A complete family’s existence was flipped upside down on May 19, 1992, in Long Island, New York, when Mary Jo Buttafuoco was shot in the face by her husband Joey Buttafuoco’s adolescent lover, the 17-year-old Amy Fisher. Thankfully, Mary Jo survived the attack, but the family continues to struggle with how to deal with everything that has happened to them. In a two-hour series titled “Growing Up Buttafuoco,” ABC’s “20/20” gives us an intimate look and more information about them three decades after the infamous crime.
Who Is Amy Fisher?
When Amy Fisher was only 16 years old, she met Joey Buttafuoco at the auto body shop where he worked and they immediately fell in love. Joey, who was 36 at the time, became enamoured with the love and attention he was receiving and began seeing her despite being married. But as time passed, Amy got more and more envious of his wife. She consequently made the decision to murder Mary Jo in a matter of months. She initially attempted to employ two guys to assist her in November 1991, but when that didn’t work, she took matters into her own hands in May 1992. She grabbed a rifle, went to the Buttafuocos’ house, and fed Mary Jo a lie about Joey sleeping with her fictitious little sister.
Mary Jo thanked her for the information and turned to go back inside when Amy gave her a single headshot. Amazingly, Mary Jo was saved by the medical professionals, and after she came to, Amy was identified, accused of first-degree attempted murder, and arrested. Amy Fisher quickly gained notoriety as the “Long Island Lolita” as a result of the media’s thorough coverage of this case in the news and tabloids. Her defence team attempted to portray her as a gullible high school senior who was duped and used as a pawn by an older man when the matter went to court, but that was not the case at all.
It was discovered during Amy’s trial that she worked for an escort service and that a television programme had shown a section of the sex tape that one of her clients had covertly recorded and sold to it. With all the evidence stacked against her, Amy entered a guilty plea to the lesser charge of first-degree aggravated assault in September of the same year. She was found guilty on December 2, 1992, and given a sentence of 15 years in prison, with a five-year parole eligibility period. When the time came, Mary Jo gave her approval for Amy to regain her freedom. Thus, at the age of 24, Amy Fisher was freed from prison in 1999, seven years after entering.
Where Is Amy Fisher Today?
Amy Fisher spent some time in Long Island, New York, following her release, where she worked as a newspaper columnist for the Long Island Press. She then collaborated on writing ‘If I Knew Then,’ a memoir that covers every aspect of the case and her life from her point of view. She did this while working with the editor of the newspaper. In addition to this, Amy is a co-author of the memoir “Amy Fisher: My Story.” She married Louis Bellara, a former NYPD cop, in 2003 and afterwards started working in the sex industry, which he reportedly pushed for. When Amy’s career took off, the couple eventually relocated to Palm Beach, Florida, where they had a few children together until divorcing in 2015.
Amy Fisher’s videos got her into strip clubs, DJ sets and even TV shows as a guest star, but in 2011, she said that she would stop filming adult films. The New York Daily News said that Amy claimed she only gained embarrassment from her sex recordings, despite the fact that she ultimately reached a settlement with Red Light District, the company that distributed her films, for a six-figure payment. Amy disclosed to the New York Post in 2017 that she had returned to Long Island and was now residing in a house less than an hour’s drive from the scene of the Mary Jo Buttafuoco shooting. She relocated because she wanted to be near her family and because she and her kids were underrepresented in The Sunshine State.
The same year, another New York Post article claimed that Amy Fisher, who is now going by a different name because she prefers to live a private life, was taping “online peep shows” in her bedroom at her Long Island home. She now works as a cam girl, to put it another way. She said, referring to her current work path, “This is what I have to do to make money.” Even though Amy’s Twitter account hasn’t been active since 2016, it was the only social media site where we could definitely identify her.
