John W. Hinckley, Jr. Biography
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JOHN W.
HINCKLEY,
JR.
A BIOGRAPHY
John Warnock Hinckley, Jr., was born in
Ardmore,
Oklahoma, on May 29, 1955. The youngest of three children, John’s home
life seemed picture perfect. His father, John W. Hinckley, Sr., was a
successful
and wealthy Chairman and President of the Vanderbilt Energy Corporation
while JoAnn Moore Hinckley, John’s mother, was a homemaker who doted on
her children, especially John, whom she felt was more introverted than
his older siblings. John’s brother, Scott Hinckley, graduated from
Vanderbilt
University and became Vice-President of his father’s oil and gas
business.
John’s older sister, Diane, was popular and outgoing, a straight "A"
student
in high school and a graduate of SMU in Dallas.
In the early years of John’s life, it
seemed
as though John would follow the path to popularity and success that his
elder siblings had established. When John was four years old, the
Hinckley
family moved to Dallas, Texas. During his elementary school years, John
was the quarterback of the school football team and also played
basketball,
earning the title "best basketball player" for his elementary school
basketball
team. When John was in the sixth grade, his family moved to the
exclusive
suburb of Highland Park. During junior high, John was elected President
of his seventh grade and ninth grade classes, managed his school’s
football
team, and took up the guitar.
During high school, John became increasing
reclusive. He rarely brought friends home and would spend hours alone
in
his room, strumming his guitar and listening to the
Beatles
.
Although his parents attributed his lack of social interaction to
shyness,
his increasing withdrawal from society is evident from a classmate’s
description
of him as "a non-guy" in high school.
In 1973, after graduating from high school,
John and his family moved to Evergreen, Colorado, the new headquarters
for his father’s business. In the fall of that same year, John enrolled
at Texas Tech, in Lubbock. After finishing his freshman year, John
moved
to Dallas to live with his sister, Diane, and her husband and son. In
1975,
John returned to Texas Tech during the spring semester. A year later,
in
April of 1976, John dropped out of college and flew to California to
pursue
his dream of becoming a songwriter. Living in an apartment in
Hollywood,
John saw the movie
"Taxi
Driver"
fifteen times that summer, writing his parents about a
make-believe
girlfriend named Lynn Collins modeled on one of the movie’s main
characters.
Many believe that Hinckley’s attempted assassination of Reagan was
based
on this movie, the story of an American psychopath who stalks a
political
candidate. Frustrated with what he termed the "phony, impersonal
Hollywood
scene," John left California in September of 1976 and returned to
Evergreen,
where he worked as a busboy at a dinner club for a few months.
In the spring of 1977, Hinckley went back
to
California, but again found it unsatisfying and returned to Texas Tech,
remaining there through the summer of 1978. When John returned to the
university,
he switched his major from Business Administration to English. During
the
seven years that John attended college, he dropped in and out of
classes
without ever acquiring a college degree. John also formed no meaningful
relationships while at Texas Tech; fellow classmates stated that they
rarely
saw John in the company of other people.
In August of 1979, John bought his first
gun
,
a thirty-eight caliber pistol, and began target-shooting. A self-taken
photograph of John in December of 1979 portrays him holding a gun to
his
temple. According to defense experts, Hinckley played Russian Roulette
twice in November and December of 1979.
In 1980, John continued to add to his gun
collection,
purchasing the
exploding-head
Devastators
that he eventually used in his assassination attempt.
In
that same year, John experienced various health ailments, and began
receiving
prescriptions for anti-depressants and tranquilizers.
In response to an article in a May 1980
issue
of
People
regarding
Jodie
Foster
’s enrollment at Yale University, Hinckley enrolled in a Yale
writing course so that he could be near the young actress who had made
such a deep impression on him in "Taxi Driver." At Yale, he attempted
to
establish contact with Jodie, and left
letters
and poems in her mailbox. He managed to have two telephone
conversations
with her, during which he assured her that he was not a "dangerous
person."
His deep obsession with Foster, however, coincided with his obsession
with
assassination. Hinckley believed that achieving notoriety by
assassinating
the President of the United States would help him gain what he termed
her
"respect and love."
In the fall of 1980, Hinckley decided to
stalk
President Carter. On October 2
nd
of that year, Hinckley
went
to one of Carter’s campaign appearances, but left his gun collection,
now
totaling three handguns and two rifles, in his hotel room. When
Hinckley
went to Nashville during another of Carter’s campaign stops, he was
arrested
at the airport when airport security detected handguns in his
suitcases.
The guns were confiscated and Hinckley was fined $62.50 and sent on his
way. Soon after this incident, Hinckley bought two more twenty-two
caliber
handguns while visiting his sister.
At his parents’ insistence, Hinckley began
seeing a
psychiatrist
in Colorado. The psychiatrist thought that John’s problems stemmed from
emotional immaturity, and recommended to John’s parents that John be
cut
off financially and forced to make it on his own.
After failing to get a job at the end of
February
of 1981 as he’d promised his parents, John flew to Hollywood. Staying
there
only one day, John Hinckley Jr. boarded a bus and checked into the Park
Central Hotel in Washington D.C. on March 29, 1981. The next day,
Monday
March 30
th
, John wrote a letter to Jodie Foster describing
his
plan to assassinate President Reagan, to impress her with his
"historical
deed," left his hotel room and took a cab to the Washington Hilton
where
Reagan was to speak to a labor convention at 1:45 p.m.
At 1:30 p.m., John Hinckley Jr. stepped
forward
from a crowd of television reporters and fired six shots from a Rohm
R6-14
revolver. The bullets from Hinckley’s gun struck
Ronald
Reagan
in the left chest, Press Secretary
James
Brady
in the left temple, Officer
Thomas
Delahanty
in the neck, and Security Agent
Timothy
J. McCarthy
in the stomach. Hinckley was immediately arrested, and
his trial began over a year later, on May 4, 1982. On June 21, 1982,
after
seven weeks of testimony and three days of deliberation by the jury,
John
Hinckley Jr. was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He currently
resides
at
St.
Elizabeth’s
Mental Hospital in Washington, D.C.