The significant coverage of the shooting incident made Buttafuoco a minor celebrity. During Fisher’s trial, Buttafuoco appeared frequently on mainstream and tabloid news programs and talk shows and gave multiple interviews to all forms of media.5 David Letterman, in his last year of hosting Late Night with David Letterman, discussed the incident so often that Buttafuoco’s name was a recurring punchline,14 while Saturday Night Live parodied the case in multiple sketches.15
On May 19, 1992, Amy Fisher had come to the Buttafuocos’ house and confronted Mary Jo Buttafuoco about Joey Buttafuoco, with whom she had been having a sexual relationship since July 1991 after Fisher brought her vehicle to Buttafuoco’s auto body shop in Baldwin, Nassau County, New York.1When Mary Jo answered the door, Fisher—posing as her own (fictitious) sister Ann Marie—offered, as proof of the affair, a T-shirt that Joey had given her with the logo of his auto body shop on it. The front porch confrontation escalated, and when Mary Jo demanded that Fisher leave and turned to go into the house and call Joey, Fisher shot her in the face with a .25 caliber semiautomatic pistol. Once Mary Jo regained consciousness, she identified Fisher as her assailant.1The investigation of the shooting and the subsequent court cases involved a series of conflicting claims and received significant news coverage in both mainstream news outlets and tabloids.4Buttafuoco’s lawyer maintained that Buttafuoco was never involved with Fisher and Fisher had invented the affair, while Fisher’s lawyer portrayed Fisher as a victim whom Buttafuoco manipulated into the shooting.5After Fisher’s assault conviction, Buttafuoco was indicted on 19 counts of statutory rape, sodomy, and endangering the welfare of a child. He initially pleaded not guilty.6 He later changed his plea to guilty, admitting he had sex with Fisher when she was 16 and that he had known her age at the time.7 He was sentenced to six months’ jail time and was released after serving four months and nine days of the sentence.8After his release from prison, Joey and Mary Jo Buttafuoco moved to California, where Mary Jo filed divorce papers in Ventura County Superior Court on February 3, 2003.9
The significant coverage of the shooting incident made Buttafuoco a minor celebrity. During Fisher’s trial, Buttafuoco appeared frequently on mainstream and tabloid news programs and talk shows and gave multiple interviews to all forms of media.5 David Letterman, in his last year of hosting Late Night with David Letterman, discussed the incident so often that Buttafuoco’s name was a recurring punchline,14 while Saturday Night Live parodied the case in multiple sketches.15