Text size:

Tears, Anger, Forgiveness

Unlikely ally puts Fisher closer to parole

By Chau Lam and Hugo Kugiya | Staff Writers

April 23, 1999

Everything was going according to plan in a Mineola courtroom yesterday, quietly, demurely progressing in a morality play of repentance and forgiveness that could free Amy Fisher from prison in as little as two weeks.

Fisher, now 24 and no longer the teen temptress whose affair with a married man and her shooting of his wife spawned three made-for-TV movies, stood crying silently between her two attorneys, readying to take the blame for everything as Mary Jo Buttafuoco, the woman Fisher shot on her Massapequa doorstep seven years ago, forgave her.

She faced her victim unflinchingly even as Buttafuoco repeated the allegation that Fisher had been molested by her father from the age of 3.

"Amy, I have been given a second chance at life," Buttafuoco said, reading from a statement. "I have been able to continue being a wife to my husband, a mother to my children . . . You are being given a second chance, too. I pray that you'll take it and make something positive out of this awful tragedy. What happened to you in your childhood should not happen to anyone. But that is no excuse for trying to take another human life. There's no excuse for what you did . . ."

But then, before Fisher could speak, the comity so uncommon to this rollicking, "Jerry Springer" show of a case dissolved into the circus that launched 1,000 tabloid headlines.

After giving her speech at the podium, Buttafuoco took a seat at the defense table, sitting next to her lawyer, Dominic Barbara. Nassau Assistant District Attorney Fred Klein, who had already told State Supreme Court Justice Ira Wexner that the district attorney's office approved of Fisher vacating her 1992 guilty plea, then told the judge he wanted to set the record straight that a consensual affair with a minor is statutory rape: "I have always recognized and pointed out that Mr. Buttafuoco, raping Amy Fisher when she was 16 years of age . . ."

Mary Jo Buttafuoco shook with anger and sputtered: "Stop it, Eric," momentarily confusing Klein with former Fisher attorney Eric Naiburg. She quickly recovered, slapped the palm of her hand on the table and directed her wrath at the right man: "Stop it, Fred!" Turning around to stare disbelievingly at her parents behind her, she yelled, "That son of a --- !" A court officer bellowed for quiet as Klein continued and said Joey Buttafuoco had been involved in the shooting that put Fisher behind bars. But Mary Jo Buttafuoco would not be ignored.

"You look at me when you say that, Fred," she shouted at him. "You can't even look at me."

Once Barbara calmed her down, the hearing proceeded. As she headed up to address the judge, Fisher turned to Buttafuoco, reached out to brush fingertips with her victim, only to be restrained by court officers as she mouthed the words, "I'm so sorry."

Then, she stepped before State Supreme Court Justice Ira Wexner and softly addressed Buttafuoco.

"What happened to you," Fisher said, "it wasn't your husband's fault. It wasn't Eric Naiburg's fault. It was not my father's fault. It was my fault. And I am sorry. I'm really sorry . . .

"I hope later on we get a chance to talk privately."

At the end, Wexner allowed Fisher to plead guilty again and receive a sentence of 3 1/2 to 10 1/2 years for first-degree assault, making her eligible for parole as early as the week of May 3 when she appears before the parole board at the women's prison in upstate Albion.

"You are still a young woman and could be a productive member of society if you channel your energies," Wexner told Fisher. "Based on the information I have received, I believe you can do that." Fisher's mother, Rose, who greeted Mary Jo Buttafuoco with a hug, said after court that her daughter's story should be her future, not her past.

"Let her be judged by what she does in the future as a grown-up," Rose Fisher said. "She's going to get the support she needs. Emotionally, Mary Jo and I drew a lot of support from one another. It's very important for her and I to be able to put our families back together."

Rose Fisher wouldn't comment on the allegations that her ex-husband, Elliot, had molested their daughter. Elliot Fisher could not be reached for comment, but he denied the charge in a 1996 call to Howard Stern's radio show after Joey Buttafuoco, a guest of the shock jock, first made the accusation.

"I learned that Elliot Fisher, Amy's father, had been sexually molesting Amy since she was 3 years old," Buttafuoco said in court. ". . . This is not something that Amy or her mother want to talk about publicly at this time."

Yesterday's wild scene came about because Rose Fisher contacted Barbara, asking that she be able to apologize to Mary Jo Buttafuoco. After the tearful meeting between the two last year, Buttafuoco wrote a letter to prosecutors urging leniency. Spurred by Buttafuoco's plea and Fisher's claim that she had been misled by Naiburg about whether prosecutors would oppose her early release, Nassau County District Attorney Denis Dillon recommended that Fisher's 5-to-15-year sentence be shortened. Dillon said he'd decided that Fisher "should be granted the relief she seeks, and that such relief comports not only with the law but also with the interests of justice." Naiburg, whom Fisher also accused of having an improper personal relationship with her, was also in a forgiving mood yesterday. "If Mary Jo can forgive Amy for shooting her and Joey for inspiring the shooting, I too can be forgiving," Naiburg, who denied Fisher's charges, said by phone.

Offers have been pouring in for interviews with all the main characters in the melodrama ever since word of Fisher's possible release surfaced.

Lines to get in formed hours before the hearing began. About 50 journalists, including reporters from a Peruvian newspaper and a British tabloid, waited for a spot. Only about 30 made the cut.

When Buttafuoco alighted from a limousine, she was devoured by a media mob, its feet shuffling in quarter steps, arms thrusting microphones.

Joey Buttafuoco, the auto body repairman who parlayed his notoriety into a sporadic show business career, was nowhere to be found, home in Los Angeles where the couple moved after his release from jail. "It wasn't about Joe," his wife said. "Amy was there to apologize to me. I was there to forgive her. Joe had nothing to do with it. He would have been a distraction."