Chapter 1: What crime is Mary Jo Buttafuoco known for?
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Chapter 2: How did the media portray the shooting incident?
Amy Fisher. And she was released early, mainly because Mary Jo came and gave a statement on her behalf, which I think is extraordinary. Now, do they dig into that in this show, Mary Jo's ability to forgive? Yes. Yes. Yes. Which is... But, you know, in this way where... They show the complexity of that, that, yes, Mary Jo can see how this girl had a rough upbringing. She was a child.
She can have some sympathy for that, but it doesn't excuse her behavior. Yeah. Initially, Joey, but if you could deny the affair. Yes. He later in court. Amy testifies against him and he does admit he is a diabolical human being, in my opinion. The fact that he could, first of all, just lie straight to his wife's face, like everyone under the sun.
And then afterwards, his lawyer said something to the effect of, oh, this is truly who he is. He's a great family man. So he pled guilty to this one count crime. Of statutory rape. He was almost like they were trying to champion him as if he's such a great guy. And then the neighborhood threw him a party when he got out of prison for statutory rape. He was still at the time with Mary Jo.
Yes, he was still married.
In the 2000s, he was released from jail and Mary Jo and Joey moved to California. Yes. She filed for divorce from him in 2003. He was remarried in 2005. He also, before, while they were still married, he was arrested for solicitation while he was on probation. Oh, after he was released from prison. Yes, after he was released from prison.
What do you think it is that makes this story so captivating still? That we just still are... learning and watching and this is a new version 30 years later. What is it about this one? I think it's really sort of unbelievable still. And then you think, well, it happened and this girl is still, I mean, she, I think part of it is
Somehow these people get to have a second life by doing these kind of exploitative shows about themselves. And that is so disturbing to me. So that's another reason that I feel... I feel really happy is the wrong word. I feel really good for Mary Jo that she's able to have this platform and really be forthright and raw and honest and truthful about her own story.
Yeah, I think it's interesting that infamous is what these people are, which is a lot of people don't know Infamy is becoming famous for something bad, but it is still fame. And so many people thrive off of being famous, even if it is infamous. Right. And this is something interesting that Mary Jo does say in this movie, that she never wanted to be famous.
She never wanted any attention like this. Like I said, she wanted a simple life. This was a good person. She was raised Catholic, very traditional, wanted to be a wife and a mother. And she... Chose the wrong dude for that. Okay, let's get into it with the executive producer, Sherry Singer, of the new Lifetime film, I Am Mary Jo Buttafuoco. I'm Cheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7.
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Chapter 3: What led to Mary Jo Buttafuoco's decision to tell her story?
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Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Goodbye. Welcome, Sherry. Thank you for being here with me today. I'm happy to be here. I want to say, just to start, that I am so incredibly glad that this woman finally gets her time to take back her own story.
We have been hearing about this for years, and I feel very moved by the entire endeavor. So bravo. Thank you very much. I was too.
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Chapter 4: How did the film 'I Am Mary Jo Buttafuoco' differ from previous portrayals?
And I didn't necessarily expect to be. I just thought, well, I'll care. It was beyond, particularly once I met her and I directed all the inserts of her and just watching her, you know, she's kind of amazing too. What happens is Mary Jo is sitting and she's quite literally speaking to the camera, telling her story. And then it's intercut with narrative and actors and acting it.
And there is something incredibly powerful. powerful about that, that you see the nuance. It's almost as though you see her kind of healing while she's speaking. It's kind of extraordinary. You know, when we filmed the wedding scene, she was on the set. She came for a few days and she cried. I mean, it was super emotional. Everybody on the set loved her immediately.
Oh, I love this so much for her. Yeah, me too. Me too. How can you not? How can you not? Okay. So let's, so this case became tabloid legend. I mean, literally almost instantly. And how did you approach dramatizing the story that people think they know, but really they mostly only know it through headlines and caricatures of these people? Well, we actually just touched on that a little bit.
It was, meant to be. Lifetime has this sort of I am or I was franchise where a woman that was famous or infamous years later reflects back on the story that everybody thinks they knew. and tells it, you know, pretty much entirely from her point of view. And that doesn't mean we didn't have other sources. But this is this is the story that she wanted to tell.
So we felt all of us, you know, felt very responsible for being true to that. Right. And how did she how did you come to meet her? How did this the project actually was somebody at Lifetime, an executive that I work with frequently who. who I think they hooked up through Instagram, believe it or not. I think, you know, I personally feel like that's how we heal through anything, right?
But she, I was so really moved by that, which I was not expecting necessarily, because I feel like there's a nuance in this relationship
you know that complication of how they always made amy fisher look like the victim yes and then at the same time demonized her so it's like all the women in this story just got the worst and yeah but especially mary jo but especially mary jo yep i mean beyond everything else you know she's still got a bullet in her head It's unfathomable. So let's talk about the actual case a little bit.
So how true is the portrayal in the film of her dealing with the issues of Joey not being home or her being alone with the kids and him not growing up and his denial of the affair? Because I felt like those are the things that somehow...
No one ever talked about like they never he was just sort of excused for this behavior and almost championed, you know, the moment when they say she says that they threw a party for him when he got out of jail, serving time for statutory rape. I know it's I don't think that would happen today, you know, because we're going back about 34 years, 35 years now.
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Chapter 5: What impact did the crime have on Mary Jo's family?
Nobody. Seven years. Seven years. So yeah, how much do you think, how much was that a part of her denial? Did she talk about that? Well, I'm sure that that was. It was all of the things you're bringing up. you know, were a part of it. And she didn't want to believe it. She was told not to believe it by people in her life that mattered. And she had kids.
And, you know, it's, I mean, I've been through it. It's really hard to get a divorce, even when you both want it. It's really hard. Right. And even if people are civil, Right. You know, so and and in those days you were told it's better to stay in an unhappy marriage than to put your kids through a divorce. That was the more a, you know, from the late 80s, certainly through the 90s. Yeah.
And and some of us never agreed with that. But a lot of people did. Yep. So I think she's, you know, iconic in this way, you know, that the things that happened to her happened at a time and a place that they could. Right, right. I'm Cheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place. It's a way of life. Now, this ain't just any old podcast, honey.
We're going to be talking to family members of victims, detectives, prosecutors, and some nationally recognized experts that I have called on over the years to help me work these difficult cases. 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... Victims' family members, come be a part of my Zone 7 while building yours. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. On June 11, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing.
It's an all-out manhunt for John Auge. Every search and rescue team in L.A. County has been called in to help. Within days, tips started flooding into the Sheriff's Department. The ruler around the drug scene was that a deputy was taken care of. Is this the story of a man who just got lost in the desert? Or of a cover-up inside the nation's largest sheriff's department?
A homicide captain saying, detective, do not find out if this guy's guilty or innocent. Who does that?
Do you have any advice for us while looking into this disappearance?
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Chapter 6: How did Mary Jo Buttafuoco's life change after the shooting?
I don't know. We're going to sally forth. Sally forth? We're going to sally forth. You guys stay sexy. Don't get murdered.
Elvis, do you want a cookie? A cookie?
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Goodbye. Let's talk a little bit about the actual shooting, too, which I think, you know, we kind of gloss over the specifics of she was standing on her own doorstep of her own home. Yes. With people.
being unafraid of looking at this little girl and um so how how true to reality were those specifically the things um when they she goes and tries to sell her candy bars under the guises of doing that for school and we didn't make any of this up that's all real yeah yeah we did we we took very little if anything we took very we took almost no creative license because we couldn't
And therefore, what you saw happened you just see how young this person is that Amy, the choices she made in so naive and so wildly dangerous by going to the door first. And so were those things were real that she like stalked her and tried to, I mean, it's just crazy. Those two people that she hired for the first one who couldn't pull the trigger. And then the second one where she got the gun.
I mean, they testified that, You know, on record. They really helped to prosecute Amy. They did, yes. You know, probably for a deal, you know. Right. But that's standard, you know. If you're going to step up and tell the truth, then you want something in return. Right, right. No, they, you know, so they were very real people. Right. And did she, when...
In the movie, they show Mary Jo when she comes to, and she identified Amy in a photo. That also really happened. Yeah, we couldn't, we had very little creative license. I mean, you can... the kind of creative license you have is maybe a scene that really occurred, didn't happen in the park.
We shot it in, or, you know, maybe the, you know, the, the photos we took, for example, when she remarried, you know, that was representative of what, you know, what their life was like, because it was, you know, but those kinds of things, even with a, you know, with a, a based on fact docudrama, you can have a little latitude for,
setting things, you know, maybe in a different place because you're shooting a movie.
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Chapter 7: What themes of forgiveness are explored in the film?
You know, he just sort of gets away with it. So what do you hope that the millions of people who were obsessed with this and will watch this film, what do you hope that they will get out of it? Well, first, I hope they watch it. I can't help it. But secondly, I hope they get out of it the things we're actually talking about. Yes.
How times can change, how social mores and religious mores can change, but can also really, in any direction, really influence people's opinions.
Mm-hmm.
of things and the way they look at them. And I think that I, I just want her to be heard authentically, you know, as, as herself. Yes. And I, I think we, you know, we worked really hard to have the, all the pieces that weren't actually her feel authentic. You know, we had three wonderful leads and,
And, and I wasn't sure, and they were hard to, they were going to be hard to find because of the accents and the mannerisms and how many years they The, you know, the story, a lot of these stories do not cover that many years, you know, where you're changing hair and colors and the way you look and what's going on in the world. And, you know, so there was a lot of production, right?
Yeah, the performances were very, very strong. Everybody. I'm really proud of them. I really am. So after everything that Mary Jo has adored and been through, what do you think? I mean, this, this idea of closure, which I always think is, is a farce. There is somewhat anyway. Yeah. Like what do you think it looks like for her?
And do you think that she has gotten some healing from making this film? I think she did. I mean, I think because she could let herself emotionally experience these things, you know, and because of how she felt on the set and because of how she felt when she was, you know, delivering the things she wanted to say to the camera, I think she probably got some of that.
And I think, you know, there's this feeling, if you feel totally misunderstood... and you get a chance to, in your own words, try to set it straight, you know, that would feel liberating to me in a certain way. She's also like, you know, very close to her daughter and her son, and she's very present. You know, she was, I found her, I wasn't sure, you know, what it was going to be like.
And I found her very, very present and really thoughtful, you know, about what was going on. Oh, I love, I just love hearing that so much. She really, I mean, I wouldn't say it if I didn't really believe it. So I Am Mary Jo Buttafuoco will premiere on Saturday, January 17th at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific on Lifetime. Everyone must watch it.
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