Point Blank!

Mary Jo Buttafuoco had no idea that when she answered the door to her home on Adam Road West in Long Island, N.Y., on May 19, 1992, her life would be forever changed. At the door was a teenaged girl with flowing brown hair who wanted to know if she was the wife of Joey Buttafuoco. When Mary Jo said she was, the girl suggested that they talk about her husband.

Mary Jo then stepped outside the house and asked the girl what she wanted. To Mary Jo's surprise, the girl said Joey was having an affair with her 16-year-old sister. Mary Jo brusquely asked the girl who she was and where she lived. The girl told her that she was Ann Marie and she lived on Dolphin Court.

As Mary Jo was talking, she noticed a car parked in front of her house with a young man sitting in the driver's seat. She asked who was in the car and the girl said that it was her boyfriend. Changing the subject, the girl told her she had proof of the affair and held up a T-shirt with the logo "Complete Auto Body and Fender, Inc." There was no doubt that the shirt was from her husband's business, but it didn't strike Mary Jo as proof of an affair, because her husband had given away many of the shirts.

Angered by the girl's accusations, Mary Jo decided to end the conversation. She demanded that the girl get off her property and Mary Jo turned to go into the house to call Joey. Suddenly, the girl brandished a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol from her pocket and struck Mary Jo in the head with the weapon. According to Maria Eftimiades in her book, Lethal Lolita, the girl then aimed the gun at Mary Jo's right temple and fired.

The girl then dropped the shirt she was carrying and the gun and ran off toward the waiting car. The young man sitting in the vehicle ordered her to go back and grab the shirt and the weapon. The girl recovered the items, raced back to the car, and took off down the street.

Three neighbors heard the shots and ran to see where the noise had originated. The men made their way toward the Buttafuocos' home, where they saw Mary Jo lying sprawled out on her front porch, bleeding profusely from her head. Another neighbor immediately dialed 911, hoping that an ambulance would make it to the scene before Mary Jo died. At the time, she was still alive but her pulse was weakening.

Within minutes, the ambulance was there and they rushed Mary Jo to the hospital. While police attempted to locate her husband, doctors prepared to perform surgery on Mary Jo. They knew they were fighting an uphill battle judging by the horrific wound on her head.

Police remained at the scene to determine what had actually happened. There was no sign of robbery and it seemed unlikely that it was a mafia hit, since the victim was a housewife. What they didn't know at the time was that the shooter was a 17-year-old girl named Amy Fisher. Moreover, Amy, not her fictitious sister, was the alleged lover of Mary Jo's husband.

News of the shooting and the suspected love triangle spread across the country like wildfire. Amidst the flurry of fact and fiction was the true story waiting to be exposed -- one more complex than initially realized. It was a story that would shock the world and eventually transform perceptions of Amy as a ruthless young woman to a victim herself.