by Noah Hawley
The psychiatrist thought Hinckley was simply emotionally immature. He urged Hinckley’s parents to cut him off financially.
On November 4, 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected the fortieth president of the United States, carrying 44 states with 489 electoral college votes to Jimmy Carter’s 49.
In December, Hinckley flew to New York City. It was the city of Travis Bickle, of child prostitutes and blood in the streets. On New Year’s Eve he considered killing himself in front of the Dakota apartment building on the very spot where John Lennon had recently been gunned down by Mark David Chapman. They were everywhere, it seemed, these disaffected young men with their faraway eyes and their itchy trigger fingers. Hinckley stood for hours looking up at the bright white windows. Abandoned Christmas trees littered the streets. The jacket he wore was flimsy. He got cold and went back to his hotel.
That night, Hinckley spoke into his tape recorder. “John Lennon is dead,” he said. “The world is over. Forget it. It’s just gonna be insanity, if I even make it through the first few days … I still regret having to go on with 1981 … I don’t know why people wanna live. John Lennon is dead … I still think—I still think about Jodie all the time. That’s all I think about really. That, and John Lennon’s death. They were sorta binded together …
“I hate New Haven with a mortal passion. I’ve been up there many times, not stalking her really, but just looking after her … I was going to take her away for a while there, but I don’t know. I am so sick I can’t even do that … It’ll be total suicide city. I mean, I couldn’t care less. Jodie is the only thing that matters now. Anything I might do in 1981 would be solely for Jodie Foster’s sake.
“My obsession is Jodie Foster. I’ve gotta, I’ve gotta find her and talk to her some way in person or something … That’s all I want her to know, is that I love her. I don’t want to hurt her … I think I’d rather just see her not, not on earth, than being with other guys. I wouldn’t want to stay here on earth without her.”
In Colorado Hinckley’s father met him at the airport. It was March 7, 1981. He gave his son $200, which Hinckley used to pay for a motel in Denver. He sat there watching TV until the money ran out.
Later, at trial, Jack Hinckley would choke up. He’d say, “I am the cause of John’s tragedy. We forced him out at a time when he just couldn’t cope. I wish to God that I could trade places with him right now.” He would take out a handkerchief and weep, as his wife, also crying, left the courtroom.
Fathers and sons. What we wouldn’t give to trade places with our boys, to absorb their suffering and ease their pain.
The next day Hinckley’s mother drove him back to the airport. They sat together in the loading zone for ten minutes, neither one of them speaking. Finally John got out of the car. He said, “I want to thank you, Mom, for everything you’ve ever done for me, all these years.” They sounded like last words.
He flew to Hollywood for one day. The sun was too bright, and the streets were filled with freaks. On March 26 he boarded a bus for Washington, D.C. The country rolled out before him like a human tongue. Three days later he checked into the Washington Park Hotel. There were guns in his luggage. He slept with one under his pillow, another on the bedside table, hammer cocked. On March 30 he had breakfast at McDonald’s. On his way back to the hotel he picked up The Washington Star. On page A-4 he saw that President Reagan would be speaking to a labor convention at the Washington Hilton in just a few hours. The words made colored lights dance in front of his eyes.
He showered and took a Valium, then worried it might not be enough and took another. He loaded his Rohm RG-14 with exploding Devastator bullets purchased nine months earlier at a pawnshop in Lubbock. Then he sat down and wrote one last letter to the woman of his dreams.
Dear Jodie,
There is a definite possibility that I will be killed in my attempt to get Reagan. It is for this very reason that I am writing you this letter now. As you well know by now I love you very much. 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. Although we talked on the phone a couple of times I never had the nerve to simply approach you and introduce myself. Besides my shyness, I honestly did not wish to bother you with my constant presence. I know the many messages left at your door and in your mailbox were a nuisance, but I felt that it was the most painless way for me to express my love for you.
I feel very good about the fact that you at least know my name and know how I feel about you. And by hanging around your dormitory, I’ve come to realize that I’m the topic of more than a little conversation, however full of ridicule it may be. At least you know that I’ll always love you. Jodie, I would abandon this idea of getting Reagan in a second if I could only win your heart and live out the rest of my life with you, whether it be in total obscurity or whatever.
I will admit to you that the reason I’m going ahead with this attempt now is because I just cannot wait any longer to impress you. I’ve got to do something now to make you understand, in no uncertain terms, that I am doing all of this for your sake! By sacrificing my freedom and possibly my life, I hope to change your mind about me. This letter is being written only 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.
I love you forever,
John Hinckley
Later, at a pretrial hearing, Jodie Foster would sit on the witness stand. The prosecutor would stand before her.
“Now, with respect to the individual, John W. Hinckley,” he would say, “looking at him today in the courtroom, do you ever recall seeing him in person before today?”
“No.”
“Did you ever respond to his letters?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did you ever do anything to invite his approaches?” the prosecutor would ask.
“No.”
“How would you describe your relationship with John Hinckley?”
“I don’t have any relationship with John Hinckley,” the actress would say.
When Foster spoke those words in Hinckley’s presence, he would fling a ballpoint pen at her and shriek, “I’ll get you, Foster!”
Marshals would rush him out of the room.
Later, when the tape of this exchange was played at trial, an agitated Hinckley would jump to his feet and throw up his arm up as if trying to ward off blows. He would race for the door, the marshals running after him.
At one thirty he caught a cab. He told the driver, “Washington Hilton Hotel.” It was a ten-minute cab ride at most. Someday a real rain is going to come and wash away all the scum, he thought. The revolver was in his pocket, a shining weapon of righteousness. The hand of God.
On-screen Travis Bickle says, “You’re only as healthy as you feel.”
He stood in the rain for thirty minutes. A crowd was gathered outside the hotel. The president’s limousine stood waiting by the curb. There were cops, but not too many. Hinckley put his hand in his jacket pocket, feeling the reassuring weight of the Rohm. He worked his way slowly into the press line. At 1:45 p.m. Ronald Reagan exited the hotel with his entourage. He was smiling, waving his left hand.
On-screen Travis Bickle says, “Now I see this clearly. My whole life is pointed in one direction. There never has been a choice for me.”
From the press line a reporter yelled, “President Reagan. President Reagan.”
Still smiling, Reagan turned in his direction.
Hinckley pulled the revolver from his pocket. He dropped into a marksman’s crouch and fired six shots as fast as he could. The first bullet tore through the brain of press secretary James Brady. The second hit policeman Thomas Delahanty in the back. The third overshot the president and hit a building. Hinckley tried to steady his breathing. He was ruining everything. He was fucking it up. The fourth shot hit Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy in the chest. Hi
nckley saw the Secret Service agents start toward him, guns drawn. Not yet. The fifth shot hit the bulletproof glass of the president’s limousine. A Secret Service agent grabbed Reagan and shoved him into the car, just as the sixth bullet ricocheted off the door, then hit the president in the chest. It grazed a rib and lodged in his lung, just inches from his heart.
Hinckley was still clicking the trigger on the Rohm when Secret Service agents wrestled him to the ground.
We flew to Los Angeles like any other family. A mother and father taking turns ministering to the needs of their children. There was luggage to check and carry-ons to muscle through the terminal. We bought magazines for the flight, avoiding the newspapers, which all carried Danny’s picture on the front page. We distracted the boys and tried to keep them from having too much sugar. They were not good fliers and sugar agitated them. It would take all Fran’s energy to keep them from coming unglued.
On board the plane, I tried not to think about the flight I’d taken three months earlier, that late-night race to reach Danny before the government hid him away in whatever dark interior he’d been locked away in ever since. I looked out through the round portal window and watched the geometric grid of the Midwest passing by underneath. Danny had spent months traveling this country by car, driving its empty miles. I thought maybe if I concentrated hard enough I could see his route, a green line turning yellow, turning orange, turning red. But even though I stared, nothing came.
We checked into the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. It was cloudy in L.A., a light drizzle falling. The kids jumped on the hotel beds, bouncing back and forth like maniacs. I unpacked our suitcases while Fran took a bath, trying to wash away the stress of traveling. I had brought a briefcase full of documents. Timelines I had put together, newspaper clippings, and DVDs containing footage of the coverage from that night. I had a list of questions I wanted answered, directions I felt Danny’s defense should take. Pretrial hearings in the case started the next day, and I wanted to give what I had to Danny’s legal team.
As always, being in Los Angeles brought on feelings of failure. It seemed appropriate somehow that this is where everything had fallen apart for Danny, the place where his parents had met. The place where they had married. The city in which their steady slide into disappointment and rage had produced a bitter divorce, and a boy who, instead of inheriting two homes, found himself with none. This was the city to which he had gravitated in the end, like a victim returning to the scene of our earlier crime.
We had come full circle.
Two hours later we left the kids with the hotel’s babysitting service and went to meet Danny’s lawyer for a drink. Murray was sitting in the lounge at the Hotel L’Ermitage with Calvin Douglas, Danny’s lead counsel. Douglas was a criminal law professor at Stanford who had spent his life defending capital murder cases. He had a mop of unruly, gray hair and a ziplock bag full of cut carrots in his briefcase.
“I just want to say right off the bat,” he said, “that there’s evidence the federal government is not letting me see.”
“What kind of evidence?” I asked.
“How can I know until I see it?” said Douglas. He opened the ziplock bag and took out a carrot stick. He looked it over before taking a bite.
“I’ve filed motions,” he said. “Given the government’s claims that certain elements of the case are considered top secret, there will be a review by a separate judge to determine what we’re allowed to see.”
“What elements?”
“Again, I can’t know for sure,” said Douglas. “But the witness list feels light to me. And there are details of Seagram’s itinerary that are missing. Also, when I ask for information about terrorist activity in the area at the time of the shooting I get silence.”
“It seems relevant,” said Murray. “What foreign cells were active? What kind of chatter was the FBI hearing? If the real shooter is still out there how are we going to find him without this information?”
I made notes on a legal pad. They would go into the file, and later I would pore over them, integrating them into the record.
“Danny said you asked him to plead not guilty,” said Fran, “based on being insane.”
“Temporarily insane.”
“That makes no sense,” I said. “My son is innocent.”
Douglas looked tired.
“I’m sure he is,” he said. “But his fingerprints are on the murder weapon. And a kid with a camera phone took a picture of him with the gun moments before the police grabbed him.”
“I’ve seen the photo,” I said. “It doesn’t prove he shot Seagram.”
“There was gunpowder residue on his hands.”
“Because when he was struggling with police, the gun went off and hit him in the leg. And what about the witnesses who saw Danny struggling with another man right after the shots were fired?”
“We’re now almost positive that that was the first Secret Service agent to reach the scene,” said Douglas. “Look, I’ve watched the footage. Your son was visible on camera standing in front of the stage moments before the shooting. He was wearing a white button-down shirt. After the first shot was fired, a camera caught a man in a white shirt pushing his way toward the door. A gun was clearly visible.”
“So Danny wore the same shirt as the killer,” I said. “I bet there were fifty people in that hall wearing white button-down shirts.”
“But only one of them had a gun,” said Douglas.
“Whose side are you on?” I said. I was angry. Fran put a hand on my arm. Douglas crossed his legs, revealing a pale, hairless stretch of calf. He ate another carrot stick.
“I’m on your son’s side,” he said. “And that means it’s my responsibility to keep him from being executed.”
I put my briefcase on the table, opened it.
“I drew up a timeline,” I said, pulling it out. “And I’ve compiled a list of conflicting witness statements. I think they raise serious questions about what happened that night.”
Douglas looked through the pages I handed him.
“We have all this,” he said. “It doesn’t prove Danny is innocent.”
Murray, who’d been silently sipping his margarita, motioned to the waitress for another.
“Tell him about the list,” he said.
“What list?” I asked.
Douglas frowned.
“The Secret Service keeps a watch list,” he said. “People who’ve threatened the president, potential crazies.”
“Danny wasn’t on the list,” said Murray.
“Of course he wasn’t,” I said.
“But Carlos Peña was,” said Douglas.
“Who is Carlos Peña?”
“He’s an unemployed roofer who sent threatening e-mails to several members of Congress,” said Douglas.
“He was also in the auditorium that afternoon,” said Murray.
“Even if he was there,” Douglas interjected, “it doesn’t prove anything.”
Fran looked at me and frowned. She could see it on my face. This was the break I needed.
“Paul,” she said, “don’t read too much into this.”
“There is no record of Danny buying the gun that killed Seagram,” I said.
“The gun was reported stolen by its owner in Sacramento three months earlier,” said Douglas. “The Secret Service puts Danny in Sacramento at the same time.”
“What about Peña?” I said. “Has he ever been to Sacramento?”
Douglas shrugged.
“The FBI shows Danny buying two other guns in the months leading up to the assassination,” he said.
“But not this one,” I said. “What if it was Carlos’s gun? What if Carlos was the man my son fought with? What if he shot Seagram? He tried to get away. Danny grabbed him and wrestled the gun away.”
“Then why hasn’t Danny said anything?” asked Fran. “If he’s innocent why hasn’t he said anything?”
There was an uncomfortable silence. We looked at one another.
“It’s possible,” said Douglas, “that your son likes the attention.”
“That’s crazy,” I said.
“You can’t have it both ways,” said Douglas. “Either Danny did it and he’s keeping quiet so he doesn’t incriminate himself, or he’s innocent and he’s keeping quiet for some other reason.”
“He’s scared,” I said.
“Let’s say for a moment he didn’t kill Seagram,” said Douglas.
“He didn’t,” I said.
“Here’s a kid who dropped out of college, who floated around from dead-end job to dead-end job, never staying in one place for too long. He showed signs of depression, possible borderline personality ideation. We know he volunteered for Seagram in Austin. He was a lonely kid looking for connection. A kid who worried that history would forget him.”
“So when Seagram was killed,” said Murray, “when the gun literally fell into Danny’s lap, he takes credit. He is somebody now. No one will ever be able to say Seagram’s name again without mentioning Danny’s.”
I thought about this. Was it possible? Would my son throw his whole life away for a place in history?
“It’s also possible,” said Douglas, “that he feels guilty for something else he’s done, and this is his way of punishing himself.”
“Like what?” said Fran.
“Who knows?” said Douglas. “Maybe he broke a girl’s heart. Maybe he ran over someone with his car and didn’t stick around for the police. I’ve filed motions for a psychiatric evaluation. The prosecution opposes it, but psychiatric evaluations are pretty standard in these types of cases.”
Fran sat next to me, shredding her napkin. She said, “If this Carlos Peña guy was on the Secret Service’s watch list, how did he get into Royce Hall?”
“You want the conspiracy version?” said Murray.
“No.”
“Human error,” said Douglas. “The guest list shows Peña checked in using the name Carlos Fuentes. He had a fake ID. The hall holds eighteen hundred people. Seagram wasn’t one of the politicians Carlos had threatened. He simply slipped through the cracks.”