Cheryl McCollum

I'm Cheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7.

Zone 7 ain't a place, it's a way of life.

I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of and thousands you haven't.

We started this podcast to teach the importance of teamwork in solving these crazy crimes.

Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly...

On June 11th, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing.

What really happened to the missing deputy?

Valley of Shadows, a new series from Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert.

Listen to Valley of Shadows on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Today, we are talking about one of the most infamous crimes that continues to capture the public's imagination, and that is the shooting of Mary Jo Buttafuoco by an underage girl who was having an affair with her husband.

This crime absolutely dominated the press.

If you are unfamiliar with this case, Mary Jo Buttafuoco, a stay-at-home mother of two small kids...

opened her front door, and was shot in the head at her home in Massapequa, New York, by 17-year-old Amy Fisher, who was having a salacious relationship with Mary Jo's husband, Joey Botafuco.

Mary Jo sustained severe permanent injuries, including partial facial paralysis and deafness in one ear, and she still, to this day, has the bullet in her head.

The case exploded nationally, with the press dubbing Amy the Long Island Lolita,

And Joey denied the affair for years.

Mary Jo stood by him, a choice that made her a target of public ridicule.

I mean, this family and Amy were on the cover of every magazine and newspaper.

There were three TV movies made about the crime, and between 100 and 125 million people watched at least one of them.

Scandal media had become dominant in mainstream culture at this time, and this story had everything.