We report the first measurements of the distributions of the number of molecular ions emitted per gold cluster impact. Experiments were performed in the event-by-event bombardment/emission mode. Targets of phenylalanine were bombarded with 28.6keV Au 9 + and 134.6keV Au 400 4+ projectiles. The secondary ions were identified with a linear time-of-flight mass spectrometer equipped with an 8-anode detector, thus allowing to record the co-emission of up to 8 phenylalanine ions. We describe how the experimentally measured molecular ion distribution is related to the initial distributions of ionized and neutral molecules.