Died in prison
Ronald DeFeo
Ronald DeFeo was 69, and in a 1999 hearing he said he loved his family very much and that he had married while held in state custody. He was taken in February 2021 from a New York state prison in the Catskill Mountains to Albany Medical Center, where he died in March 2021. The state corrections department would not say why he was hospitalized, citing health privacy laws. WHSV reported that the cause of death was not immediately known.
Cause of death, as reported: Cause not yet determined