Getting It Through My Thick Skull

by Mary Jo Buttafuoco

  “Enough, Joe,” I told him wearily, several times. “It’s over. Let’s try to get back to a normal life.”

  “Oh, no, Mary Jo—I need to clear my name!” Getting his good name back became a huge mission for him, and he soon became obsessed with the idea. Now, let’s think for a moment how a normal person in this situation would behave. He was getting away with no legal repercussions, not to mention that he had the full support of both our families and an entire neighborhood full of people standing firmly behind him. His wife was alive and functioning, and our friends and neighbors went out of their way to insulate us from the harshness that awaited us outside of our community.

  Wouldn’t a normal person say to himself, “Whew, I dodged a bullet on that one,” shut up, and put the incident behind him, no matter what the press said? Maybe think about devoting the rest of his life to being a good partner to his badly injured spouse? That’s what I would have done; I think that’s what most people would do in such a situation. But fame—or notoriety might be a better term—had come to us, a very unwanted and unwelcome development for me, but not for Joey. Whenever he started in about his mission to clear his name, all I could rationalize was, Huh! He must be innocent, or he’d let this thing die. He really does want to vindicate himself like any normal, innocent person who gets falsely accused of something.

  I agreed to join him for an appearance on The Phil Donahue Show in this misguided campaign in January 1993, less than eight months after I’d been shot. I was in no shape to make a public appearance anywhere, but I had made the commitment and felt I should honor it. I was mainly there to support Joey. I knew he was very far from the monster the press continued to portray. I liked The Phil Donahue Show and had watched it for years. From what I’d seen, Phil seemed like a warm, engaging man who really listened and was polite and respectful to his guests.

  Both sets of parents, several family members, and a few neighbors showed up to sit in the audience at the show, where the other audience members proceeded to vilify Joe and attack me, too. “Yes, I knew her. Yes, I drove her home, but I never did anything . . .” was the gist of what he said over and over. The audience wasn’t buying it. All the viewers felt very free to berate me for what they saw as my stupidity as I sat there frozen like a deer in the headlights. This audience whipped themselves into an absolute finger-pointing, name-calling frenzy. It was horrible. I felt as close as I could to being trapped on an episode of The Jerry Springer Show. What happened while we were sitting on that stage was the furthest thing imaginable from the calm, reasonable, back-and-forth discussion I had envisioned.

  On the way home from what had been a trying ordeal, I said, “I’m done. Joey. I am done with all this. No traveling, no appearances anywhere. I just want to concentrate on getting better.” I was such an easy target for the press. My paralyzed face, garbled speech, and devotion to Joey had been mocked endlessly nationwide on Saturday Night Live, newspapers, television shows, and radio. Not only did this hurt my feelings terribly, but it made me angrier. We were out of our league when it came to the media, and I had the sense to realize it.

  That was it for me, but Joe and Kornberg continued on the great Joey Buttafuoco “I’m Clearing My Name Tour.” The whole idea was absurd. He wasn’t facing any charges; therefore my husband had no need for a lawyer. But Kornberg loved seeing his own face on television and wanted to extend his fifteen minutes. There was no good reason for Joey to be anywhere talking about anything; the whole episode was over and done with. But he and his lawyer egged each other on. Some of these appearances were paid, which I had no problem with—that I could at least understand. What I did have a problem with was how much he loved the publicity. Joey and Marvyn were a terrible match, and the harm he did Joey was incalculable.

  When Larry King called, they were both quite anxious to appear. Both did their best to convince me to join them, but I absolutely refused. So, Dumb and Dumber showed up on Larry King Live saying, “The cops messed this case up . . . they’re stupid . . . they’re morons . . .” and denigrating them at every turn. Larry, meanwhile, asked a question about the receipt Joey had supposedly signed at a local motel. “Well, what about this motel receipt? It looks like you signed it.”

  “Oh, that’s not my handwriting!” Joey went on and on about how he’d been framed. It was clear that he believed he could talk anybody into anything. In fact, I believe he had talked himself into believing his own version of events. It had worked pretty well so far, anyway.

  Joey’s behavior was a textbook example of a very interesting phenomenon: the inability of many sociopaths to close their mouths and resist the spotlight, even when it’s clear to the whole world that they should just lie low and shut up. O. J. Simpson and Scott Peterson, for example, would later display this same trait—rambling on and on in the misguided belief that their version of events made sense, with the absolute conviction that given the chance to talk long enough and explain it well enough, they could convince everyone of the “truth.” But back then this was all uncharted territory. We had the dubious distinction of being the hottest “real people” crime story to catch America’s imagination in years.

  Joey simply could not stop talking—the downfall of a sociopath. The district attorney and cops back on Long Island, meanwhile, were far from pleased with this barrage of bad publicity. They were already being bombarded with angry phone calls and letters from people all over the country asking, “How could you let this child molester/rapist/murder plot participant off ?” Meanwhile, there he was on TV every night, badmouthing these very same authorities. Prosecuting Joey hadn’t been worth the DA’s time. Because Amy’s crime had been so egregious and her behavior so callous, they really didn’t want to bother going after Joe once they realized she had acted alone. That feeling sure changed after a few nationwide appearances from Joe and his lawyer. Behind the scenes, a grand jury convened to investigate Amy’s allegations of statutory rape. The authorities started pulling together an indictment.

  In April 1993—ten months after I was shot and five months after the decision that Joey would not be charged in connection with the crime—the DA’s office announced to the press that they were going after Joey: sixteen counts of statutory rape, twelve counts of third-degree sodomy, and one count of endangering the welfare of a child. Each count was a felony carrying a possible penalty of one to four years. He could conceivably be put away for more than ninety years—a situation I blamed entirely on the fact that he and his lawyer could not manage to close their mouths. The two of them, and their big mouths, and their spotlight. This is what had come of the great campaign.

  I literally lost my mind when Marvyn called to break the news. I started screaming like a banshee, never mind that the children were in the house and my outburst was scaring them to death. No matter what, I had kept up a strong front for Paul and Jessie. I refused to let my behavior traumatize them further. I had told them a hundred ways and a million times that I was going to be all right. Not this time. I completely lost control. Joe raced into the room and tried to put his arms around me to calm me. I flailed away at him in a white-hot rage, wailing and cursing at the top of my lungs. I was making so much noise that our next-door neighbors could hear me and came running over. I screamed at them, too, and pushed them away when they tried to approach. Eventually, I fell to the floor, pounding and kicking and screaming even louder.

  Everyone was horrified. No one knew how to handle this situation. “Mommy, you’re the fighting Irish,” nine-year-old Jessica pleaded, referring to a Notre Dame baseball cap I wore during my recovery. “You’ll be okay.”

  “No!” I screamed at my wide-eyed, terrified daughter. “It’s not okay. Nothing is ever going to be okay again! This nightmare will never end!” Joe eventually called the police. My fit showed no signs of ending, and no one knew what to do for me. The officers said they were on their way (we were on a first-name basis with every cop in town by then), and advised Joey to call my doctor.

  The doctor, who coul
d hear me yelling in the background over the phone, told Joe to find the strongest sedative he could in the jumble of all my prescription bottles. There were some pills there I had never even used. Joey forced me to swallow two of them. “Sure! Give them all to me! I want to take them all and die! I can’t go on like this!” I screamed.

  When the police entered the house, I immediately turned my rage onto them.

  “This is all your fault, all of it! What the fuck is the matter with all of you? Some teenage hooker does her best to murder me, and this is what happens? Indicting my husband is how you all help me? Assholes!” My tirade lasted at least ten more minutes until I had completely worn myself out. At that point, of course, Joe had to comfort me, literally carry me to bed, and try to reassure me that everything would be all right. “You and that fucking lawyer of yours—he ought to go to jail with you!” I told him before passing out.

  Our spring and summer were spent in legal limbo as we tried to figure out the best thing to do about this vengeful DA. The situation bordered on the absurd; the sheer number of separate counts was completely over the top. The authorities were really gunning for him. We truly believed Joey was being obviously and unfairly persecuted.

  In the end, at the bargaining table, Joe agreed to plead guilty to one count of statutory rape and was sentenced to six months in county jail, a $5,000 fine, and five years’ probation. Joe painted this plea bargain as a sacrifice he was making to end all this madness. He was completely innocent, he swore, but plenty of innocent people rot in jail for things they didn’t do. He was the victim of overzealous prosecutors. I agreed with him completely on that point, but I didn’t bother to point out that he had brought this whole mess on himself.

  The media circus was back on. Once again, the eyes of the world were fixed squarely on the Massapequa courthouse on the day Joe formally went before the judge and entered his plea. “On July 2, 1991, I had sexual relations with Amy Fisher at the Freeport Motel,” Joey said in court, sealing his image as a cheating, lying scumbag forever in the mind of the public.

  Amy was let out of Albion Correctional Facility near Buffalo, where she was serving her time, to attend his hearing and make her own victim’s impact statement. Her hair was in ringlets, and she wore a demure dress with kneesocks like a little girl. And who was standing right by her side? Assistant District Attorney Klein—the same man who stood next to me when I, as the victim of attempted murder with a bullet still lodged in my head, made my statement at her trial—the man who had repeatedly referred to Amy as a “wild animal” and “not credible” in the press. I took it as a personal slap to my face.

  Amy made quite a speech about Joe introducing her, a regular sixteen-year-old girl, to expensive restaurants and cheap motels. She didn’t look up once. She was clearly reading what someone had written for her. It was all utter crap. Her appearance and words absolutely enraged me as I watched her live on TV. There was nothing that could have induced me to accompany Joey to court that day. I refused to be present and compelled to lay eyes on her again. When this entire farce was over, I fired Marvyn Kornberg immediately. He had done nothing but harm.

  In November 1993, Joe went off to serve his time in the local jail. My anger, never far from the surface, reached a fever pitch when I contemplated a winter on my own. Our house had become a target. Rarely did a day pass without a carload of gawkers who posed for pictures on the lawn, drove by and yelled insults, or, in many cases, threw eggs or trash at the house. Carloads of teenagers raced by at night, whooping and yelling. I was afraid to be alone at home with the kids all winter. It was certainly no secret to anyone in America where we lived. We had installed a massive security system with cameras and alarms, but that didn’t stop the circus outside on the street.

  “What are you going to do if something happens to me?” I demanded of the police. “I’m already harassed daily when Joe is home. Now I’ll be all alone with two children, and I’m not in the best of shape!” My ear continued to give me trouble with constant infections, and the pain was ever-present. Imagine the worst toothache and migraine you’ve ever had—combined— all the time. I was taking heavy doses of painkillers, which rendered me pretty much a functioning vegetable. I was incapable of protecting myself should that need arise. Their solution was to park an empty Nassau County police car directly in front of our house as a deterrent to mischief-makers.

  Record-breaking freezing temperatures and snowfall descended on Long Island that year, making for an endless, miserable winter. I did my best to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas for the kids, who missed their father badly. Joe was allowed three visits per week, and I tried to go as often as possible. Going to visit my husband in jail was a degrading, dehumanizing process. All the visitors stood in line outside for a couple of hours in the bitter cold and dirty, mushy snow, waiting to be processed for as long as it took. Inside, the officers took everything from me, even the rubber band holding my hair in a ponytail, so I soon learned to show up empty-handed. The staff at the jail couldn’t have cared less that I was Mary Jo Buttafuoco, the notorious woman they saw every single night on TV, or that my physical condition was still fragile. There was no special treatment for me, so I endured the finger-pointing, whispering, and downright rude questions and comments from all the other visitors every single time.

  Not surprisingly, Joe did quite well in jail. He was housed in a special wing for high-profile cases, and he soon charmed the guards as he did everyone else. They even brought him special meals on the holidays. He was doing fine. Meanwhile, I was an absolute wreck at home. I was thrilled when he was released early in March for good behavior, and so was everybody else. If I thought I’d seen a party before, that was nothing compared to this.

  Friends and lawyers insisted on throwing a huge, black-tie, invitation-only homecoming party at a restaurant the week Joe got released. I was ambivalent. I was simply relieved to have him back home to help me. I certainly didn’t need a party. My friends, however, made all the arrangements. They wanted some sort of official celebration, so I allowed them to talk me into it. One friend sent out invitations, another booked limousines, and a good friend of the family offered to host the party at his popular local restaurant Testarossa. The press turned out to cover his homecoming, the neighbors arrived in full force to show their support, and the night was one long, joyful gala. Jessica refused to leave her father’s side all night. In every single picture of Joe taken that night, our ten-year-old daughter was right there next to him, glued to his side, almost as if she was afraid to let him out of her sight.

  At the time, I believed that nothing worse than what I’d already endured could ever conceivably happen. Amy was safely locked up in prison, and while Joe had foolishly talked himself into jail, he was safe, out, and back home with us. Spring had finally arrived after the worst winter I could ever remember. We were going to put all this behind us once and for all now. I was sure of it.

  CHAPTER 7

  GOOD-BYE L.I.,

  HELLO L.A.

  There was only one thing I wanted out of life: a return to a normal existence. I had been fighting to recover from my devastating injury with everything I had for two years. I was determined to be present for my kids, which sustained me through three separate operations. The first, which I jokingly referred to as my half-assed facelift, corrected the drooping skin hanging from the paralyzed side of my face. It definitely improved my appearance, but my face was still lopsided and would remain so forever. Much worse than how I looked were the ongoing inner ear infections. My injured ear canal continually oozed and dripped. When an infection was really raging, the pain became nearly unbearable. Doctors did their best to fix the damage deep inside my skull in two separate operations, but after the second operation, we all conceded that I would have to simply learn to live with recurring ear problems.

  Sheer anger and determination had kept me going through the longest, darkest winter of my life. I’d enjoyed six charmed years in my beautiful home, and I meant to get back
to that life, whatever it took. My ever-present rage—at Amy, the authorities who should have looked out for me as a crime victim, the loss of my anonymity, the irreparable damage done to my family—was now tempered by a feeling of overwhelming gratitude that the nightmare I’d been living might actually be over.

  Joe and I made several trips to Los Angeles over the next year. Los Angeles was a place I enjoyed visiting. These trips meant a stay in a lovely hotel, sightseeing, and a quick appearance by Joe on a talk show. Amazingly enough, the media still wanted to rehash the story, and now Joe had a new angle: how he’d made a deal and served time in jail to ease the pain and suffering of his family and put an end to the nightmare. He, too, was a victim of Amy Fisher. Some of these appearances were paid, but this was Joe’s favorite topic—he was happy to expound on it for free. I looked at these jaunts as mini-vacations, though I would have preferred to never speak of any of these events ever again. But Joe continued to fan the flames. Without his constant presence on TV, the whole sordid story would have eventually died a natural death. Sure, it would have always been an interesting bit of news, a point of interest, but nothing like it was. But despite a term in jail, Joe refused to let it go!

  A female talent agent approached Joe and told him, “I think we can parlay your name recognition into an entertainment career.” This woman, Sherri Spillane, was very credible. She and her partner Ruth Webb handled many of the old Hollywood stars like Mickey Rooney, and I liked her very much. She and her partner were just entering the reality field, a very novel idea back then. We were real, all right.

  I was the wet blanket, as usual. I thought the whole idea was stupid. Once again, I felt lost in the shuffle. I had almost been murdered. Was that something to base an entertainment career on? I kept waiting and hoping for the day that Joey would say something like, “Are you crazy? My wife was almost killed in cold blood in front of her own house. I would never capitalize on that or try to parlay it into anything!” I waited in vain because he never said anything of the kind. The spotlight was just too intoxicating. He loved the idea of having an agent. “They’re doing this to us, Mary Jo,” was again his reasoning. “We haven’t caused this, but it all happened. We can’t change any of it, so we might as well make money from it!” I didn’t agree, but if it meant a few trips to the West Coast each year, then fine.