How a crazed Jodie Foster fan almost killed a US President
John Hinckley was sick of failing to get his idol’s attention when he hatched an insane plan she couldn’t ignore — with deadly consequences.
On March 30, 1981, US President Ronald Reagan had just wrapped up delivering his speech at a convention at the Washington Hilton Hotel.
He said goodbye to delegates and, as he stepped outside towards his limousine, a young man suddenly stepped forward and fired six shots.
At close range, John Hinckley shot Reagan and three of his entourage, including Press Secretary James Brady who was shot in the head.
District of Columbia policeman Thomas Delahanty was shot in the neck, while Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy took a bullet in his side.
Hinckley was immediately tackled and pinned to the ground. Luckily for Reagan and his staff, the gunman was a poor shot and most of the ‘exploding bullets’ he used didn’t actually explode as they were supposed to.
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Meanwhile Reagan had been shot in the left lung, with the bullet narrowly missing his heart. He was helped into his car and rushed to hospital.
As he prepared for surgery, the 70-year-old President was apparently cheerful, telling his wife Nancy: “Honey, I forgot to duck.”
Following a two-hour surgery, Reagan was listed in a stable condition.
But who was Hinckley? And what motivated a reclusive 25-year-old student to try and kill the US President?
It wasn’t long before his strange obsession with movie star Jodie Foster was revealed. He’d been sending her several love letters in a desperate bid to get her attention, one written shortly before he left for his shooting spree.
But his deluded attempt to impress Foster backfired spectacularly and he spent the next 30 years in custody.
TAXI DRIVER OBSESSED
It was 1976 when Hinckley saw the movie Taxi Driver, starring Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle, a man who stalks a Presidential candidate in the hope he will somehow impress a 12-year-old prostitute named Iris, played by Foster.
Hinckley was said to be obsessed with the actress, as well being obsessed with Nazis, the Beatles and assassins.
Born in May 1955, in Ardmore, Oklahoma, the youngest of three children, Hinckley seemed to have an ideal upbringing with loving parents. A shy child, he was said to grow into a reclusive teenager, spending most of his time alone in his room. After graduating from high school in 1973, Hinckley enrolled in Texas Tech, majoring in Business Administration.
But college life was not what he’d hoped for and in 1976, Hinckley dropped out and moved to California to chase his dream of becoming a songwriter.
This is where his Jodie Foster obsession began.
Living alone in a Hollywood apartment, Hinckley watched Taxi Driver at least 15 times.
He wrote to his parents, telling them he had a girlfriend, named Lynn Collins, but he later confessed that he had just made her up; there was no girlfriend.
Said to be frustrated with what he called the “impersonal Hollywood scene”, Hinckley left California in September 1976 and returned to Evergreen, Colorado, where his parents lived. He worked at a restaurant for a few months before moving back to California but that didn’t last and a year later he went back to Texas Tech, changing his major to English.
Hinckley bought his first gun in August 1979, a .38 caliber pistol and he started target-shooting as a new hobby.
By 1980, Hinckley added to his gun collection, buying the “exploding head Devastators” that he would use in his assassination attempt. The Washington Post described the bullets as “expensive, customized .22-caliber cartridges designed to explode upon impact with the force of slugs fired from much more powerful handguns”.
It was at that time Hinckley began receiving prescriptions for anti-depressants and tranquillisers.
CRUSHING ON JODIE FOSTER
An avid reader of People magazine, Hinckley discovered in 1980 that Jodie Foster had enrolled at Yale University. What better way to get close to his obsession than enrolling in a writing course at the same university?
He managed to get into the writing course and it wasn’t long before he started writing poetry and letters to Foster, leaving them in her mailbox.
As his obsession with Foster grew, so did his obsession with guns and he started to believe the only way to gain Foster’s respect was to stalk the US President and eventually kill him.
JIMMY CARTER
In mid-1980, Hinckley began following US President Jimmy Carter. He kept up the campaign trail by reading the newspapers, flying interstate and catching buses to wherever he might be.
In October he turned up to one of Carter’s campaign appearances, but he left his weapons (three handguns and two rifles) behind. However, when Hinckley followed Carter to Nashville, he was arrested at the airport when his handguns were detected in his suitcases.
Hinckley was fined just $62.50 and sent on his way, but the incident did nothing to prevent him from purchasing two more .22 calibre guns in the following weeks.
At Hinckley’s trial it was revealed by the end of 1980 his parents were very worried about him and insisted he see a psychiatrist. In Colorado, the psychiatrist urged Hinckley’s parents to cut their son off financially, so he’d be forced to support himself.
Hinckley promised his parents he’d get a job but when that plan failed he flew to Hollywood at the end of February, 1981. On March 29 he caught a bus to Washington DC and checked into the Park Central Hotel. The next day, he penned another letter to Foster, telling her he planned to assassinate President Reagan (Jimmy Carter’s presidency had ended in January 1981).
Here’s the final letter Hinckley wrote to Jodie Foster, when he was 25 and she was 19.
“I am doing all of this for your sake. By sacrificing my freedom and possibly my life I hope to change your mind about me. This letter is being written an hour before I leave for the Hilton Hotel. Jodie, I ask you to look into your heart and please give me the chance, with this historical deed, to gain your respect and love.”
He mailed the letter and took a taxi to the Washington Hilton where Reagan was due to appear. Standing with a group of journalists, as soon as Reagan came outside, Hinckley fired from a Rohm R6-14 revolver.
Absolute pandemonium broke out as people realised the President had been shot.
THE VICTIMS
The President recovered very quickly, no mean feat for a 70-year-old man. He was able to sign a piece of legislation from his hospital bed and on April 11, he was well enough to return to the White House.
In the aftermath of the assassination attempt, Reagan’s popularity skyrocketed. By August Congress passed Reagan’s controversial economic program, with many Democrats breaking ranks to back his plan.
However, while Reagan claimed to be fully recovered from the shooting, he was believed to suffer the effects of the gunshot wound for many years.
McCarthy and Delahanty eventually recovered from their injuries but Brady suffered permanent brain damage after he was shot in the eye.
Later he became a gun control advocate and in 1993 Congress passed the Brady Bill which set out a five-day waiting period for background checks for those wishing to buy guns. The Brady Bill was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
THE TRIAL
Leading up to the trial, much was made of Hinckley’s obsession with Jodie Foster, who was unwittingly thrown into the spotlight.
Hinckley’s trial began on May 4, 1982 with his defence team telling the court their client was mentally ill with narcissistic personality disorder and had an obsession with the movie Taxi Driver.
Hinckley, his lawyers claimed, wanted to re-enact the events of the movie in his own life.
After seven weeks of testimony and three days of deliberation by the jury, John Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was taken to St. Elizabeth’s Mental Hospital in Washington, DC.
But the verdict caused widespread public outrage, with people horrified that a would-be presidential assassin could avoid being thrown in prison for his crime.
Doctors initially diagnosed Hinckley with major depression and “psychotic disorder not otherwise specified”.
By the late 1990s, Hinckley’s lawyer argued that his client’s mental illness was in remission and he should be allowed to return to a normal life.
In August 1999, he was awarded supervised day trips off the hospital grounds and eventually he was allowed unsupervised visits with his parents.
In September 2016, 30 years after he shot Reagan, 61-year-old Hinckley was officially released and ordered to live with his elderly mother in suburban Virginia.
Ronald Reagan died in June 2004 after living with Alzheimer’s disease for nearly a decade. James Brady died in August 2014 of complications resulting from the shooting.
Foster has steadfastly refused to ever speak publicly about Hinckley.
— LJ Charleston is a freelance historical journalist. Continue the conversation @LJCharleston
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