Ronald DeFeo Jr., the convicted killer whose 1974 murders spawned the “Amityville Horror” franchise, died last week while serving 25 life terms, officials said on Monday.
DeFeo, 69, was pronounced dead at 6:35 pm on Friday at Albany Medical Center, state prison officials said in a statement.
It was not clear why DeFeo, who was serving his sentence at the Sullivan Correctional Center, was hospitalized and the cause of death was still being determined by the coroner’s office in Albany, officials said.
DeFeo was 23 when he shot his parents, two sisters and two brothers at his home in Amityville, on the south coast of Long Island, on November 13, 1974.
During his trial, DeFeo claimed he heard voices telling him to kill his family.
He was convicted in 1975 on six counts of second-degree murder. A family who bought the house about a year later ran away weeks later, amid an alleged series of strange events.
A film based on the murders and their aftermath, “The Amityville Horror”, was released in 1979 and has become a franchise for several decades.
The house was recently listed in 2016 for $ 850,000.
The Associated Press contributed.