Killer whose house inspired Amityville horror films dies aged 69

A man convicted of slaughtering his parents and four siblings in a home that later inspired the book and films The Amityville Horror has died.

Ronald DeFeo, 69, died Friday at Albany Medical Center, where he was taken Feb. 2 from a prison in New York’s Catskill Mountains, the state Department of Corrections and Community Services said.

The cause of his death was not immediately known.

DeFeo was serving a 25-year-to-life sentence for the 1974 murders in Amityville, Long Island.

The house became the basis of a classic horror film after another family briefly lived there about a year after the murders and claimed the house was haunted.

A book and two films — the 1979 original, starring James Brolin, Margot Kidder and Rod Steiger, and a 2005 remake — depict a house with strange voices, walls that ooze slime, furniture that moves on its own and other supernatural elements.

DeFeo defended his insanity at his trial, claiming he heard voices that drove him to kill his family.

He unsuccessfully sought a new trial in 1992, claiming that his 18-year-old sister had killed the other five family members and that he had then shot her.

“I loved my family very much,” he said at a 1999 parole hearing, where he also said he married while in prison.

The Corrections Department said it could not disclose why DeFeo was taken to the hospital, citing medical privacy laws.