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Ronald DeFeo Jr and the Amityville murder case |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Saturday, 12 August 2006 |
Ronald DeFeo Jr and the Amityville murder case - Autopsy of Dawn DeFeo: Some details and questions
22 July 2006
Steven Morris
It is a matter of public record that during the early morning hours of Wednesday, 13 November 1974, Ronald Joseph ‘Butch’ DeFeo Jr took a 35-calibre Marlin hunting rifle and shot to death his family of six as they slept at 112 Ocean Avenue, Long Island, New York.
Later that same day, DeFeo, aged twenty-three, was taken into police custody - allegedly for his own protection. Shortly thereafter, he was subjected to a lengthy police interrogation which culminated in him being charged with all the killings.
At trial, DeFeo made a judicial admission of guilt. On Wednesday, 19 November 1975, a year and five days after the murders, Judge Thomas M. Stark instructed the jury to return a verdict og guilty and DeFeo was convicted on six counts of second-degree murder. Two weeks later, DeFeo was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
He vehemently denies murdering every person in that house but takes responsibility for shooting his father, mother and his eighteen-year-old sister, Dawn. Ronald DeFeo claims that Dawn killed siblings, Alison, Marc and John.
It is a fact that throughout the years he has been incarcerated, DeFeo has contradicted various statements he has made in relation to that fateful night; from the somewhat dramatic persepective of demonic possession, to there being a male accomplice involved. But perhaps a look at Dawn DeFeo's possible culpability in some of the murders will further illuminate.
Examining the details of her autopsy report, which I have been provided with courtesy of Ronald DeFeo’s wife, Tracey, the very first page states that "no powder marks or fine speckled indentations are noted surrounding the entrance wound."
This addresses the question of distance: How far away from her was the killer when he fired the fatal shot?
At the trial of Ronald DeFeo Jr, prosecutor Gerard Sullivan - author of a subsequently published account of the case - in his opening statement to the jury, instructed that Dawn was shot at close range, which left partially burnt powder on the shoulders of her nightgown.
However, there were no powder marks near or surrounding the wound she sustained. One would think that if the powder marks were allegedly found on the "shoulders" of her nightgown, they would also be present in the girl’s hair, on her skin, and the blanket of her bed where her body lay.
In Prosecutor Sullivan’s book High Hopes, he also states that Dawn DeFeo had been menstruating at the time of her death and offers this by way of explanation for the sheeting beneath her blanket being sodden with blood. The official autopsy performed upon Dawn DeFeo reveals the absence of any menstrual blood on the sanitary napkin she had in place at the time of her death. The fact that she was using one would indicate that she anticipated her menstrual cycle, yet reveals an inconsistency with that posited by Gerard Sullivan, in that the blood on her sheet was not of menstrual origin.
Each of the bodies were described as being "cold" but no mention was made of Dawn's body being found in this condition. Dr Howard C. Adelman, testifying at DeFeo's murder trial, told of his astonishment at how one person could have murdered six people under such circumstances - all having been "controlled" so efficiently.
Adelman also claimed that urine and blood tests were performed on the victims (there was some suggestion that the parents may have ingested LSD) and found them to have been sober at the time they were shot dead. This testing was said to have occured on 27 November 1974, so two weeks after the murders. Why did this take so long?
There is no direct evidence that blood from any of the victims was ever actually tested. Samples of blood, liver, kidney, brain tissue, bile and gastric fluid had been submitted, but no positive results of such tests upon them are in existence, with the exception of urine results for Ronald DeFeo Sr and his wife, Louise.
Further, the autopsy indicates that in each victim, with the exception of Dawn, rigor mortis was "complete". With Dawn this was only partial. Livor mortis was anterior. All other victims were anterior, confluent, violaceous and fixed. Of interest is that pertaining to her gastrointestinal tract, which states that the oesophagus "is natural" and that the stomach contain[s]150 cc. of partly digested tan and brown food particles, some of the fibres measuring up to 1.5 cm. in greatest dimension. It states that "the mucosa and wall are natural, with slight autolysis of the mucosa. Small and large bowels are natural".
In addition, the antecubital fossa were incised for some reason. It is customary for the medical examiner to carry out this test in order to ascertain whether the victim had recently used drugs. Did he or investigators see something that made them suspicious?
Quite possibly. Was Dawn DeFeo using narcotics on the night her family were murdered, which may have rendered her temporarily "psychotic" for the period that she was under such chemical influence? If she was, why was this detail never explored at the trial of Ronald DeFeo Jr?
http://www.newcriminologist.co.uk/news.asp?id=-1761815327 |
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