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Mary Jo Takes Joey to Splitsville

By The Associated Press

May 7, 2003

Joey Buttafuoco and his wife, Mary Jo, who was shot in the face by "Long Island Lolita" Amy Fisher, are divorcing after 26 years of marriage.

"It's OK. To move on you've got to get a divorce," Buttafuoco said in a telephone interview Monday. "She's with another guy. His name is Stew. I've been with a girl for awhile, too." His attorney, Leon F. Bennett, said the two remain friends and are "trying to work out an amicable resolution." Mary Jo Buttafuoco, who filed divorce papers Feb. 3 in Ventura County (Calif.) Superior Court, didn't list an attorney in her filing and couldn't be found for comment.

Fisher, dubbed the "Long Island Lolita" by New York tabloids, was 17 when she knocked on Mary Jo Buttafuoco's door and shot her in the face. Fisher served seven years in prison.

Buttafuoco initially denied having an affair with Fisher but pleaded guilty in 1993 to one count of statutory rape and served six months in jail. He said Monday he pleaded guilty only because he'd run out of money. "She was never a girlfriend, never a lover," said Buttafuoco, 48. "The prosecutors spent so much time and money coming after me they had to get a conviction."

Buttafuoco, who owned a Baldwin auto body repair shop at the time of the shooting, moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1990s to pursue an acting career. He said he's since returned to the car repair business, and now works with his adult son. "I do all the Ferraris," he said. "I do a little TV and movies, but that doesn't put a lot of butter on my bread."