On November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot and killed six members of his family at 112 Ocean Avenue, a large Dutch Colonial house situated in a suburban neighborhood in Amityville, on the south shore of Long Island, New York.

George and Kathy Lutz divorced in the late 1980s. Kathy died of emphysema in 2004; George died of heart disease in 2006. There was nothing particularity suspicious or eerie about their deaths.