Mary Jo Buttafuoco’s anonymous life as a housewife and mother in Massapequa, Long Island ended when she answered the door to her home on Adam Road West in Long Island, N.Y., on May 19, 1992. At the door was a teenage girl with flowing brown hair who told her that her husband was having an affair with the girl’s sister. She said her name was Ann Marie and that she lived on Dolphin Court. When Mary Jo asked her to leave her property the girl hit Mary Jo in the head with a .25 caliber semiautomatic pistol and then shot her in the right temple before fleeing. The police later discovered the shooter was Amy Fisher, 16, who had invented the story of the fictitious sister.

Doctors struggled to perform surgery on Mary Jo and she survived the ordeal if only with a paralyzed right side of the face and a deaf right ear. She stayed with Joey staunchly defending him but then realized she could not live with him any longer. The couple split in 2003. Explaining the split to her son was not very difficult and she said, “I said, ‘I don’t understand why your father doesn’t get it. I don’t understand. And he just looked at me and he said ‘he’s never going to get it, Mom. He’s a sociopath.”

Mary Jo then moved to California and has since moved on with her life. She seems happy when she says, “My life has changed dramatically. I now am living with my fiancé, Stu, and his three children. My daughter lives with us. My son is all grown up and I’m being a mom again. Something I thought was over and done with. I’m doing it again.”

Meanwhile, Amy Fisher, who was later known as the Long Island Lolita, spent seven years in prison and got parole in 1999. Joey Buttafuoco was charged in October 1993 with Statutory Rape and served six months.