Mary Jo Buttafuoco still lives every day with the consequences of a single bullet fired on her front porch by her husbands teenage mistress, a moment that shattered a suburban family and became a grotesque media spectacle for a nation hungry for scandal.
Nearly 34 years after the affair that nearly cost her life, the Long Island mother at the center of the "Long Island Lolita" saga is reclaiming her narrative in the Lifetime biopic "I Am Mary Jo Buttafuoco," with actress Chloe Lanier portraying her younger self. According to Fox News, the now 70-year-old grandmother is using the film and a new round of interviews to speak candidly about survival, betrayal and the long-term cost of violence both physical and cultural in an era that too often treats real human suffering as entertainment.
"Im as recovered as Im going to get," Buttafuoco told Fox News Digital, reflecting on the injuries that have defined her adult life. "I still have the effects of this bullet. Ive always said that people who get shot dont heal from bullet wounds. You can break a leg, fall, scrape your knee and it heals. When you get shot, a bullet tears through wherever it goes, and it causes permanent damage." She does not sugarcoat the toll, adding, "I have permanent damage that will never heal," and listing the deficits that remain: "Ive lost hearing in my right ear. I have facial paralysis and problems with my esophagus. I have only one carotid artery, so I face vascular issues that will be with me for the rest of my life."
Her assessment of her prognosis is blunt, but not self-pitying, grounded in a kind of hard-earned realism that many crime victims are rarely allowed to voice. "Ive always said this bullet will get me eventually," she reflected, acknowledging that the foreign object still lodged in her skull is a constant threat. "But Ive been very blessed that its let me hang on this long."
The day that changed everything began with the ordinary rhythms of middle-class life in Massapequa, New York, on May 19, 1992. After sending her two children off to school, the then-37-year-old mother was preparing to paint in the backyard when a knock at the front door interrupted her plans and, in an instant, destroyed the sense of safety that home is supposed to provide.
On the porch stood Amy Fisher, then a high school student, holding a T-shirt from Complete Auto Body, the shop where Mary Jos husband, auto body mechanic Joey Buttafuoco, worked. Introducing herself under a false name, "Anne Marie," Fisher claimed to be 19 and insisted the shirt was proof that the 36-year-old Joey was having a sexual relationship with her 16-year-old sister, a story calculated to inflame suspicion and confusion.
As Mary Jo turned to call her husband to the door, Fisher produced a .25-caliber handgun, fired a single shot into her head and fled the scene, leaving a mother bleeding on the threshold of her own home. "In the blink of an eye, the life I had ended when she came to my door," Buttafuoco said, summing up the abruptness with which normalcy vanished. "I was nearly murdered in front of my own house my safe place."
Doctors managed to save her life after eight hours of emergency surgery, but they could not safely remove the bullet. It had shattered her jaw, traveled deep into her skull and lodged at the base of her brain, just above the spinal column, where any attempt to extract it risked paralysis or death.
Once she regained consciousness, Mary Jo provided police with a description of her attacker, even as she struggled with catastrophic injuries and the fog of trauma. Her husband, however, vehemently denied any sexual relationship with Fisher, presenting himself as a misunderstood businessman and family man rather than a middle-aged adult entangled with a teenager.
Detectives moved quickly, arresting Fisher two days later, on May 21, 1992, after gathering phone records, eyewitness accounts and evidence that contradicted her initial claims. Confronted with the mounting proof, Fisher eventually confessed, and what might have remained a local crime story exploded into a national obsession.
The case rapidly devolved into a media circus, with tabloid television, late-night comedians and sketch shows turning a near-fatal shooting into lurid entertainment. "It was awful," said Buttafuoco, recalling how the culture treated her disfigurement as a punchline. "They made fun of me on Saturday Night Live. One of the actresses had her face all distorted that was supposed to be funny. I thought, My God, I look like this because I got shot. I was almost murdered."
"It became a joke," she continued, describing how the Buttafuoco name was transformed into shorthand for scandal. "Maybe because I stood up, walked and talked, people thought, Oh, shes OK. Everythings fine. But it wasnt fine. It was mortifying. The name Buttafuoco got dragged through the mud. It became a punchline."
Fisher ultimately pleaded guilty to first-degree assault and received a sentence of five to 15 years in prison, a punishment that many observers at the time considered lenient given the premeditated nature of the attack. She served seven years before being released in 1999, reentering a culture that had already turned her into a notorious figure and, in some corners, a twisted kind of celebrity.
Despite the betrayal and the violence, Mary Jo remained with Joey for seven years after the shooting, a decision that outsiders often struggled to understand. "First of all, I almost died," she explained, emphasizing the physical and emotional fragility that defined her early recovery. "I was in no shape to say, Get out. I was very sick for a long time. I had two little kids who were traumatized that their mom was almost murdered outside their home. And Joey lied easily and smoothly. He swore on the lives of our children that he had nothing sexual to do with Amy that she was just a customer who misunderstood him. He had his story, and he stuck to it. And I believed him."
She acknowledges now that her judgment was clouded not only by trauma but by heavy medication. "I was on a lot of medication a lot of pills that altered my thinking," she admitted, underscoring how vulnerable victims can be when they are physically dependent and emotionally overwhelmed.
Looking back with the clarity of distance and sobriety, Mary Jo has wondered whether she experienced a form of Stockholm syndrome, the psychological phenomenon in which victims develop emotional bonds with those who harm or control them. "I have been with Joey since I was 17," she said, noting the depth of their shared history. "Before I got shot, Id been with him for 20 years. I realize now that he was a good talker a schmoozer. He was personable, and everybody liked Joey in the neighborhood. He was everyones friend, with this over-the-top personality people were drawn to."
She recalls how he consistently deflected responsibility and cast Fisher as an unstable young woman who misread his friendliness. "Whenever I asked, Why did this girl shoot me? hed say, She must have thought that because I was nice to her and fixed her car, she could have me. She must have misunderstood me. Thats what he would tell me and it made sense at the time."
The pattern of deception was relentless. "He was such a good liar," Buttafuoco continued. "I would ask him a hundred times why. He never flinched hed just look at me and say, I dont know why she did this. He was my captor, and I listened to him. I believed him."
As the years passed, Mary Jo turned increasingly to prescription medication to dull both physical pain and emotional anguish, a quiet descent that played out behind the faade of a functioning household. Privately, she battled depression and a sense of entrapment, recognizing that something had to change if she was going to survive in any meaningful sense.
"There wasnt an aha moment," she said, describing the slow realization that she was losing herself. "I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. Time was passing, and I wanted to set an example for my children that mom can go through this, and itll be OK. They never saw me wiped out or drugged out. But I took pills to maintain, just to exist. They thought mom was fine, but when theyd go off to school or with friends, I would collapse in my room. I never wanted them to see me like that."
Her dependence deepened as doctors continued to prescribe. "I became an addict," Buttafuoco continued, offering a stark indictment of a medical culture that too readily medicates pain without addressing its roots. "Back then, they gave me every pill I asked for. Nobody says no to a woman with a bullet in her head who says, Im in pain. They were handing that stuff out like candy and I took it."
Eventually, she sought help at the Betty Ford Center, a decision she credits with giving her a second chance at life. Buttafuoco entered the renowned addiction treatment facility, a move she said "saved my life," and with sobriety came a new perspective on her marriage and her future.
"I remember they said, Mary Jo, this terrible thing happened to you, and its awful, but you have so much anger and hate inside you. Its not allowing you to heal. They opened my eyes. When I got sober, I realized I couldnt stay in this anymore. I had to move on." She later filed for divorce in 2003, finally severing legal ties to the man whose infidelity had set the tragedy in motion.
In the years after her release from prison, Fisher, now 51, briefly entered the adult entertainment industry before leaving that line of work in 2011, according to People magazine. After Fishers conviction, Joey himself faced legal consequences, as he was indicted on multiple counts of statutory rape, sodomy and endangering the welfare of a child, People reported, and though he initially pleaded not guilty, he later admitted to having sex with Fisher when she was 16 and served four months in jail.
Fox News Digital noted that it reached out to both Fisher and Joey, now 69, for comment on the latest chapter of Mary Jos story. Neither has publicly demonstrated the kind of contrition or moral reckoning that many would expect after such a scandal, leaving Mary Jo to draw her own conclusions about their character and motives.
"What Ive learned over the years is that Amy Fisher is a narcissist and narcissists dont change," Buttafuoco said, offering a harsh but considered judgment of the woman who nearly killed her. "Its always been about her. She doesnt care one iota about what shes done. Its also inexcusable for any adult man to take advantage of a teenager. In that sense, she was a victim, but it doesnt excuse what she did afterward."
Today, Mary Jo lives in California with her daughter and remains close to her son, having rebuilt a quieter life far from the Long Island streets where her name once drew satellite trucks and tabloid headlines. After extensive facial reconstruction surgery, she has regained the ability to smile, a small but powerful symbol of resilience in the face of permanent injury.
"My head is half hollow," she said, describing the lingering physical reality of her condition. "If youve ever been on Novocaine, thats what it feels like every day. I have no feeling on the right side of my face, but Ive adapted to it. I made it. Im a survivor and Im proud of myself for that." For viewers of Lifetimes "I Am Mary Jo Buttafuoco," now available for streaming, her story is a reminder that behind every sensational headline is a human being, and that personal responsibility, moral clarity and the strength to reject victimhood remain essential virtues in a culture too quick to glamorize wrongdoing and trivialize its costs.
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