The Morning Call from Allentown, Pennsylvania • 16

A-15 SUNDAY CALL-CHRONICLE, APRIL 10, 1983 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmauBummmmmmmmm Mother admits slaying to which son confessed If I suddenly died, there would have been no idea what the truth would have been. I could never have cleared it. Donna DeFeo six times. I think it was three times in the back and three times in the chest." Her husband, Armando DeFeo, staggered across the room and collapsed against a wall, Skeeters said DeFeo told him. Two years after her husband's death, Donna DeFeo moved her family to California where, she said, "We wanted to start a new life." Skeeters said family members told police that Angelo was shunned and called names by some family members.

"It was hard to live with the secret," Skeeters said. Although the grand jury found he had acted in self-defense, DeFeo said, her son Angelo "felt guilty He took it on his shoulders. Now he is relieved. I'm glad for him." So, gradually, Donna DeFeo said, she decided the time had come to set the record straight. "If I suddenly died, there would have been no idea what the truth would have been," she said.

"I could never have cleared it." Six of her other children already knew the truth, she said. She said she told her four oldest children she had killed her husband immediately after the stabbing, and two of the younger children when they got older. By the time she turned herself in to police, only her youngest son, 12-year-old Micky, had not been told, she said. 1 She said she believed her children were old enough now to live with the consequences, whatever they might be. By TOM VESEY Of The Washington Post WASHINGTON Twelve years ago, Angelo DeFeo, then a 19-year-old Marine at home on leave, told police that he had stabbed his father to death during a fight at the family's Riverdale, home.

Recently, his mother, Donna DeFeo, now 50, saying she was haunted by the truth, confessed to California police that it was she, not Angelo, who had wielded the knife that killed her husband. "She spits it right out: killed my husband and my son took the blame. I want to clean the said Jamie Skeeters, a homicide detective who was on duty in Oxnard, when Donna DeFeo appeared to clear her conscience and her son. Angelo DeFeo was charged by police with murder after his father's death in September 1971, but a grand jury declined to indict him, police -said, apparently because the killing -had been an act of self-defense. The state's attorney's office in Prince George's County, is now considering whether to take any action against Donna DeFeo.

A decision is expected soon. Donna DeFeo said in a telephone interview that she never asked her son, who now works at an aircraft parts plant in Ventura, to confess, but he insisted on doing so. "My son wanted to do it to protect me," she said of Angelo, the oldest of her seven children. "We went through years of agony," said Donna DeFeo, who now runs a house-cleaning business near Ventura. She said her sleep was plagued by nightmares of the killing and of what she described as a ghastly life of beatings and abuse she and her children had endured at the hands of her husband.

"It was frightening back in that time," she said. "There was absolute- ly no help for someone who suffered when a man was abusing his family. I know people heard me, heard the kids, knew they were being abused. But nobody said anything; the police' couldn't do anything." She said she never complained to police about her husband, but neighbors did. But, Donna DeFeo said, nothing happened.

"Today, people are more aware of what is going on, and are more willing to help," she said. According to Detective Skeeters, Donna DeFeo told him that her husband came home drunk on Sept. 14, 1971, and started beating her up in the couple's bedroom. Her son, Angelo, was in the house and tr ied to intervene, but her husband turned on him and started strangling him, Skeeters said DeFeo told him. Donna DeFeo said she tried to pull her husband off her son without success, Skeeters said.

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