John Warnock Hinckley Jr. (born May 29, 1955) is an American man who attempted to assassinate U.S. president Ronald Reagan as he left the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., on March 30, 1981, two months after Reagan's first inauguration. Using a revolver, Hinckley wounded Reagan, MPD police officer Thomas Delahanty, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, and White House press secretary James Brady. Brady was left disabled and died 33 years later from his injuries.
Hinckley believed that the attack would impress the actress Jodie Foster, on whom he had a fixation after watching her in Martin Scorsese's 1976 film Taxi Driver. Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and remained under institutional psychiatric care for over three decades. Public outcry over the verdict led state legislatures and Congress to narrow their respective insanity defenses.
In 2016, a federal judge ruled that Hinckley could be released from psychiatric care as he was no longer considered a threat to himself or others, albeit with many conditions. After 2020, a ruling was issued that Hinckley may showcase his artwork, writings, and music publicly under his own name, rather than anonymously as he had in the past. Since then, he has maintained a YouTube channel for his music. His restrictions were unconditionally lifted in June 2022.
In 2025, Hinckley published his full-length autobiography, John Hinckley Jr.: Who I Really Am by WildBlue Press, giving an in-depth review on his upbringing, the beginning of his fixation on Foster, the planning, occurrence, and aftermath of the shooting, his trial, institutionalization, and release.
Early life
John Warnock Hinckley Jr. was born on May 29, 1955, in Ardmore, Oklahoma,"John Hinckley Jr Fast Facts" . CNN. Retrieved September 19, 2013. and moved with his wealthy family to Dallas, Texas, when he was four. Hinckley's father, John Sr. (1925–2008), was the founder, chairman, chief executive officer, and president of the Vanderbilt Energy Corporation. His mother was Jo Ann Hinckley (née Moore; 1925–2021).
John Sr. was a financial supporter of George H.W. Bush in the 1980 election campaign. Bush was Reagan's biggest rival for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. Hinckley's older brother, Scott, who became vice president of his father's oil company after graduating from college, was supposed to have dinner at Neil Bush's house the day after the assassination attempt.Wiese, Arthur; Downing, Margaret. "Bush's Son Was To Dine With Suspect's Brother", The Houston Post, March 31, 1981 The connection between the two families has occasionally been used for conspiracy theories, for example by Roger Stone, an author and conservative political consultant.
Hinckley grew up in University Park, Texas, and attended Highland Park High School in Dallas County. After he graduated from high school in 1973, his family, owners of the Hinckley oil company, moved to Evergreen, Colorado, where the new company headquarters was located. Hinckley was an off-and-on student at Texas Tech University from 1974 to 1980, but eventually dropped out.
In 1975, Hinckley went to Los Angeles in the hope of becoming a songwriter. His efforts were unsuccessful, and Hinckley wrote to his parents with tales of misfortune and pleas for money. Hinckley spoke of a girlfriend, Lynn Collins, who turned out to be a fabrication. In September 1976, he returned to his parents' home in Evergreen.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hinckley began purchasing weapons and practicing with them. He was prescribed antidepressants and tranquilizers to deal with his emotional problems.
Obsession with Jodie Foster Hinckley became obsessed with the 1976 film Taxi Driver, in which disturbed protagonist Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) plots to assassinate a presidential candidate. Bickle was partly based on the diaries of Arthur Bremer, who attempted to assassinate George Wallace. Hinckley developed an infatuation with Iris, a sexually trafficked 12-year-old child, played by Jodie Foster. Hinckley began to adopt the dress and mannerisms of the Travis Bickle character.
When Foster entered Yale University, Hinckley moved to New Haven, Connecticut, for a short time to stalk her. His parents had given him funds to attend a writing course at Yale. Hinckley never enrolled in the course, but instead used the money to support himself while sending Foster love letters and romantic poems, and repeatedly calling and leaving her messages.
Failing to develop any meaningful contact with Foster, Hinckley fantasized about conducting an aircraft hijacking or killing himself in front of her to get her attention. Eventually, he settled on a scheme to impress her by assassinating the president, thinking that by achieving a place in history, he would appeal to her as an equal. Hinckley trailed President Jimmy Carter from state to state during his campaign for the 1980 United States presidential election and got to within of him at a rally at Dayton, Ohio.
On October 9, 1980, Hinckley was in Nashville, Tennessee, on the same day Carter was visiting the city. Hinckley was arrested at Nashville International Airport while trying to board a flight to New York with handcuffs and three unloaded guns in his hand-luggage. The airport police handed him over to the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department. Hinckley's guns and handcuffs were confiscated, and he was fined $50 plus court costs. He was released later the same day.
After Nashville, Hinckley flew to Dallas. On October 13, he bought more guns from a Dallas pawn shop. They included the .22 caliber Röhm RG-14 revolver that he used five months later to attempt the assassination of Reagan. The $3,600 from Hinckley's parents was now exhausted and he returned home penniless. Hinckley spent four months undergoing psychiatric treatment for depression, but his mental health did not improve. In 1981, Hinckley began to target the newly elected president Ronald Reagan. For this purpose, he collected material on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. On January 20, 1981, the day of Reagan's inauguration, Hinckley was present outside St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., where Reagan attended a pre-inaugural church service, and was later recognized by an officer who had observed him there.
Ronald Reagan assassination attempt
Hinckley arrived in Washington, D.C. on March 29, 1981, after travelling by Greyhound bus from Los Angeles. He spent the night in a hotel. The next morning, he read President Reagan's itinerary in a newspaper and discovered that later that day, Reagan was to be at the Hilton Hotel to address an AFL–CIO conference. Hinckley spent the morning composing a letter to Jodie Foster.
After finishing the letter, he took a taxi to the Hilton Hotel.
At 2:27 p.m. EST, Hinckley was among a crowd of several hundred outside the hotel. He was carrying his Röhm revolver. When Reagan emerged from the hotel, Hinckley shot all six of the bullets in the gun at Reagan. The first shot critically wounded press secretary James Brady while the second wounded police officer Thomas Delahanty. The third shot missed, but the fourth hit Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy, who was deliberately standing in the line-of-fire to shield Reagan. The fifth bullet struck the armored glass of the presidential limousine. The sixth and last seriously wounded Reagan, when it ricocheted off the side of the limousine and hit him in the chest.
Alfred Antenucci, a Cleveland, Ohio, labor official who stood near Hinckley and saw him firing, hit Hinckley in the head and pulled him to the ground. Within two seconds, agent Dennis McCarthy (no relation to agent Timothy McCarthy) dove onto Hinckley, intent on protecting Hinckley, to avoid what happened to Lee Harvey Oswald, who was killed before he could be tried for the assassination of President Kennedy. Another Cleveland-area labor official, Frank J. McNamara, joined Antenucci and started punching Hinckley in the head, striking him so hard he drew blood.
As a result of the shooting, Brady endured a long recuperation period, remaining paralyzed on the left side of his body, until his death on August 4, 2014. Brady's death was ruled a homicide 33 years after the shooting.
Trial
Hinckley was initially held at Marine Corps Base Quantico, where he met his defense lawyer Vincent J. Fuller. Hinckley was quickly moved to Federal Correctional Complex, Butner. For four months, he was interviewed by both prosecution and defense. During his incarceration, he tried to kill himself twice, in May 1981 and again the following November.
At trial, the government emphasized Hinckley's premeditation of the shooting: noting that he had purchased a gun, trailed President Reagan, traveled to Washington, D.C., left a note detailing his plan, selected particularly devastating ammunition, and fired six shots. The defense argued that Hinckley's actions and his obsession with Foster indicated that he was legally insane. The trial was chiefly devoted to a battle of the psychiatric experts concerning Hinckley's mental state. Because Hinckley was charged in federal court, the prosecution was required to prove his sanity beyond reasonable doubt.
For the defense, William T. Carpenter, who diagnosed Hinckley with schizophrenia, testified for three days, opining that Hinckley had amalgamated various personalities from fiction and real life—including Travis Bickle (from Taxi Driver) and John Lennon. Carpenter concluded that Hinckley could not emotionally appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions because he was consumed by the prospect of a "magical unification with Jodie Foster". David Bear testified that Hinckley's actions followed "the very opposite of logic" and that Hinckley did not exhibit signs of malingering. Bear said that his opinion was in part supported by a CAT scan of Hinckley's brain showing widened sulci, a feature Bear said was found in of persons with schizophrenia, but only two percent of non-schizophrenics. Similarly, Ernest Prelinger testified that, while Hinckley had an above-average IQ, his results on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory were highly abnormal—specifically, Prelinger said that only one person out of a million with Hinckley's score would not be suffering from serious mental illness.
For the prosecution, Park Dietz testified that he had diagnosed Hinckley with dysthymia and three types of personality disorders: narcissistic, schizoid, and mixed, with borderline, and passive-aggressive features. Dietz found that none of these illnesses rendered Hinckley legally insane. His report said that there was "no evidence that [Hinckley] was so impaired that he could not appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or conform his conduct to the requirements of the law". Sally Johnson, a psychiatrist in the federal prison who interviewed Hinckley more than any other doctor, emphasized that Hinckley had planned the shooting and that he was preoccupied with being famous. Johnson said that Hinckley's interest in Foster was no different than any young man's interest in a movie star.
The insanity instruction provided to the Hinckley jurors was based on the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code:
The jury deliberated for a total of 24 hours over the course of four days. On June 21, 1982, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity of all his 13 charges.
Aftermath
Soon after his trial, Hinckley wrote that the shooting was "the greatest love offering in the history of the world" and was disappointed that Foster did not reciprocate his love.Taylor, Stuart (July 9, 1982). "Hinckley Hails 'Historical' Shooting To Win Love" . The New York Times. In 1985, Hinckley's parents wrote Breaking Points, a book detailing their son's mental condition.