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 was President of the Vanderbilt Energy Corporation while his mother was a homemaker whom doted over her children, especially John.
In the early years of John�s life, it seemed as though he would follow the path to popularity and success that his elder siblings had established. During his elementary school years, John was the quarterback of the school football team and also played basketball. 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.
In high school, Hinckley became increasingly a recluse. 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. After finishing his freshman year at Texas Tech, Lubbock, 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, and this began his obsession with Jode Forster.
Many believe that Hinckley�s attempted assassination of Reagan was based on Taxi Driver, the story of an American psychopath (Robert De Niro) who stalks a senatorial candidate. Frustrated with what he termed the "phony, impersonal Hollywood scene," John left California in September of 1976 and returned to Colorado, where he worked as a busboy at a dinner club for a few months.
In August of 1979, John bought his first gun, a .38 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. Also, he began his researching into the life of Lee Harvey Oswald, whom he considered a personal hero.
In the 1980's, John continued to add to his gun collection, purchasing the exploding-head Devastators that he eventually used in his assassination attempt. Also, John experienced various health ailments, and began receiving prescription 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 her. He attempted to establish contact with Jodie, and left letters and poems in her mailbox. He managed two phone 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."
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 fled 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 30th, 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 reporters and fired 6 shots from a Rohm R6-14 revolver. The bullets from Hinckley�s gun struck Ronald Reagan in the 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 7 weeks of testimony and 3 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., where he recently married a woman who was convicted of killing her own daughter.