He's Cured
Obsessed with a young Jodi Foster and her breakout movie, he shot a sitting U.S. President, paralyzed a Press Secretary, and wounded two others. The year was 1981. Today, he's a FREE MAN.
What a time to be alive. The headlines are so surreal.
~ Hinckley to get full freedom 41 years after shooting Reagan
John Hinckley, Jr. shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
He was a disturbed dude who became obsessed with Jodi Foster in the movie Taxi Driver, starring Robert Deniro. (You talkin’ to me?)
He was found not guilty by reason of insanity by a jury and confined to a mental hospital.
Forty years later - he’s about to be wholly released back into society without supervision or court oversight.
Hinckley’s case could be a massive victory for the American mental health system.
His transformation took four decades. Hinckley began transitioning back into society in 2003 - staying with his parents in Virginia while being monitored and checked on.
Gradually, he gained more freedoms, and last fall was deemed ready for a full release - which is happening this month.
Why Did Hinckley Snap in 1981?
Born in 1955, John Hinckley Jr. was 26 years old when he attempted to murder President Reagan.
Hinckley was deemed too insane to stand trial - he was diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and became obsessed with the 1976 film Taxi Driver, where the main character attempts to assassinate a fictional senator.
We know Hinckley was born into a wealthy family. His parents were John Hinckley Sr. and Jo Ann Moore - both now deceased. Jr. had two siblings - a brother and a sister.
Hinckley is described as a pretty average child who started showing reclusive behaviors in high school. In his later teen years, Hinckley Jr. took medication for depression.
Before attempting to assassinate Reagan, Hinckley became fixated on Jodi Foster. He stalked her and tried to gain her attention. He wrote Foster a letter the same day of the shooting.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Hinckley Jr. wrote: "
“By sacrificing my freedom and possibly my life, I hope to change your mind about me,” he wrote, according to reports at the time. “This letter is being written an hour before I leave for the Hilton hotel.”
“Jodie, I’m asking you to please look into your heart and at least give me the chance with this historical deed to gain your respect and love.”
According to Foster, other letters were sent to her before the shooting.
Now, you may wonder if Hinckley’s release upset Jodi Foster?
It would be best to get the complete picture here: Hinckley moved to Connecticut to be near Foster when she attended Yale. He stalked her. She received many “love” letters from Hinckley and phone messages. According to this snippet of one of his letters, the two had even spoken on the phone at least twice (they didn’t have caller I.D. back then.) From The Pit blog:
“Over the past seven months I’ve left you dozens of poems, letters and love messages in the faint hope that you could develop an interest in me,” wrote Hinckley in a letter to Foster. “Although we talked on the phone a couple of times, I never had the nerve to simply approach you and introduce myself. … The reason I’m going ahead with this attempt now is because I cannot wait any longer to impress you.” - John Hinckley Jr. in a letter to Jodi Foster
As a young college student back in ‘81, Foster was “frightened” when she figured out this fanatical fan was the Wanna-Be assassin.
Understandable.
Here is a press conference she gave soon after Hinckley shot Reagan.
How Foster feels about Hinckley’s release now is something we may never know.
Just last fall (2021), she did talk briefly about this incident.
According to UPROXX - Foster has adeptly maneuvered around and away from the Hinckley story. Over the years, she would intentionally avoid the topic. This skillful P.R. helped keep her from being automatically associated with the shooting of a President in everyone’s mind.
Foster gives her mother all the credit for pulling this off:
It was a “weird moment in my life” for Foster, she told Maron, who was impressed with Foster’s ability to transcend that event in her career.
“Yes, I mean, I skillfully transcended it,” Foster said. “My mom had been a publicist, and she was very clear that she tried to guide me to make sure that I wasn’t just going to be known as the person who was involved in the shooting of the President. She said, if you want to have a career that is not about this, so you are never going to talk about it. You’ll do whatever you need to do for the court case, and then that’s it. You won’t talk about it.”
“What I did,” Foster continued, “is I wrote a piece about it for Esquire magazine … and that was it. I had written what I had to write about it, I got it out, and there was nothing more to say about it.”
That was her policy, she says, although it took some enforcement. “I’m not sure you could enforce that these days because we have a different relationship with the press now.”
“It was a weird time in history. It was a weird time for me, personally. It was a weird time for the movie business. Strange,” she added.
In the end, however, Foster says that her ability to distance herself from the “Hinckley problem” was a “testament to her mom. She was able to find a good strategy to make sure that happened.”
One of Hinckley’s court orders for gaining his freedom is to have ZERO contact with Ms. Foster.
Now that he is receiving a full “unconditional release” this month - fans of Jodi Foster are hoping Hinckley’s mental health issues remain in the past.