Getting It Through My Thick Skull (6 page)

The media went absolutely fanatical. It was at this juncture that Amy was dubbed “Long Island Lolita” by the
New York Post,
and the coverage reached the absolute heights of absurdity. The latest revelation only added fuel to Naiberg’s fire, so the latest spin was that Joey had forced this little schoolgirl into prostitution, given her a beeper, worked as her pimp, made her buy the gun, convinced her to shoot me, and on and on and on.

In light of this most recent revelation, Fred Klein said, “Describing Amy Fisher as a schoolgirl is like calling John Gotti a businessman,” at Amy’s bail hearing. Though Eric Naiberg argued valiantly that Amy was a lost little girl who needed to be at home with her parents, the judge posted a $2 million bail on Amy—the highest ever in the county’s history for a first-time offender.

Given the sex tape scandal and the unprecedented bail amount, the press descended like wolves, took up residence on our front lawn, and refused to budge until police intervened, at which point they grudgingly backed up to a legal distance— in the street of our quiet suburban neighborhood.

Our next-door neighbors had been waiting to relocate to Florida until June so their daughter could finish out her school year. Their house was in escrow when the shooting took place, and putting aside their concern for me, I’m sure they were probably panicking. Who wanted to live next door to the Buttafuocos and the infamous house? I imagine they were worried that the house deal would fall through. Fortunately for them, it didn’t. A young married couple moved in as scheduled and took possession of the house in the middle of the whirlwind.

Every time Joey escorted me out the front door, we faced yells, taunts, and idiotic questions from the media. In fact, reporters were all over town, banging on our neighbors’ doors, descending on Complete Auto Body, trying to get inside Bilt-more Shores Beach Club next door, anything for a quote. I was forced to walk the gauntlet every day, when Joey faithfully drove me to physical therapy, where I was hooked up to a TENS machine. Small sensors were stuck all over my paralyzed face, neck, and jaw, and then bolts of electricity zapped through the machine. The goal was to shock the paralyzed nerves back to life. It hurt, and the whole process scared me. But it had to be done.

Joey was my rock. He had taken a leave of absence from his job to stay home full-time and care for the kids and me. Fortunately, it was a family business with my father-in-law at the helm, so the paychecks continued. Cass’s main concern, of course, was that I get well. Joey cooked breakfast, washed dishes, packed lunches, grocery shopped, cleaned the house, did laundry, and drove the kids around without a complaint. He was also my nurse: cleaning my wound, refilling my prescriptions, sitting at my side during physical therapy, helping me walk, bathing me, and monitoring visits from my friends. He never wavered in his denials that he’d had nothing to do with Amy Fisher and that she was crazy. Everything he was saying made sense. It was the two of us against the world. Even massive amounts of painkillers didn’t dull my rage at this kid who’d tried to kill me and the public servants who were willfully destroying my husband’s reputation.

One afternoon, I endured a particularly grueling session on the medieval torture machine. The reporters outside were especially rude and aggressive; I did my best to ignore their shouts as we slowly exited the car. Joey and I ascended the stairs—a painful ten-minute ordeal that left me exhausted and shaking from the effort of balancing. As I hobbled to my bed, I caught sight of myself in the full-length mirror and gasped. I walked toward my reflection and really looked at myself hard, head to toe. I weighed eighty-nine pounds—twenty pounds had vanished due to my liquid diet. My hair was completely shorn off and just starting to grow back in uneven patches. I was so emaciated that I looked like a little boy. A patch still covered my eye, and the bullet wound was heavily bandaged. I clutched the dresser for support and peered even closer. Loose skin drooped from the injured side of my face—the frozen half. I was virtually unrecognizable from the pretty, vital woman I’d been just a month before.

This is what Amy Fisher had done to me. I was literally fighting for my life. Meanwhile, the entire world wanted to tune in to the Joey and Amy soap opera. Poor
Amy
? People wanted to hear about how Joey had taken advantage of
her
? How come nobody was interested in what she’d done to
me
?

I got a big jolt when Detective Marty Alger called me at home one day as I rested in bed. There were new developments that could possibly support a charge of premeditation. Apparently, two teenage boys had voluntarily shown up at the police station with their parents. Seeing the nonstop media coverage of every aspect of Amy Fisher’s life, they had gotten scared about something they’d done months before. Amy had approached a teenage boy the previous fall and told him some story about being in love with an older guy and how badly she wanted to get rid of his wife. When he mentioned that he had an old rifle lying around somewhere, Amy got very excited. She offered him $400 cash plus a blow job to go to my house and shoot me.

Her would-be shooter was just a regular, somewhat nerdy seventeen-year-old boy—he wanted the money and the blow job, but he was no criminal. He had no intention of following through or shooting anybody. When the agreed-upon day came, he did nothing, and he told cops that Amy had screamed at him the whole ride home.

Amy soon moved on to a different boy. This new kid just took her money and the blow job and didn’t even go near our house. Both boys swore they never had any intention of harming anybody; the police believed them.

Amy’s frustration and obsession had clearly been growing for months. She couldn’t find anyone willing to do the deed despite handing out cash and sexual favors. Finding no one willing to shoot a perfectly innocent woman they didn’t even know, she eventually decided to do it herself. Amy’s mysterious “boyfriend” turned up as well. The teenage boy I’d seen sitting in the car outside my house that day was eventually located after a long investigation. It turned out that this kid, Peter, had given Amy a gun and driven her to my house. He’d stolen a license plate off a car in Brooklyn and put it on his car before coming, so he clearly knew what she planned to do and took precautions against being identified. That boy sat there, watched our discussion, and saw her shoot me. Peter then drove Amy home, took her bloody clothes and the gun, and dumped them down a sewer.

These actions clearly made Peter an accessory to attempted murder. However, given his “cooperation” and the fact that he led police to the sewer where the gun was eventually recovered, he was allowed to plea-bargain. Peter was charged with criminal possession and sale of a weapon and sentenced to six months in jail. He wound up serving four months and was never heard from again.

My strength was slowly returning, and I tried desperately to return to some semblance of normal life for my children’s sake. I had become well enough to be escorted the hundred yards to the Biltmore Shores Beach Club and sit propped on a beach chair outside. The sun and fresh air were restorative. Protective friends surrounded me, and my kids could see all their friends there.

One afternoon, as I rested on the beach under an umbrella, a friend came racing over the sand and stopped in front of me. “Amy made bail!” she shouted. I couldn’t believe it, but there it was. Joey and I returned to the house and called Klein’s office. We learned that Eric Naiburg had raised the exorbitant money by having Amy sign over the rights to her story for book and television deals. Amy would be released from jail and into her parents’ custody the next day. I was granted an immediate court order against Amy Fisher that barred her from coming anywhere near me or my house, but the police insisted I wear a panic-button alarm around my neck at all times that would alert them immediately should she show up.

It was no fun hearing from various neighbors and acquaintances how Amy was all over town. She was seen trying on dresses at the Sunrise Mall and dining with her mother and Eric Naiburg at Il Classico. Hearing about these sightings only fed my anger. What was she doing out and about, enjoying life, while I was struggling to stand up straight and walk across my bedroom without a cane?

The wheels of justice continued to grind behind the scenes. I was living for my day in court. I couldn’t wait for Amy’s case to be tried and tell the world what had really happened that day. No struggle, no argument, no accident—this girl had tried to murder me, and I was ready, willing, and able to testify to that at her trial. But the police and district attorney had no intention of letting all the details of the sloppy police work come out in a public trial. In a desperate attempt at a Cover Your Ass Move, Assistant District Attorney Klein broke the news to me in a personal meeting that “for my sake” they were going to let Amy plead out to a much lesser charge. They were arranging this so I wouldn’t be put through an exhausting trial. How nice of them.

They were offering Amy a deal: five to fifteen years in return for pleading guilty to one count of aggravated assault.
Aggravated assault?
She tried to assassinate me in front of my own home! Were they crazy? Here was the kicker: as part of her deal, she agreed to testify that Joey had sex with her when she was still sixteen. They had to get that in there somehow, of course. They couldn’t just punish her for the crime she’d committed; they were determined to get Joey, too.

“Are we still on that bullshit?” I screamed at Fred Klein. “She’s a liar—she’s lied about everything! She’s crazy—she tried to kill me! She’d been trying for months! She was a working call girl—this is no innocent kid! How can you do this to me and my family?” I stood up shakily and slammed my hands down on the desk.

Michael Rindenow tried to calm me down. “Take it easy, Mary Jo,” he said, and reached over to guide me back down to my seat.

“I won’t take it easy! What part of ‘This girl is a dangerous nut job’ don’t you guys get? You’re going to take the word of this little lunatic that they had sex when she was sixteen? Didn’t you watch that tape? You should be taking care of me, not going after Joe! I need my husband home helping me!”

I fell back down in my seat, emotionally distraught and weak with exhaustion. In the four months since she put that bullet in the side of my head, I hadn’t had one minute of peace or healing. Everything was always about Joey and Amy. The attorneys were unmoved by my outburst and looked at me stone-faced. Hey, they were doing this for
me
. By having Amy plead guilty to an assault charge, they explained, I could collect a sizable settlement from her parents’ homeowner’s insurance policy. But I knew better. This was a political decision based entirely on their colossal mishandling of the entire case against Amy Fisher. All I wanted was my day in court. But what I wanted or needed was never a part of the equation—and never would be.

As the district attorney’s office hammered out the fine points of a plea bargain with Eric Naiberg, I did my best to calm my seething anger at what I saw as the continued harassment of my husband. Though I certainly tried, I couldn’t ignore the incessant news coverage or the latest bulletins from the cops. They were now officially claiming that Joey and Amy had first had sex in her house on July 2, 1991. Records showed that her car had been brought in for service that day. Amy left it at the shop, and Joey drove her home. According to Amy, she invited Joey into the house where they had sex for the first time. Her parents obviously weren’t home.