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With Few Words, Joey's Out Of Jail

By Jack Sirica | Staff Writer

December 2, 1995

Without a news conference, a limousine ride home or his snakeskin boots, a pale Joey Buttafuoco left the Nassau County jail yesterday completely free from prison and probation.

It was three years to the day after Amy Fisher, his teenaged lover, was sentenced to prison for shooting Buttafuoco's wife, Mary Jo, in the head on the family's doorstep in May 1992.

After 78 days in the slammer - punishment for breaking probation when he offered to pay an undercover Los Angeles police officer for oral sex in May - Buttafuoco was driven home to see his wife and children, who sources said never once visited him in prison.

"I feel good," Buttafuoco said to reporters who swarmed around him after he walked out of the East Meadow prison at 10:30 a.m. Seconds earlier, he had trashed media scrutiny of his release as "baseless and ridiculous."

Then he threw his suitcase in the back seat of the red Jaguar waiting to take him to his Massapequa home, greeted the driver - his sister, Anne Isabelle - and took off.

After his October, 1993, conviction for the statutory rape of Fisher, Buttafuoco, 39, served 4 months of the jail term and was in his second of 5 years of probation when he was arrested in California on May 24 and charged with solicitation of prositution.

Nassau County Court Judge Jack Mackston sentenced him to 10 months in prison on Sept. 15 for the California probation violation.

Contact with the outside world was more limited during Buttafuoco's second jail term. Jail spokesman Lt. Robert Anderson said the inmate received far fewer than the 6,000 letters he got the first time around. During his first jail term, Mary Jo visited him three times a week and his two children saw him weekly.

As far as Buttafuoco's future plans, his California agent, Sherri Spillane, said he has written a proposal for a book called "Joey Buttafuoco's How to Avoid Car Ripoffs" and has received a couple of offers for film roles. Buttafuoco also speaks about his Hollywood arrest on a 900-number scandal hotline that costs $2.99 per minute, Spillane said.

"I think he's got one hell of a future coming up," the agent said. She said Mary Jo Buttafuoco "just wants a very quiet life."

Buttafuoco's lawyer, Dominic Barbara, had no comment on the Buttafuocos' relationship.

Ironically, the Hollywood charge of solicitation, to which he pleaded "no contest" on July 7, greatly speeded up his release from the criminal justice system. Buttafuoco won't have to check with a probation officer anymore because his second jail term ended the case - anyone sentenced to more than six months in jail cannot be given probation, said Ed Grilli, the Nassau District Attorney spokesman.

Fisher, who is serving 5 to 15 years in prison for the assault of Mary Jo Buttafuoco, is scheduled to get out of jail in 1997, her attorney said.