Getting It Through My Thick Skull

by Mary Jo Buttafuoco

  Joey was absolutely hysterical in his denials. It was a very persuasive portrayal of a wrongly accused man. “Show me a statement! Play me a tape where I said that! They won’t because they don’t have one! They are making this up.” Overnight, Amy and Joey had become the biggest story in the country. The burly auto mechanic and a sweet little schoolgirl! It was Fatal Attraction with a teenager! Joey and Amy had plotted to get rid of me! He had given her the gun! Amy shot me when he tried to break off their affair! With a name like Buttafuoco, we must be involved with the mob! Day after day, the stories kept coming, feeding off each other, one more outlandish than the next. We found ourselves the subject of an absolute media circus.

  I lay in my hospital bed watching the round-the-clock coverage in disbelief. Every daytime talk show in the country did shows on the “affair”: Geraldo, Sally Jessy Raphael, Jackie Mason, Phil Donahue. Newscasters broke into the daily soap operas to report the latest breathless rumor or official update. Joey and Amy were the top story on every news broadcast. Editorial pages all over the country weighed in on this irresistible scandal in suburbia.

  I had no choice but to confront my husband after several days of this. The police were reiterating their assertion on television, every single day. Joe screamed loudly and publicly to anyone who would listen that they were lying—he had never touched Amy—but his denials were always a single sentence at the end of a salacious story: Joseph Buttafuoco denies these allegations.

  “Come on, Joey,” I said one afternoon. “This is ridiculous. Why do the police keep insisting that you had an affair with her? They’re not telling Naiberg to shut up! The press is only running with what they keep officially stating!”

  “Because they’re lying, Mary Jo.”

  “Why would they lie about that, Joe?”

  “I don’t know, they just are. They’re making this up! The only time sex ever even came up was that day at the house, when I made the call to get her out to meet me. I asked the cops if it was against the law to have sex with a sixteen-year-old!”

  Gravely injured as I was, hard as it was to concentrate or even hear anything clearly, this remark really jolted me. “JOEY . . . Why would you feel the need to ask that?”

  “Hey!” He shrugged his shoulders and threw up his hands. “They kept talking about how she was only sixteen, so I just asked if having sex with a sixteen-year-old was illegal, or what. I just wanted to know; doesn’t mean I did anything!”

  I was too frazzled to pursue it. A week into life with my new neighbor, Mr. .25 Caliber, was exhausting me. My body was starting to come back to life and protesting every step of the way. Ironically, it seemed that as I healed, the pain became more excruciating. I was literally sweating out the hours between doses of pain medication—that is, when I wasn’t screaming bloody murder as my wound was probed. I physically didn’t have the strength to argue, but the question nagged at me. Why would he ask such a thing? I worried about it for a few minutes, until the pain obliterated any rational thought.

  CHAPTER 2

  WHEELS OF JUSTICE

  One of the most prominent and telling traits of many sociopaths is their fantastic ability to manipulate others and lie for profit, to avoid punishment, or seemingly just for fun. As someone who faced a firestorm of public anger, disapproval, and just plain incomprehension over the years from those who asked, “How could she stay with him after that?” all I can say is that if you haven’t ever been under a sociopath’s spell, be grateful. They can charm the birds out of the trees and tell you black is white, and have you believing it.

  I was far from alone in my outrage at what I saw as nothing but a slanderous, hurtful campaign against my husband and family. Every friend and family member who visited my hospital room was equally aghast by our sudden infamy and what they were seeing about Joey on TV and the front page of every newspaper. “A hardworking, affable guy . . . the life of the party,” one neighbor described him in Newsday. “Even the guys say there was never a hint of him fooling around.” But these viewpoints were buried in a sea of innuendo, rumor, and outright lies, fueled by Eric Naiburg’s antics and popularized by seemingly every journalist in the country, from the New York Post to People magazine. Joey was right by my side, of course, swearing it was all lies.

  Both families picked up the gauntlet and stuck firmly behind Joe’s story: the cops lied when they claimed that Joey and Amy had had an affair of any kind. There was no official signed statement by Joe; they hadn’t taped Joey in any interviews; it was a he said/they said situation. At most, I thought that Amy might have developed a crush on Joe at the garage and fabricated this whole “affair” in her mind. I wouldn’t put anything past a girl who could ring a doorbell and then shoot somebody in the head. She was clearly unstable, and her lawyer wasn’t helping her. He was exploiting her—and destroying my family along the way.

  After eleven days in the hospital, the doctors agreed I was well enough to check out and continue recovering at home. The doctors in charge of my case gathered in my room that morning to prepare me for what was to come.

  “Your eye, which is stuck open, will eventually close, and the patch can come off. Your vision in that eye should eventually be all right. Your balance will continue to improve as your equilibrium readjusts itself. The facial paralysis is permanent, but we will continue to work on it in therapy and hopefully the muscles will relax somewhat over time. Same thing with your esophagus; it’s paralyzed, but the left side of your throat will eventually learn to compensate and you’ll be able to swallow real food. For now, only liquids or puddings. Your speech will similarly improve.” The senior doctor paused.

  “The cleaning and packing of the wound must continue at home for several more weeks,” he said. I groaned, but it was about to get much worse. “The hearing in your right ear is gone forever, Mary Jo,” he said bluntly. “The eardrum was shattered, and there’s nothing we can do to fix that damage. You will be permanently deaf on that side.”

  I’d realized I was deaf in one ear, of course, but I had been holding out hope that this was a temporary condition. It’s difficult to describe the sensation of deafness in one ear; it’s not the equivalent of losing half your power to hear. It means complete disorientation as to what direction a sound comes from. It means being bothered by background noise that everyone else automatically tunes out. It’s living with a strange hollowness inside the head. In practical terms, it meant that for the rest of my life I would have to sit with my “good” ear near the person I was with, or look at them face-to-face if I wanted to hear and understand their words. And I’d have to get real good at lipreading. I wept as I sat in my wheelchair waiting for Joey to pull the car around.

  Thankfully, the hospital made no public announcement that I was being released. Joey and I were able to drive home and get inside without being bothered by the press. Joey carried me up the stairs, and I got myself settled into my own bedroom. Several close friends and neighbors stopped by to welcome me home, bringing flowers and hugs and news. In a touching and beautiful gesture, one of our friends, wanting to help out in any way she could, canvassed our street asking people if they would sign up to bring us a hot meal or casserole for dinner each night. Sixty families signed up. For two months after I came home from the hospital, friends stopped by our house every afternoon and brought us the most delicious meals. It was a show of kindness and concern that I will be forever grateful for.

  Everyone protected us at every turn. The media became a constant presence in front of our house in the summer of 1992. Intrusive journalists, news vans, cables, wires, and curious crowds became a fact of life, something we all had to live with on a daily basis. Reporters invaded our quiet little community, bothering and questioning everyone who came by to visit or help. The more allegations that got hurled at Joey by Amy’s defense lawyer, the more crazed the media attack became. Just getting the kids out of the house and around the corner to the beach club without being attacked by the press became impossible, and the club was the on
ly respite that we had. Its board—I had been corresponding secretary until I got shot— held a meeting and voted to break through the fence and put a gate up with a lock that only our family had the keys to. This way we didn’t have to go out through the front door and be engulfed by the media fray. Nobody could have asked for better friends and neighbors than the ones that Joey and I had.

  I was home where I belonged, surrounded by family and dear, supportive friends. These people knew me and Joey and our kids and our life. Not a single one believed what they were hearing or reading about Joey and Amy. Michael Rindenow, the attorney who’d assisted us on the closing of our house, offered to act as our family spokesman and accompany me to any meetings with the police and the district attorney’s office. We happily accepted. He and many others stepped in and did their best to stand by me in the eye of the tornado. It was about to get even crazier.

  Amy Fisher was the lead story in every newspaper and television show in the country, and it didn’t take long for worms to start crawling out of the woodwork. It soon came to light that Amy had worked as an escort. Indisputable proof was right there on a homemade videotape, surreptitiously recorded by her client. He pocketed a tidy sum for selling the tape— which was soon broadcast to all of America on A Current Affair.

  The media went absolutely fanatical. It was at this juncture that Amy was dubbed “Long Island Lolita” by the New York Post, and the coverage reached the absolute heights of absurdity. The latest revelation only added fuel to Naiberg’s fire, so the latest spin was that Joey had forced this little schoolgirl into prostitution, given her a beeper, worked as her pimp, made her buy the gun, convinced her to shoot me, and on and on and on.

  In light of this most recent revelation, Fred Klein said, “Describing Amy Fisher as a schoolgirl is like calling John Gotti a businessman,” at Amy’s bail hearing. Though Eric Naiberg argued valiantly that Amy was a lost little girl who needed to be at home with her parents, the judge posted a $2 million bail on Amy—the highest ever in the county’s history for a first-time offender.

  Given the sex tape scandal and the unprecedented bail amount, the press descended like wolves, took up residence on our front lawn, and refused to budge until police intervened, at which point they grudgingly backed up to a legal distance— in the street of our quiet suburban neighborhood.

  Our next-door neighbors had been waiting to relocate to Florida until June so their daughter could finish out her school year. Their house was in escrow when the shooting took place, and putting aside their concern for me, I’m sure they were probably panicking. Who wanted to live next door to the Buttafuocos and the infamous house? I imagine they were worried that the house deal would fall through. Fortunately for them, it didn’t. A young married couple moved in as scheduled and took possession of the house in the middle of the whirlwind.

  Every time Joey escorted me out the front door, we faced yells, taunts, and idiotic questions from the media. In fact, reporters were all over town, banging on our neighbors’ doors, descending on Complete Auto Body, trying to get inside Bilt-more Shores Beach Club next door, anything for a quote. I was forced to walk the gauntlet every day, when Joey faithfully drove me to physical therapy, where I was hooked up to a TENS machine. Small sensors were stuck all over my paralyzed face, neck, and jaw, and then bolts of electricity zapped through the machine. The goal was to shock the paralyzed nerves back to life. It hurt, and the whole process scared me. But it had to be done.

  Joey was my rock. He had taken a leave of absence from his job to stay home full-time and care for the kids and me. Fortunately, it was a family business with my father-in-law at the helm, so the paychecks continued. Cass’s main concern, of course, was that I get well. Joey cooked breakfast, washed dishes, packed lunches, grocery shopped, cleaned the house, did laundry, and drove the kids around without a complaint. He was also my nurse: cleaning my wound, refilling my prescriptions, sitting at my side during physical therapy, helping me walk, bathing me, and monitoring visits from my friends. He never wavered in his denials that he’d had nothing to do with Amy Fisher and that she was crazy. Everything he was saying made sense. It was the two of us against the world. Even massive amounts of painkillers didn’t dull my rage at this kid who’d tried to kill me and the public servants who were willfully destroying my husband’s reputation.

  One afternoon, I endured a particularly grueling session on the medieval torture machine. The reporters outside were especially rude and aggressive; I did my best to ignore their shouts as we slowly exited the car. Joey and I ascended the stairs—a painful ten-minute ordeal that left me exhausted and shaking from the effort of balancing. As I hobbled to my bed, I caught sight of myself in the full-length mirror and gasped. I walked toward my reflection and really looked at myself hard, head to toe. I weighed eighty-nine pounds—twenty pounds had vanished due to my liquid diet. My hair was completely shorn off and just starting to grow back in uneven patches. I was so emaciated that I looked like a little boy. A patch still covered my eye, and the bullet wound was heavily bandaged. I clutched the dresser for support and peered even closer. Loose skin drooped from the injured side of my face—the frozen half. I was virtually unrecognizable from the pretty, vital woman I’d been just a month before.

  This is what Amy Fisher had done to me. I was literally fighting for my life. Meanwhile, the entire world wanted to tune in to the Joey and Amy soap opera. Poor Amy? People wanted to hear about how Joey had taken advantage of her? How come nobody was interested in what she’d done to me?

  I got a big jolt when Detective Marty Alger called me at home one day as I rested in bed. There were new developments that could possibly support a charge of premeditation. Apparently, two teenage boys had voluntarily shown up at the police station with their parents. Seeing the nonstop media coverage of every aspect of Amy Fisher’s life, they had gotten scared about something they’d done months before. Amy had approached a teenage boy the previous fall and told him some story about being in love with an older guy and how badly she wanted to get rid of his wife. When he mentioned that he had an old rifle lying around somewhere, Amy got very excited. She offered him $400 cash plus a blow job to go to my house and shoot me.

  Her would-be shooter was just a regular, somewhat nerdy seventeen-year-old boy—he wanted the money and the blow job, but he was no criminal. He had no intention of following through or shooting anybody. When the agreed-upon day came, he did nothing, and he told cops that Amy had screamed at him the whole ride home.

  Amy soon moved on to a different boy. This new kid just took her money and the blow job and didn’t even go near our house. Both boys swore they never had any intention of harming anybody; the police believed them.

  Amy’s frustration and obsession had clearly been growing for months. She couldn’t find anyone willing to do the deed despite handing out cash and sexual favors. Finding no one willing to shoot a perfectly innocent woman they didn’t even know, she eventually decided to do it herself. Amy’s mysterious “boyfriend” turned up as well. The teenage boy I’d seen sitting in the car outside my house that day was eventually located after a long investigation. It turned out that this kid, Peter, had given Amy a gun and driven her to my house. He’d stolen a license plate off a car in Brooklyn and put it on his car before coming, so he clearly knew what she planned to do and took precautions against being identified. That boy sat there, watched our discussion, and saw her shoot me. Peter then drove Amy home, took her bloody clothes and the gun, and dumped them down a sewer.

  These actions clearly made Peter an accessory to attempted murder. However, given his “cooperation” and the fact that he led police to the sewer where the gun was eventually recovered, he was allowed to plea-bargain. Peter was charged with criminal possession and sale of a weapon and sentenced to six months in jail. He wound up serving four months and was never heard from again.

  My strength was slowly returning, and I tried desperately to return to some semblance of normal life for my children’s sake. I
had become well enough to be escorted the hundred yards to the Biltmore Shores Beach Club and sit propped on a beach chair outside. The sun and fresh air were restorative. Protective friends surrounded me, and my kids could see all their friends there.

  One afternoon, as I rested on the beach under an umbrella, a friend came racing over the sand and stopped in front of me. “Amy made bail!” she shouted. I couldn’t believe it, but there it was. Joey and I returned to the house and called Klein’s office. We learned that Eric Naiburg had raised the exorbitant money by having Amy sign over the rights to her story for book and television deals. Amy would be released from jail and into her parents’ custody the next day. I was granted an immediate court order against Amy Fisher that barred her from coming anywhere near me or my house, but the police insisted I wear a panic-button alarm around my neck at all times that would alert them immediately should she show up.

  It was no fun hearing from various neighbors and acquaintances how Amy was all over town. She was seen trying on dresses at the Sunrise Mall and dining with her mother and Eric Naiburg at Il Classico. Hearing about these sightings only fed my anger. What was she doing out and about, enjoying life, while I was struggling to stand up straight and walk across my bedroom without a cane?