John Hinckley Jr. has message for Jodie Foster 45 years after shooting Ronald Reagan to impress her
Warning: This article contains details some readers may find distressing.
The man behind the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in an attempt to impress Jodie Foster revealed he has a message for the star.
John Hinckley Jr. planned to kill the President on March 30, 1981.
He positioned himself outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington D.C. and waited for Reagan to emerge.
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Horrifyingly, when the President appeared, Hinckley fired six so-called 'devastator' bullets from a Röhm revolver, injuring several of Reagan's staff and Secret Service agents who were accompanying him.
Press Secretary James Brady, Secret Service Agent Timothy McCarthy, and policeman Thomas Delahanty were also severely wounded.
One of the bullets bounced off the President's limousine, striking him under the arm, but his injuries were not noticed until he started coughing up blood, according to the Reagan Library.
The Secret Service later said the bullet struck 'grazing a rib and narrowly missing his heart. The sixth shot travelled across the street and penetrated a window.'
Hinckley was taken down by several agents, seconds after the shooting.
Stalking
It later emerged that the would-be assassin had stalked Foster while she was a student at Yale University.
He was 25 at the time, while Foster was just 18, and he admitted the assassination attempt was his final move to try and win her affections.
She had already starred in the likes of Taxi Driver and Freaky Friday.
Variety reports he appeared on The Mark Joseph Show, he confessed his motivations: “I wanted to have a union with Jodie Foster and live the rest of my life with her and all these things that, of course, were delusional. But I was believing those things at the time, so the best outcome would have been a union with Jodie Foster.”
“I thought she would, you know, after things settled down, join me wherever I was,” Hinckley added. “I wasn’t sure if I was gonna be in jail or the hospital or what after things settled down. I had this notion that she was gonna join me wherever I was.”
A new message
He shared a new message for the Hollywood star: “I just wish Jodie Foster well, you know, I don’t really see her movies, but I wish her well, and I know she’s doing quite well. And that’s all I can say is just, I wish Jodie well, and I hope she has a good life.”
Following the failed attempt, Reagan spent 12 days recovering in the George Washington University Hospital.
Two years after the attempt, in June of 1982, Hinckley was found 'not guilty by reason of insanity' and was sent to St. Elizabeth’s hospital in Washington, D.C, for 35 years.
He was discharged in 2016 before being released from all court restrictions in 2022.
The aftermath
Press Secretary James Brady was left severely disabled after he was shot in the head, and upon his death in 2014 it was ruled a homicide, caused by the gunshot wound he received 33 years earlier.
Jodie Foster told Interview magazine that the shooting was the reason she may never be able to do live theatre again.
“I’m finally able to admit that the one bit of theater I did when I was in college, there was so much trauma involved in it,” she recalled.
“The play happened in two weekends, and I did the first weekend, and in between the first weekend and the second weekend, John Hinckley shot the president… He shot him in order to impress me, and he had written letters to me, so it was a big moment in my life.”
"The world fell apart, there were Secret Service people everywhere, I had bodyguards, and I had to be taken to a safe house. And I was in the middle of these two weekends of this play, and I had the dumb idea of 'the show must go on.' So I was like, 'I have to do that second weekend,'" she recalled.
According to PEOPLE, in 2022, Hinckley apologised to the victims and to Foster in an interview with CBS News: "They probably can't [forgive me] but I wish they would, I feel terrible for what I did. And I've had remorse for many years for what I did. If I could take it all back I would. I swear, I would take it all back."
"I did not have a good heart. I was doing things that a good person doesn't do. So it's hard for me to at all relate to that person back then," he said about his mindset at the time. He added, "I truly believe I had a serious mental illness that was preventing me from knowing right from wrong back then."
Topics: Crime, True Crime, News, Politics
Jen Thomas