The Devil I Know: My Haunting Journey with Ronnie DeFeo and the True Story ofthe Amityville Murders by Jackie Barrett Page A

with wine-color interior and a white top. I said to the guys at the dealership, ‘Look, this is gonna sound crazy, but they got a Gran Sport Riviera, loaded, leather interior, sunroof; they paid cash for it.’ Then my grandfather starts in with me: ‘What are you doing with these drug dealers?’ ”
    “Rocco DeFeo,” I said, looking at my notes. Ronald Sr.’s father.
    “Yeah. He was known as Rocky DeFeo. That’s what we called him. The next morning I had to go to work early, we had to open it up, take it out of the showroom, make it ready. I undercoated the car, tank up with gas, it said three gallons, three gallons my ass. I got up to stuff all the time. I was no good. That’s why they were planning to kill me.”
    “Who was planning to kill you, Ronnie?”
    “Both of them. My father and my great-uncle, Pete DeFeo. Thanksgiving day.”
    I flipped through the file again. Peter “Pete” DeFeo, born March 4, 1902, died April 6, 1993. Known as “Philie Aquilino,” a New York mobster who grew up in Little Italy and became a
caporegime
under a number of big-name bosses, including Frank Costello and Vito Genovese. After becoming a made man, Pete worked his way up the ranks, eventually achieving the rank of captain and operating his “businesses” out of various social clubs in the neighborhood and the Cuomo Cheese Corporation. At his peak, it seemed Pete DeFeo was one of the more respected bosses on the Lower East Side.
    How ironic, then, that he didn’t truly become known until November 1974, when his grandnephew was convicted of killing Pete’s niece, Louise, along with her husband and their other four kids. Pete, along with, it seemed, everyone else in the vicinity, was considered an early suspect before the clamps came down on Ronnie.
    “You think they were planning to kill you?”
    “I don’t think so, I know so. I overheard the whole conversation. My father says, ‘He’s using drugs, he’s using heroin, we can’t trust him. The kid knows too much; he’s gonna take us down. He comes home late at night, drives his mother nuts.’ They were gonna do it. Thanksgiving day. You gonna kill your own kid? I mean, come on.”

SIX

    No matter where they’re from or what kind of lives they lead, all teenagers get restless. I was no different. Around my eighteenth birthday, I felt my spirit being pulled. If I think about it, I suppose it was different from the usual scenario, since the reason for my restlessness wasn’t just the typical desire to escape my parents’ rules and do my own thing.
    It was something more than that. Voices were coming through to me, from multiple directions, asking for help. Some of them seemed near, some distant. But they were calling. The feeling overcoming me wasn’t like wanderlust. It was a need to answer the voices.
    I had always known my mother to travel—New York, California, elsewhere. She’d go almost monthly, sometimes for a week, sometimes two, usually scouting and buying properties in which she could perform her rituals. New York was the place that drew her most powerfully,and most often, and because of that, I’d always felt a kinship for the place, too, though I’d never been.
    The voodoo community, especially the elders with whom my mother conferred, saw my need and understood it. You have to realize that Louisiana Voodoo is not just a practice; it’s a religion, too. Some people are raised in the arms of the church or the synagogue or the mosque. I was raised in the arms of medicine men, dark priestesses, and warrior chiefs. That was my spiritual cocoon.
    They agreed it was time for me to spread my wings, but they also needed to know I was up for the challenge. I would be assigned travels, forays into the outmost corners and darkest places, where my job would be to record and witness demonic possession, followed by, in some cases, exorcisms. If it wasn’t too late, I would be charged with saving those who could still be brought back. The visits would require