.

[Travis McElroy]

Oh, wow, Nice.

[Ed Larson]

That's for her, actually.

[Marcus Parks]

That's pretty good. Thomas, maybe. Man, didn't you know? Bella Thorne.

[Ed Larson]

Don't.

[Travis McElroy]

Ooh.

[Ed Larson]

Bella, don't. Bella Thorne is the one with the.

[Travis McElroy]

She's attractive.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, she's a. Yeah, that one. Yeah, that one.

[Travis McElroy]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

All right.

[Ed Larson]

Goodbye, Hillside.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, game.

[Travis McElroy]

Hail long island medium.

[Marcus Parks]

McKenna. Grace. Of course. They got her in there. She plays the creepy little girl in every movie.

[Ed Larson]

She is a very good creepy little girl.

[Marcus Parks]

She's a great creepy little girl.

[Ed Larson]

Get out of here, McKenna. I'm not paying you.

[Marcus Parks]

We enjoy your work, but we're not paying.

[Ed Larson]

I'm not paying, and you're fucking right.