If you were alive thirty years ago, you couldn't help but hear about Amy Fisher
and Joey Buttafuoco. But what happened to the biggest victim of the situation, Joey's wife,
Mary Jo Buttafuoco? Keep watching for the answer.
In 1992, 37-year-old wife and mother Mary Jo Buttafuoco was standing in her
Long Island driveway when she was shot in the face by 17-year-old Amy Fisher.
This was no random act of violence, though: Mary Jo's husband, Joey Buttafuoco, was having
an affair with Fisher, who would come to be known in the press as the "Long Island Lolita."
The story started a little less than two years before that incident in the Buttafuocos' driveway,
though. Joey Buttafuoco met Amy Fisher when she and her parents brought her
car into his auto body repair shop. The two would engage in an affair that, over time,
would escalate to the point that Fisher decided to shoot Mary Jo.
A New York Times article from the time of the shooting mentions that it was initially believed
the shooting was precipitated by Buttafuoco trying to end their relationship. The article quotes
Homicide Detective Daniel Severin who compared the case to the 1987 film Fatal Attraction. Mary
Jo Buttafuoco sustained serious injuries in the shooting including a severed carotid artery that
required a nine-hour surgery to mend. Afterwards, she needed the use of a ventilator for two days.
The shooting, the love triangle that was revealed to have precipitated it,
and the aftermath was basically a '90s tabloid's dream.
The Buttafuoco case was all over the news and even joked about on late-night television.
"Are you as dumb as dip, but you still wanna make a lot of money?
Then take Amy's special Bang for your Buck seminar!"
In the years that followed, made-for-TV movies and reality TV appearances would
help propel those involved to pseudo-celebrity status. Amy Fisher was arrested after she was
identified by Mary Jo as her attacker, and charged with attempted murder.
Meanwhile, Joey Buttafuoco also found himself in the clink as he and Fisher began their
relationship when she was just 16 years old, a year below the legal age of consent in New York.
Despite the animosity that must have existed between the two of them,
it was actually Mary Jo Buttafuoco who spoke in favor of granting Amy Fisher
parole — after seven years behind bars. The New York Post quoted Mary Jo as saying:
"I will be in court when Amy Fisher goes for resentencing,
and then all I want to do is to forget the whole thing. At this stage, forgiveness is appropriate."
Buttafuoco's grace and compassion did the trick, and Amy Fisher was granted parole in 1999.
Fisher's lawyer, Bruce Barket,
spoke highly of Mary Jo Buttafuoco's decision to forgive his client, saying:
"I am very thankful for Mary Jo's graciousness and compassion.
She deserves to be commended for her public position."
While Joey Buttafuoco and Fisher paid a price for their crimes, in the long run,
it was Mary Jo Buttafuoco who would have to reckon with the harshest consequences of their decisions.
Mary Jo was forced to deal with the horrific effects of her long-term injuries; in particular,
the shooting left Buttafuoco with a bullet lodged near her spinal column. She told Oprah in a 2005
interview that she suffered from facial paralysis and hearing damage as a result of the attack.
"I heard you didn't get the one answer you wanted. And what was that one answer?"
"Why?"
"Why."
"Why?"
In 2017, People magazine reported that Buttafuoco
underwent additional surgeries to help repair some of the damage.
Curiously, considering everything that went down, the Buttafuocos didn't divorce until 2003.
In 2012, Buttafuoco married Stu Tendler, a print shop owner, at a wedding ceremony in Las Vegas.
However, that marriage ended in divorce in 2018, with a court document filed by
Tendler mentioning that the couple's tastes and personalities were so divergent that they
could "no longer live together as husband and wife." Tendler died a few months later.
Ever since the attack, Mary Jo Buttafuoco has remained out of the spotlight — at least,
relative to her ex-husband, who has appeared on a number of reality TV shows in recent years.
That said, she still makes occasional TV appearances. In 2009, she even released a
book with a pretty on-the-nose title: Getting It Through My Thick Skull:
Why I Stayed, What I Learned, and What Millions of People Involved with Sociopaths Need to Know.
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