Amy Fisher: The Long Island Lolita was a Groomed Child

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In 1992, a 17-year-old girl named Amy Fisher shot Mary Jo Buttafuoco in the face on her own front step. Within weeks, America had a nickname for her: the Long Island Lolita. Within a year, all three major networks aired competing made-for-TV movies about her, and roughly half the country watched at least one.

Almost nobody asked about the 35-year-old married man who had been sleeping with her since she was 16.

This is the story of Amy Fisher, Joey Buttafuoco, and Mary Jo Buttafuoco — a case that became the blueprint for how tabloid media turns a groomed child into a villain and a predator into a lovable rogue. We cover how Joey Buttafuoco met a 16-year-old at his Long Island auto body shop, the mechanics of grooming and how predators select and isolate a target, the DARVO playbook he ran when the story broke, and the sentencing gap that gave Amy Fisher seven years while the man convicted of statutory rape served four months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices