Jamie Hess
speaker
130 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Jamie Hess’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
It's not a bullet to the head. Imagine that being the barometer against which you gauge the validity of any childhood trauma, any bumper bruise, any broken heart from your first love. Imagine at nine, you felt like you had to invalidate your pain because at the end of the day, it's not a bullet to the head.
Mary Jo began to miraculously recover, which, once again, left things in a precarious and bizarre place. I mean, now what? It's starting to appear as if Mary Jo was shot by a teenage lover of her husband, but was this really the case? This is where the story becomes windy, and it's something that Jesse is still unpacking to this very day.
Because the media so strongly invaded her family's privacy and pushed into their lives so obtrusively, Jesse thinks they closed ranks as a defense mechanism, which allowed Joey to maintain the facade that this was all a big misunderstanding. Amy Fisher was some lovestruck teenager who did a crazy thing unrelated to anything he did. And the family had to stick together now more than ever.
You know, hindsight is an amazing thing. I think we can all look back now and with the advantage of time, clarity, and several made-for-TV movies on the topic, we can understand immediately that this is hogwash nonsense. But at the time, the family, well, they believed him. They wanted so badly to believe him that they just did. And so, everyone just came back together under one roof.
Joey, his wounded, recovering wife, Mary Jo, and the kids. And they acted like a united front against the real enemy, the media. Of course, I couldn't help but ask Jessie, in her quietest moments, in her teenage bedroom, what she really thought. Like what goes through your mind as a preteen living with your dad after all this went down?
Mom came home, dad was the number one husband. And he just lied to her and she believed.
Imagine that you had to deal with this pressure on your own, hiding it from your family and therefore cutting yourself off from the only support system you had. Now, imagine this is all happening at a time when attention spans were a lot more concentrated and not as fractured as they are today with a million distractions and downloads that allow us to jump and click from one thing to the other.
Back then, everyone paid attention to the same news cycle. In today's terms, this was viral on a level we don't see even these days. Although going viral wasn't a thing back then yet, but having news crews camp out on your front lawn for months at a time, well, that was, that was very much a thing. This case was unarguably the jumping off point.
It was the first true crime sensation that was the first piece in the puzzle, ultimately leading to today's obsession over all things true crime, from podcasts to the dateline of it all. This case even came before the OJ Simpson case.
Okay, so here we are with 90s exploitative media culture just about to hit hyperspeed. From O.J. Simpson to the talk shows that newly littered the airwaves each day with shocking, controversial, and intrusive content for the first time in history. You know, shows like Donahue, Sally Jesse Raphael, and of course, This guy.
In the meantime, the arrest of Amy Fisher would not bring any peace to the Buttafuoco household. In fact, every time Fisher, who was now being called by the press the Long Island Lolita, appeared in court, more secrets were revealed.
And just when the Buttafuoco family thought it couldn't possibly get any worse... Jessie learned the affair with her dad began when Amy was only 16. And then Amy included Joey in the version of her murder plot, claiming that he had manipulated her into committing the assault. The conflicting claims between Amy and Joey were splashed all over Nightly News and the tabloids.
Joey's lawyer, of course, insisted his client was never involved with the young woman and that she had invented the whole affair. Well, Amy's lawyer portrayed her as the victim. After her assault conviction, Joey was indicted on 19 counts of statutory rape, sodomy, and endangering the welfare of a child.
At first, he initially pleaded not guilty, but later agreed to a plea deal and was sentenced to six months jail time. He was released after serving only four months and nine days of that sentence. Eventually, the accumulation of lies, trauma, and anxiety would push Jesse into a dark path.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
It was then that Jessie's friend, who had been quietly sitting in the corner, piped up and chimed in. Of course, she could only do so anonymously, as she explained to us that she sits under a mountain of non-disclosure agreements. But she begins to spill the tea.
She shares on experiences where producers would talk proudly amongst themselves about how to get people to cry on camera and how to, quote, break them. What are their weak points? She told us about one executive producer who purposely dehydrated and kept his head talent drunk for three days because he knew by the fourth day they'd be so drained that they'd crumble on camera.
As her producer buddy shares it all, Jessie nods her head at some parts and shakes it in disgust at others. Then she turns to me.
And that is the point of this show. One year in, I've realized this. If sharing people's stories can help others avoid some of the same pitfalls and get right to the gratitude, then these are stories worth sharing.
I'm so grateful to be on this magical, spiritual, sparkleful journey with you.
Showing 21–40 of 130 · page 2 of 7
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