Amy Fisher Trial: 1992

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Amy Fisher Trial: 1992

Defendant: Amy Fisher
Crimes Charged: Attempted murder, assault
Chief Defense Lawyer: Eric Naiburg
Chief Prosecutor: Fred Klein.
Judge: Marvin Goodman
Place: Long Island, New York
Date of Trial: September 24, 1992
Verdict: Guilty of assault
Sentence: 5-15 years imprisonment; released after 7 years

SIGNIFICANCE: The Amy Fisher/Joey Buttafuoco affair (she being a teenager at the time) showed the extent of tabloid newspapers' and television shows' power in capturing the public's attention and catapulting ordinary people into celebrityhood.

One sunny May afternoon in 1992, Mary Jo Buttafuoco found a teenaged girl ringing the doorbell of her suburban Massapequa, New York, home. The girl accused Buttafuoco's 36-year-old husband Joey of having an affair with her younger sister. Unimpressed by the story and a T-shirt the teenager offered as proof, Mary Jo Buttafuoco decided that the conversation was over and turned away. As she stepped back into the house, she suddenly fell with a bullet at the base of her skull.

The following year would be enlivened by an antic cavalcade of lawyers, tabloid reporters, Hollywood film makers and the participants themselves—all openly playing with the truth about why Mary Jo Buttafuoco was shot. Conflicting stories became a profitable commodity to be bought and sold in the form of newspapers, magazines, tell-all books, and television shows. By the time the justice system was finished with the affair, Americans would be fascinated or repelled by a story in which nearly all of the action took place out of the courtroom.

When Mary Jo Buttafuoco began to write a description of her assailant for the detectives clustered around her hospital bed, her husband, Joey, suddenly announced that he knew the identity of the attacker. He steered police toward the teenaged daughter of one his customers.

Police quickly arrested 17-year-old Amy Fisher, who claimed that she had been having a sexual affair with Joey Buttafuoco since she was 16 years old. She said she was obsessed with the auto-body mechanic and had gone to the Buttaffuoco home to confront his wife. When Buttafuoco's wife refused to take her seriously, Fisher angrily smacked Mary Jo in the head with a cheap handgun, causing it to accidentally discharge and fall apart.

Anyone who assumed that Fisher was merely a smitten teenager confused by the promises of an older lover got a rude shock a week after the shooting. In a secretly made videotape purchased by the tabloid television program A Current Affair, Fisher was seen negotiating terms for sex with a salesman in a motel bedroom. The videotape aired on national television the night before her bail hearing. What had been a sordid local story became an instant national sensation.

Calling her a prostitute who had stalked Mary Jo Buttafuoco for months, Nassau County Assistant District Attorney Fred Klein charged Fisher with attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault, and a host of firearms-related felonies. Klein asked for a record-breaking $2 million bail.

If Fisher were a call girl, replied her attorney, Eric Naiburg, then Joey Buttafuoco was a pimp who had introduced his client to prostitution by setting her up with work at an escort service. Nassau County Supreme Court Justice Marvin Goodman was not convinced by Naiburg's arguments that Fisher was a victim of Buttafuoco's manipulations. The judge agreed to the prosecutor's unprecedented $2 million bail request and sent Fisher off to jail to await trial.

Long Island Lolita

The media latched onto the tale of the "Long Island Lolita" with an obsession that rivaled Fisher's hunger for Buttafuoco's affection. Reporters looking for a fresh angle in the case were rewarded within days. While tending to his recovering wife at home, Joey Buttafuoco dialed controversial talk radio personality Howard Stern to denounce the sensational stories about his involvement with Fisher. Over the airwaves, Buttafuoco announced to the world that he loved his wife and was innocent of any part in her shooting. He declared that Fisher's claims were hallucinations.

Television and press reporters swarmed around Joey Buttafuoco. Was it true that Long Island escort services called him "Joey Coco-Pops" because of his ability to procure cocaine and women for customers? Buttafuoco admitted that he once had a drug problem, but said that it was now behind him. Had he met Fisher for sex at motels, his boat, his auto body shop, and at her parents' house, as she claimed? Had he encouraged her to kill his wife? Absolutely not, repeated Buttafuoco, who blandly insisted that such charges were the lies of a sick young woman. Buttafuoco said that he only knew the teenager from his auto body shop where she had brought her smashed car for repairs. She was such a frequent customer that he had her telephone beeper number.

As Mary Jo Buttafuoco regained her speech, she vigorously defended her husband. "The story is pretty simple," she told the press. "I love my Joey. My Joey loves me." If she suspected her husband of being involved in the shooting, she said, she would castrate him. "I'm no pushover who doesn't know her ass from her elbow," she told the Ladies Home Journal.

Hollywood Deals

With Judge Goodman repeatedly refusing to lower Fisher's huge bail, her attorney went to Hollywood to obtain bail money. Naiburg constructed a deal in which a film production agency secured the rights to Fisher's story by guaranteeing the major portion of her bail. The contract was signed and Fisher was released.

When prosecutors learned that Hollywood had helped finance Fisher's bail bond, they were furious. Since 1977, New York's so-called "Son of Sam" law, named after serial killer David Berkowitz, had barred criminals and defendants under indictment from selling their stories for profit. Six months before Fisher's case, however, the law had been declared an unconstitutional infringement of First Amendment rights to free speech. The state was hurriedly modifying the voided law in a way that would comply with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision, while still making convicts liable to financial claims by their victims. The prosecution charged the defense with improperly funding Fisher's release. However, Fisher remained free, Although under a restraining order to stay away from the Buttafuocos. This was not enough for an angry Mary Jo Buttafuoco, who filed a civil suit against Fisher for over $100 million, including the Hollywood bail money.

Meanwhile, the Buttafuocos were also selling interviews and cutting deals with Hollywood. Partially paralyzed and suffering from impaired vision and hearing, Mary Jo Buttafuoco sold the rights to her side of the story to CBS television for several hundred thousand dollars.

On September 23, 1992, Amy Fisher agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of reckless assault rather than face the uncertain outcome of a trial for attempted murder. Mary Jo Buttafuoco was livid over the plea bargaining, which required Fisher to aid investigators still examining the incident. This was a clear indication that Joey Buttafuoco was vulnerable to a statutory rape charge if it could be proved that he had had sex with Fisher when she was 16 years old.

"She tried to kill me and now she's taking my husband and trying to destroy us," said Mary Jo Buttafuoco. "This girl is an attempted murderer, a liar, a prostitute, and the D.A. is accepting her statement that she and Joe were together. Something's wrong here."

Free on bail while awaiting sentencing, Fisher visited a boyfriend, Paul Makely. While she rattled on about marrying Makely so that she could have conjugal visits in prison and about a sports car she hoped her notoriety could buy her, Makely secretly videotaped the conversation. He sold the tape to Hard Copy, a national tabloid television show, and Fisher made headlines again. When she saw the tape, she attempted suicide and checked into a psychiatric hospital. After she was released, she voluntarily returned to prison to avoid the media.

By now, police investigators had collected a handful of motel receipts signed by Joey Buttafuoco on dates when Fisher claimed to have met with him. F.B.I. handwriting analysts confirmed that most of the receipts carried Buttafuoco's signature. Yet facing a lack of any other evidence and with Fisher's reputation making her a useless witness, the District Attorney announced that Buttafuoco would not be indicted. At her sentencing on December 1, 1992, Fisher listened as Mary Jo Buttafuoco told the court of the lifelong pain she would endure as a result of her gunshot wound and the permanent disruption of her life and those of her loved ones.

"A Walking Stick of Dynamite"

When her turn to speak came, Fisher nervously apologized, but continued to insist that Joey Buttafuoco had encouraged her.

Judge Goodman was unmoved. "You are a disgrace to yourself, your family, and your friends," he told Fisher as he imposed the maximum sentence of 5-to-15 years imprisonment. "You were like a walking stick of dynamite with the fuse lit."

The Buttafuocos happily declared they were satisfied with the verdict and used the occasion to once again brand Fisher a liar. Major television networks soon aired the made-for-TV movies whose broadcast rights had floated Fisher's bond and paid the Buttafuocos's medical and legal bills. Local interest in the crime had faded. Ratings for the movies, however, demonstrated that viewers around the nation still had not tired of watching the cheap plot play out.

Joey's Troubles Are Not Over

With Fisher in prison and the television dramas over, the story soon started anew for Joey Buttafuoco. Police questioned a former employee of his body shop who claimed to have heard Buttafuoco boast of having sex with Fisher. On April 15, 1993, nearly a year after his wife was shot, Buttafuoco was indicted on six counts of statutory rape, twelve counts of sodomy, and one count of endangering the welfare of a child. Buttafuoco pled not guilty and left court in a white Cadillac accompanied by his still supportive wife.

That summer, Mary Jo Buttafuoco accepted an undisclosed settlement in her $125-million damage suit against Fisher and Peter Guagenti, who was spending six months in prison for selling Fisher the handgun and driving her to the Buttafuoco house. The New York State Supreme Court, however, denied Buttafuoco's claim to any of the money with which Fisher made bail, ruling that the deal with Hollywood was within Fisher's rights as a presumed innocent defendant who was permitted to raise bail by any lawful means.

The Buttafuocos's frequent press conferences and interviews on television programs like The Phil Donahue Show were viewed by millions, although the couple's version of events wore thin with much of the American public. Joey Buttafuoco's constant claims that he had never slept with Amy Fisher and Mary Jo's feisty denials of her husband's alleged affair provided easy laughs for comedians across the nation. Prosecutors were less jocular about the case. They ordered Buttafuoco to submit to a blood test and physical examination to weigh Fisher's charge that he had given her herpes and her claim to be able to identify hidden birthmarks on his body.

Joey Buttafuoco's wife stayed home with their children when he went to court on October 5, 1993. Flanked by his lawyer, Buttafuoco pled guilty to one count of statutory rape, the most serious charge in a 19 count indictment against him.

"I cannot accept your plea unless you are, in fact, guilty," Judge Jack Mackston told the tense defendant. There was a long pause. "On July 2, 1991, I had sexual relations with Amy Fisher at the Freeport Motel," Buttafuoco finally said.

"Do you mean sexual intercourse?" interjected the prosecutor.

"Yes, sir."

The defense attorney had an explanation for skeptics, to whom the crumbling of Buttafuoco's claim of innocence was no surprise. "There is a family involved here," Attorney Dominic Barbera said of his client. "That's the man he is. He did what he had to do in that courtroom so everybody else's life could go on."

Those wondering if Buttafuoco had committed a noble perjury to save his family more pain looked to the District Attorney's office, who assured Judge Mackston that factual evidence included motel receipts and witnesses to Buttafuoco's boasts about his sexual relationship with Fisher.

Joey Buttafuoco was sentenced to six months in prison and five years probation. He was also fined $5,000. He left prison after serving only 129 days of the sentence, flashing a thumbs-up sign at photographers. His wife threw a welcome-home party for him and several hundred guests attended. Bemoaning the sensationalism surrounding the case, The New York Times printed the party menu and photographed the Buttafuocos celebrating together.

Amy Fisher served her sentence amid tabloid rumors of a romance with a prison guard and later a lesbian affair with a fellow inmate. Meanwhile New York Governor George Pataki eliminated work release for any inmate convicted of a violent felony, thus scuttling Fisher's chance for an early parole.

Joey Buttafuoco considered embarking on a career as an actor, a line of work for which his detractors considered him well-qualified. But Joey's troubles were not over: On May 24, 1995, in Los Angeles, California, he was arrested for—and later pleaded no contest to—soliciting sex from an undercover vice officer. In addition to ordering Buttafuoco to pay $1,715 in fines and take an HIV test, the judge placed Buttafuoco on two years' probation.

Back in Nassau County, Judge Mackston found Buttafuoco guilty of violating his parole and sentenced him to 10 months in prison.

After his release, Joey Buttafuoco spent several years in Hollywood trying his hand at acting. He landed small roles in forgettable movies and for a short time, hosted his own public access cable television talk show.

In May 1999, Amy Fisher was released from prison after serving seven years of her sentence. Her early release from jail was due, in large part, to Mary Jo Buttafuoco's public statements forgiving Fisher. At the time of her release, Fisher's attorney said that she had a job waiting for her in the fashion industry.

—Tom Smith