Infamous
What If Joey Buttafuoco Was Your Dad? Listen to Gratitudeology with Jamie Hess
Thu, 03 Apr 2025
This week, we’re sharing an episode from The Gratitudeology Podcast with Jamie Hess—the powerful story of Jessie Buttafuoco. Jamie Hess, a wonderful interviewer, listens as Jessie’s life turned into a media circus when her father’s mistress attempted to murder her mother. Years later, she is finally ready to tell her own story. Click ‘Subscribe’ at the top of the Infamous show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices A Campside Media & Sony Music Entertainment production. To connect with Infamous's creative team and gain access to behind the scenes content, join our community at Campsidemedia.com/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the story of Jessie Buttafuoco?
Hey Infamous listeners, today we're doing something a little different. We're sharing an episode from a show we absolutely love, the Gratitudology podcast with Jamie Hess. It's a podcast that digs deep into resilience, recovery, and finding meaning through life's most intense moments. And this episode is pretty infamous.
Jamie dives into the story of Jesse Budafuco, a name you might recognise from one of the most sensational true crime cases of the 90s. The case where one man's wife was shot in the face by his underage mistress, Amy Fisher. The case that maybe helped kick off the true crime craze that's still going on today.
But what you might not know is what happened to that couple's daughter, Jessie, a nine-year-old whose normal life was upended when her family's tragedy became a media circus. This is Jessie's story. It's about reclaiming her voice and navigating trauma and media exploitation. It's powerful, moving, and honestly, kind of unforgettable. Here's Gratitudology, Growing Up Budafuco. Hope you enjoy.
This episode mentions gun violence and suicide. Please take care while listening. Born in 1983, Jesse's childhood was like one long movie montage combined with a classic family sitcom.
My parents, Joey and Mary Jo, and the name alone is adorable, right? And then there was so much love there. They were high school sweethearts. I mean, Joey and Mary Jo were like it. They were popular in the neighborhood. You know, it was very much them. The family lived in a safe, close-knit neighborhood on Long Island, New York.
You knew everybody, and you could ride your bike up and down the street and go skateboard with those kids and go ding-dong ditch over there.
When Jessie was nine years old, she was getting ready to take part in it. She'd no longer be left behind while her big brother and the other neighborhood kids caused a little harmless mischief on their way to school. Her biggest worry was remembering her bike lock combination.
Outside of school and neighborhood shenanigans, Jessie spent her time at dance classes and just generally preparing to be the greatest thing Broadway had ever seen. You know, singing along with the best of the 90s divas, just waiting to be discovered from her bedroom.
I came out of the womb just singing and dancing and wanting to entertain and make people laugh. I would play Whitney Houston on repeat, Mariah Carey on repeat, and just dance in my room with a hairbrush and just really like got into that kind of fantasy life. And then at nine years old, my mother was shot in the face by my dad's underage mistress.
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Chapter 2: Who is Joey Buttafuoco and what happened in 1992?
Let's go to the beginning of that day.
So that day, May 19th, 1992, was the first day I was riding my bicycle to school. In the morning, my mom was hounding me about my bike lock combination and how to use it and was like really instilling the sense of responsibility in me of like, you have to lock up your bike, you have to be safe. Like I just remember that as being the last thing we were talking about as I was leaving.
Now riding your bike to school was like a rite of passage and this was my first time doing it with my big brother. It was a random Tuesday. And so as we were heading off, I'm ready to go, my brother's like, I don't know, I got to go back in. He went back in and just had a weird feeling. My mom was like, whatever, come on, go, go, go, shoved him out the door.
So around noon, I mean, it was before lunch, I get a phone call in the classroom and I was told to pack my lunch and meet my aunt at the front of the school. And I was like, What? Like, what? Why? I'm leaving. Why am I leaving? I have auditions for the school play after this was going to be my musical debut. I was going to get discovered and become Annie on Broadway.
What do you mean I have to leave? And so I get my little Minnie Mouse lunchbox and my little thermos. And then I head out the door and then I see my brother coming down the hall as well. And now we're walking. And now I see my aunt who's six foot in the distance. I was like, why? Why is she here? She's never picked me up from school. What's going on? It was weird.
And she's like, all right, we got to go. And I remember freaking out of like, but my bike, my bike's here. We can't leave my bike here. Mom's going to kill me if I leave my bike here. No, you don't understand. Mom is like, this is my first thing of like responsibility that my mom is putting on my plate. And if she finds that I leave this school without my bike, she's going to kill me.
Not realizing she's fighting for her life, you know, in a hospital bed. So eventually, I don't know what's going on. We leave. I make my aunt get my bike. We throw it in her trunk and we head to my dad's work. And we meet up at my dad's shop. And when I get there, every one of my family members is there. My dad is one of five. My mom is one of five. Both their parents were alive.
So everyone is at my dad's work at this point. And like the only time that really happens is like holidays, right? Christmas, Thanksgiving, things like that. This was May. Like, what are we doing? And I just remember everyone looking like they saw a ghost or just like their world has been rocked. And at the time, you know, I was very intuitive. I could pick up on stuff.
And so I'm sitting on my aunt's lap and I'm just looking at everybody like as if they're in this state of shock because they were. And I cracked a joke and said, what's the matter with everybody? It looks like somebody got shot in the head or something. And then my aunt was like, who told you that? What's going on? Like as if I said something wrong and I felt very much in trouble.
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Chapter 3: How did Jessie Buttafuoco experience her mother's shooting?
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And because she didn't know any different. Like she didn't see him cheating. She really didn't. She thought their marriage was as strong as it ever was. Like they had their problems, but like not, she didn't see any of this coming at all. And so the dynamic at home, it was weird. Not only is my mom physically injured, all of a sudden they're famous now.
I learned very early that my family doesn't need any more problems. So I'm just gonna be as perfect as I can, and I'm gonna succeed, and I'm gonna laugh, and I'm gonna make you think I'm fine. And I just, I acted my way through my life. I was dying inside. I was terrified of being kidnapped, terrified of being murdered myself, terrified of taking the trash out or walking the dog, okay?
So I just learned how to do everything scared. And I was just constantly biting my nails, anxious and nervous.
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.
This is a CBS News special report. Dan Rather reporting from CBS News worldwide headquarters in New York. Good day. Los Angeles police are about to hold a news conference about the O.J. Simpson case. The district attorney's office filed murder charges against him today. The former pro football star is accused of murder.
We were directly before O.J. When O.J. came, it took the attention off us and actually gave us breathing room a little bit.
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.
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