Frankly, Moran’s claims are placing an uncommon demand on our credulity.

“It was well-known that Butch had a preoccupation with guns. He was not only proficient with them, he was fastidious about safe handling. DeFeo friends agree that he handled weapons like a range officer in a police academy so it is unlikely that he would carry or throw a loaded and cocked weapon into the water. Dawn on the other hand, knew little about guns and, if acting alone, could have thrown the rifle into the water at the end of Ocean Avenue, unaware of the danger of it inadvertently firing.”—Rick Moran, Fortean Times, 2004

Here Moran seems to blatantly ignore court testimony. During the trial, Ronnie’s friend Frank Davidge testified that Ronnie was very unsafe with his gun handling – at one point, pointing a loaded gun directly at his head! Davidge also recalled that during a hunting trip Ronnie fired a gun in his direction, and during a double date Ronnie pointed a loaded gun at the head of his date!

Air Force veteran John Carswell testified how Ronnie fired a gun outside his bar (where his girlfriend had lost her job), and Bobby Kelske testified how a drunken Ronnie DeFeo approached him outside a bar with a rifle and threatened to shoot him late one night. Ronnie, himself, testified that on one occasion he had to be forcibly stopped when he grabbed a gun and attempted to visit the house of an angry man who had threatened him earlier. Still on another occasion Ronnie described how had pointed a loaded weapon at his father’s head and pulled the trigger (only for the weapon to misfire).

All looks bleak for plucky Rick Moran, as the evidence seems solidly against his claims. Fortunately, though, he has an eyewitness! It seems one of his friends, Mike Shaner (deceased), was an SCPD officer involved with the DeFeo investigation. Shaner told Moran that a suspicious car had been spotted as being constantly in the area prior to the murders. This car always had one sole occupant, was always within view of the house, and it displayed a “US Department of Health” parking permit. Interesting. Moran then finds out from another source that the Department of Justice’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) often uses vehicles with this parking permit in their surveillance operations.

Luckily, Moran has friends at the DEA! He visits and asks if anyone knew about the DeFeo house being under surveillance by them at the time of the murders. He isn’t told then and there, but assured he’d get an eventual answer. A week later, Moran receives an anonymous call telling him the following information:

• Yes, the DeFeo house was under surveillance at the time of the murders (for suspicion of drug smuggling)
• The DEA officer watching the house saw the murders going down, represented as flashes in the 2nd floor windows accompanied by muffled roars coming from within the house
• Next he observed Dawn (carrying what appeared to be a rifle) leaving the house, getting into her car and driving south, toward the dock (where the Amityville creek meets the bay)
• A few minutes later Dawn returns without the rifle
• Ronnie leaves for work later in the morning
• 24 hours later, a man comes to the house
• Within minutes of that, the area was swarming with police

Moran treats this as eyewitness evidence proving that Dawn threw the murder weapon into the bay, ignoring the fact that police ballistics experts confirmed Dawn was killed by that very same rifle (see above documents). So the DEA agent’s story conflicts with the police ballistics tests – Dawn could not be shot by a rifle which was, at that same time, sitting at the bottom of the bay. Unless, again, maybe there was a conspiracy between the the district attorney’s office, the homicide detectives, the medical examiners, the head of the firearms laboratory and other police officers to keep this story of a handgun hidden. Creating and maintaining such a grand conspiracy would require much more work than just admitting Dawn was involved in the murders.

Missing rifles aside, there seems to be other major problems with this DEA story. Strike two comes when the DEA agent describes how the area was swarming with police just minutes after “a man came to the house.” But as explained in High Hopes (the book about the DeFeo case written by the prosecuting attorney, Gerard Sullivan), it wasn’t just one man approaching the house at that time – it was Ronnie with a group of at least 5 people from the bar down the road. This is confirmed by eyewitness testimony as well as the 911 call, made from the house by a friend of Ronnie’s (where Ronnie and others are referred to and heard in the background).

Other questions persist as well. Why didn’t police spot and question this lone stranger sitting alone in his car silently watching the murder house as they arrived? Why didn’t this DEA agent inform the police of what he saw? To the latter question, Moran explains that he did not want to compromise an ongoing investigation, but he also states that the DEA later sent a memo to the Suffolk County police detailing what was witnessed (Dawn’s actions). This information was put into the DeFeo record by officer Mike Shaner, himself.

But wait – if Shaner put the DEA memo into the DeFeo case file, himself, then that means he knew the DEA had been watching the house. So why did he only tell Moran about “a suspicious car” if he knew full well it was the DEA?

Unfortunately (or should I say “suspiciously”) Moran tells us that this DEA memo was later removed from the DeFeo file by SCPD officials and lost forever. So I guess that means we can’t verify this information with them. Mike Shaner is dead, so we can’t speak to him about this; and the DEA informant was anonymous, so we can’t verify this with him, either. Though if the DEA officially sent this memo to the SCPD, and the DEA case on the DeFeos was closed, it surely was no longer a secret – so I don’t understand why the agent would feel the need to call Moran anonymously.

Lastly, another problem with this DEA information is the timeline.

“This same agent said that he saw Butch leave the house the next morning. Twentyfour hours later, another man came to the house and within minutes, the area was swarming with police.”—Rick Moran, Fortean Times, 2004

The murders went down around 3am on November 13th. The police arrived about 15 hours later, at 6:40pm – not 24 hours after Ronnie left for work, and not in the morning. Wouldn’t an agent assigned to watch a house be taking detailed notes? Rick Moran claims he was at the scene with the other reporters. Didn’t Rick know what time of day it was when he was there? As a reporter, didn’t Moran ask the police when the call was made or when they arrived on the scene?

I certainly don’t believe this DEA story – but more importantly, why does Rick Moran?

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