Amy Fisher: The Shooting, Long Island Lolita Case, and Life After Prison

Amy Fisher is the Long Island teenager who, at 17, shot Mary Jo Buttafuoco in the face on the doorstep of the Buttafuoco family home in Massapequa on May 19, 1992. Fisher had been having a secret affair with Mary Jo’s husband, Joey Buttafuoco. New York tabloids christened her the “Long Island Lolita,” and the case became one of the biggest crime spectacles in American media before the O.J. Simpson trial displaced it. Fisher pleaded guilty to first-degree aggravated assault and served nearly seven years in prison before being paroled in 1999.¹²

What Happened on May 19, 1992

Fisher went to the Buttafuoco house that morning and shot Mary Jo point-blank in the face with a .25 caliber handgun. She fled in a Pontiac Thunderbird driven by Peter Guagenti, a 21-year-old who had supplied the weapon. Investigators later determined the attack was premeditated. Prosecutors said Fisher had been fixated on killing Mary Jo for close to a year and had tried to recruit others to do it, offering money and sexual favors.¹

The bullet broke Mary Jo’s jaw, severed her carotid artery, and lodged at the base of her brain above her spinal column.³⁴⁵

Guagenti was identified by a witness and confessed on June 12, 1992, leading authorities to recover the discarded weapon from a sewer. He pleaded guilty to criminal sale of a weapon and was sentenced to six months in jail in February 1993.¹⁶

The Affair With Joey Buttafuoco

Fisher’s relationship with Joey Buttafuoco was the motive prosecutors built the case around, and it produced a separate criminal prosecution of him. The affair began when Fisher was 16. In October 1993, Joey Buttafuoco was charged in a 19-count indictment that included statutory rape, sodomy, and endangering the welfare of a child. He pleaded guilty to third-degree rape, acknowledging in court that he had sexual relations with Fisher on July 2, 1991, and knew she was underage. Under a plea bargain, he was sentenced to six months in jail, five years of probation, and a $5,000 fine, and served four months.⁷

In her 2004 memoir If I Knew Then, co-written with Robbie Woliver, Fisher claimed it was Joey Buttafuoco who “put it into my head” to shoot Mary Jo, alleging he had glorified criminal activity and told her “there would be no repercussions.” She described herself as being “under his spell” but also wrote that her mistakes were her own and that she should have walked away or sought help.⁸

Guilty Plea, Prison, and Parole

Fisher initially faced a possible trial for attempted murder. In September 1992 she reached a plea agreement with Nassau County prosecutors, pleading guilty to first-degree aggravated assault in exchange for cooperating in the investigation of others involved in the shooting.⁹ On December 2, 1992, she was sentenced to five to fifteen years.¹⁰

She was denied parole in 1997. In April 1999, State Supreme Court Judge Ira Wexner vacated her 1992 guilty plea on the grounds of ineffective legal counsel and resentenced her to a shorter term. During that court appearance, Fisher apologized directly to Mary Jo, saying, “It was my fault and I’m sorry.” Mary Jo publicly stated that she forgave her.¹¹

On May 6, 1999, the New York State parole board voted two to one to grant Fisher parole after she had served more than six years at the Albion Correctional Facility. She was released within a week. Her attorney, Bruce Barket, said she would live with her mother in New York State and hoped to work in the fashion industry.¹²¹³

Mary Jo has said the “assault” label undersold what happened to her. She told People: “It wasn’t an assault. It was an assassination.” She has also spoken about forgiveness as something she chose “more for me,” while describing Fisher as someone who “hasn’t made good choices.”⁵

The “Long Island Lolita” Media Frenzy

New York tabloids gave Fisher the “Long Island Lolita” nickname, borrowing from Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel. Fisher reportedly asked her mother, “What’s a Lolita?” when she first saw the headlines.¹⁰

Three competing made-for-TV movies about the case aired within days of each other over the 1992–93 holiday season, the first time three primetime network movies had dramatized the same recently adjudicated crime:

NBC’s Amy Fisher: My Story, premiering December 28, 1992, with Noelle Parker and Ed Marinaro, portrayed Fisher as a victim of an older man’s manipulation.
ABC’s The Amy Fisher Story, premiering January 3, 1993, directed by Andy Tennant and starring Drew Barrymore, was the most commercially successful of the three.
CBS’s Casualties of Love: The “Long Island Lolita” Story, also on January 3, 1993, starring Alyssa Milano, framed the case as a “fatal attraction” scenario after CBS paid the Buttafuoco family several hundred thousand dollars.

All three topped the ratings despite competing with each other.¹⁰

The scramble for rights raised ethical questions of its own. Fisher’s attorney tried to sell her movie rights to raise bail money in time for her high school graduation, and one NBC executive said she received seven separate pitches for the Fisher story in a single day.¹⁴ A Long Island company called KLM Productions put up $60,000 toward Fisher’s $2 million bail bond, and a judge later ordered her attorney to show cause why those funds and other profits from her story should not be seized to satisfy a $125 million civil suit filed by Mary Jo Buttafuoco.¹⁵

Life After Prison

After her release in 1999, Fisher married Louis Bellera, a former NYPD officer turned wedding videographer who was 24 years her senior. They had three children before divorcing in 2015.¹⁶ She worked briefly as a columnist for the Long Island Press and published her memoir in 2004.⁵

In 2007, a private sex tape featuring Fisher and Bellera went public. Fisher alleged that Bellera leaked it, and the tape sold 200,000 copies. She appeared on Maury that year and pledged she would not enter the adult film industry, but by 2010 she had reversed course, signing a deal to appear in eight adult films. She starred in the pay-per-view title Amy Fisher: Totally Nude & Exposed and several other productions before leaving the industry in 2011.¹⁷⁵

Fisher legally changed her name in 2016 and, after several years in Florida, moved back to Long Island with her children to be closer to family. She told the New York Post in 2017 that her children had been ostracized in Florida and that a stalker had harassed her at their gated community.¹⁶

1
Oxygen. Amy Fisher and Mary Jo Buttafuoco’s Shooting
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Oxygen. Amy Fisher Long Island Lolita
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ABC News. Growing Up Buttafuoco
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People. Mary Jo Buttafuoco Recalls Being Shot by Amy Fisher
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People. Joey Buttafuoco and Amy Fisher 25 Years Later
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The New York Times. Jail for Accomplice in Amy Fisher Case
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Los Angeles Times. Buttafuoco Pleads Guilty
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NBC News. Amy Fisher Memoir
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The New York Times. Amy Fisher to Enter Guilty Plea
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Screen Slate. Triple Fisher: The Lethal Lolitas of Long Island
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CNN. Amy Fisher Granted Parole
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CBS News. Amy Fisher to Be Freed
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CNN. Amy Fisher Parole
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The New York Times. Story Rights for Crimes Certainly Pay
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UPI. Amy Fisher May Have to Go Back to Jail
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New York Post. Amy Fisher Is Back on Long Island and Ready for a Fresh Start
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CBS News. Amy Fisher Wants Full-Time Porn Career