Joseph A. Buttafuoco is an auto body shop owner from Long Island who had a sexual relationship with a minor, Amy Fisher, who subsequently shot his wife, Mary Jo Buttafuoco, in the face. Tabloid news coverage labelled Fisher the "Long Island Lolita". Buttafuoco later pleaded guilty to one count of statutory rape and served four months in jail.
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. When Mary Jo answered the door, Fisher—posing as her own 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. The 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. Buttafuoco'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. After 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. 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. He was sentenced to six months' jail time and was released after serving four months and nine days of the sentence. After 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.
Unrelated charges
Buttafuoco has been convicted of crimes since the 1992 shooting incident:
In 1995, he pleaded no contest to a solicitation-of-prostitution charge and was fined and placed on probation for two years.
In 2004, he was sentenced to a year in jail and five years of probation after pleading guilty to auto insurance fraud. As part of the sentence, he is prohibited from working in the auto body industry in California for the rest of his life.
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. 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, while Saturday Night Live parodied the case in multiple sketches. In 2002, Buttafuoco participated in Celebrity Boxing, originally slated to oppose John Wayne Bobbitt, who dropped out after being arrested for domestic abuse. Bobbitt was replaced by female pro wrestler Joanie "Chyna" Laurer. Buttafuoco, despite being booed, won the fight in a majority decision. In 2006, he and Fisher were reunited at the Lingerie Bowl for the coin toss. On May 23, 2007, Mary Jo Buttafuocco appeared on Larry King Live to discuss the recent reunion of her ex-husband and the former "Long Island Lolita." At the time, Buttafuoco's second wife, Evanka, had recently filed for divorce, but withdrew her divorce petition on June 22, 2007. Joey Buttafuoco appeared in an episode of Judge Pirro, successfully suing an adult film actress for failure to pay an auto body bill. Sixteen years after the incident, Mary Jo Buttafuoco wrote a book telling her story, Getting It Through My Thick Skull: Why I Stayed, What I Learned, and What Millions of People Involved with Sociopaths Need to Know. She was inspired to write the book after her son referred to her ex-husband as a sociopath. Not knowing what the word meant, she looked it up and had a realization leading to her going public with her story.
