NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
OCTOBER 9, 1980
12:02 P.M.
Losing the election may have saved Jimmy Carter’s life.
It is three weeks before the vote when John Hinckley finally makes up his addled mind. He will assassinate President Carter in order to impress actress Jodie Foster, with whom he has fallen deeply in love. Hinckley’s plan comes right out of the movie Taxi Driver.
But today the frenzied Hinckley has reluctantly decided to delay the killing. He is now running through the Nashville airport, late for his plane. Over the last month, Hinckley has stalked Carter at appearances in Dayton and Columbus, Ohio; Washington, DC; and now Nashville. In Dayton, he got within six feet of Carter but did not shoot because he was not in “a frame of mind in which I could carry out the act.”1
That has not been the case in Nashville. President Carter arrived in the city less than an hour ago. He is now onstage at the Grand Ole Opry, speaking to 4,400 local residents. In two more hours, Carter will board Air Force One for the flight to his next campaign stop in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Hinckley’s frame of mind has nothing to do with his inability to murder Jimmy Carter today. The fact of the matter is Hinckley could not get close enough to squeeze off a shot. Security was too tight, so the would-be assassin decided to get out of town.
The handle of Hinckley’s oversize gray suitcase is clutched in one fist as he bears down on the security checkpoint. He bought his first handgun just a year ago, and now owns several. Three of them—two .22-caliber pistols and one .38-caliber revolver—are inside his luggage. Hinckley is nervous. His heart races and he feels short of breath as he approaches the X-ray machine.2
“I’m running late,” he yells, doing his best to bluff his way through without having his suitcase scanned.
Laura Farmer and Evelyn Braun of the Wackenhut Security Corporation are unfazed. In fact, Sergeant Braun thinks that the pudgy young man looks extremely suspicious. Rather than passing him through, she instructs Mrs. Farmer to pay extra attention to the X-ray of Hinckley’s bag.
John Hinckley reluctantly places the suitcase on the conveyor belt. The security officers notice that his hands are shaking.
Laura Farmer studies the video screen as it reveals the contents.
She signals to Nashville airport police officer John A. Lynch, who walks over and opens Hinckley’s suitcase. Not only does he find the three handguns, but Hinckley is also carrying fifty .22-caliber bullets and a set of handcuffs.
Hinckley begins to argue, claiming that he is selling the guns, and insists that he is late for his plane.
Airport police officer Lynch ignores him. “You have the right to remain silent,” he informs Hinckley, officially placing him under arrest.
* * *
The four years since his first summer in Los Angeles have been largely a haze for John Hinckley. He continued to wander, shuttling from one state to another in an attempt to find himself, often returning to Texas Tech University, in Lubbock, to take a few courses. His grades were Bs and Cs, and Hinckley has been in no hurry to graduate. At school, he woke up each morning and ate a half-pound hamburger from Bill’s Lot-A-Burger. Once fastidious about neatness, Hinckley has become a slob. He keeps no food in his simple apartment, where a fine layer of dust from the local sandstorms and a pile of white Lot-A-Burger bags cover the dining table.
In Lubbock, Hinckley often walked into Acco Rentals to talk football with owner Don Barrett. Other days, he sat alone in silence by the pool at the Westernaire Apartments.
But recently, John Hinckley has developed a new passion. He’s become enamored of Adolf Hitler and recently purchased a two-volume set of the German dictator’s ideological opus, Mein Kampf, for thirty dollars at a Lubbock bookstore. Hinckley even joined the American Nazi Party for a year. He proudly wore the official brown uniform, with its swastika armband and storm-trooper jackboots. But Hinckley was asked to leave the fascist group because he consistently advocated violence.
“Rallies and demonstrations were not enough,” neo-Nazi leader Michael Allen explained. “He said he believed violence and bloodshed was [sic] the answer. He advocated illegal acts, and we believe in acting within the law. We don’t want his kind in our organization.”
Another neo-Nazi official was blunter, saying that Hinckley was “violent, irrational and advocated terrorism.”
But this is not the side of his persona John Hinckley wants Jodie Foster to see. Just one month ago, on September 17, Hinckley flew to New Haven, Connecticut, where the actress has begun attending Yale University. The image of her beautiful innocence in Taxi Driver continues to haunt Hinckley, who still watches the film on a regular basis. He is determined to win Jodie’s love, but the journey to Yale proved to be a setback. He wrote her letters and poems, and even managed to speak with her on the phone. But rather than find the attention romantic, Foster was disturbed. She told Hinckley he was rude and dangerous, and ordered him never to call her again.
Initially, Hinckley was devastated. He attempted suicide by swallowing antidepressants but failed. Rather than try again, Hinckley vowed to renew his pursuit of Foster by imitating Travis Bickle’s strategy for romancing women: political assassination.
So it is that John Hinckley spent what little money he had on handguns and airfare, following the president of the United States around the country, hoping to put a bullet in his head.
* * *
Within an hour of his arrest in Nashville, John Hinckley stands before Judge William E. Higgins. The location is not a courtroom but a small office in police headquarters. He is being charged with possession of a firearm.
A terrified Hinckley can only imagine what will happen next. He has never been in jail before. With President Carter just a few miles away at the Grand Ole Opry, it is logical that Judge Higgins or the FBI would question Hinckley about his guns and his intent. Even though it might appear to be a coincidence, the president’s presence in Nashville demands that those questions be asked.
But on this day, John Hinckley is in luck. The FBI is so overwhelmed by Jimmy Carter’s visit to Nashville that every last agent has been tasked with ensuring his safety. So there is effectively no interrogation of Hinckley.
Judge Higgins’s verdict is swift: John Hinckley will be punished to the maximum letter of the law. He is immediately ordered to pay a $50 fine, along with $12.50 in court costs. He also loses his guns.3
John Hinckley walks out of Judge Higgins’s courtroom a free man. He immediately returns to the airport, where he takes the next plane to Dallas.
* * *
In 1980 the Secret Service has a computer file listing the four hundred individuals most likely to attempt a presidential assassination. There is also a secondary list of the more than twenty-five thousand people who might be capable of carrying out such a killing.
Despite his troubles in Nashville, John Hinckley does not make either list.
Four days after his arrest, Hinckley enters Rocky’s Pawn Shop at 2018 East Elm Street in Dallas. There, in a strip mall whose tenants include a bail bondsman and a dive bar, he purchases two snub-nosed pistols of the same model. Its official name is the RG-14 .22-caliber revolver. In police parlance, the gun is known as the Saturday Night Special.
The intensity of John Hinckley’s quest for the love of Jodie Foster ratchets up. His compulsion has now overwhelmed him.