![]() When he'd arrived in Washington the previous afternoon, he'd gone to the White House, and stood near the fence on the South Lawn. That was welcome information to Hinckley. to deliver a speech to an assembly of AFL-CIO members. On the way back to the hotel, he picked up a copy of both the Washington Post and its then-competitor the Washington Star. Back in the room, he turned to the Star, and saw that President Ronald Reagan would be at the Washington Hilton on 1919 Connecticut Avenue N.W. Now, in a twisted effort to impress Foster, Hinckley would follow that fictional template.Īt approximately 8:00 a.m, according to the Justice Department report, Hinckley left the hotel and had breakfast alone at a sandwich shop. All right?'' the actress had told him.) A few years before, Foster had appeared in the movie Taxi Driver, in which the title character-portrayed by Robert Di Niro-had made an aborted attempt to kill a politician. As United Press International later reported, his possessions also included a cassette recording of two phone calls that he had made to Foster at Yale. Hinckley was obsessed with Foster, but his letters to her had gone unanswered. He also had a copy of the October 1980 issue of Esquire magazine, which contained an article that Jodie Foster had written about leaving Hollywood to attend Yale University. The would-be songwriter also had a book on how to market his compositions. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, and a book on serial killer Ted Bundy, and another entitled Strawberry Fields Forever: John Lennon Remembered, about the Beatle who had been slain just a few months before. Like other travelers, Hinckley had brought some reading material to pass the time. 22 RG Industries revolver, along with an instruction manual, and an assortment of ammunition, including 35 hollow-point shells. Ominiously, there was also the black box that contained his. A red-and-black plaid suitcase contained more clothing, in addition to a couple of visitor's passes to the U.S. Hinckley, who was just about two months shy of his 26th birthday, had been roaming the country restlessly for months, riding buses and staying in shabby motels, and apparently the grueling travel had taken its toll, as evidenced by the bottle of Doan's Pills for backaches and a partially-used roll of Di-Gel antacids. Penney, a pair of undershorts, shoe laces, a used airline ticket, a studio pass to see the taping of the Merv Griffin Show on March 26, and a pocket Instamatic camera containing a 24-frame roll of film, though Hinckley had taken no pictures with it. Justice Department, a mong other items, it contained: An assortment of shorts mostly purchased at J.C. According to a report later compiled by the U.S. Nearby was a tan suitcase, whose contents later would be carefully catalogued by FBI agents. The Park Central wasn't one of Washington's finer hotels, but for $47 a night, it was affordable, if a little dreary, with its brown carpet and the cheap-looking floral comforter on the bed. His name was John Warnock Hinckley, Jr., and he was going to try to kill the President of the United States. No, this visitor had something different in mind. But unlike most of them, he didn't plan to see the Lincoln Memorial or the Capitol dome, or to peruse the exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution's various museums. He had arrived the night before on a Greyhound bus, and like many other tourists who visit Washington from afar, he had a big day ahead. (Photo credit: FBI)Īs the sun rose over Washington, DC, on the morning of March 30, 1981, in room 312 of the Park Central Hotel on 705 18th Street NW, a guest lay in bed, anxious and wired after a mostly sleepless night. Would-be Presidential Assassin John Hinckley, Jr., in a mugshot taken after his arrest.
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