Speaker 1: Hey everyone, this is Part two of the Amy Fisher story.
Speaker 1: If you haven't listened to part one yet, I recommend
Speaker 1: starting there. Just a note that we discuss sexual violence
Speaker 1: and abuse in this episode.
Speaker 2: The final chapter in the saga of the Long Island Lolita,
Speaker 2: Amy Fisher coming face to face with her victim.
Speaker 1: Just six months after seventeen year old Amy Fisher shot
Speaker 1: Mary Joe Bettafuco, the wife of her thirty eight year
Speaker 1: old boyfriend, or statutory rapist based on his later conviction,
Speaker 1: Amy appeared before a judge for sentencing.
Speaker 2: It was the first time Amy Fisher had seen Mary
Speaker 2: Joe Buttafuco since May nineteenth, nineteen ninety two. This time
Speaker 2: the two met in a court to hear a judge sentence.
Speaker 3: Amy Fisher, you are.
Speaker 4: A tragedy in disgrace to yourself, to your family, to
Speaker 4: your friends, and to society, and you deserve no less
Speaker 4: than the maximum sentence I can impose by law.
Speaker 1: Her punishment fifteen years in prison. But going away wouldn't
Speaker 1: end the media frenzy around Amy or help her escape
Speaker 1: that label, the Long Island Lolita that still follows her
Speaker 1: to this day.
Speaker 3: I'm Susie Vanaker and I'm Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 1: And this is in Retrospect, where each week we revisit
Speaker 1: a cultural moment from the past that shaped.
Speaker 3: Ust and that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1: This week, we're talking about Amy Fisher and how she
Speaker 1: came to be known as the Long Island Lolita, but
Speaker 1: we're also talking about the way that word lolita and
Speaker 1: that trope is used to paint young girls as precocious
Speaker 1: and seductive. This is part two, jess I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about kind of what happens to Amy Fisher and all
Speaker 1: this right, and that she's punished, but she's punished so
Speaker 1: much more heavily than Joey. But Afuko, who she claims,
Speaker 1: really was essentially a co conspirator, right. She claimed that
Speaker 1: he talked a lot about wanting his wife gone, that
Speaker 1: he talked about his insurance policy, that he wanted her dead,
Speaker 1: and so she comes up with this plan to ingratiate
Speaker 1: herself with him or to please him. This is really
Speaker 1: something she does because she's doing something that he wants.
Speaker 1: And she goes away from five to fifteen years and
Speaker 1: he gets four months, right, and that that is really
Speaker 1: telling about the way society sort of looked at her
Speaker 1: versus him.
Speaker 5: So how does this compare to other people in similar
Speaker 5: situations at that time or I don't know if anything
Speaker 5: could be really similar, but well, again there are actually.
Speaker 1: Things that are, like, not exactly similar, but give you
Speaker 1: a sense of how disproportionate the way she was punished
Speaker 1: was and sort of what that said about the kind
Speaker 1: of bloodthirst around her. So another really famous tablet case
Speaker 1: at the time was the Preppy killer Robert Chambers. And
Speaker 1: for people who don't remember that case, Robert Chambers killed
Speaker 1: a woman that he was having a sexual encounter with
Speaker 1: in Central Park and claimed it was consensual rough sex.
Speaker 1: He choked her to death, so doesn't seem like a
Speaker 1: consensual encounter. But he got the same sentence as Amy Fisher.
Speaker 1: He literally killed someone. I mean, she did try to
Speaker 1: kill someone, but it's interesting that they got the exact
Speaker 1: same sentence. But the other thing that's interesting is she
Speaker 1: got two million for bail and he got one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand. I mean, that's a really big contrast
Speaker 1: in terms of how dangerous they assessed her to be
Speaker 1: as compared to him, who was an actual killer.
Speaker 5: So this also reminds me of what I think was
Speaker 5: the biggest tabloid story before Amy Fisher, which was William
Speaker 5: Kennedy Smith JFK's nephew who was accused of raping a
Speaker 5: woman on the beach in Palm Beach, Florida, where he
Speaker 5: was with his uncle Ted Kennedy. Yes, and he was
Speaker 5: acquitted in I think one of the shortest deliberation periods ever,
Speaker 5: in less than eighty minutes by atory.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think it's interesting because a lot of people
Speaker 1: have kind of forgotten about this case. But to give
Speaker 1: you an idea of just how big a case it was.
Speaker 1: At the time, when I was in high school, I
Speaker 1: had a poster in my room that said William Kennedy
Speaker 1: Smith Meet Thelma and Louise, and it was a picture
Speaker 1: of Thelma and Louise. I mean what At the time,
Speaker 1: it was a very very prominent case. If you cared
Speaker 1: about women and rape and feminist issues, you were following
Speaker 1: it because it felt like he got away scott free
Speaker 1: because he was a.
Speaker 5: Kennedy and Thelm and Lois. That was basically like saying
Speaker 5: he should be killed. Yes, basically they had a gun
Speaker 5: in their hand. It was like a picture of elm
Speaker 5: em Loui's with a gun in their hand.
Speaker 1: I should have been about that, Like it was like
Speaker 1: a photocopied poster like William Kennedy Smith meet melmanis.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's like very scum manifesto of you.
Speaker 1: Well, you can imagine a boarding school. I was like
Speaker 1: really like out there, okay.
Speaker 5: And so my sense is that Joey, you know, he
Speaker 5: goes to jail for four months, he gets out, he
Speaker 5: like moves on, and this continues to follow Amy into
Speaker 5: here we are twenty twenty three talking about this case.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, what's interesting is that the only reason he
Speaker 1: kind of doesn't fade into obscurity is he really tries
Speaker 1: to stay in the spotlight. Right. He moves to La,
Speaker 1: he tries to become an actor, he has a public
Speaker 1: access show, who loves the attention, He's constantly giving press conferences,
Speaker 1: and he just never stops trying to be in the spotlight.
Speaker 1: Whereas she has attempted in various different ways over the
Speaker 1: years to kind of move on, and one of the
Speaker 1: things she said in an interview at some point was
Speaker 1: anytime he does something crazy, or he does something buffoonish,
Speaker 1: or he gets arrested, all across the newspapers again, it's
Speaker 1: the Long Island Lolita, Like I'm the one that can't
Speaker 1: get away from this, even though he's the one that
Speaker 1: is often keeping this story in the headlines, and that
Speaker 1: this is a label she just cannot escape for the
Speaker 1: rest of her life. And it's also so recognizable, right like,
Speaker 1: the minute you put Long Island Lolita in the headline,
Speaker 1: most people who were alive during that story have an
Speaker 1: immediate recollection of her. They can picture her, the long
Speaker 1: hair and the bangs and the Long Island of it all.
Speaker 5: And I think you were telling me earlier that you
Speaker 5: know some of the adjectives used for Amy in all
Speaker 5: of these stories and newscasts about her, where things like sick, spoiled, her,
Speaker 5: teens maker, arrogant, reverted.
Speaker 1: Like all the adjectives used for her are about how
Speaker 1: crazy she is, how sex hungry she is. But they
Speaker 1: also really go out of their way to generally refer
Speaker 1: to her as a woman. The prosecution only ever refers
Speaker 1: to as a woman. She's very rarely called a girl,
Speaker 1: although she is quite literally still a girl. She's under eighteen,
Speaker 1: but there's this real sort of need to make her
Speaker 1: into an adult with agency, and to make her into
Speaker 1: this like very sexually aggressive being, because there's no way
Speaker 1: that she can be a victim, right, she has to
Speaker 1: be the perpetrator, and that's partially because she has done
Speaker 1: something violent. Right. The thing about this case that's complicated
Speaker 1: is that there is this sort of like innocent woman,
Speaker 1: Mary Joe, who she has, you know, harmed in this
Speaker 1: like extremely aggressive way. And so it is I think
Speaker 1: impossible for the public imagination to hold the idea that
Speaker 1: both Mary Joe and Amy might be victims, not that
Speaker 1: Mary Joe is the victim and Amy is this sort
Speaker 1: of monster who has wrought vengeance on her.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what stands out is that in the beginning, I'm
Speaker 5: sort of thinking of her as a villain, But as
Speaker 5: you begin to learn all these different little things about
Speaker 5: the case and her background and how she was treated,
Speaker 5: and you peel back these layers, it's almost like she
Speaker 5: becomes more of a victim, and yet she never totally
Speaker 5: sheds that villain archetype or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: Totally, because it feels like, when you go back and
Speaker 1: read the coverage now that she's as much sort of
Speaker 1: being punished and villainized for being this sexual being as
Speaker 1: she is for what she did to Mary joe It's
Speaker 1: like there's this sense that because she is seen as promiscuous,
Speaker 1: she needs to be punished and put in her place
Speaker 1: right that it's like she can't just be like a
Speaker 1: teen girl who came to that promiscuity through abuse, which
Speaker 1: we know was in her background, or because she's been
Speaker 1: sort of like victimized by Joey. The fact that she's
Speaker 1: a prostitute is meant to indicate that she's some sort
Speaker 1: of harlot that deserves to be punished. And in fact,
Speaker 1: there's like this really interesting detail that when the prosecutor
Speaker 1: is trying to convince the judge to give her a
Speaker 1: two million dollar bail, one of the justifications for that
Speaker 1: he uses is that she's a prostitute, and he's like,
Speaker 1: if we let her out, she will just fade into
Speaker 1: a life of prostitution and never be found again, as
Speaker 1: if she's not literally like the most famous person in
Speaker 1: the country, Like there is no way for her to
Speaker 1: fade into obscurity. She's on every newspaper cover in New
Speaker 1: York City, but it's like they continuously go back to
Speaker 1: Thistle is a way to make it seem like she's
Speaker 1: this deranged sick person that needs to be like boxed
Speaker 1: up and put away.
Speaker 5: Okay, So I mean I think we should talk about
Speaker 5: that directly because we're talking about this really complicated case.
Speaker 5: There are many things at play here, but we are
Speaker 5: largely talking about one thing, which is the Lolita trope. Yes,
Speaker 5: And I almost think we need to pause for a
Speaker 5: minute to remind our listeners and ourselves maybe the origins
Speaker 5: and connotations of that word.
Speaker 1: Yes, of Lolita, which is from the nineteen fifty five
Speaker 1: novel written by the Russian American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The book,
Speaker 1: for those who don't remember, is about a middle aged
Speaker 1: professor who becomes obsessed with a twelve year old girl
Speaker 1: who he nicknames Lolita. Eventually he becomes her stepfather and
Speaker 1: then kidnaps and sexually abuses her. And what's so interesting
Speaker 1: about the Lolita trope is that it is quite literally
Speaker 1: a book about a man who kidnaps and rapes a child.
Speaker 1: But over time, over the course of the last seventy years,
Speaker 1: the definition of a lolita has changed so much that
Speaker 1: it is no longer considered the term for someone who's abused,
Speaker 1: but instead Miriam Webster literally defines it as a precociously
Speaker 1: seductive girl today.
Speaker 3: That is the twenty today night.
Speaker 1: That is the today definition of it. So it's become
Speaker 1: this shorthand for a girl who's sexual before her time,
Speaker 1: like a seductress, when that's fundamentally not what the character
Speaker 1: is in the book. And in fact, in my conversation
Speaker 1: with Amy Pagnosi, that's the New York Post reporter we
Speaker 1: spoke to earlier, she mentioned that she really fought the
Speaker 1: New York Post on using the term Lolita for that
Speaker 1: infamous headline. Yeah.
Speaker 7: I was a lid major in school and I was
Speaker 7: one of always one of my favorite books, and it's
Speaker 7: about a pedophile. So I kept saying, this is not
Speaker 7: what that means. But you know, I think it's it's
Speaker 7: something that a lot of men like to think that
Speaker 7: women that age actually want them.
Speaker 5: I think that my most vivid recollection of that idea
Speaker 5: of the Little Lita is the movie American Beauty, which.
Speaker 3: I loved growing up.
Speaker 5: Oh interesting Storry Kevin Spacey, who we, along with many
Speaker 5: people think of in a new way now. But he's
Speaker 5: basically playing a man who has a midlife crisis and
Speaker 5: becomes completely infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend.
Speaker 1: So you may not know this because I did not
Speaker 1: know this until we were researching this episode. But American
Speaker 1: Beauty was inspired by the Amy Fisher story. The screenwriter
Speaker 1: said that he saw this comic book that was released
Speaker 1: after she went to prison, and it sort of inspired him.
Speaker 1: Comic book about Amy Fisher, about Amy Fisher and Joey
Speaker 1: Buttafa Go, and it inspired him to finish the movie.
Speaker 3: This is Alan Ball, the screenwriter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's actually a quote from him, and I'll
Speaker 1: read you some of it. He says, I'd been working
Speaker 1: on the basic premise for eight years. The genesis of
Speaker 1: the idea for me was the Amy Fisher Joey buttafuco
Speaker 1: business in New York City when I was living there.
Speaker 1: I was working at Adweek and I came out one
Speaker 1: day and some guy was selling a comic book about
Speaker 1: Amy and Joey. On the one side was this virginal
Speaker 1: looking Amy and a big, leering, lectrous, predatory Joey. And
Speaker 1: you flip it over and he's all buttoned up and
Speaker 1: she's all tarted up in predatory sluttie vixen. I remember
Speaker 1: thinking the truth is somewhere in those and we will
Speaker 1: never know what it is. Wow, fascinating, isn't that fascinating?
Speaker 1: Which is also like is the truth somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1: We know that she was a teen girl, So again
Speaker 1: it's this need to kind of turn the teen girl
Speaker 1: into someone who is tempting, who is seducing, who is calculating,
Speaker 1: who has agency, and is in fact the instigator, when
Speaker 1: in reality that is rarely the case, right, Like young
Speaker 1: girls are rarely these like evil geniuses. We're trying to
Speaker 1: like seduce men.
Speaker 5: And even if they are, by the way, you're a
Speaker 5: grown ass adult. So maybe, yeah, exactly a little perspective.
Speaker 5: Good point, But this is far from the first film
Speaker 5: to be inspired by the Amy Fisher story.
Speaker 1: Correct, yes, this is far from the only movie to
Speaker 1: be inspired by Amy Fisher. In fact, the most famous
Speaker 1: movies that were inspired by her are these three TV
Speaker 1: movies that came out right after she went to jail.
Speaker 1: They came out sort of one right after the other.
Speaker 1: Two of them I think aired on the same night,
Speaker 1: and one of them aired like the week before. As
Speaker 1: you might remember, the way that Amy makes bail is
Speaker 1: she sells her version of the story and then Joey
Speaker 1: and Mary Joe. But if Fuco sell their version of
Speaker 1: the story, and then there's a third version that gets made,
Speaker 1: and this one is based on Amy Pagnosi's New York
Speaker 1: Post columns, and she's actually a character in the film.
Speaker 1: Here's Amy again.
Speaker 7: I got a lot of offers from a lot of
Speaker 7: different people, and the one from ABC seemed to be
Speaker 7: the best.
Speaker 1: Woman.
Speaker 7: I really really loved being a columnist more than anything.
Speaker 7: But the movie money was great because all I had
Speaker 7: to do was give them access to the notes that
Speaker 7: I had. The screenwriter was wonderful. I actually think of
Speaker 7: all of the three movies, it was the best one,
Speaker 7: I agree, And the person who played me was incredibly nice.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, do we need three Amy Fisher movies?
Speaker 1: Do we need one Amy Fisher movie?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 1: Of course not.
Speaker 3: There were much much more important things to cover.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's a very good point.
Speaker 5: But it really shows how much the Amy Fisher story
Speaker 5: literally became entertainment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, these TV movies were really popular and
Speaker 1: started pretty big name actresses at the time. Drew Barrymore
Speaker 1: starred in.
Speaker 3: One, Alyssa Milano was in one of the other ones.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, so Alyssa Milano was in one called Casualties
Speaker 1: of Love, the Long Island Low Leita story.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's just that.
Speaker 8: I like all the guys, I mean the boys in
Speaker 8: my school one, two, three, you know, and it's like over.
Speaker 1: And then there was a little known actress named Noel
Speaker 1: Parker who was in the lethal Lolita version. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know what I did, but I just don't understand
Speaker 1: how it all began.
Speaker 5: And then Drew Barrymore is in the most popular one,
Speaker 5: the Amy Fisher, the Amy Fisher story.
Speaker 8: Joey is the only man I love and I will
Speaker 8: do whatever it takes to his wife out of the way.
Speaker 5: Which side not interesting because Drew, as a child actress,
Speaker 5: has talked, i think in more recent years about being
Speaker 5: very sexualized from a young age.
Speaker 1: Yes. And actually one thing that's interesting is that in
Speaker 1: the research Sharone who works on the show, found this
Speaker 1: clip of her talking about playing Amy Fisher, and in
Speaker 1: that interview with Conan O'Brien, he is sexualizing her in
Speaker 1: really creepy ways, like he's asking about her tattoos in
Speaker 1: this creepy way. And it should be noted that Drew
Speaker 1: Barrymore was also underage like she must have been maybe
Speaker 1: eighteen when she did this interview, so she is in
Speaker 1: fact in playing this character being sexualized and then experiencing
Speaker 1: the same sort of media reaction to it, which is
Speaker 1: like a weird meta thing that goes on. But what's
Speaker 1: also interesting is that these films are so much more
Speaker 1: popular than the networks expect right, they all air in primetime,
Speaker 1: which is just not a thing you would see like
Speaker 1: now they would just become lifetime movies or whatever. But
Speaker 1: they all air on primetime television. They do really well,
Speaker 1: and in some ways they kind of are the beginning
Speaker 1: of this true crime era that now is so huge,
Speaker 1: especially in podcasts. But this is the beginning of entertainment
Speaker 1: executives beginning to understand how much of an appetite there
Speaker 1: is for these true stories. And actually this is part
Speaker 1: of a genre of film in the nineties that becomes
Speaker 1: really popular. It starts in nineteen ninety two, the year
Speaker 1: that Amy shoots Mary Joe. In fact, in the same month,
Speaker 1: there is this movie Poison IVY, also starring grew Marymore
Speaker 1: that comes out about a teenage girl who becomes obsessed
Speaker 1: with her friend's father and she murders her friend's mother
Speaker 1: to try and get to the fall. So again this seductress,
Speaker 1: this like young girl, and this.
Speaker 5: Is not based on Amy and Joey's story. This just
Speaker 5: happens to be coming out at the same time.
Speaker 1: Yes, isn't that crazy. It literally comes out the month
Speaker 1: that this incident occurs. And this is also the Fatal
Speaker 1: Attraction era, right, Yes, so this is right after Fatal Attraction.
Speaker 1: Amy is constantly kind of compared to Fatal Attraction entirely
Speaker 1: coverage before she kind of becomes her own cautionary tale.
Speaker 5: Right She love a sexy, murderous woman, yes, but also
Speaker 5: like vengeful the essentially they are all the original e right.
Speaker 1: They are the women who tempt these good men away
Speaker 1: from their good wives, and they lure them into this
Speaker 1: horrible life that otherwise they would not be lured into.
Speaker 1: It's just like really removes agency from men, which is
Speaker 1: I think why men love these stories, right, they're never
Speaker 1: responsible for their bad behavior.
Speaker 3: Well, to be fair, I think women love these stories too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is true. I don't know why women.
Speaker 5: Love these stories on largely men who are watching these
Speaker 5: is it? And maybe we don't know, But I bet
Speaker 5: it's not.
Speaker 1: I think it's both. Yeah, I definitely don't think it's
Speaker 1: just like men who love these stories.
Speaker 3: Wasn't there another one? Wasn't there crush or something like that?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Was there one that's Alicia's Silverstone?
Speaker 1: Yes? Yes? And Carrie Always, who I love from The
Speaker 1: Princess Bride. Oh, that movie was inspired by Amy Fisher,
Speaker 1: at least compared to it. It came out in ninety three.
Speaker 1: It's about this precocious child who is played by Alicia
Speaker 1: Silverstone in her first movie. She becomes obsessed with Carrie Always,
Speaker 1: who's a writer who's like renting an apartment from her family,
Speaker 1: and she's like a genius, which is also very weird.
Speaker 1: Like the need to make them really smart I think
Speaker 1: is fascinating because again it's why they're able to manipulate
Speaker 1: these perfectly innocent men into doing these like outrageous things
Speaker 1: who can't keep it in their pants. And then there's
Speaker 1: like this weird scene where she tries to kill his
Speaker 1: girlfriend by trapping her in a room with bethes. I mean, absolutely,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, wild tale.
Speaker 5: Also, I was just going to say about Alicia Silverstone,
Speaker 5: such an interesting character also in the Marvin because remember
Speaker 5: that Aerosmith song. I loved Crazy and the music video
Speaker 5: for it, where she's like this hot I think underage
Speaker 5: or much younger.
Speaker 1: I mean I think she looked like she was like
Speaker 1: twelve at the time, and with Stephen Tyler. Yes, who
Speaker 1: you know the thing about Stephen Tyler? Right? So, Stephen
Speaker 1: Tyler in fact, was recently sued by a woman who
Speaker 1: says that he adopted her when she was underage.
Speaker 3: Okay, so that in order to be in a relationship with.
Speaker 1: Her, in ordered to be in a relationship with her
Speaker 1: and to take her out on the road, so he
Speaker 1: became her literal.
Speaker 5: Well guardian, I read this story. I read this story, okay.
Speaker 5: And he is also the father of Liv Tyler, who
Speaker 5: was in the Crazy video with Alicia Silverstone.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: Yes, I remember thinking they were like the hottest thing
Speaker 5: like that. I wanted to be that, like.
Speaker 1: Video was so cool, and I think like music videos
Speaker 1: don't really have the same cachet they did then, But
Speaker 1: that music video was in itself like a huge cultural moment,
Speaker 1: like everybody saw it. It was like a very popular video.
Speaker 1: I think it was the number one video. It was
Speaker 1: like at the height of MTV, when MTV has really
Speaker 1: become its own art of the zeitgeist, so that video
Speaker 1: really was something that everybody saw.
Speaker 5: And so it's like these things are all circling, and
Speaker 5: it's like Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco are somewhat at
Speaker 5: the center.
Speaker 1: Somewhat at the center, right, they sort of inspire but
Speaker 1: also reflect what's kind of happening in the culture at
Speaker 1: the time, which is this kind of sexualization of young
Speaker 1: girls in this very specific way that's not as innocent children,
Speaker 1: but as seductresses and temptresses in their own right. And
Speaker 1: one thing that I think is so interesting about the
Speaker 1: movie Crush is that there's actually a review of it
Speaker 1: I found, which I think speaks to how disturbing these
Speaker 1: movies kind of were and were never acknowledged to be.
Speaker 1: Like I saw a Crush when it came out, and
Speaker 1: I remember, like the movie, I was like a teen
Speaker 1: girl at the time. Right, the critic rights, the movie
Speaker 1: is virtually an invitation to child abuse. In shot after shot,
Speaker 1: Shapiro pans his camera up one side of Silverstone's body
Speaker 1: and down the other, as if it was perfectly all
Speaker 1: right for us to visually caress the thighs of a
Speaker 1: fourteen year old.
Speaker 5: Wow, this was in the Washington Post. Yes, Hal Hinston,
Speaker 5: I'm looking at it now. Yeah, thanks holl And.
Speaker 1: Also, the way that quote ends is he says, my
Speaker 1: guess is that most people will find the whole business creepy,
Speaker 1: and even creepier still the people who made it. But
Speaker 1: in fact people didn't find them creepy, and the movie
Speaker 1: did well. It was a success.
Speaker 5: I mean, I guess it's not really that surprising that
Speaker 5: people loved those movies.
Speaker 1: At the time.
Speaker 3: They were fantasy.
Speaker 5: There was something enticing about how dark and twisted they were.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's a little taboo, you know, even though
Speaker 1: these girls were always punished in the end, there was
Speaker 1: something compelling about girls who are aggressive and open about
Speaker 1: wanting men, Like as a teen girl, you didn't see
Speaker 1: that very often, and in a lot of ways, that's
Speaker 1: what was underlying the coverage of Amy.
Speaker 5: Oh, that's a good point, Like, of course she's punished
Speaker 5: for the actual crime she commits, but one thing the
Speaker 5: media continues to fixate on is how freely she talks
Speaker 5: about sex and wanting it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which now, of course we would interpret as an
Speaker 1: immediate red flag of some kind of trauma in her past,
Speaker 1: But back then that was just another freakish point to
Speaker 1: zero in on.
Speaker 5: And to make fun of, Like, don't you remember how
Speaker 5: this became a huge bit on USNL.
Speaker 6: You've seen the other three. Now the fourth Network presents
Speaker 6: the fourth Amy Fisher story. Tory's spelling is Amy Fisher
Speaker 6: in Aaron spellings Amy Fisher one oh five one six.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that's the other side of
Speaker 1: the coin. Right, So, on the one hand, Amy is
Speaker 1: being presented in this sort of like very villainous way,
Speaker 1: but also the story lends itself to comedy, right, So
Speaker 1: the Late night comics love it because honestly, the name
Speaker 1: is so ridiculous, right, Like, but a Fuco is a
Speaker 1: ridiculous name. It just sounds funny, And so his name
Speaker 1: alone just becomes a punchline that the Late night comics
Speaker 1: are using over and over.
Speaker 6: Again number three and get one more cheap laugh by
Speaker 6: saying the word but a Fuca.
Speaker 1: Also, a thing we haven't really talked about is there's
Speaker 1: this real obsession about Amy and Joey's accents at the time.
Speaker 1: They have these very thick, long island accents, ok that
Speaker 1: I don't think we're all that commonly heard outside of
Speaker 1: the Tri State area. And so their accents are really
Speaker 1: rife for impressions, right, I mean, you can really hear
Speaker 1: the Long Island in them, and that culture feels very
Speaker 1: unique to the rest of the country. And because I
Speaker 1: love it so much, let's listen to this great example
Speaker 1: from the sketch comedy show in Living Color with Jim Carrey.
Speaker 8: Ma.
Speaker 1: You know, the Long Island will lead up and.
Speaker 5: Right, so I want to take us back to the
Speaker 5: case itself. This obviously becomes a huge media spectacle. I
Speaker 5: don't think I had any idea that that many works
Speaker 5: of film were based on this story. But you mentioned,
Speaker 5: Susie that Amy is really never able to live a
Speaker 5: normal life after this.
Speaker 3: So what actually happens?
Speaker 1: So she tells her own story a few different ways.
Speaker 1: She does an interview with Inside Edition. There's also a
Speaker 1: book she writes in nineteen ninety four with Sheila Weller,
Speaker 1: who is a very well known journalist and has gone
Speaker 1: on to write a number of books about very famous
Speaker 1: women Carrie Fisher, Carol King, Joni Mitchell, Chris Jian Almenpoor
Speaker 1: And it's really the first time that Amy extensively tells
Speaker 1: her side of the story. She was raped by a
Speaker 1: handyman in her home when she was around thirteen. This
Speaker 1: book reveals that she had also been sexually abused by
Speaker 1: a person close to the family when she was very young,
Speaker 1: starting around three or four years old. And also it
Speaker 1: just paints a very different picture of Amy. It's a
Speaker 1: much more nuanced portrait of her as shy and naive,
Speaker 1: still sort of hoping that Joey's going to come in
Speaker 1: and save the day, or that Joey still loves her,
Speaker 1: desperate for kind of male approval from anyone who's willing
Speaker 1: to give it to her, and it sort of starts
Speaker 1: to give you a hint that she has some mental
Speaker 1: illness that's untreated and contributes to her thinking that, you know,
Speaker 1: this shooting never registers for her as a real crime
Speaker 1: when she's doing it, she doesn't really have a sense
Speaker 1: of consequences when she embarks on this thing that forever
Speaker 1: changes her life. It's almost like she's so naive and
Speaker 1: so detached from reality. She's more worried about her parents
Speaker 1: grounding her than she is about going to jail. And
Speaker 1: the interviews in the book take place right before she
Speaker 1: goes to jail, then continue throughout her first couple of years,
Speaker 1: So it also describes what that transition is of going
Speaker 1: to jail and kind of the shock of that.
Speaker 3: So when is she actually released from prison?
Speaker 1: So she's released in nineteen ninety nine, and interestingly, Mary Joe,
Speaker 1: who spends years talking about how sick she is and
Speaker 1: saying that she doesn't feel safe with Amy out and about,
Speaker 1: is instrumental in her release. She appears at a parole
Speaker 1: hearing for her, Amy apologizes to her directly. They have
Speaker 1: this like moment in court, and it is ultimately what
Speaker 1: causes the judge to decide she's served enough time and
Speaker 1: change her deal and release her.
Speaker 3: What happens then, what does she do with her life?
Speaker 1: So she actually marries a man she met on an
Speaker 1: online dating site after she got out of prison. He's
Speaker 1: an older man, another one. He's like a videographer, like
Speaker 1: I think, like a mostly wedding videographer. They have three kids.
Speaker 1: At some point they've moved to Florida and been keeping
Speaker 1: with every other man in her life. Eventually he betrays her.
Speaker 1: There's a period where they are separated in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, and she does this weird thing. Her and
Speaker 1: Joey do this weird thing where they pretend to get
Speaker 1: back together because they're trying to shop a reality show,
Speaker 1: and her husband says that this makes him angry, and
Speaker 1: so he releases one of their sex tapes. So, like
Speaker 1: every other man that she's ever trusted, he essentially betrays
Speaker 1: her with revenge porn, and he releases this sex tape
Speaker 1: of her. But it is hugely successful, and the sex
Speaker 1: tape is successful.
Speaker 3: What does that mean? Is successful rests money.
Speaker 1: And lots of people watch it. But you know, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that the tape is released without her consent,
Speaker 1: she decides to lean into it and start doing porn regularly.
Speaker 1: And she says about it at the time, I'm I
Speaker 1: have two choices. I can sit there and say it
Speaker 1: doesn't exist, which it does exist, you know, or I
Speaker 1: can do the intelligent thing, which for Amy Fisher means
Speaker 1: making the best of the situation and making money. So
Speaker 1: she so she starts porn, starts doing porn. She does
Speaker 1: her own pay per view adult film called Amy Fisher
Speaker 1: Totally Nude and Exposed.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: She makes a handful of adult movies that starts in
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, but in twenty eleven she stops
Speaker 1: making the films. She decides to leave the porn industry,
Speaker 1: and in twenty fifteen she gets a divorce and then
Speaker 1: she moves home to Long Island and the New York
Speaker 1: Post continues to haunt her, and the last published report
Speaker 1: about her is a New York Post piece where they
Speaker 1: have found her doing camgirls stuff. That's before OnlyFans, so
Speaker 1: you know, she's doing like sort of sex work through camgirl.
Speaker 1: They portray it as an incredibly seedy it's like a
Speaker 1: very sad story. They confront her, she denies that it's
Speaker 1: her or even though she used her name and they
Speaker 1: have her image, and she's living with her mom again actually,
Speaker 1: and that's really the last we hear from Aymie Fix
Speaker 1: When is that? That's in twenty seventeen. Then after that,
Speaker 1: I think that year or the year following, she changes
Speaker 1: her name. She goes to court, she listens to have
Speaker 1: a name change, and she no longer does press. And
Speaker 1: that's really when she stops being in the public eye.
Speaker 1: The thing that's interesting is that many of the occasions
Speaker 1: where she goes back into the public eye, right this
Speaker 1: sort of like the porn and the reality show, are
Speaker 1: occasions when she's trying to make money from her past. Like,
Speaker 1: one thing you realize is that she goes to jail
Speaker 1: when most kids are going to college. She doesn't have
Speaker 1: anything to fall back go, so the only thing she
Speaker 1: has to kind of fall back on is her notoriety.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting that finally in the late twenty tens,
Speaker 1: she just gives up on that and decides to move on.
Speaker 1: And when she's contacted to be part of projects that
Speaker 1: Mary Joe or Joey are still willing to do, she refuses.
Speaker 5: Okay, so Joey's still doing interviews? Is he still like,
Speaker 5: what's his deal?
Speaker 1: Yes, Joey and Mary Joe are still somewhat in the
Speaker 1: public eye. So Joey is essentially just like a buffoon
Speaker 1: for a long time. As I mentioned, he moves to
Speaker 1: California to become an actor. He has some bit parts.
Speaker 1: He is arrested again in nineteen ninety five for soliciting
Speaker 1: an undercover cop as a prostitute, and he is obviously
Speaker 1: in violation of his probation at that time, so he
Speaker 1: goes back to jail. He's just generally like a very
Speaker 1: sketchy dude. Mary Joe eventually divorces him in two thousand
Speaker 1: and three, Mary Joe stood by Joey for such a
Speaker 1: long time, And I think that's also like a really
Speaker 1: interesting part of the story that we haven't had a
Speaker 1: chance to explore, which is that there's this sort of
Speaker 1: psychological thing that happens with Mary Joe where she is
Speaker 1: so defensive of Joey. It's almost like she needs to
Speaker 1: deny the affair to somehow not give Amy any excuse
Speaker 1: for what she did. So for so many years she
Speaker 1: denies that the fair even happened. She stands by him,
Speaker 1: she calls Amy names, but then eventually she realizes that
Speaker 1: Joey is a sociopath, like literally releases.
Speaker 3: Them a sociopaths called.
Speaker 1: Getting It through My Thick Skull, Why I stayed, what
Speaker 1: I learned, and what millions of people involved with sociopaths
Speaker 1: need to know. So she writes that book in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine. Wait, sorry, one clarification.
Speaker 5: So is she still with Joey when she's helping Amy
Speaker 5: to get out of jail.
Speaker 1: Yes, she is still with him. I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the interesting details about Okay. She doesn't divorce him
Speaker 1: until two thousand and three, and then in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five she goes on Oprah and tells her story
Speaker 1: for you know, some reason like where are they now
Speaker 1: or whatever. And actually a plastic surgeon reaches out to
Speaker 1: her after that appearance because she still has paralysis on
Speaker 1: one side of her face, and he offers to fix
Speaker 1: it and she accepts, and in fact, later on there's
Speaker 1: a an Oprah show where the results of her plastic
Speaker 1: surgery are revealed.
Speaker 5: So it's still times it's like they just can't stop
Speaker 5: doing this media site, like they're trapped, and they're kind
Speaker 5: of trapped in useless and then the next generation becomes
Speaker 5: part of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, obviously we don't talk about the Butafuco
Speaker 1: children that much. Right, there were nine and twelve when
Speaker 1: this happened, and at the time we just didn't really
Speaker 1: think about generational trauma. But they saw their mother shot,
Speaker 1: they saw their father behave like an absolute creep on
Speaker 1: television for years, and then you know, this story follows
Speaker 1: them forever. I mean, they have the Butafuco last name.
Speaker 1: In fact, the Sun has changed his last name. You
Speaker 1: cannot find him.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 5: Also, it's not like Smith, like this is the most recognizable.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is the same when I was reporting
Speaker 5: on Monica Lewinsky.
Speaker 3: Yeah, same deal.
Speaker 5: It's like that name is so specific, so loaded and memorable.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's impossible to run away from, you know. So
Speaker 1: either you change your name like the sun does, or
Speaker 1: you do what the daughter did, which is just accept
Speaker 1: that it's part of her history and talk about it publicly.
Speaker 1: You know. In twenty nineteen, actually Mary, Joe and Joey
Speaker 1: and the Daughter do a special on ABC called Growing
Speaker 1: Up but Afuco where Jesse, the daughter, shares what it
Speaker 1: was like for her to be part of the story.
Speaker 3: So the daughter actually has a relationship with her father.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jesse was talking to him at the time of
Speaker 1: the special, but within a year she says on a
Speaker 1: podcast that she stopped speaking to Joey, that she's basically
Speaker 1: gone no contact and that he's toxic and she no
Speaker 1: longer wants to have any relationship with him. I mean,
Speaker 1: good for her, yeah, I mean she's talked extensively about
Speaker 1: what the shooting and all that followed it did to her.
Speaker 1: You know, she went through a lot of depression and anxiety,
Speaker 1: She had eating disorders and addiction to alcohol. So you know,
Speaker 1: you can see why she blames him for a lot
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 5: It's really like Jesse's experience shows us how this story
Speaker 5: really continues to affect everyone involved.
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, I think the option he has chosen
Speaker 1: to try and live a quiet and private life, as
Speaker 1: much as that's even possible for her, is the choice
Speaker 1: I would make too. But I'm sure it's not easy,
Speaker 1: and I don't think there is a right answer here.
Speaker 1: So I did try and contact Amy for this story
Speaker 1: because I wanted to let her have the last word
Speaker 1: if she wanted it, but I wasn't able to reach her.
Speaker 1: So I found something she said in two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight when a reporter asked her if she still cared
Speaker 1: about the public perception of her.
Speaker 8: You know what, at this point, you know, I've this
Speaker 8: is maybe this is awful to say. You know, I
Speaker 8: am known for something that is not a good thing.
Speaker 8: So you know, I've had a lot of negative media attention.
Speaker 8: People have said a lot of horrible things about me,
Speaker 8: so over the years, you know, it's made my shell
Speaker 8: a little bit hardened. And no, I don't care what
Speaker 8: people think about me anymore. You know, if people like me,
Speaker 8: that's wonderful. And I think I'm a nice person, and
Speaker 8: I think because of everything I've been through in my
Speaker 8: life that it's made me actually a kinder, more understanding person.
Speaker 3: So interesting.
Speaker 5: I mean, I hope for her sake that is true,
Speaker 5: But I do wonder if she'd still say that today, Susie.
Speaker 5: I know you mentioned we've tried to contact her for
Speaker 5: the podcast, but maybe it's worth saying. You know, Amy,
Speaker 5: if you're listening, we would still love to talk to you.
Speaker 5: And I do hope for her sake that she has
Speaker 5: been able to move on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too, And I think that's a good place
Speaker 1: to leave it for today. This is in Retrospect. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. Is there a cultural moment you can't stop
Speaker 1: thinking about and want us to explore in a future episode.
Speaker 1: Email us at inretropod at gmail dot com or find
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Speaker 5: If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
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Speaker 1: You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
Speaker 1: and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books
Speaker 1: Feminist Fight Club and This Is eighteen in Redhead.
Speaker 5: Respect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Media.
Speaker 5: Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
Speaker 5: engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attia is our researcher and
Speaker 5: associate producer.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina Norbel.
Speaker 1: Our artwork is from Kentagram. Additional editing help from Mary
Speaker 1: Doo and Mike Cosperelli, sound correction and mastering by Amanda
Speaker 1: Rose Smith. We are your hosts Suzie Bannaccarum.
Speaker 3: And Jessica Bennett. We're also executive producers.
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Speaker 3: See you next week.