Most people would think twice about moving into a house barely a year after a young man murdered six members of his family inside. But George Lutz and his new bride, Kathy, leaped at the chance to settle into the Amityville, N.Y., riverside home in December 1975. "It didn't bother us. We didn't believe in ghosts and weren't superstitious," says Lutz. "I felt strongly this was our house. Whatever might be a problem could be fixed."

But just 28 days after moving into the three-story Dutch colonial, the Lutzes and their three children fled in terror. Their shocking claims of supernatural domestic disturbances were documented in author Jay Anson's 1977 blockbuster book The Amityville Horror, which sold more than 6 million copies, and a hit 1979 film. Since then, any number of Lutz's acquaintances have called the book a hoax. Through it all Lutz, 58, says he's still battling his Amityville demons. "People are disrespecting a true story," he says, sipping a glass of iced coffee in his favorite Las Vegas steak house. "It's my family's story, and it's hurtful."

The latest affront is a remake of the '79 film, opening April 15. Lutz and MGM, which is making the film without Lutz's input or permission, have traded lawsuits—a situation not unfamiliar to Lutz, who says he has been embroiled in no less than 14 Amityville-related lawsuits since 1976. Lutz says the lawsuits, however, are not based on money but on protecting his story. "We could have made a lot more money on this," he says. "But we never wanted to sensationalize it." Not surprisingly, he's expecting the worst regarding the remake. "I understand they have taken our story and grafted The Shining and other horror movies on," says Lutz. "It is not the story of what happened to us."

But what exactly did happen? The only indisputable fact is that in 1974 Ronald DeFeo, then 23, shot and killed his parents and four siblings in their sleep. For a time DeFeo claimed he was urged on by voices, but he recanted that story in a 2002 Primetime Live interview, saying that his parents were abusive and that he committed the murders while drunk and high on heroin.

In the Amityville book the Lutzes maintained that after moving into the DeFeo home they experienced doors flying off their hinges, levitating bodies, disembodied voices and frequent sightings of a demonic pig named Jodie. But DeFeo's former lawyer William Weber insists the supernatural elements in Anson's book are "pure bull, and I should know, because I helped create them." Weber claims that he helped the Lutzes concoct the fantastical details in anticipation of a lucrative book deal and then sued the Lutzes when they made a deal without him (they eventually settled). Counters Lutz: "Weber wanted to do his own book and movie, so he has tried to discredit us. We have taken polygraphs. We did not make this up." Other naysayers include Roxanne Salch Kaplan, who coauthored 1995's The Amityville Horror Conspiracy with her late husband, Stephen, a self-described parapsychologist who had consulted with the Lutzes. She believes in supernatural activity—just not what happened at the Lutzes' house. "When real paranormal activity occurs, you might get one or two things, but not all that craziness," contends Kaplan.

After fleeing the Amityville house, the Lutz family—George had adopted Kathy's three children from a previous marriage—moved in with Kathy's mother, who lived in a nearby town. After the book deal, Lutz moved the family to San Diego. "We were looking for the farthest point we could get from Amityville," he says. "We sailed every day on Mission Bay and got our lives back." The family, who Lutz says made only $300,000 from the book and film, relocated in the early'80s to Phoenix, where George and Kathy, who had given birth to two more kids, Gabrielle, 22, and Noel, 27, ran a direct-marketing business.

The Lutz marriage, meanwhile, was slowly disintegrating, and they divorced in the late '80s. Lutz moved to Las Vegas while Kathy, who never remarried and died last year at 57, ran a ministry for the homeless. Lutz now lives with his longtime girlfriend in Vegas, where he restores old cars and commiserates with other believers in the supernatural. "This is a lot more common than you think," says Lutz, who runs two Amityville Horror-related Web sites and is mulling over a documentary when the story's rights revert to him in four years. "I'd love for people interested in this story to see something of the truth."

Jason Lynch. Maureen Harrington in Las Vegas, Steve Erwin in Amityville and Liza Hamm in New York City

More From This Article

House Calls
Lutz isn't the only one dreading the, remake's release. The town of Amity-viile is bracing for another uncomfortable moment in the spotlight "I'm not happy about the attention these movies give our town, " says Marcia Besserman, president of Amityville's Chamber of Commerce. "It's a fallacy." While subsequent owners of the DeFeo-Luz home changed its street address and appearance (the sinister-looking half-moon windows are no more) in an effort to thwart unwanted visitors, the gawkers still flock. "None of the people who have owned the house since the Lutzes left—and there have been several families—has had any kind of supernatural occurrences,'' says Lutz skeptic Roxanne Salch Kaplan. "Ask anyone who lives in the neighborhood, and they'll tell you the only demons that haunt the house are the tourists once the bars let out".