John Hinckley's obsession with Jodie Foster has been well documented – not least by Hinckley himself. According to Wikipedia, it began with the 1976 film Taxi Driver, whose disturbed protagonist Travis Bickle (played by Robert De Niro) plans to assassinate the right–wing Presidential candidate George Wallace. This led to Hinckley's obsession with Foster, who plays a sexually trafficked 12–year–old child in the same film. She herself was only 12 years old during filming; at the time of release she was 13, and Hinckley was 20.
Around 1980, when Foster went to Yale University to study African–American literature, Hinckley moved to New Haven, Connecticut to stalk her. He sent love letters and romantic poems, and repeatedly called and left her messages. Frustrated by her lack of response, he began to devise ways of attracting her attention. He planned to assassinate Jimmy Carter during his campaign for the 1980 United States presidential election, but in October 1980 he was arrested at Nashville International Airport while trying to board a flight to New York with a set of handcuffs and three unloaded guns in his hand luggage. (Carter was visiting Nashville at the time.)
Following Reagan's election, and his inauguration in January 1981, Hinckley turned his attention to the new President. On 29 March 1981 he travelled to Washington, where he studied Reagan's itinerary for the next day. He spent the morning of 30 March composing a letter to Foster, in which he wrote that "The reason I'm going ahead with this attempt now is because I cannot wait any longer to impress you."
At 2:27 pm on the 30th, Hinckley was among a crowd of several hundred people outside the Washington Hilton hotel, where Reagan was addressing a trade union conference. He was carrying a revolver. When Reagan emerged from the hotel, Hinckley discharged all six of the gun's bullets in his direction. Only the sixth bullet hit Reagan, but three people (Reagan's press secretary James Brady, a police officer and a Secret Service agent) were hit by others. All four survived; Hinckley was overpowered by onlookers, and taken to the Federal Correctional Complex near Butner, North Carolina. Later in 1981 he was released to a psychiatric hospital in Washington, and at his trial the following year (when the defence concluded its case by showing Taxi Driver to the jury) he was found not guilty of all thirteen charges, by reason of insanity.
Hinckley and the hospital began seeking various conditional releases around 1986, and judicial approval was given for the first time in 2003. The conditions included the necessity that Hinckley be supervised during his temporary release by his parents, who lived in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Hinckley was released in 2016 – subject to a raft of conditions, which were finally lifted in 2022. In a subsequent television interview, Hinckley expressed remorse for his actions and apologised to the Reagan and Brady families as well as Jodie Foster.
James Brady, who had been hit in the head by Hinckley's first bullet, endured a long recuperation period, remaining paralysed on the left side of his body. His death in 2014 (33 years after the shooting, at the age of 73) was ruled a homicide. Because of the 'not guilty by reason of insanity' verdict at his original trial (and also because of a law in effect at the time, which ruled that death could not be legally attributed to acts or omissions that had occurred more than a year and a day previously), Hinckley – who would remain incarcerated for two more years – did not face any further charges.
© Haydn Thompson 2024