N.Y. Teen-Ager Who Shot Alleged Lover’s Wife to Serve 5 to 15 Years

A defiant Amy Fisher was sentenced Tuesday to the maximum of five to 15 years in prison in the “Long Island Lolita” case for shooting the wife of a man she claimed was her lover.

“You were a walking stick of dynamite with the fuse lit,” the judge told the 18-year-old.

Before being sentenced for assault, the teen-ager apologized to Mary Jo Buttafuoco, who was sitting nearby, and then accused the woman’s husband of complicity in the May 19 love-triangle shooting outside the couple’s Long Island home. Mrs. Buttafuoco, 37, was left partially paralyzed from a head wound.

Near tears at times, Fisher accused Joey Buttafuoco, 36, of urging her to shoot his wife after the two allegedly began an affair.

“I had an affair with a married man, and it is also the truth that Joey Buttafuoco knew of my intentions toward his wife and he encouraged me,” she told Judge Marvin Goodman. “They are the facts, and I cannot and will not take them back for the sake of harmony.”

Police said the shooting came after Buttafuoco tried to end their affair. Buttafuoco, who denied that there was any affair, was not charged.

At a news conference later, he called Fisher “an absolute liar right to the end.” His wife rejected Fisher’s apology, calling her “a pathetic creature” who “thoroughly disgusts me.”

Fisher pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of assault in a Sept. 23 plea bargain and she will be eligible for parole after five years.

Fisher has been in jail since early November when she asked that her $2-million bail be revoked to enable her to escape publicity from newspapers and TV stations around the world. Tabloid newspapers dubbed her “Long Island Lolita” for her beauty and youth and her alleged relationship with an older man.