The confession that changed: DeFeo's shifting story on the night his family was shot

The bar on Ocean Avenue opened early on a Wednesday morning, or perhaps it had never closed.

A young man walked in and told the patrons that his family had been shot.

That was the first public statement of the day, and it was made to strangers over a counter.

The man was Ronald DeFeo Jr., 23 years old, a resident of the house at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York.

Exactly what he said to the bar patrons is not in the record.

Only that he told them his family had been shot, and that someone called the police.

Officers arrived at the DeFeo home and found six bodies.

The father, the mother, two brothers, and two sisters, each shot in the head while asleep.

Each one killed in bed, in the same house, on the same night.

DeFeo told police an unknown gunman had entered the home.

That was his first story.

Under questioning, he confessed to the murders himself.

That was his second story.

The confession was not a single, steady account.

His story shifted on the order of the shootings.

His story shifted on whether he acted alone.

Why would a man walk into a bar and announce his family was dead?

Why would he blame a stranger first, then take the blame himself?

Why would the details move every time he told them?

That would require evidence, and the evidence would come later.

On that morning, there was only the announcement, the bodies, and a young man whose account would not hold still.

THE FAMILY AT 112 OCEAN AVENUE

He was 23 years old, and he lived in the house where the killings occurred.

The house was at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York.

He lived there with his parents and four siblings — two brothers and two sisters.

Six people, one roof, one household.

The family was intact and living together on the night of November 13, 1974.

There is no record of the family being fractured, no record of a departure, no record of a quarrel that drove anyone out.

They were all there, asleep, when the shots came.

DeFeo later claimed he had heard voices urging him to kill his family.

That statement became central to his defense.

His defense also cited a history of drug use.

The exact nature and extent of that drug use are not in the record.

Neither are any specific events leading up to the night.

What remains is the domestic setting: a full house, a young man at its center, and his own account of a mind under pressure.

He was the oldest child in that house.

He was the one who walked into a bar that morning and told others his family had been shot.

The household was the stage.

The announcement was the curtain.

What happened between the two — what he heard, what he took, what he decided — is not documented.