From the archives: Mary Jo Buttafuoco's bullet rings in jail visit

This story was originally published in Newsday on Nov. 17, 1993

Mary Jo Buttafuoco visited her husband in jail yesterday for the first time, but not before the bullet fired into her head by his former teenage lover set off a metal detector.

"The officers understood, and they were wonderful about it," said Lucretia Floros, who accompanied her sister-in-law to the jail. Inside, Joey Buttafuoco tried to embrace his crying wife when he saw her, but a corrections officer told them it wasn't allowed.

The two met in a secluded area several yards away from dozens of other inmates and their visitors, who turned and watched the celebrity couple. The Buttafuocos held hands atop a small wood partition.

Several hours later, Joey Buttafuoco appeared in a taped interview on the tabloid-TV show "A Current Affair," saying the motivating factors in his affair with Amy Fisher were lust coupled with an apparent desire to relive the youth he lost when his mother died when he was 11.

Buttafuoco said his relationship with Fisher went from "heavy flirting" at his family's auto body shop to sex at a motel. Buttafuoco's account of the first sexual relationship, however, contradicted Fisher's. She said that the two first made love in her Merrick home after Buttafuoco drove her home from the body shop.

"We went to a motel instead, and we had relations," he said. "I'm not proud of it. It was a very big mistake, probably the biggest mistake of my life."

Buttafuoco described the affair as "strictly lustful sex," adding, "When the lust part gets satisfied, the guilt comes back ten times over."

A news release from the show said that in an interview tonight, Mary Jo Buttafuoco will admit that she "made her own mistakes in life that were to do with drugs and infidelity." Sources have told Newsday that Buttafuoco has a $ 500,000 contract with the show for a series of interviews.

But outside of the glare of TV lights, Joey Buttafuoco - sentenced Monday to 6 months for the statutory rape of Fisher - was adjusting to jail.

A Nassau County jail spokesman, Lt. Robert Anderson, said that Joey Buttafuoco will be separated from the general population until tomorrow at the earliest, as are all new inmates, and during that time he will undergo psychological and physical testing. Anderson said Buttafuoco is alone in his cell 22 hours a day.

Floros said Joey Buttafuoco told his wife he didn't sleep at all Monday night because he was "freezing . . . and he's sleeping on a quarter-inch thick mattress," Floros said.

Floros added that her brother, who kept his trademark snakeskin boots on even after he put on his orange prison uniform, later exchanged them for sneakers.

Mary Jo Buttafuoco, carrying a Macy's bag with men's underwear for her husband, arrived at the jail about 1 p.m. with Floros, who had "The Firm," a Pisces horoscope book and a Discover magazine. Floros said they were not allowed to give them to her brother.

In a transcript of tonight's interview provided by "A Current Affair," reporter Steve Dunleavy asks, "You've made mistakes in your life?" Mary Jo replies, "Sure I have."

Dunleavy says, "Things you'd like to regret, things you'd like to take back?" Mary Jo replies, "Sure, yes, absolutely. . . . " Dunleavy asks, "Is it to do with fidelity and drugs," and Mary Jo answers "Both," but then she changes the subject.

"A Current Affair" spokeswoman Trish Whitehead yesterday said Mary Jo Buttafuoco did not elaborate in the entire interview. "She just touched on it. It implies she had extramarital affairs," Whitehead said.

But friends and family say the show took unfair creative license. Joan Classi, one of Mary Jo's closest friends for eight years, said that Buttafuoco told her last night, "Any implication she may have made was to ease the tension she was feeling and to lighten up." Classi added that her friend has never implied that she had an affair.

Also in the interview, Mary Jo Buttafuoco acknowledges her husband's affair: "Yes, I know he had an affair, and I don't care."

Fisher, who pleaded guilty last year to shooting Mary Jo Buttafuoco in the head in May, 1992, was transferred yesterday from Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester to a prison in upstate Albion, where she is serving a 5-to-15-year sentence. She had been in Bedford Hills so she would be available during the prosecution of Joey Buttafuoco.

But officials said the move back to Albion was not related to allegations that Fisher was sexually assaulted by a group of Bedford Hills inmates over the past four weeks.

Officials and Fisher's lawyer declined to comment. Sources said the family is deciding what to do because they don't want to cause more trouble for Fisher, who has had many run-ins with officials and inmates.