Amy Fisher

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Before their world erupted in the media, they were just Joey and Mary Joe Buttafugo.

The Buttafugos were a perfect Long Island family with two adorable children.

They had a beautiful home next door to a beach green.

Until one bullet changed everything.

It was a complete mystery as to who would shoot a woman like this in cold blood.

Was this a random crime?

Was someone lurking in the neighborhood?

As investigators pushed for answers, they'd ultimately uncover a story no one could believe or ever forget.

The case just exploded overnight.

It was the biggest story in America.

The first true crime reality show.

People were fixated by this.

They couldn't wait for the next sex tape.

They became very addicted to fame.

Once they had a taste of the spotlight, they couldn't let it go.

For those things to be said about me,

it was horrifying.

More than 25 years after this infamous case captivated the nation, the woman at the center of the media storm tells her story.

I was the biggest news in town that day.

This was my journey.

And during the course of it, I did a lot of things wrong.

I made a lot of mistakes.

I tried to do the best I can.

Nobody told me, Okay, Mayor, this is what happens when somebody comes to your house and shoots you in the head.

Everything that was before

was then over.

It's a quiet morning in the seaside community of Massapequa, New York.

Stay-at-home mom Mary Jo Buttafuco is starting her daily routine.

May 19th, 1992, started out like every other day in my 37 years on Earth.

At that point, my children were in third and sixth grade, and actually, it was the first day I had let them ride their bicycles to school with their friends, and I was a little nervous about it.

After seeing her kids off to school, Mary Jo is ready to take on a project.

I was going to paint.

I had this bench, it was a beautiful day, and there was a big bench in the backyard that I wanted to paint.

And about 20 to 12, a quarter to 12,

the doorbell rang.

So I opened the door and went outside.

And everything ended.

A retired New York City police officer who lives across the street from the Butta Fugos

is relaxing on his porch when he hears what he believes is a gunshot.

He's the one who saw Mary Joe across the street laying in a puddle of blood on her own porch.

Mary Joe's unconscious and she's unable to talk.

He calls 911 immediately.

Paramedics, dozens of them, arrive to the scene and find what appears to be a stay-at-home mother shot with a bullet right to her temple.

A medevac helicopter is dispatched to the area so that Mary Jo can be airlifted to Nassau County Medical Center.

In the meantime, one of the neighbors reaches out to Mary Joe's 38-year-old husband, Joey Budifuco, who is at work at his family's nearby auto body shop.

Joey got a phone call from a neighbor and basically just said, come home, come home right away.

The first thing that he sees is a helicopter landing on his front lawn and his wife, the love of his life, dripping with blood.

He is extremely distraught.

Number one, was his wife going to make it?

Number two, who did this to her?

And is this person still out there?

For the Budafuco family, the unfolding tragedy seems impossible to believe, especially for two people who seemed destined to be together forever.

The vastness of the situation was so surreal, something we've never ever experienced before.

Everything that was before

was then over.

Mary Joe grew up in Long Island, very Catholic parents.

She was Irish.

The Butaficos were a mainstay in the small town.

I met Joey in the summer of 1971.

We were ninth grade and he was the funniest guy I'd ever met.

He made me laugh constantly.

They started out as friends and then they just sort of fell in love and it was sort of meant to be.

My mom was very simple.

My mom wanted a family.

My mom wanted to be a mom and raise kids and keep her house clean and be on the PTA.

We were dating and it was kind of like the next step.

We were young.

We got married.

He was 21 and I was 22.

Everybody loved Joey and Mary Joe.

There was no opposition.

My parents loved him.

His parents loved me.

Even though we were young, we were smart.

We saved all our money.

We bought a home.

It was a little house in Baldwin.

In January of 1980, Mary Joe became the stay-at-home mom she'd always dreamed of being.

She became pregnant with their son Paul and she was ready to settle down.

A few years later, Joey and Mary Joe welcomed a baby girl, Jessica, into the world.

Joey and Mary Joe had the first house they had bought as a young married couple.

By the time they had two kids, they were ready to upgrade.

In fact, Joey and Mary Joe were so successful that in 1987, they made an offer on a sprawling waterfront home in Massapequa.

But before the couple could close on the home of their dreams, they had to sell their old place.

That's when a revelation surfaced that blindsided Mary Joe.

He said he had a buyer for the house.

All right, well now we got to go to the bank and transfer funds and everything.

And that's when he kind of broke down and came to me and said,

I gave the house to my drug dealer

because he was going to kill me.

I owe him a lot of money.

I was speechless.

I was speechless.

That, I thought, was the lowest point of my life and of my marriage.

I was scared.

I was angry.

I was furious.

My children were three and six years old.

The father-in-law was not pleased.

However, he was not willing to let his daughter-in-law and two grandchildren sit on the street.

They packed Joey off to rehab and the father-in-law wrote them a check for $50,000 so that they could buy the new house.

Ultimately, Mary Joe decided to stand by her husband.

It got to a point where I finally said, if you don't go into rehab, this marriage is over.

And to his credit, at that time, he agreed.

So he did.

Went into a rehab program and came out sober.

For the next five years, Joey focused on his family and his thriving business.

In his spare time, he enjoyed lifting weights and cruising the South Oyster Bay in his pride and joy.

A 30-foot cigarette boat named Double Trouble.

Everybody in the neighborhood thought it was the best thing in the world because he'd take everybody out on the boat.

It was, it was like Disneyland all summer.

They really did everything for us, for my brother and I.

It was great.

It was a lot of fun.

A lot of laughs, a lot of music, a lot of dance parties.

Everything was going well.

The children were getting a little older.

You know, we had weathered the storms, so to speak.

And I thought we were in the best place that we had been in in many, many years.

But on May 19th, 1992, with the ring of the doorbell, the Buttifugo's charmed life was transformed into a nightmare.

Who would be brazen enough to shoot a woman in broad daylight in this middle-class neighborhood in Long Island?

Coming up, Mary Jo fights for her life.

As fear spreads, a community demands answers.

Clearly, the perpetrator had a gun and was willing to use it, so people were scared.

It was a complete mystery as to who would shoot a woman like this in cold blood on her own porch.

In 1992, Joey and Mary Joe Buttifuco were living the dream in small town Long Island.

However, that fairy tale took a devastating turn on May 19th, 1992, when Mary Jo was found shot in the head on her own front porch.

Airlifted to Nassau County Medical Center, Mary Jo's prognosis is grim.

Mary Jo was unconscious, fighting for her life.

She wasn't able to give us any information at that point.

We didn't know at that time whether she was going to survive.

We treated it as a potential homicide.

Investigators start to canvass the scene, and immediately they start to gather evidence.

They actually find

three live rounds of ammunition.

The bullets, which appear to be.25 caliber rounds, are collected as evidence.

Then, detectives question the Butta Fuco's neighbors to learn more about Joey and Mary Joe.

People heard the shooting, but nobody saw it.

They had no ideas.

This was inexplicable.

I mean, this was a cold-blooded murder attempt on just a nice average housewife.

Hoping he can offer some insight, investigators turn their attention to Joey.

Joey, he was beside himself and could not imagine what had happened.

He was very cooperative with the police.

They kept asking him, do either of you have any enemies?

And he just kept saying, no, of course not.

Of course, Joe's the first one one that they're looking at because he's the husband.

And he was at work.

And it just was a nightmare to have to get that phone call.

I mean,

on a Tuesday, everybody's at work, everybody's doing their thing, and nobody's understanding what's going on.

With no reason to believe Joey was involved in the shooting, investigators allow him to join Mary Joe at the hospital.

At the crime scene, police continue searching for answers.

Could this have been an armed robbery gone wrong?

Oftentimes, armed robberies can end with innocent victims being shot.

Certainly, a high-end neighborhood like the one the butt a few goes lived in would make an attractive target.

But something about that theory doesn't sit right with investigators.

There certainly had never been an armed robbery or any kind of an armed crime in our area, as long as I can remember.

Thankfully, that afternoon, police received their first potential lead.

A neighbor had told police that they saw a Ford Thunderbird that was parked not too far away from the Battafuco's home.

But without a license plate or any other details, it's not much for detectives to go on.

With every minute that passes, the fear that there's an armed shooter on the loose continues to grow.

I'm coming home from work.

and I see police cars all over the neighborhood trying to figure out what's going on.

And I see one of of our neighbors and I said, what happened?

And he said, Mary Jo was shot.

You start wondering, what's going on?

Was this a random crime?

Was someone lurking in the neighborhood?

As the fear mounts, so do the rumors.

The one that gains the most traction centers around one of New York City's most notorious mob families.

There was an initial rumor that a relative of the Gotti family had lived in that location and maybe somebody got the wrong person.

There had been a shooting at the Butterfuca home sometime before this.

Nobody got shot, but there were bullets fired through the window.

Maybe this wasn't meant for Mary Joe.

Maybe this is meant for the person that lived there previously.

However, the bullets collected at the crime scene suggest the attack on Mary Jo hadn't been carried out by a professional hitman.

And that kind of indicates that the person's an amateur.

They didn't know how to handle a firearm, which leads us to believe that maybe this wasn't a professional hit.

At this point, you know, there were no real leads.

We were looking at everything.

As detectives continue to spin their wheels, Joey has joined Mary Joe at the hospital, where she is still unconscious and in critical condition.

Where her prognosis was very grim.

It was not better than 50-50 when she had arrived.

They were prepared for her to go.

It was that bad.

Joey was told: if we don't operate, she'll be dead in 12 hours.

If we do operate, she may die, she may be paralyzed.

They just had no idea.

And he was the one that ended up signing for them to go ahead with the surgery.

During this time, I think my dad's demeanor was

just trying to keep his head above water.

He's got a wife that's shot in the head

and

two kids that

need somebody

against the odds, Mary Joe survives.

After eight hours of surgery, her carotid artery is successfully reconnected.

The doctors determined that the bullet was so close to a nerve in her head that they would not ever be able to safely remove it, so it was going to stay.

Mary Joe makes it to the surgery.

She's on a respirator.

She's still unconscious, in a coma state.

And basically, the investigators are waiting to find out if she can talk.

Meanwhile, Joey remains at Mary Joe's bedside, along with her in-laws and several other family members.

She wasn't the mom I saw when I left the house for school.

Her head was all wrapped up in a big old bandage.

She was really swollen.

I just remember kind of going blank and being really scared.

I didn't want to touch her.

I didn't want to hurt her.

The whole family sat in a vigil for days, hoping she would wake up.

I remember being in the hospital and

like bright, bright, bright, bright lights on me, and a woman yelling in my face and saying, Mary Joe, Mary Joe, like over me,

you're in the hospital.

You're in the hospital.

You were shot.

You've been shot in the head.

And I heard it, but I was very calm.

I thought I was dreaming.

And I must have gone in and out for a couple of days.

By the third day, I started to wake up.

When I started to talk, I couldn't.

And I was frantic.

It's like, I have to tell them.

So I made a thing like, let me write it down.

I can't talk, but I can tell you what I know.

And I wrote down Anne-Marie, t-shirt, 19 years old.

Stunned that Mary Joe was not only finally conscious, but writing, Joey realized the significance of what she was writing.

Mary Joe gave Joey the biggest clue yet as to who had ambushed her.

She writes down Dolphin Court.

And then Joey steps up.

Coming up, the case goes from a local Long Island mystery to a nationwide sensation.

This was a frenzy.

Like I had never seen.

Like I don't think anyone had ever seen.

And investigators set a trap to catch an attempted killer.

Police had some clues, albeit vague clues.

They certainly thought it was a man.

Nobody would have dreamed it was a girl.

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In what could only be deemed a miracle, on May 22nd, 1992, 37-year-old stay-at-home mom, Mary Joe Budifuco, emerges from her coma and reveals to her husband the first credible information regarding who shot her.

So on the piece of paper, she wrote the name Anne-Marie.

She wrote the address Dolphin Court, and she gave it to Joey.

I'm in agony.

I'm on pain medication, but I just know I got to get out what I remember.

They're thinking, really?

Are you sure?

Are you sure?

And I'm like, I'm positive.

I'm positive.

They certainly thought it was a man.

That was just the immediate thought.

Nobody would have dreamed it was a girl.

Detectives are immediately dispatched to the hospital to interview Mary Jo.

Half her face was completely paralyzed and it drooped.

Her speech was very badly affected.

She was deaf in that ear.

On the side of her face, it was damaged.

Mary Jo does her best to recount for detectives the events leading up to the shooting.

The doorbell rang.

I looked through my backyard to the front of that door and I saw this teenage girl standing there.

And I said, yeah, can I help you?

And she said, are you Mrs.

Butafuco?

And I said, yeah.

And she said, I need to talk to you about your husband, Joey.

And the first thing I noticed is a car directly across the street with a young man in it.

And in my head, I thought, oh, this kid had an accident with our boyfriend.

And, you know, Joe was an auto body repairman.

And that's when

she said to to me, I need you to know that your husband is having an affair with my little sister.

This just threw me for a loop.

And I looked at her and I was like, how old are you?

And she said, I'm 19.

Okay, what's your name?

She said, my name is Anne-Marie.

Anne-Marie said, don't you think it's disgusting a 40-year-old man is doing this with a 16-year-old?

Mary Joe.

just said, well, I'm not really sure it happened.

Well, I have proof.

I have proof.

She had a complete auto body t-shirt and she handed it to me.

She said, I found this in my little sister's bed when I was making it.

That this was the new batch of sharks that had just arrived in the office that week.

So she wasn't quite sure how she got that.

So I kind of said they were having an affair and he left his t-shirt in the bed and went back to work with no shirt on.

So I kind of said to her, Look, I don't know what you want me to do about this.

I'll go in and call them and tell them you came by.

I gotta go.

Thanks for coming by.

And I turned my head.

I never saw it, I felt it, and everything ended.

Once Mary Joe is finished with her statement, her husband Joey chimes in.

Joe said right there, in front of the police, in front of everybody, he said, I only gave out one of those t-shirts, and that was to Mr.

Fisher's daughter.

I said, well, who's that?

And he said, Amy Fisher.

That's when Detective Alliger took him out of the room.

And it was at that point that Joey told him all about Elliot Fisher and his daughter Amy.

Elliot and Rose Fisher owned a fabric store in the nearby town of Freeport.

Amy was their 17-year-old daughter.

By all accounts, Amy Fisher had a privileged background.

She was an only child.

Her parents doted on her.

Whatever she wanted, she got.

And people that I interviewed said, Amy Fisher never heard the word no.

For her 16th birthday, Amy's parents gave her a brand new car.

But in the winter of 1991, Amy's car needed a little work done.

So her father recommended she take it to Joey's complete auto body shop.

Amy liked to flounce around in very short shorts around a bunch of men who worked in the shop.

They thought it was harmless.

Joey explained that Amy's motive must have been that she was an unstable young girl who somehow had an unhealthy obsession with him, so she went after his wife.

After speaking with Joey and Mary Joe, police secure a photo of Amy and ask Mary Joe to make a visual identification.

I do remember saying that's her and I was angry.

I was really, really, really, really angry because I'm in agony.

My life is upside down.

This kid shot me in the head.

Who the hell is this kid?

Joey acted very like, I can't believe this.

You know, yeah, we know her.

She's nuts.

Confident Amy Fisher is, in fact, the shooter, detectives enlist Joey's help in arresting her.

He paged her.

She then received it, left the house, got into her car, drove away, at which point the police pulled her over and arrested her.

Three days after Mary Joe's shooting, Amy Fisher is brought brought in for questioning.

Amy stated that she did not go to the Bodofuco home to hurt Mary Joe.

She said she just wanted to go there and talk to her

because Mary Joe was dismissive of her.

You know, it angered her.

She took the gun and she struck her over the head and the gun went off accidentally.

And Amy panicked and she just fled the scene.

Investigators are suspicious of Amy's story.

We had the scans from the hospital, which showed the trajectory of the bullet, which did not go in her head at an angle, which that would be consistent with being hit by the gun and then the bullet going off at an angle.

But a questionable confession isn't all Amy Fisher has to say.

She tells the investigators that she indeed was having an affair with Joey Buertofuco, and it had been going on for over a year.

Then Amy drops another bombshell about Joey.

She said in her confession that Botafuko was responsible for her obtaining the gun.

Whether he gave it to her directly or he told her who to go to to get a gun.

That was Amy's perspective.

Now Joey wasn't crazy about his wife.

He probably painted her in a very negative fashion.

And God, if she was only not here, we could be together forever and always and everything would be painted pink and lovely.

Following the interview with Amy, Nassau police charge her with attempted murder.

Later that day, authorities make the announcement to the media.

The moment a 17-year-old girl was arrested for the attempted murder of a stay-at-home mom, that's when the case exploded.

That's when Amy was labeled the Long Island Lolita.

And that's when every camera in the region and across the country zeroed in on this case of fatal attraction.

This was a frenzy like I had never seen.

Like I don't think anyone had ever seen.

Following Amy's arrest, her family retains a high-profile defense attorney named Eric Nyberg, who quickly flips the script on the media narrative.

You had a young girl who began a relationship with an older man, a much older man, when she was 16 years old.

A story began to play play out that sweet little schoolgirl got seduced by big burly auto mechanic and that he had forced her into maybe shooting the wife he swore this was a lie that is disgusting absolutely disgusting uh for those things to be said about me

is horrifying joey seemed to be the scapegoat By the time Mary Joe is released from the hospital, both Joey and Mary Joe continue to deny the allegations.

I kind of understood, like, yeah, you know, he's the husband, like the family members are always the first to be accused.

But he steadfastly swore that all he ever did was fix her car.

Everybody stood behind Joe.

My dad was very good at letting us know that she was to blame.

And I believed him over the media, over her lawyer.

As investigators learn more about Amy Fisher, a troubling picture emerges.

This was not your typical teenage girl.

She had had a lot of problems in school.

She was not well liked and she didn't have many friends.

However, nothing prepares them for what comes next.

One day, a customer of Amy's revealed that she was actually a call girl.

She was a real call girl, and he had a tape to prove it.

This went on hard copy, and the publicity went nuts.

Filmed secretly two months earlier, the client reportedly sold the tape for $7,500.

That's when the roof was blown off of everything.

Current affair will broadcast a videotape with a young woman allegedly working as a prostitute.

I showed the world that Amy wasn't the sweet little innocent schoolgirl who'd been led astray.

She clearly had a lot of problems before any of this started.

As the story of Amy the teenage prostitute gains steam, tabloid reporters start digging up dirt on Joey, including his past struggles with drug abuse.

Some publications go even further.

It was alluded that he was a cocaine dealer, which, you know, just I think everybody has said at one point in time that, you know, Joey had a colorful past.

With every new tawdry rumor and allegation, the media coverage snowballs.

You know, it's New York.

It's the New York Post.

It's the Daily News.

It's Newsday.

But it was just relentless.

It was constant.

People were fixated by this.

They couldn't wait for the next sex tape.

This is before OJ Simpson.

I don't remember any case receiving as much attention as Amy Fisher's case.

Amidst the media circus, people begin to talk.

Amy's friends would eventually tell investigators that she had been obsessed for the better part of a year with finding a way to kill Mary Joe.

Amy Fisher promised two separate boys money and oral sex if they would shoot Mary Joe for her.

Coming up, Amy Fisher's attorney approaches prosecutors with shocking new information.

I supply to Fred Klein some evidence that he could use in the prosecution of Dirty Brother Fuco.

And further evidence of Amy's dark desires comes to light.

She was caught on tape talking about how this whole case was going to get her a Ferrari.

It's the spring of 1992 and the eyes of the nation are fixed on Long Island, where teenager Amy Fisher has been charged with the attempted murder of housewife Mary Joe Buttafuco.

Amy claims that the shooting was an accident, but new witnesses have emerged suggesting otherwise.

She had been trying to do this for a long time.

Going back maybe six months, she had asked two different young men to kill Mary Jo, but they refused to go through with shooting Mary Joe.

And this told police that they were dealing with a case of premeditated attempted murder.

Then, yet another young man contacts Long Island investigators.

On June 12th, a gentleman named named Peter Guagenti comes forward with a lawyer and he states that he was the one that helped Amy get the 25 caliber handgun.

He did this in exchange for ROSE and a little bit of money and that he was the driver of the Thunderbird.

He led us to the gun.

He told us that after the shooting, either she or he threw it down a sewer and told us where and bingo, we find the gun.

So he really put the case together nicely for for us 21 year old peter guagenti pleads guilty on gun charges and is ultimately sentenced to six months in prison meanwhile amy is being held in jail with her bail set at two million dollars a record high for nassau county she was in jail for a considerable period of time till mr nyberg to his credit came up with the idea of selling her publicity rights to somebody in return for somebody posting the bail.

If anybody out there watching can come up with $2 million bail, I'll sell you Amy Fish's story exclusively.

And then people were coming in from Hollywood and it worked, it got her out.

Two months after her arrest, Amy is bailed out by a Hollywood production company.

But even as Hollywood is shelling out for movie rights, Prosecutors are still figuring out how the story will end.

At some point, I made the evaluation that this case was not a case that was going to trial.

So it was a case that had to be handled on a plea bargain.

In September of 1992, prosecutors inform Mary Jo that Amy Fisher will plead guilty to the reduced charge of reckless assault.

The news devastates Mary Jo.

I almost killed the district attorney right there.

The bullet couldn't kill me, but the judicial system might.

I was furious.

They could have gotten her 25 years to life for attempted murder.

But it's what prosecutors tell Mary Joe next that truly comes as a shock.

The district attorney called me into his office.

They were investigating Joe very heavily at the time.

Like,

what?

What?

You're going after Joe, and we already know what this girl did.

Amy made her plea agreement.

They had put some sort of stipulation in there that specified she had had sex with Joey, which drove Mary Joe completely mad.

Joey was officially being investigated on the charges of statutory rape.

This girl is an attempted murderer, a liar, a prostitute, and the DA is accepting her statement that she and Joe were together because she kept saying, why would they put this in there if it didn't happen?

On September 23rd, 1992, Amy Fisher appears in court to enter her plea.

I proceeded to talk to Mrs.

Buttifuco for approximately 10 to 15 minutes, at which time she turned around to walk away.

I hit her on the back of the head.

I went to hit her again, and the gun went off.

She said she got really mad at Mary Joe when Mary Joe kind of refused to buy into her story about Joey.

Mary Joe got shot, and she panicked and she left.

After accepting Amy's guilty pleas, the judge orders her to return on December 1st for sentencing.

But before her final day in court arrives, another media bombshell explodes and in the process, destroys Amy's hopes for a lenient sentence.

Not long after the plea agreement, the show hard copy aired a video that somehow surfaced of Amy Fisher with her boyfriend who owned the gym.

And he had been recording their conversation.

The day before she went in to make her formal agreement, she snuck out of her house against the conditions of her bond, went over to see an old boyfriend, and this former boyfriend immediately sold her out for $10,000.

And the tape was all over the air the next day.

And they got her recording, saying, yeah, so I'll go to jail for a couple of years, but I'm going to make a lot of money.

I'm famous now.

You know, I'm going to get a Ferrari.

Very flippant and like, no, yeah, no big deal.

It made her seem totally.

The antithesis of what I had been presenting her as.

Honestly, there was no controlling Amy.

Amy was going to do what she wanted to do.

Amy was devastated that her former boyfriend had sold her out.

So devastated that she made a pretty serious suicide attempt and wound up in a psychiatric hospital on a locked ward.

A month later, Amy is released from the psychiatric hospital.

The judge promptly sentences her to a maximum of 15 years in prison.

You, Amy, Fisher, are hereby sentenced to an indeterminate sentence of imprisonment, but you'll have a maximum term of 15 years and the court hereby imposed a minimum term of five years.

Given her mental instability and the revelation of her cold, calculating nature, prosecutors decide to drop the investigation into statutory rape charges against Joey Buttafuco.

The investigation kind of got shut down.

She wasn't the kind of person that the DA wanted to hold up, bring to court as a truthful person, as a reliable person.

Joe's off the hook.

They're not going to press any charges against Joe.

Amy's in jail.

For some odd reason, Joe loved the attention.

He loved it.

His attorney at the time decided that the two of them should go on a we told you so, Joey is innocent tour, which Joe thought was fantastic.

And I thought, you're out of your effing minds, both of you.

The cops are sitting home and they're steaming.

They don't like being told by Joey Butta Fugo, who they think is a punk anyway, that they were wrong.

The cops, however, aren't the only ones put off by Joey's publicity tour.

We learned that there was former employees of Complete Autobody who were claiming that he had told them that he had had sex with Amy at various locations, and that just restarted the investigation.

This time around, investigators have concrete proof of Joey and Amy's illicit affairs, courtesy of Amy's own attorney.

I supplied to Fred Klein some evidence that he could use in the prosecution of Joe Burton Fucho.

The evidence was kind of overwhelming.

On October 14th, 1993, Joey is indicted on 19 counts of statutory rape.

Each charge was six months to a year.

You're talking about 19 years.

I mean, she's going to jail for five years, but he's going to do 25 years for having sex with a whore.

With Mary Joe still in Joey's corner, he pleads not guilty to all the charges.

I believe we were being persecuted.

I believed now the police are my enemy.

The district attorney is my enemy.

It was me and Joe against the world.

However, over the next few months, with the help of Amy Fisher, investigators gather evidence that clearly suggests Joey is guilty of the charges against him.

They were having sex.

everywhere essentially at her parents' home on Joey's boat at the garage, at the motel.

And the police went to the motels, gathered the receipts from them being there.

She was right on with the dates.

Coming up with the mounting evidence against him, will Joey be able to avoid jail time?

And will Mary Joe ever be able to find peace?

That was the beginning of moving on with my life.

On November 21st, 1993, a little over a year since Amy Fisher was convicted of shooting Mary Joe Buttafuco, her husband, Joey Buttafuco, pleads guilty to one count of statutory rape against Amy and is sentenced to six months in jail.

When you plead guilty, you have to say under oath what you did, and the judge has to be satisfied that it's a crime.

Otherwise, the judge is not going to accept the play.

Even after watching her husband plead guilty to statutory rape, Mary Joe still believes Joey is innocent.

I thought that we just got, you know, kind of schnooked by the district attorney's office, and I still believed him.

That's all I knew.

I still believed him.

I mean, I knew he wasn't a saint, but I didn't think he had had an affair with her.

As usual, the victim, what else is new?

After serving four months and nine days of his six-month sentence, Joey is released on March 24th, 1994.

Awaiting him on the other side of the barbed wire is Mary Joe.

Through everything, you know, after Joey was sentenced, Mary Joe stood by him the entire time and then actually threw a party for him when he got out.

There was a huge party with the friends, family, neighbors when Joey got out of jail.

A huge party where everyone celebrated and said, we're still on your side.

This was all a big mistake.

Let's put this all behind us.

Hoping for a new start, in 1996, Joey and Mary Joe move their family to California and begin building a new life together.

I think Mary Joe at that point thought this ordeal is really over.

We can move ahead now.

That was not to be.

Less than a year after moving to California, the New York Parole Board announced they would be hearing Amy's application for release.

The first time she came up for parole at her five-year mark, I went and I fought.

I wanted her to stay in.

I was in that anger, mad, you should stay there and rot mode.

Due to Mary Jo's impassioned pleas, the board denies Amy's parole.

After Amy was rejected, she got a new lawyer.

This lawyer had reached out to Mary Jo.

Amy's attorney asks Mary Jo to speak to Amy's mother, Rose Fisher.

Surprisingly, Mary Jo agrees.

Amy's mother came forward with a lot of information about a very, very troubled past.

And at that point, I think Mary Jo knew that her husband had had this affair and maybe didn't realize that there was more going on for Amy than she thought.

That was the beginning of forgiving Amy Fisher and moving on with my life.

In May of 1997, Mary Jo speaks at Amy's next parole hearing and requests that she be released.

I had gone through this transformation and I realized she's gonna get out.

And I started to become empathetic and see the mother's point of view and say, oh, this poor woman, like she was just a very sad woman.

I did feel sorry for her.

The board votes two to one to grant Amy parole.

Due in large part because of the support of Mary Joe, Amy Fisher was paroled in 1999.

In the aftermath, Amy tries to pick up the pieces of a life gone astray.

However, the world isn't as ready to forgive and forget as Mary Joe Budifuco.

She wasn't accepted in society.

She shot a mother of two in the head in cold blood for no reason.

She couldn't get a job.

She was shunned.

So she basically went to the only direction that she was comfortable in, which is selling herself.

Doing webcam pornography.

Amy Fisher has no problem with sex.

It's what she likes to do.

It's what she does best.

However, Amy isn't the only one who continues to capitalize on their fame in the years that follow.

After all of this happened, Joey actually

became an actor.

He acted in nearly a dozen different films and TV shows.

Finally, in the winter of 2000, Mary Joe has had enough.

They split in 2000.

I know she waited a long time because my brother and I were so young.

While it's been more than 25 years since this shooting captured America's attention, the bullet Mary Jo still carries in her body is a constant reminder of just how lucky she is to be alive.

It was just this little series of angels that were all there just saying, okay, Mary Jo, we're not done with you yet.

You're not going anywhere.

We've got plans for you.

After serving seven years in prison, Amy Fisher moved back to Long Island in 2017 to be closer with her family.

She has three children with her ex-husband.

Mary Joe Budafuco now lives a quiet life outside of Los Angeles.

She spends her time raising awareness about gun violence through public speaking.

Joey Buttafuco also resides in Los Angeles.

He is spending his retirement restoring old cars and riding motorcycles.

For more information on Snapped, go to oxygen.com.

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