WASHINGTON, DC
CHRISTMAS DAY, 1986
6:00 A.M.
The would-be assassin will soon be a free man.
But only for today.
Escorted by the Secret Service, John Hinckley will spend the holiday at his parents’ new home in Northern Virginia. Doctors here at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital feel that Hinckley is making significant progress in dealing with his mental illness. They also believe that a day with his family will further the healing process. Jack and Jo Ann Hinckley have thrown themselves into their son’s recovery, selling their Colorado home in order to move east. Each Tuesday afternoon, they attend therapy sessions with their son and a hospital psychiatrist. The Hinckleys are inspired by the advances John seems to be making. It appears that John Hinckley is “finding his voice,” as his father describes it, even getting elected ward president by his fellow patients.
The Hinckleys and the hospital staff, however, are unaware that their son still secretly conceals pictures of Jodie Foster in his room, which is forbidden. Even more disturbing is that John Hinckley is cultivating friendships through the mail with murderers. He has secretly become pen pals with convicted serial killer Ted Bundy, now awaiting electrocution in Florida for murdering two Florida State University sorority sisters and a twelve-year-old girl.
Hinckley is also corresponding with Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, imprisoned in California for attempting to assassinate Gerald Ford in 1975. Unbeknownst to his doctors or his parents, Hinckley asked Fromme to send him the address for the notorious murderer Charles Manson.1
* * *
Shortly after daybreak, John Hinckley is walked down from his fourth-floor hospital ward by an attendant. He then passes through the locked front doors of St. Elizabeth’s and is rendered to his parents. Two Secret Service agents are in charge of supervising the visit.
But it is not his parents with whom Hinckley is eager to spend time. No, it is his girlfriend, forty-year-old Washington socialite Leslie deVeau. Today will be the first time they have the chance to be alone since they met four years ago.
Like John Hinckley, Leslie is a cold-blooded criminal. She was sentenced to St. Elizabeth’s after murdering her ten-year-old daughter, Erin, in 1982. In an unconscionable act, deVeau placed a shotgun against the sleeping child’s back and pulled the trigger. She then turned the gun on herself, but it misfired. Instead of killing her, the blast tore off deVeau’s left arm. Like Hinckley, she was declared not guilty by reason of insanity and placed in the mental hospital.
At a hospital Halloween party in 1982, Hinckley sidled up to the petite brunette and began flirting. “I’d ask you to dance if I danced,” he said. The two spent the rest of the party in deep conversation, sharing their life stories. Leslie deVeau, who comes from an old Washington, DC, family, did most of the talking. In vivid detail, she told Hinckley about how she’d murdered her daughter. When it came time for Hinckley to talk about his crime, he showed no remorse. Instead, he led deVeau to a hospital bulletin board where a newspaper clipping about his evil deed was posted.
“He was still operating under the delusion it made sense what he did,” deVeau would later remember. “That he was supposed to do this to prove his love for Jodie Foster.”
Although deVeau knew that Hinckley was still infatuated with the actress, her unlikely relationship with him blossomed. “I was lost until I met Leslie,” Hinckley will later write. “Leslie made me want to live again, and she is the sunshine of my life.”
Hinckley and deVeau resided on the same floor, but contact between them was restricted. Still, they found ways around the rules in order to communicate. They ate in the cafeteria at different times, but each furtively taped love letters underneath the dining table for the other to find. On the occasions that they actually saw each other in person, they used sign language to message “I love you.”
In time, deVeau was granted the special privilege of being let outside to wander the hospital grounds. Hinckley, who had no such privilege, would shout to her from a window, and she’d answer back. In this way they conversed, not at all concerned that the whole hospital could hear them.
A year before, in mid-1985, deVeau was granted an even greater privilege: doctors decided she should be released from St. Elizabeth’s and be treated on an outpatient basis. Thus, she no longer sees John Hinckley on a daily basis but returns to the hospital to visit him on weekends, where they can talk face-to-face. They sit across from each other at a glass table on visiting day, holding hands and kissing, ignoring the other patients and their guests all around them. During these visits, deVeau confides that she is still haunted by the night that she shotgunned her daughter to death.
In turn, Hinckley confessed that despite his outward bravado and trademark smirk, he had nightmares about the day he shot Reagan. He went on to tell Leslie that he sometimes dreamed that he was in a wheelchair, like James Brady.
In all the hours spent sitting sharing their feelings, deVeau and Hinckley have always been supervised. All that will change this morning.
As two Secret Service agents stand guard outside, John Hinckley eats Christmas breakfast with his parents and Leslie deVeau. They then spend two more hours in the living room, watching Hinckley home movies.
But as the clock strikes noon, the couple steals away.
Finding a secluded room, deVeau takes the initiative, pressing her body against Hinckley’s and kissing him passionately. Normally demure, she is surprised and invigorated by her forward behavior.
Hinckley is flustered, unsure what to do. He has never had a girlfriend, and his few long-ago sexual experiences were limited to prostitutes. “I think he was startled,” deVeau will later recall. “What is this woman doing to me?”
Suddenly, a voice calls out from the kitchen. Jack Hinckley, suspecting what is going on, interrupts the couple, calling them back to the living room for Bible study.
By nightfall, a frustrated Hinckley is back in his hospital room alone. It has been an eventful Christmas.
If only Jodie Foster had been there to spend it with him.