killings. DeFeo told detectives: "Once I started, I just couldn't stop. It went so fast". He admitted that he had taken a bath and redressed, and detailed where he had discarded crucial evidence such as blood-stained clothes, the Marlin rifle and cartridges before going to work as usual. Trial and conviction DeFeo's trial began on October 14, 1975. He and his defense lawyer, William Weber, mounted an affirmative defense of insanity, with DeFeo claiming that he killed his family in self-defense because he heard their voices plotting against him. The insanity plea was supported by the psychiatrist for the defense, Daniel Schwartz. The psychiatrist for the prosecution, Dr. Harold Zolan, maintained that, although DeFeo was a user of heroin and LSD, he had antisocial personality disorder and was aware of his actions at the time of the crime. The trial's judge, Thomas Stark, declared that DeFeo's crimes were "the most heinous murders committed in Suffolk County since its founding." On November 21, 1975, DeFeo was found guilty on six counts of second-degree murder. On December 4, 1975, Judge Thomas Stark sentenced DeFeo to six sentences of 25 years to life. DeFeo was held at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in the town of Fallsburg, New York, and until his death all of his appeals and requests to the parole board had been denied. Controversies All six of the victims were found face down in their beds with no signs of a struggle. The police investigation concluded that the rifle had not been fitted with a sound suppressor and found no evidence of sedatives having been administered. DeFeo claimed during his interrogation that he had drugged his family. DeFeo had a volatile relationship with his father, but the motive for the killings remains unclear. He asked police what he had to do in order to collect on his father's life insurance, which prompted the prosecution to suggest at trial that his motive was to collect on the life insurance policies of his parents. After his conviction, DeFeo gave several varying accounts of how the killings were carried out. In a 1986 interview for Newsday, DeFeo claimed his sister Dawn killed their father and then their distraught mother killed all of his siblings, apparently with a rifle before he killed his mother. He stated that he took the blame because he was afraid to say anything negative about his mother to her father,