Joey Buttafuoco

Last updated

Joey Buttafuoco
Buttafuoco.jpg
Joey Buttafuoco
Born
Joseph A. Buttafuoco

(1956-03-11) March 11, 1956 (age 68)
Massapequa, New York, U.S.
Occupation Auto body shop owner
Spouses
​
​
(m. 1977;div. 2003)​
Evanka Franjko
​
(m. 2005)​
Children2

Joseph A. Buttafuoco (born March 11, 1956) is an American auto body shop owner. In 1992, Buttafuoco was convicted for his statutory rape of a minor, 17-year-old Amy Fisher, after Fisher shot his wife, Mary Jo Buttafuoco, in the face. Tabloid news coverage labelled Fisher the "Long Island Lolita". [1]

Contents

Buttafuoco later pleaded guilty to one count of statutory rape and served four months in jail. [2]

Early life

Buttafuoco was born on Long Island, New York. He graduated from Massapequa High School. [3]

Shooting incident

Buttafuoco first met then-15-year-old Amy Fisher when her father took his car to be repaired at his garage in 1990. The two began a sexual relationship around July 1991, when Fisher took her vehicle to Buttafuoco's auto body shop in Baldwin, Nassau County, New York. [1] Fisher later said she had damaged the car several times as a pretext to see him. [4]

On May 19, 1992, Fisher confronted Buttafuoco's wife, Mary Jo, at the Buttafuocos' home. When Mary Jo answered the door, Fisher—posing as her own (fictitious) 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 to 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. [1]

The subsequent court cases involving a series of conflicting claims received significant news coverage in both mainstream news outlets and tabloids. [5]

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 committing the assault. [6]

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. [7] He later changed his plea to guilty, admitting he had sex with Fisher when she was 16 and that he knew her age at the time. [8] He was sentenced to six months' jail time and was released after serving four months and nine days of the sentence. [9]

Life after the incident

After his release from jail, Joey and Mary Jo Buttafuoco moved to California, where Mary Jo filed divorce papers in Ventura County Superior Court on February 3, 2003. [10] In 2005 Buttafuoco married Evanka Franjko. [11]

In July 2009, seventeen years after the incident, Mary Jo published a book titled Getting It Through My Thick Skull: Why I Stayed, What I Learned, and What Millions of People Involved with Sociopaths Need to Know. In the book, she characterizes Buttafuoco as a sociopath, and says that her son helped her come to that conclusion. [12]

Buttafuoco has been convicted of crimes since the 1992 shooting incident:

Media appearances

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. [6] 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, [22] while Saturday Night Live parodied the case in multiple sketches. [23] The Critic parodied Letterman's obsession with the scandal in the episode "Sherman of Arabia" with the number one reason on his Top 10 Reasons Jay Sherman Is Still a Hostage being "Buttafuoco, Buttafuoco, Buttafuoco!" [24]

During an appearance on Saturday Night Live in January 1993, Madonna performed her single "Bad Girl" from her fifth studio album, Erotica (1992). At the end of the performance, she ripped up an 8-by-10 photograph of Buttafuoco, while yelling to her audience "Fight the real enemy!". This action was a spoof of the actions taken by Sinéad O'Connor when she acted on the program in October 1992, in which she ripped apart a photograph of Pope John Paul II and yelled the phrase as a protest against sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. [25]

On Season 4 Episode 18 of Friends , Buttafuoco is referenced as hurting the cause of people named Joey. [26] He was also referenced in an episode of NewsRadio , where one of the characters is sanctioned for doing a story on Buttafuoco, not because the story was not true, but because he accidentally mispronounced the surname as "butta-fuck-o". [27]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Kay Letourneau</span> American sex offender (1962–2020)

Mary Katherine Fualaau was an American teacher who pleaded guilty in 1997 to two counts of felony second-degree rape of a child and subsequently married her former student. The case received national attention.

Jessica Hahn is an American model and actress. She frequently appeared on The Howard Stern Show throughout the late 1980s and into the 2000s.

Dana William Stubblefield is an American former professional football player. He was a defensive tackle in the National Football League (NFL). After graduating from Taylor High School in North Bend, Ohio, Stubblefield attended the University of Kansas. He is serving a sentence of 15 years to life in prison, after being convicted of rape.

<i>Casualties of Love: The "Long Island Lolita" Story</i> 1993 American TV series or program

Casualties of Love: The "Long Island Lolita" Story is a 1993 American television crime drama film based on the story of Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco, written and directed by John Herzfeld. Alyssa Milano and Jack Scalia played the main characters. It aired on CBS on January 3, 1993, the same night and time as ABC's film The Amy Fisher Story, though the latter film was much higher rated in the TV ratings and critically praised.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Federal Medical Center, Carswell</span> Womens federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.

The Federal Medical Center, Carswell is a United States federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, for female inmates of all security levels, primarily with special medical and mental health needs. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), a division of the United States Department of Justice. The facility also has a prison camp for minimum-security female inmates.

Mary Jo Buttafuoco is an American author and motivational speaker. In 1992, she was shot in the face by Amy Fisher, a teenager with whom her husband had an affair.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Massapequa High School</span> School in Massapequa, New York, United States

Massapequa High School is a public high school located in Massapequa, in Nassau County, on Long Island, in New York, United States. It serves students in grades 10 through 12.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amy Fisher</span> American pornographic actress, journalist, writer

Amy Elizabeth Fisher is an American woman, who, in 1992, at the age of 17, shot and severely wounded Mary Jo Buttafuoco, the wife of Joey Buttafuoco, who had initiated a sexual relationship with the underaged Fisher in 1990. Initially charged with first-degree attempted murder, she eventually pleaded guilty to first-degree aggravated assault and served seven years in prison. Due to her age and her affair with a much older man, she became known in the tabloid media as "the Long Island Lolita". Fisher was paroled in 1999 and became a writer, a webcam model, and a pornographic actress.

Joseph "Jo Jo" Corozzo, Sr. is a New York mobster who was the reputed consigliere of the Gambino crime family.

<i>The Amy Fisher Story</i> 1993 American TV series or program

The Amy Fisher Story is a 1993 American television film dramatizing the events surrounding Amy Fisher's abuse as a teen by Joey Buttafuoco and her eventual conviction for aggravated assault for shooting Buttafuoco's wife. The film was produced by ABC and originally aired on that network; in 1993, it was released on VHS and in 2001 on DVD.

Molly Shattuck is an American socialite, convicted sex offender and child rapist. She is the former wife of businessman Mayo A. Shattuck III. She came to national prominence when she became the then-oldest cheerleader on record for the National Football League when she began cheering for the Baltimore Ravens Cheerleaders at age 38.

Robert Joel "Joe" Halderman is a television news writer, director, former producer for CBS News, and convicted felon. Halderman was found guilty of attempted extortion of talk show host David Letterman.

John Wayne Bobbitt and Lorena Bobbitt were an American former couple, married on June 18, 1989, whose relationship received international press coverage in 1993 when Lorena severed John's penis with a knife while he was asleep in bed; the penis was successfully surgically reattached.

Aaron H. Thomas, also known as The East Coast Rapist, is an American who was convicted of committing a number of rapes in Maryland, Virginia, Connecticut and Rhode Island since 1997. Police had DNA evidence from the first attacks, but had not matched the DNA in any criminal database. On March 4, 2011, police in Connecticut arrested 39-year-old trucker and New Haven resident Thomas after claiming to have matched his DNA to that of the rapist from a cigarette butt he discarded. Thomas underwent police questioning. On March 5, 2011, jailers reported that Thomas attempted to hang himself while in a jail cell.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amy Berman Jackson</span> American judge (born 1954)

Amy Sauber Berman Jackson is an American attorney and jurist serving as a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Kylie Maybury</span> 1984 child murder in Melbourne, Australia

Kylie Maria Antonia Maybury was an Australian schoolgirl from Preston, an inner-city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Maybury was kidnapped, raped, and murdered on 6 November 1984, the date of the 1984 Melbourne Cup Day; and she was nicknamed in the Melbourne tabloid newspaper The Sun News-Pictorial as the Cup Day Girl.

Amy Fisher: My Story is a 1992 American drama film directed by Bradford May and written by Phil Penningroth. The film stars Ed Marinaro, Noelle Parker, Boyd Kestner, Pierrette Grace, Lawrence Dane, Kate Lynch and Kathleen Laskey. The film premiered on NBC on December 28, 1992.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Bell, Rachael. "Amy Fisher". Crimelibrary. Archived from the original on May 21, 2014. Retrieved May 21, 2014.
  2. ↑ "Joey Buttafuoco-Celebrity Mug Shot". Charles Montaldo. Archived from the original on July 21, 2011. Retrieved July 24, 2006.
  3. ↑ Ketcham, Diane. "ABOUT LONG ISLAND; At the Repository of High School Memories", The New York Times , February 12, 1995. Accessed January 3, 2017. "Copies of The Sachem, as the Massapequa book is called, are scattered throughout the collection. A long-haired Jerry Seinfeld pops out of the pages of 1972. In '74, Mr. Buttafuoco and his wife graduated. There is just one comment under Mr. Buttafuoco's picture. It says, 'I love Mary Jo.' Other graduates of the Massapequa schools include the Baldwin brothers, Alexander, '76, class president; Dan, '79; Billy, '81, and Steven, '84. In Ms. Hahn's Class of '77 were also Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats, Tim Van Patten, an actor and Brian Baldinger, a professional football player."
  4. ↑ Barron, James (October 18, 1992). "Amy Fisher Case: Parable or Aberration?; How Shooting Lives On". The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved March 23, 2023.
  5. ↑ Schemo, Diana Jean (September 24, 1992). "Amy Fisher Pleads Guilty To Assault". The New York Times.
  6. 1 2 Barbanel, Josh (September 27, 1992). "A Morality Tale In Court and Tabloid". New York Times. Retrieved May 21, 2014.
  7. ↑ McQuiston, John T. (April 16, 1993). "Buttafuoco Enters Plea Of Not Guilty". The New York Times. Retrieved May 21, 2014.
  8. ↑ "Buttafuoco Alters Story, Pleads Guilty to Third-Degree Rape". Los Angeles Times. October 6, 1993. Retrieved May 21, 2014.
  9. ↑ "Buttafuoco Is Released After 4 Months in Jail". Los Angeles Times. March 24, 1994. Retrieved May 21, 2014.
  10. ↑ "Joey Buttafuco, Wife Getting Divorced". USA Today. May 6, 2003. Retrieved November 19, 2012.
  11. ↑ Keegan, Kayla (November 8, 2019). "Where Is Joey Buttafuoco Now? Here's Where He, Amy Fisher, and Mary Jo Are Today". Good Housekeeping.
  12. ↑ "Excerpt: 'Getting It Through My Thick Skull'". abcnews.go.com.
  13. ↑ "CHRONICLE". Nadine Brozan. July 8, 1995. Retrieved July 24, 2006.
  14. ↑ Sciaudone, Christiana (March 23, 2004). "Buttafuoco Sentenced to 1 Year in Jail". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 21, 2014.
  15. ↑ "Joey B. gets a break". Associated Press. Archived from the original on November 14, 2006. Retrieved November 4, 2006.
  16. ↑ "Joey Buttafuoco Ends Calif. Jail Term". AP/sfgate.com. Archived from the original on November 2, 2007. Retrieved May 9, 2007.
  17. ↑ "Judge Judy S1 E98". Metacritic. Archived from the original on April 21, 2022. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
  18. ↑ Grossberg, Josh (May 15, 2002). "Celeb Boxing: Bobbitt Out, Chyna In". E! Online. Archived from the original on June 4, 2002. Retrieved April 10, 2023.
  19. ↑ "Fox's dull 'Celebrity Boxing' far from being a knockout". Tim Cuprisin. Archived from the original on July 10, 2006. Retrieved July 24, 2006.
  20. ↑ "Joey Buttafuoco and Amy Fisher Reunion Will Be a Coin-Tosser at The Lingerie Bowl". SOURCE Horizon Productions (Press release). Retrieved July 24, 2006.
  21. ↑ "Judge Jeanine Pirro (Ep dated March 5, 2009)". IMDb.
  22. ↑ Barry, Dan (May 16, 1999). "The Nation: No Way Out; Still Gawking After All These Years". The New York Times. Retrieved May 21, 2014.
  23. ↑ Lorraine Delia Kenny, Daughters of Suburbia: Growing Up White, Middle Class, and Female (Rutgers University Press, 2000; ISBN   0-8135-2853-4)
  24. ↑ "Sherman of Arabia". The Critic.
  25. ↑ "Another 'Bad Girl' Rips Up a Photograph on 'SNL'". Deseret News . January 18, 1993. Archived from the original on February 14, 2015. Retrieved December 23, 2012.
  26. ↑ Friends Fun Facts: 3000 Little-Known Facts About the Show. 2021.
  27. ↑ "Revisiting 'NewsRadio' Episode 2: Inappropriate". Hidden Remote. March 18, 2015. Archived from the original on February 11, 2022. Retrieved April 21, 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.