Lou Gentile Amity Week, Night 3

(May 29, 2002)

LOU GENTILE: Let's get on with George Lutz. George, welcome to the show.

GEORGE LUTZ: Hi Lou. How are ya?

LOU GENTILE: Ah, I'm doing okay. The best I can do, I guess, compared to what happened last night.

GEORGE LUTZ: Did you put out an announcement that the fellow that called-in last night is never to call your show again?

LOU GENTILE: That's right. You can never call, ever again. [laughs]

KEVIN MEARS: Hi George.

GEORGE LUTZ: Hi. How are ya?

KEVIN MEARS: I'm good.

LOU GENTILE: Alright, now let's take this call, because I believe this is John.

JOHN (caller): Hi, its John. [dial tone]

LOU GENTILE: Can you believe it? [laughs]

KEVIN MEARS: Did you just hang up on him?

LOU GENTILE: I just hung up on George.

KEVIN MEARS: Well you...

LOU GENTILE: Ah... Is this John?

#990000 (caller): Yeah, its John.

LOU GENTILE: Alright John, hang on a second, okay? This is amateur night as well as Amityville night. So anything goes.

[break]

LOU GENTILE: And we're back to The Lou Gentile Show. We have George on the phone as well as John. Alright John, go ahead. Get it out of your system, what you have to tell him.

JOHN (caller): Okay, I just want to address what the skeptics in general say about ghost stories and paranormal sightings. They try to claim a logical or medical condition. You know, something like a hypnogogia or waking dreams or hallucinations to explain some of the things that happened to the Lutz family. You know, I just want to know if that was posed to George, how would he respond to it?

GEORGE LUTZ: That, I have no idea. I thought about this after we got hung up on last night, and after there was obviously going to be no more radio show last night. The thing that came to mind first was that the, if you want to call them, the pressures of being a newlywed or having business, and a new family and all of that, I think kept me very grounded in some practical ways back then. And then, Kathy and I talked about it quite a bit during one of the breaks while we were trying to get everything going ‚ and I guess I really didn't understand part of your question. I think I understand it a bit better tonight.

I was reminded of two specific instances where, let's say that was possible that it was more of a dream than reality ‚ and yet, the way I recall it, there's no part of it that was a dream.

JOHN (caller): [unintelligible] when you woke up the next day you said, "I wasn't really sure what happened last night," or was it a very...

GEORGE LUTZ: Well the problem is I didn't wake up. The problem is I stayed awake after this went on, and all through it...

JOHN (caller): So there really is no waking dream involved...

GEORGE LUTZ: Right.

JOHN (caller): It was just reality.

GEORGE LUTZ: Right. Even when I look back at it now, I kinda wish it was a dream, especially... [call waiting tone] ...house, but there's one good part to this and one bad part, and we'll do the good part first, if you wish.

When Kathy and I were levitating, we were talking to each other [call waiting tone] ...were looking down at the bed and it was empty. That was a pleasant experience. That was not a frightening experience. It was disconcerting in that it was new and uncomfortable and pretty unbelievable ‚ even while its going on and you're seeing it and you're participating in it and you're conversing and talking about it. And after we were back in bed, next to each other, we looked at each other and said, "Did that really happen," just for confirmation from each other. I really can't really think of that in terms of a dream, because we were cognizant through it and talking to each other and carried on a conversation while this was going on. One of disbelief, but still...

JOHN (caller): The reason I asked is because I am sure there are certain percentage of paranormal reports that can be attributed to things like waking dreams, where, as true with paralysis and having terrible nightmares and afterwards not really being sure what happened ‚ but, you know, I know that feeling. Things like cold spots in your house ‚ that's not, that has nothing to do with a waking dream at all.

GEORGE LUTZ: I can think of a waking dream, as such, years later ‚ in terms of a nightmare ‚ where I'm talking in the middle of the nightmare and I'm already in California for, let's say two years. That to me would be a waking dream/nightmare kind of thing.

JOHN (caller): I've experienced that. I've had them in the past, so I know what they're like. I had one where I was paralyzed for maybe 15 seconds, and there was a woman at the end of my bed. I butchered my dead grandmother the next day. I wasn't sure if it was reality or if it was a dream, you know, I couldn't tell. At least that's sort of the way they are, so that's why I was proposing the question.

KEVIN MEARS: You see, John, the one thing I point to is that the big way to tell when you're looking at something that has to be paranormal and not a hypnagogic hallucination is if you have more than one witness seeing something, its not hypnagogic. It can't be.

JOHN (caller): I agree.

GEORGE LUTZ: And during the nightmare, for example, Kathy would wake me up, but I really was not awake. I was back in the house. And that was one of the most frightening things to be back there and feel that I couldn't get out of there.

And Kathy was hearing, while this was going on, Kathy was hearing a woman speaking, saying, "Where's my George? Where's my George?" And I was just trying to figure out a way to get back to where ‚ out of there. Get back to wherever it was I was supposed to be, because I knew I wasn't supposed to be there.

So I don't know what you'd call that ‚ a really bad nightmare, or just some form of hallucination. I don't know.

JOHN (caller): A bad day, for sure.

GEORGE LUTZ: Yeah. I mean, I still recall it, and this is now 20 years ‚ more than 20 years later since that one. But I still remember that night.

JOHN (caller): So you never looked at it the next day and said, "Is this real," I mean it was just always real as far as you were concerned, right?

GEORGE LUTZ: Well that certainly ‚ that experience was. Even though I knew my body was asleep, there was no part of my mind that was.

LOU GENTILE: Its amazing. And I'm sure that while you were in the house, George, you had similar dreams?

GEORGE LUTZ: No, see, I won't use the word "dreams." Kathy had the dreams ‚ I didn't have them. Kathy had dreams about the order of the murders, where the bodies ‚ where the DeFeo family was shot ‚ who was shot first, the time that they were shot ‚ different things like that. I mean she literally relived that in her mind, in her dream state.

And I don't know, we never had a way to know whether that was ‚ dreams was accurate or not ‚ whether they were, if you wanna call them, "bleed-throughs" in time of some kind that were really showing her what really had happened. All we could ever say was this is what she experienced. This was what she came to believe happened. Doesn't mean that forensics or science would show otherwise, you know, or would confirm it.

That wasn't the troubling thing. The troubling thing was that she would even dream these things.

LOU GENTILE: Alright John, does that answer your question?

JOHN (caller): Yeah, I have another one if you wanna hear it. A simple question.

LOU GENTILE: Okay, go ahead.

JOHN (caller): I've heard rumors that you're gonna either make a new website or possibly a book or maybe even some type of a documentary. Is that gonna happen, or what's the chance of that happening? [unintelligible joke made ‚ all laugh]

LOU GENTILE: See? What did I tell ya. Here we go.

GEORGE LUTZ: For more than 20 years I've wanted to do a picture book of some kind with an explanation of the house as the way we left it. That'd be the picture book of all the different photographs that were taken the day of the investigation. And we will do that. I don't know when that will be. I had thought that we had that worked out two years ago. As you know that didn't come about. It will happen, and it will happen within two years, but the question is just when and how.

I'm not really sure what media to put it on and how to think of it. What I'd really like to do is put it on amityvillehorror.net when we get that up and running, and then just have it for people to see and if they want a CD of it, or whatever, make one available for five bucks or something like that, I really don't...

JOHN (caller): I think a lot of people are looking forward to that, for sure.

GEORGE LUTZ: I really don't want to think of it in terms of a commercial venture as much as just making the photographs available.

As far as a book ‚ no. We tried that a couple of different ways. We do still have the original "Campaign of Terror," which is a very large book. That was the sequel that the writer left after it was done and after a ‚ what would you call it ‚ an advance ‚ advanced negotiations had already been completed with Prentice-Hall, and then it was removed from the market because of all the legal problems at that point with the author leaving. We own the copyrights for that, so we will be transferring that book to probably the same website in probably the same way. You can read it there or you can download the whole thing. We'll figure something out with that, because I think people would really ‚ should have those stories ‚ should know what happened to the other people.

So there's two different projects that I'm not sure how we'll handle them as an end result, but we're certainly trying to figure something out to have it make sense and not have it be 20 bucks a copy or anything like that.

JOHN (caller): Okay. I'll be waiting.

GEORGE LUTZ: As far as movie goes, that's just, that's always a dream until it happens. So who knows.

LOU GENTILE: Alright John, thanks for the call.

JOHN (caller): Thanks for taking my call.

LOU GENTILE: Alright. Bye. [off-topic talk excised] Let's take another call. You're live on Lou Gentile Show. What's you question for George Lutz?

CALLER: Hey George, I was just wondering something. When did you feel that all those horrible episodes pretty much ended? Was it after you moved out to California?

GEORGE LUTZ: When I look back at it now, I think that many times we thought it was just plain over. Many different times we just, we'd have quite a few days of peace, quite a few days, even weeks, maybe, without the severe headaches and the nausea or the draining sensation, where you just have no energy at all and you have no physical ailment, no illness or anything like that, but you just are drained. We would have weeks of peace and we would say to ourselves, you know, looks like, you know ‚ you dare to think that maybe its over that way. In that sense. So when the kids would have a good night's sleep night after night after night, so that you would start to feel safe, and then a few things would happen, and, umm, you would know better.

CALLER: Do you feel now that you are at a place where you can finally say, "Whew, its over"? Or I guess this never...

GEORGE LUTZ: Well, yeah, in one sense its always been over, from the time we left there. In that sense, what I mean by that is that, that was the beginning of severing the direct physical and psychological link with the house. It was years later when we met Reverend Neal Smith, who was the archbishop of Canterbury's exorcist for the Anglican Church in England. We spent time with him. We prayed with him. We... I hate to say it now, but I argued with him for quite a few hours, and it was mostly about words and semantics. Finally he got me to agree to go into the chapel in his church and pray with him. That we could both agree on. And there's the way I thought of things, the way Kathy thought of things, and the way he thought of things, were different. And it was a problem for a couple of hours with us. And he's a lovely man. He's really an incredible individual.

And in that church that night he said prayers with us, for us. He did a blessing. And there was an incredible relief at the end of that night. You could feel a real lifting from it all. That doesn't mean that it all just quit right then and there, but so much of it went away, that ‚ if there's a biggest turning point after leaving New York, or getting out of the house, it would certainly be that.

CALLER: Wow. That must have been horrible, but...

GEORGE LUTZ: Well actually it was kind of wonderful that it happened.

CALLER: Really?

GEORGE LUTZ: Yeah. That it was over, that meeting him. That was just one of those gifts from God that you are grateful for forever, and never understand how it came about. The way we met him was, we were being interviewed by a New York Times ‚ I'm sorry, a London Times ‚ reporter, and her name was [sounds like "Dani"] Brooke, and she had written a book on natural childbirth. And she was interested in our story, and she was interviewing us about our story, and she mentioned that she knew Reverend Neal Smith, and we just begged her to meet him.

And the following year we were back in London, seeing him again, but that time was totally social, and having dinner with him and his family. They were really wonderful people.

CALLER: Great. Well thank you, George.

GEORGE LUTZ: You're quite welcome.

CALLER: And thank you for sharing your story with everybody. Take care. God bless.

GEORGE LUTZ: Bye.

LOU GENTILE: Alright. Thank you. Well, John Zaffis joins us now. John, welcome back.

JOHN ZAFFIS: Hi, How you doing?

LOU GENTILE: Alright.

GEORGE LUTZ: Hey John. You're back to bother me some more, aren't ya?

JOHN ZAFFIS: Uh, yeah. [laughs]

LOU GENTILE: So how are you doing, John?

JOHN ZAFFIS: Doing okay. Not bad.

LOU GENTILE: Alright. We were just recapping some of the things that happened last night, and took a couple of calls ‚ that person John called in, and...

JOHN ZAFFIS: Oh no. Everything didn't crash again, did it?

LOU GENTILE: No.

KEVIN MEARS: It must have been that there were two "Johns" on at once.

LOU GENTILE: Say that again, Kev.

KEVIN MEARS: Well there were the two Johns on at once. So you didn't get that double whammy.

LOU GENTILE: [off-topic talk excised] Anyway, George, as far as Butch DeFeo is concerned ‚ I know there was a point where you actually tried to get him some help. Is it possible you can elaborate on that a little bit?

GEORGE LUTZ: After Kathy and I left the house, we sat... [call waiting tone] ...tapes for ourselves ‚ not the kind of tapes you would want anyone else to listen to. And they were for our own sense of well-being, psychological un-doing... [call waiting tone] ...different things that had taken place for one of us, and the other had no idea. It was a discovery process, also.

In the process of doing that, we came to the conclusion that Ronald DeFeo sitting in jail for six consecutive life terms would be a real... [call waiting tone] ...tragedy ‚ again ‚ would further the tragedy. [call waiting tone] ...very least he should be afforded psychological help, psychiatric care. And we made arrangements through friends of ours. Amy Vedder was ‚ a good friend of mine, Joe Vedder, who was ‚ they were at our wedding earlier that July. They had been over to the house while we were in the house. She knew William Weber and she, or a way to get a hold... [call waiting tone] ...she knew DeFeo's attorney, and she made inquiries about whether he would be willing to talk with us, and we eventually met him and sat down and spoke with him. Always with the understanding that that was the reason why we were meeting with him.

LOU GENTILE: So in other words, you actually believe that there was something going on with this that he could have been very well possessed.

GEORGE LUTZ: Absolutely.

LOU GENTILE: Okay. John, what stories had you heard about Butch DeFeo being possessed in all the times that you have discussed The Amityville Horror?

JOHN ZAFFIS: One thing that I'd like to ask George before I answer that ‚ George, did he agree to the counselling and the psychiatric help?

GEORGE LUTZ: I don't think William Weber, as DeFeo's attorney at that time, ever made any moves towards such a thing.

JOHN ZAFFIS: They never even tried to seek out any help...

GEORGE LUTZ: I have no reason to believe that he did.

JOHN ZAFFIS: Okay. Just curious.

GEORGE LUTZ: I have no... I am not privy to any information that he did anything in that way. Instead what happened was that by the time Ed and Lorraine went into the house on the 2nd time, there was a contract that had been delivered to our house. It had Weber and his partners, Mars and Burton ‚ wanted to do a book deal and a movie deal and use our story as part of that. They wanted us to take lie detector tests, and if we failed the lie detector tests, we were not to receive any money from this venture. And Ronald DeFeo was to receive monies from this.

And the whole idea of all of that was just... They even, at one point, wanted us to donate the house to their corporation. That was ‚ the whole idea was just not something that Kathy and I would agree to.

JOHN ZAFFIS: Alright. I was just curious where he went as far as, you know, were they even attempting on his behalf to try and get him any psychological help or, you know, any type of guidance...

GEORGE LUTZ: Well representations were made to us that there was an appeal in process ‚ that there was an automatic appeal of some kind that would be taking place. That this ‚ that any information we supplied would be helpful towards that, possibly. We were introduced to a gentleman by the name of Paul Hoffman, who eventually wrote the "Good Housekeeping" article without our permission. He was introduced to us as a criminologist working on this case. Turns out he was a writer. We didn't know that until it was April of 1977 when he, when the story came out in "Good Housekeeping" about us. Yeah, these are ‚ this is quite a group of interesting individuals.

JOHN ZAFFIS: Yeah. I should say. I think the one thing, Lou, in answer to your question ‚ in hearing so many different arguments, if you will ‚ so many theories, so many different things that took place the night of the murders ‚ its astounding to me today, after all these years, that none of the neighbors heard any of the shots.

LOU GENTILE: Well John, I got a surprise for ya. I have, tonight on the show, its gonna be coming up on the next hour when George leaves us ‚ Joel Martin. Have you heard of Joel Martin?

JOHN ZAFFIS: Umm, its not a familiar name to me right now. No.

LOU GENTILE: Okay. Joel was a local Long Island, New York, radio personality who closely, who was closely involved with The Amityville Horror case. And he was the first reporter on the scene. And he has some very, very first-hand knowledge of the interviews that took place with all of the people and neighbors and friends and all that other stuff. So he's gonna be explaining that to us when he comes up on the second part of the hour.

JOHN ZAFFIS: Okay. That sounds good.

LOU GENTILE: Definitely, its ‚ believe me ‚ its gonna blow the doors off a lot of people's opinions about what happened.

GEORGE LUTZ: I believe he knew Kaplan rather well, too, if I remember correctly.

LOU GENTILE: Yes. And he didn't exactly condone what Stephen Kaplan was doing.

GEORGE LUTZ: I wasn't inferring anything, I just, I always thought that he knew him.

LOU GENTILE: Yeah, he knew him, but he didn't really condone what he was doing as far as calling Amitville a hoax, because even Joel will admit that there have been some very odd, strange and bizarre things that have happened surrounding The Amityville Horror case, with the people who have been involved and things like that.

[off-topic talk excised ‚ break]

LOU GENTILE: I wanna get into some of these email. I tried to sort them out. The first one I'm gonna do here is from Bill Bonfiglio from New York, and he asks George: "There have been allegations that during the time you were residing at 112 Ocean Avenue, you had gone to the police station and told them you were having thoughts of murdering your family, and you turned your gun over to them. Is there any validity to this allegation, and if so, what are the details?"

GEORGE LUTZ: I had heard this before. I don't know where to start. Back when we were in New York and I had my business there, I had a cash payroll [and] I had a license to carry a concealed weapon. That's not an easy thing to get. It was limited to Nassau and Suffolk County and upstate New York. It was not valid in New York City. So any time that I went to New York City, I had to either leave the gun at home someplace or in a car or at a police station. The police station always seemed to be the best option. So very often I would go and it just became a habit to stop by the police station and you drop it off and you tell them when you'll be back. We went to New York and I dropped the gun off.

LOU GENTILE: So that allegation is false, then?

GEORGE LUTZ: Pretty ridiculous.

LOU GENTILE: Okay. [off-topic talk excised] George, where do you think The Amityville Horror is gonna be in 25 years from now? Do you think its gonna be as widely publicized, and do you think its still going to remain one of the most popular hauntings in human history?

GEORGE LUTZ: Where do I think it'll be in 25 years? Do I have a marketing plan for it for 25 years from now? Is that part of the underlying question? [all laugh]

LOU GENTILE: No, its just, I mean, what do you think...

GEORGE LUTZ: I couldn't have imagined 25 years ago I'd be sitting at home on a telephone talking about this to a live audience. That's just not ‚ I don't think about that. It doesn't occur to me that that's something important to worry about or think about. I don't know. I mean maybe that's not the answer you want, but...

LOU GENTILE: Well let me ask you this. Twenty-five years ago...

GEORGE LUTZ: We spent 25 years trying to put together a normal life and live fairly incognito where we are. Its not a comfortable thing to be recognized when you go to the grocery store, and I have a great deal of empathy about that, and I'm glad that that's gone away for the most part, so when it does happen, most of the time, I guess that you can consider it a pleasant surprise, but its like, okay, well thank God it doesn't happen every day or every week or every month. I can't imagine what that kind of life would be like, and not be able to live like a private citizen.

LOU GENTILE: Well 25 years ago, was it different?

GEORGE LUTZ: It was never a good thing to go out of your house and worry about who's gonna accost you next.

LOU GENTILE: Alright, let's take another call. You're live on The Lou Gentile Show, and what's your question for George Lutz?

CALLER: Yeah, hi. I was wondering if I can ask George how much of the movie was realistic. I mean how much... What I'm trying to say is how much that happened in the movie really took place?

GEORGE LUTZ: There is quite a few things in the movie that never took place ‚ never happened the way that they were depicted in the movie.

CALLER: Now would you say that the flies on the priest ‚ did that happen?

GEORGE LUTZ: I don't think that Father Ray ever spoke about flies on him. The flies did happen in that room constantly ‚ in the upstairs sewing ‚ what we referred to as the Sewing Room. They were there pretty much from the time we moved-in, but they weren't in swarms like in the movie.

CALLER: Oh, okay. Now, the toilet bowl flushing blood ‚ was there anything like that ever happened?

GEORGE LUTZ: No, no. I got it all. The toilet bowls did turn black on the first floor and on the second floor, and they had started to on the third floor when we had left. When we left.

CALLER: Wow. Creepy.

GEORGE LUTZ: Just the inside of the porcelain. Not the complete bowl. The blood running down the walls ‚ no. One of the things they left out was that there were drips out of the keyholes on different doors, especially on the second floor, that, they were like a hardened substance. They were black. It was like a teardrop, and they would grow longer. They would grow larger. So as time went on they got ‚ they actually grew while they were there.

CALLER: Now the cross on the wall, did that turn upside down?

GEORGE LUTZ: Yes.

CALLER: Yeah, that did happen. Oh. And how long was Ed & Lorraine Warren involved when ‚ at what point did you call Ed & Lorraine to come visit your house?

GEORGE LUTZ: Actually Laura DiDio set that up from channel 5. I still don't understand how she came into our life and performed so many wonderful things and then just seemed to be the right person in the right place. But she had a rapport with them and she understood them to be the professionals that they are. And she took it upon herself to get a hold of me and especially after seeing, I think, Kaplan's interview in the newspapers and on TV on the 18th and 19th of February, and she explained that he had no credentials, but she did have people that did have credentials. And she convinced the Warrens to come down and go through the house the first time by themselves with her. So she accompanied them.

She was an assistant news producer of some kind for channel 5 news in New York. And then the Warrens put together the team that went in later.

CALLER: Now before you bought the house, were there any early warning signs that told you that maybe, you know, "I shouldn't buy the house," you know, that maybe there's something wrong here, or that nothing ever went through you mind?

GEORGE LUTZ: Sure, it went through our minds. And in this sense, that we wanted to first of all know that if the kids were going to be bothered by this in some way ‚ if they had objections, we would not have bought the house. So as a family we sat down and discussed it at length.

And I'm not saying today that that's the best solution that someone would do, but that's what we did then. We sat with them and we explained that a family had been murdered there. They had seen the house. They had been through it. If they had any reservations or any reason in their minds that they wouldn't be comfortable in there, then we wouldn't have moved there. So that was a decision before buying the house, in that sense.

CALLER: Does anybody in Amityville today still hold any ill-will towards your family?

GEORGE LUTZ: Oh, I would have no idea.

CALLER: You would have no idea.

GEORGE LUTZ: I'm told that there are quite a few, but I really don't know.

CALLER: Hmm. Cause I understand that that town was ‚ I mean after the movie took place after the story took place, now Amityville, you know, as soon as you say that name, everybody links it to your story.

GEORGE LUTZ: Oh, and I'm sure there were times ‚ and there still are ‚ when they wished that we had never moved-in there. And I can certainly understand that I would never have wanted to be my neighbor, and then have all the years after that.

CALLER: Alright, thank you very much, George. And Lou, keep up the good work.

LOU GENTILE: Alright man, thanks a lot. Thanks for the call. Bye. [off-topic talk excised] George, have you, within the past 25 years, went back to Amityville at any point?

GEORGE LUTZ: Yes.

LOU GENTILE: Was there any kind of hard feelings with anyone there?

GEORGE LUTZ: Oh, no one knew that I was there.

LOU GENTILE: And I imagine the house is completely changed today, correct?

GEORGE LUTZ: From the pictures I've seen, yes.

JOHN ZAFFIS: Well I can speak to that, because I was there about two months ago, when I was working in the general vicinity on a case ‚ naturally you want to see the Amityville home. And the whole side is done. The curved windows ‚ those are replaced. The pool is gone. I'm not quite sure, but I think its a new boathouse that's out there. But you can still tell that its the home just by driving by it, by all the pictures over the years. I mean they have done some remodeling.

LOU GENTILE: George, were you ever at the house that they blew up in Tom's River, New Jersey?

GEORGE LUTZ: No.

LOU GENTILE: No? Just checking.

GEORGE LUTZ: That was one of those sets that I wasn't invited to.

LOU GENTILE: That's actually right down the street from our house.

GEORGE LUTZ: No way.

LOU GENTILE: Yeah, its funny. Because when I met my wife it was like, "Yeah, this is where The Amityville Horror is," and I'm like, "That's not the Amityville horror house," and she's like, "Oh, I know, its the one they blew up in the movie."

GEORGE LUTZ: I'm told they, that was an A-frame and they converted it somehow?

LOU GENTILE: All I know is that she said that they blew it up and its completely different then the way it looked.

GEORGE LUTZ: They didn't really blow it up, though.

LOU GENTILE: Yeah, they did.

GEORGE LUTZ: They did?

LOU GENTILE: Yes. Completely levelled it.

GEORGE LUTZ: I didn't know that.

LOU GENTILE: Yep, the house in Tom's River was completely levelled and they built a new home and the family that's there now ‚ I mean, it was a movie, so I'm not expecting that they had a haunting or anything, but, you know, they built the brand new house on it and, you know. Its eerie how it actually looks like Amityville. You know, the pictures at least that I've seen. Because if you look at the back yard, they have a boathouse now. They didn't blow that up. And its still got that look to it, if you know what I mean. [off-topic talk excised] John, what did you find that when you were growing up with your aunt and uncle, whenever they brought up Amityville, did you at all think that maybe this wasn't true, maybe it was true. Was there any skepticism in your mind, or...

JOHN ZAFFIS: No. The reason being, Lou, is you gotta remember, when they were working on cases, I was always fortunate enough to be around, and Ed would always say, "John, listen to this, listen to this." And you've heard me say this before, where I heard before, you know, anything really ever hit ‚ where books, you know, and the movies or anything really hit ‚ when Ed & Lorraine actually sat down with Kathy and George and they were talking to them about different things. Or it was over the telephone ‚ I can't remember exactly what it was on the audio tapes.

I just remember sitting, listening to the different things and, as you know, my uncle will stop the tape and start telling you what he feels with his input and what he thinks was happening to the family at that point and time. See, ya gotta remember, at that point and time, it was considered "just a case." It was just a case in Amityville, Long Island, at that point.

So as things progressed and I would hear these different things, or the movies would come out, or you'd hear about the book, you read the book, and different things, I mean, then everything would start getting twisted and turned and, you know, some different things would come into perspective, but did I ever doubt the validity of the case ‚ no. Because I remember the original investigation, when they went in, and hearing them discuss and talk about the different things that transpired. So no ‚ I never doubted it for a second.

And actually, George, I don't know if you ever go on my website or if you've ever been on there or not, but I do talk about the Amityville story on there. And the very first paragraph I state that in there, that I heard it ever since I was a kid, so I knew that it was real. [laughs]

GEORGE LUTZ: Its been a long time since I visited. Is it warrens.com?

JOHN ZAFFIS: No, I was referring to mine. I have my own website.

GEORGE LUTZ: No I haven't, John.

JOHN ZAFFIS: Okay. Everybody has a website today.

LOU GENTILE: Go ahead, John, plug your website for George so that he can...

JOHN ZAFFIS: Okay, its www.prsne.com.

GEORGE LUTZ: Prsne.

JOHN ZAFFIS: Prsne.com.

LOU GENTILE: Yes that's www.prsne.com as well as Warrens.net. Alright, George, I wanna thank you very much for being on the show... [off-topic talk excised]