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Mary Jo Buttafuoco was shot in the head on the front porch of her home by her husband’s 17-year-old mistress, Amy Fisher, who was later dubbed the “Long Island Lolita.”
Nearly 34 years after her husband’s affair almost turned fatal, the suburban mom at the center of the scandal is telling her story in the Lifetime biopic “I Am Mary Jo Buttafuoco,” starring Chloe Lanier as her younger self.
“I’m as recovered as I’m going to get,” Buttafuoco, now 70 and a grandmother, told Fox News Digital. “I still have the effects of this bullet. I’ve always said that people who get shot don’t 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.”
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“I have permanent damage that will never heal,” she shared. “I’ve 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.”
“I’ve always said this bullet will get me eventually,” she reflected. “But I’ve been very blessed that it’s let me hang on this long.”
The morning of May 19, 1992, started like any other Tuesday, she recalled. After sending her two children off to school, the Massapequa, New York, mother — then 37 — was preparing to paint in the backyard when a knock at the door changed everything.
WATCH: MARY JO BUTTAFUOCO TELLS ALL ABOUT THE AMY FISHER SCANDAL
Fisher, then a high school student, arrived holding a Complete Auto Body T-shirt from the shop where Buttafuoco’s husband, auto body mechanic Joey Buttafuoco, worked. Introducing herself as “Anne Marie,” Fisher claimed to be 19 and said the shirt was proof that the 36-year-old man was having a sexual relationship with her 16-year-old sister.
As Buttafuoco turned to call Joey, Fisher pulled out a .25-caliber handgun, fired a single shot and fled.
“In the blink of an eye, the life I had ended when she came to my door,” Buttafuoco said. “I was nearly murdered in front of my own house — my safe place.”
Buttafuoco miraculously survived the attack. After eight hours of emergency surgery, doctors determined the bullet was too dangerous to remove. It had broken her jaw, traveled deep into her skull and lodged at the base of her brain, just above her spinal column.
Once she regained consciousness, Buttafuoco gave police a description of her attacker, though her husband vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
Detectives arrested Fisher two days later — on May 21, 1992. After confronting her with phone records, witness descriptions and inconsistencies in her story, Fisher eventually confessed.
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The case quickly became a national media circus that dominated headlines for months.
“It was awful,” said Buttafuoco. “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. Maybe because I stood up, walked and talked, people thought, ‘Oh, she’s OK. Everything’s fine.’ But it wasn’t fine. It was mortifying. The name ‘Buttafuoco’ got dragged through the mud. It became a punchline.”
Fisher pleaded guilty to first-degree assault and was sentenced to five to 15 years in prison. She served seven years before being released in 1999.
Buttafuoco remained with Joey for seven years after the shooting.
“First of all, I almost died,” she explained. “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.”
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“I was on a lot of medication — a lot of pills that altered my thinking,” she admitted.
Looking back, Buttafuoco said she has wondered whether she suffered from symptoms of Stockholm syndrome.
“I have been with Joey since I was 17,” she said. “Before I got shot, I’d 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 everyone’s friend, with this over-the-top personality people were drawn to.”
“Whenever I asked, ‘Why did this girl shoot me?’ he’d 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.’ That’s what he would tell me — and it made sense at the time.”
“He was such a good liar,” Buttafuoco continued. “I would ask him a hundred times why. He never flinched — he’d just look at me and say, ‘I don’t know why she did this.’ He was my captor, and I listened to him. I believed him.”
Buttafuoco turned to prescription medication to numb her pain and quiet her thoughts. Privately, she struggled with depression. She knew she needed help.
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“There wasn’t an aha moment,” she said. “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 it’ll 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 they’d go off to school or with friends, I would collapse in my room. I never wanted them to see me like that.”
“I became an addict,” Buttafuoco continued. “Back then, they gave me every pill I asked for. Nobody says no to a woman with a bullet in her head who says, ‘I’m in pain.’ They were handing that stuff out like candy — and I took it.”
Buttafuoco entered the Betty Ford Center for addiction treatment, a decision she said “saved my life.” She later filed for divorce in 2003.
“I remember they said, ‘Mary Jo, this terrible thing happened to you, and it’s awful, but you have so much anger and hate inside you. It’s not allowing you to heal.’ They opened my eyes. When I got sober, I realized I couldn’t stay in this anymore. I had to move on.”
Fisher, now 51, pursued a brief career in adult entertainment before leaving the industry in 2011, according to People magazine.
After Fisher’s conviction, Joey was indicted on multiple counts of statutory rape, sodomy and endangering the welfare of a child, People reported. He initially pleaded not guilty but later admitted to having sex with Fisher when she was 16. He served four months in jail.
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Fox News Digital reached out to Fisher and Joey, 69, for comment.
“What I’ve learned over the years is that Amy Fisher is a narcissist — and narcissists don’t change,” Buttafuoco said. “It’s always been about her. She doesn’t care one iota about what she’s done. It’s also inexcusable for any adult man to take advantage of a teenager. In that sense, she was a victim, but it doesn’t excuse what she did afterward.”
Today, Buttafuoco lives in California with her daughter and remains close to her son. After extensive facial reconstruction surgery, she can smile again.
“My head is half hollow,” she said. “If you’ve ever been on Novocaine, that’s what it feels like every day. I have no feeling on the right side of my face, but I’ve adapted to it. I made it. I’m a survivor — and I’m proud of myself for that.”
Lifetime’s “I Am Mary Jo Buttafuoco” is available for streaming
