Latham, Aaron. "The Dark Side of the AMERICAN DREAM." Rolling Stone 5 Aug. 1982: 18+.

John Hinckley believed in the American Dream, but in his mind it was twisted into an American Dream Fantasy. His girlfriends were fantasies. And his ambitions were fantasies. And in a sense, his crime, his assassination attempt, was a fantasy too.

His father believed in the Horatio Alger American Dream of working your way to the top. But John believed in the instant-hit Rock Star American Dream. This baby-faced young man - who had breakfast at McDonald's before shooting the president - wanted his fame to be as quick as American fast food. He also believed in another version of the American Dream - the Rich Daddy American Dream - which goes something like this: If I get into trouble, my rich daddy will bail me out. Which, as it turns out, was not so crazy.

Now, we have all dreamed American Dreams similar to Hinckley's, have all indulged at one time or another in the fast-fame fantasy, have all lost ourselves from time to time at the movies. There is a little John Hinckley in all of us. He is the underbelly of our ambitions. He is our bad fantasies. He is the flip side - as they say in the record business he so wanted to break into - of our inventiveness. When you turn over the American Dream, there he is living on the bottom of it, a fat white larva. John Hinckley's complexion is the complexion of a larva. Pasty.

Of course, we are all infected with the fantasy fever, but he developed a much higher temperature than most of us a killing fever. We will never know for sure why he got so sick, but one psychiatrist who studied him in jail has a almost fantastical hypothesis. He did not offer his theory when he testified for the defense at the trial, because it seems to belong more in a fantasy movie than in a courtroom. But we discussed it in his Harvard Medical School office.

"This is almost sci-fi," Dr. David Michael Bear told me. And then he went on to outline a possible scientific scenario, starring John Hinckley, that reminded me of those science-fiction stories about children who are born different. In the movies, they often have glowing eyes, special brains and do terrible deeds. In the real world, which can also be fantastic, John Hinckley could well be one of these children. Except for the glowing eyes. His eyes are quite dull.

What made John Hinckley's brain different--or rather what may have done so--is almost more sci-fi than sci-fi. Some doctors at Harvard now believe, based primarily on theories proposed by Dr. Norman Geshwin, that the human race has a way of increasing or decreasing the number of dreamers it produces. When stress is low humans produce fewer dreamers because the species needs less imagination. But when stress increases, special hormones--testosterone among them--are released in a pregnant woman's body; these help to shape more experimental brains. More deep-dreamers brains. More left-handed brains. More inventive brains with the ability to dream up new solutions. And more defective brains.

"When John Hinckley's mother was in the third month of her pregnancy," explained Dr. Bear, who did not look like a mad scientist in a fantasy movie, "the family home burned down. John turned out to be left-handed and to have a shrunken brain. Maybe he got a pulse of testosterone that might have made him a genius but made him a schizophrenic instead."

Which recalls a poem John wrote called "He Would Have Been a Genius," in which he says he was born insane.

The theories about what happens to the offspring of mothers who were under stress during their pregnancies have centered on children born in England during World War II. This turns out to be an extraordinary generation. And one of the most extraordinary members of this generation was John Hinckley's idol, John Lennon.

The Rock Star Fantasy

John Hinckley wanted to be John Lennon. He used to spend his time alone in his room, teaching himself to play the guitar, practicing to be Lennon. A shy boy, John never got up the nerve to play for his sister or brother or mother or father. He didn't have to worry about playing for his friends, because he didn't have any. But this loner, who was too timid to entertain anyone he knew, dreamed of entertaining the whole world. Becoming a rock star was the original fantasy out of which the assassination fantasy would grow.

"John Hinckley's interest in the Beatles," testified Dr. Park Dietz, a psychiatrist who appeared as a prosection witness, "is the earliest sign that he came exceedingly interested in fame that would not require a great deal of effort." The Easy American Dream Fantasy.

Propelled by his fantasies, the reticent would-be rock star made the first of his many trips in search of stardom in April 1976. The larva was migrating. He wrote to his parents in Evergreen, Colorado, that he was dropping out of Texas Tech University and leaving Lubbock--but he did not say where he planned to go or what he planned to do.

"We didn't hear from John for about six weeks," his mother, Jo Ann Hinckley, recalled on the witness stand. "We had no idea where he was. We were very worried and didn't know whether he was dead or alive. The first communication we had was a Mother's Day card. There was no return address."

John Hinckley followed his fantasies to Hollywood. The man whom he would one day shoot had followed similar dreams to the same town a couple of generations earlier. But Hinckley evidently never got beyond the receptionists who guard the doors to stardom.

"The purpose of this move," William T. Carpenter, a defense psychiatrist, told the jury, "was to move to where the publishers of music were. But he very quickly became discouraged, depressed, feeling like he could not make it in life. And it was at that time that he saw Taxi Driver."

Dr. Bear:

"He first saw Taxi Driver at the Egyptian Theater. He told me he immediately felt; 'I am like Travis. I am a loner. I am unhappy. I have no girlfriend. I look around me. I see how horrible things are.'

"He went back to see that movie at least fifteen times over the next years. He obtained the script of the movie. He also obtained a cassette tape recording of the music and would listen to it endlessly and often hear the music in his mind when it wasn't being played. He would even ask himself: 'Am I Travis?'

"In even the smallest aspects of his behavior, clothes, drinking and so forth, he picked up habits of Travis Bickle. In this way, elements of that movie entered into his private world. He lived like Travis. In that sense, he became like Travis Bickle.

"In Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle meets Iris, a prostitute who is working in a very bad part of New York City even though she is young. And Travis befriends her. Well, this character is played by Jodie Foster. She looked like a little girl. Iris and Jodie Foster merged into one."

The Taxi Driver Fantasy

"What Hinckley identified with was not the violence but the pathology," says Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver. "We could stop presenting criminals realistically. Then we would still have psychopaths, but we wouldn't have art. We would still have Raskolnikovs, but we wouldn't have Crime and Punishment. The psychopaths would just identify with something else, comic books, swimsuit ads."

I asked Schrader if we weren't all members of a fantasy generation.

"Well, fantasy is a much bigger business than it used to be. It used to be a mom-and-pop business. A family business. Your family told you fairy tales. But now fantasies are pumped to by faceless conglomerates. By TV."

The Fantasy Girlfriend

At last, on June 10th, 1976, John wrote his parents that he was in trouble and needed help. Caught up in a Hollywood nightmare, he was resorting to the Rich Daddy American Dream, counting, as he always would, on his father, the wealthy oilman, to bail him out.

Mother: "Someone had broken into his room and taken everything he owned. He had been living on rooftops and sleeping on park benches. He had no money and no clothing, and he had no place to stay. We were frantic."

Father: "I went to the 7-Eleven store nearby and bought a money order and sent it with twenty dollars in cash to John, along with a letter telling him we were so pleased to hear from him, even though it was not a very happy circumstance. And for him to take the twenty dollars and get something to eat and get cleaned up and see if he could cash the money order. And for him to call so we could get back in touch."

John Hinckley may or may not have been robbed. No such robbery was ever reported to the police, so it is possible that he was dramatized his life to get money from his parents. He certainly dramatized it in later letters when he told of a new girlfriend.

Father: "John tells us about a girl named Lynn. He was going to Malibu with her. He was having a good time for change. And we were very pleased."

Dr. Carpenter: "In order to try to get his parents to continue to provide financial support, he fabricated a girlfriend named Lynn. This woman was very similar to one of the leading characters of Taxi Driver."

Dr. Bear: "After John saw the movie, he began writing to his parents about a woman named Lynn Collins: 'She is a blond woman, a fine woman. She is a writer.' John told me the idea of making up a girlfriend came directly from Travis Bickle. Travis was a washout with girls and yet would write home: 'am doing well with Betsy. Things are just fine.'"

Dr. Carpenter: "He spent time keeping a diary about her, planning activities. And over time, she began to take on something of a life with him."

Having given up on selling his songs, John had little to do besides go to movies and make movies in his mind.

Idle Fantasies

"People fantasize in idle periods," Dr. Bear told me. "Moderate stress stops fantasies. But with extreme stress another kind of fantasizing begins."

When people are not busy, well, idle minds are the devil's--or sometimes the angel's--playthings.

"A lot of drifters live in a fantasy world." Dr. Bear continued. "People who are disengaged, who spend a lot of time with their own thoughts, fantasize more. This is a part of what happened to John Hinckley. This is true of all drifters. They fantasize about what they might be in life. About success. A fair number are going to be schizophrenics, some really sick. Their fantasies will be grandiose fantasies...like writing a hit song."

When a drifter gets a job, the fantasies tend to evaporate. That is what tending to business does. But then this whole picture reverses itself as stress increases from moderate to extreme. For extreme stress opens the wells of fantasy once again. And the new fantasies that flow are essentially attempts to dream up solutions to the problems that are causing the stress in the first place. So fantasies have at least two muses: idleness and stress.

Dr. Bear believers that cultures trend to behave much like individuals. When a culture or a society is simply drifting, the way ours seems to be, it encourages idle fantasies. Science fiction movies. Clothes that sometimes verge on costumes. Comic books. And perhaps occasionally a fantasy assassin.

When a culture really gets down to the business of business, as ours did in, say, the Fifties, then fantasies tend to flee. But when the pressure is increased...

"When cultures are under stress," said Dr. Bear, "there are more fantasies. Fear fantasies. War fantasies. Invention goes up in times of stress. World War II produced lots of inventive fantasies. Look at the Manhattan Project."

I asked Dr. Bear if we were living in a fantasy age.

"Yes. Right now I think we have a lot of dreamers. We are in both a low-stress and a high-stress period culturally. It is low stress compared to World War II. No one is shooting at us. But it is high stress because we could all the blown up tomorrow. It is a super setup for fantasizing."

The danger is that our dreamy drifting culture throws off dangerous drifting dreamers.

Failed Fantasies

Father: "All of a sudden everything had fallen apart. John was having problems with his eyes. A man on the street attempted to rob him. The progress he thought he was making with selling his songs had fallen apart. And worst of all he had broken up with his girlfriend, Lynn."

Mother: "He wished to come back home."

Hinckley's first trip to Hollywood was a paradigm for many other trips to many other places. He followed his fantasies with high hopes, failed to transform his fantasies into reality, became depressed, and retreated. It happened over and over agin. He spent years sallying forth in search of the Fast Fame American Dream and then returning to the Rich Daddy American Dream at home.

He always went home again. Or always tried to . He never wanted to leave home, never wanted to move beyond dependency, never wanted to grow up. He was slow to walk, even to slower to drive, and continued to live at home off and on until he was almost twenty-six (his age when he shot the president on March 30th 1981).

Mother: "He called us from the Denver airport and asked us to pick him up."

He did not stay home for very long, but then he did not go very far away either. He got a job at the Taylor Supper Club in a Denver suburb, and moved into a motel across the street.

Father: "It was a very old, little motel. The room was concrete block walls. I don't think there was any carpet on the floor. It was just a string of rooms one next to the other maybe eight or ten rooms long, one story high."

John Hinckley worked at the Taylor Supper Club for about five months, from September through February 1977, and then grew restless again.

Dr. Carpenter: "He made another trip to Hollywood in an effort to sell music, one that lasted for only about three weeks. And at that time he got very depressed, had suicidal thoughts. He found himself doing many things that the character in Taxi Driver had done, sitting around watching X-rated movies, spending time alone."

Father: "He hated it. Everything went wrong. So he came home and then went back to Texas."

But he was too restless to stay in Texas long. Soon, as the song says, he was on the road again.

Dr. Carpenter: "He made one more attempt at selling his songs. This time he drove to Nashville. Got to the city. Took a look at it. Felt total despair. And turned around and left."

He returned to Lubbock and enrolled for the summer session at Texas Tech, where he changed his major from business to literature and journalism.

Father: "In the early part of 1978, he started having several illnesses. And they moved all over his body. He had problems with his ears, throat, arms, eyes."

Toward the end of the 1978 fall semester, John dropped out of school again and went to Dallas to live in an apartment all alone, alone again, as always. And he unhappily stuffed himself with fast food until he looked more and more like a fat larva on the underside of the American Dream. When he went home for Christmas, his parents were concerned.

Mother: "He had put on an awful lot of weight."

The new year, 1979, began ominously, with the prospect of a visit from John's imaginary girlfriend, Lynn Collins.

Dr. Carpenter: "Having broken with her, she is finally reentering his life now. He becomes obsessed with it so deeply that he had the appropriate emotional experiences that go along with it. It is becoming difficult for him to sort out what is reality and what is a concoction from his own mind."

Mother: "He was getting ready for Lynn's visit, trying to lose weight."

Father: "He got sick from fasting, but as soon as he saw her, he felt better."

But John Hinckley could not even hold an imaginary girlfriend. She had places to go and things to do that were more important than he was. Soon she had returned to California. And John returned to Texas and a state of depression. He consoled himself by reading about hate.

Dr. Carpenter: "He was reading Nazi literature, right-wing, extreme-right ideological literature."

The Fantasy Gap

Ironically, John Hinckley was fantasizing about a Nazi world that would have done all it could to force him to shut down his fantasies.

"One of the worst things about totalitarian states," Dr. Bear told me, "is that they dry up fantasies. And so they dig their own graves. On the other hand, our level of fantasizing is high. And that may turn out to be one of our great survival advantages. The U.S.S.R. puts so many curbs on fantasies. But here our fantasies are right out in the open. And some fantasies lead to new solutions, like Thomas Edison imaging things no one had ever seen before. But by encouraging fantasy, which is good, we may also allow people with defective brains to be hurt--or to hurt others. Fantasies help the strong but hurt the defective."

John Hickey is what is bad about what is good about America.

American-Front Fantasy

Dr. Carpenter:

"He also spent time reading books about newsworthy murders. Read a book called RFK Must Die. Another book about Marina and Lee Oswald.

"He decided to form a national organization called the American Front. The purpose was to bring the country to its senses to realize how minority groups were destroying the rights of the white Protestants. He spent hours working out this organization, kept notes on its activities and a newsletter that he sent to the membership, addressed himself as National Director John Hinckley. But, in fact, there weren't other members. This was solely within his own mind."

When he wrote his parents from Lubbock about the American Front, they were upset that their son had made such weird friends who might influence him for the worse.

Dr. Carpenter: "He had also purchased a .38-caliber pistol during 1979, in August. He used that pistol at first in a room alone, kind of aiming at the TV. In Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle used his guns to aim at the television set."

Shoot-the-TV-Fantasy

Paul Schrader, the creator of 'Taxi Driver' hates television enough to shoot a TV set. Which is why he had his script's protagonist point a gun at one.

"There is a kind of fantasy that is productive," he told me, "but there is another fantasy that alienates you from the reality of feelings. Like modelmania fantasies. Sanitized T & A. That's an unhealthy expression of fantasy, removed from any real physicality, unattainable. That's seventy-five percent of TV ads and thirty percent of TV shows. They make you as two-dimensional as they are."

Fantasy Suicide

Mother: " 1979 was the first and only time that John did not come home for Christmas. Our son told us he was going to New York with his girlfriend, Lynn Collins. He had written a novel, and he was going to take the manuscript around to different publishers in New York."

Dr. Carpenter: "He didn't really do that. He didn't feel he could go home and face the effort of trying to be with his family. So he spent that time in Lubbock, alone and in a state of server depression."

Dr. Thomas C. Goldman, another defense psychiatrist: "During this period, John is actually playing Russian roulette. He had a revolver that had five chambers in the cylinder, and he had one round in the cylinder. He would spin it, point it to his head, pull the trigger once. Each time he didn't get the loaded chamber, he said: This is my lucky day."

John Hinckley began the new year, 1980, by buying a rifle. They he posed for pictures with his new friends, his firearms. In one photograph, he holds both his rifle and his handgun; in another he holds the handgun to his head.

Dr. Bear: "He would make playful maneuvers with the gun pointing to his head as Travis Bickle did. In the final scene of that movie. Travis points to his own head like this, click: 'This is the time to shoot myself."

Mother:

"John seemed to be going downhill, downhill, downhill. Every time we heard from John, he had a new physical complaint. He was missing classes. And when he did go to class, he would become faint and would have to leave. We were very worried about him.

"We said: 'John, why don't you leave school and come home, and we'll have you examined by our doctors here.

"My son looked so bad when he came home. He was very very overweight. And he was very depressed and very wiped out. He just looked sick. John weight 225 pounds at that time, and his normal weight should be around 160."

The mother took her son from doctor to doctor, but they couldn't find anything wrong.

After spending a few weeks at home, the restless son headed for Dallas to spend some time with his sister, who lived there. Then he returned to Lubbock.

That spring, John Hinckley started turning out poem after sad poem, practicing his meter at the same time he was practicing with his guns. What he had in mind, he later told his doctors, was becoming a "psychopathic poet."

Dr. Goldman: "He decided to be a writer, but the tragic thing about the way he pursued this was that he did it alone. He never showed it to teachers or anybody."

He could-not show his writing to anyone anymore than he could play his guitar for anyone, but he nonetheless intended to be a famous writer.

In the spring of 1980, wh wrote a poem about his lonely, womanless life:

The girls are waiting to be chosen,
But unused hearts like mine are frozen.
I am kin to Frankenstein, begging for a mate,
Cursing my ungodly fate.

Dr. Carpenter: "I think it was in May when he saw an article about Jodie Foster in People magazine describing her plans to attend Yale. And on reading that, he became much more intensely preoccupied with Jodie Foster."

While Jodie Foster was preparing for her freshman year at Yale, John Hinckley enrolled in summer school at Texas Tech. That summer the "psychopathic poet" began writing poetry about the movie star whom he lived: "Yes, she was another beauty. She's oblivious to my existence." Eventually he intended to change that.

Mother: "He was having new complaints, stress, weakness and a vertigo feeling. His legs wouldn't hold him."

John saw a doctor in Lubbock, a Dr. Rosen.

Mother: "Dr. Rosen prescribed an antidepressant called Serentil and also a tranquilizer called Valium."

Dr. Bear: "Travis Bickle was a compulsive pill-taker. And John Hinckley also was a tremendous taker of pills."

Father: "By the end of that semester, he was just unable to cope. And my wife and I decided again to bring him home and see if we could get some more help for him. I made arrangements with a psychologist by the name of Durrell Benjamin, our company psychologist, to see John."

John's parents also met with Dr. Benjamin.

Father: "He told me that John was immature and that we needed to work out a long-range plan to make John self-sufficient. John had heard of a writer's school at Yale, so when Dr. Benjamin recommended the long-term agreement, we worked it out that John would go to it."

The family drew up a written agreement that set forth the terms under which he was to be allowed the money to go:

"I will receive the sum of $3000 in check, taken from my stock...to last from September 17th to February the 1st... And I do pledge to try to make the coming weeks and months as productive as possible. It is now or never. Thank you for the money and one more chance. John W. Hinckley Jr."

The day after he signed this contract, John left for New Haven. But the only long-term plan he had in mind was a till-death-do-us-part romance with Jodie Foster.

Dr. Carpenter: "The trip to New Haven was not predicated on attending a writing course. He wouldn't have proven eligible. But it was predicated on what had developed in his own mind about Jodie Foster. He saw a number of movies on TV that August with Jodie Foster in them. It was his feeling that the movies had been put on TV to excite him into action, to get him going to make this union with her."

And so John Hinckley set off the find Jodie Foster as if she were some Wizard of Oz who could heal him. In a sense, he was trying to go home again, for she had become something of a mother figure to him. He even began one poem: "Jodie, please watch over me." When he finally reached New Haven, he tried to introduce himself to her by slipping some of his poetry under her door.

Dr. Goldman: "I believe this was the first attempt he made to show his writing to somebody."

Dr. Carpenter: "He did succeed in having two telephone conversations with her during that trip. When he made contact with her, what he was anticipating was an almost magical union. What actually happened on the telephone was kind of the awkwardness of ' Why are you calling?' and not knowing quite what to say, and, kind of pleading almost like a little boy, pleading for her to stay on the telephone. His reaction was that he had been a total failure."

The "psychopathic poet" wrote: "The pain is sharper than a hypodermic penis/Caught in a working meat grinder."

Foster Fantasy

Feeling uncomfortably like John Hinckley, I dialed Jodie Foster's number. After a couple of rings, I heard her familiar, confident voice answer. I told her that I was covering the trial and asked if I could talk to her about Hinckley.

"We talked it over," Jodie Foster said. "And we decided I shouldn't talk about him."

Still hoping for something for my story, I wanted to try to keep her on the phone a little longer, feeling, again, much as Hinckley might have felt. So I told her I was going to write about Hinckley as a member of the fantasy generation.

"That's been the consensus," Jodie Foster said. "I think you should go ahead with it."

Three-Gun Fantasy

Having been gone from home a week--as long as he could sustain the long-term plan-John returned to his real mother.

Mother:

"I was very, very much surprised to see him. And I was very upset with him for coming back home so soon. He said he was very disappointed in Yale. His clothes were wrong. He did not like it there at all.

"My husband was out of town, and I was afraid he would come home and find John there. Knowing how angry I was with John, I knew his father would be even more so. And so I told John he could not stay at the house. He went down to a motel in Denver and spent the night. And then I took him the airport the following morning. He told me he had some unfinished business in Lubbock."

The larva was about to turn.

Dr. Carpenter:

"He returned to Lubbock. He purchased two .22 pistols. He then had three handguns--and the satisfaction of having the same number of guns that Travis Bickle had. He felt intensely identified with Travis Bickle and decided to stalk President Carter.

"He left from Lubbock, went on the 27th of September to Washington D.C. From there, the next day, to Columbus, Ohio. Two days later to Dayton, where he knew that President Carter was making a campaign appearance. He carried handguns with him.

"He did get in the immediate vicinity of President Carter, but felt he was just unable to get himself into a frame of mind to actually carry out the act. He felt a failure again."

The Fast Fame American Dream had somehow been twisted into the Instant Infamy American Nightmare. But even this bad dream eluded him. Shooting a president was turning out to be just as hard as meeting a movie star.

Dr. Carpenter:

"He left Dayton discouraged, made another trip to New Haven, left materials for Jodie Foster again. Went back to New York , where he spent some time seeking out young prostitutes, twelve, thirteen or fourteen years old, looking for someone like Jodie Foster.

"He took a trip to Lincoln, Nebraska, where he hoped to make contact with the person he describes as one of the leading ideologists for the Nazi party. So he showed up in Lincoln and didn't know what to look for. He spent a day in Lincoln but did nor make contact.

"Then flew to Nashville, where he again stalked President Carter during a campaign stop. He was apprehended as he was leaving Nashville. His guns were in a suitcase, and they were picked up by a metal detector. He paid the fine."

Later that day, John Hinckley flew back to his mecca, New Haven, where he had intended to abduct Jodie Foster, chain her in handcuffs and lead her away. But the police in Nashville had taken not only his guns but his handcuffs. So an unarmed Hickey checked into the Colony Inn in New Haven. The next day, he paid the bill of forty-six dollars and checked out. Then he checked into the Hotel Duncan but checked out only a few hours later. He finally wound up at the Sheraton Park Plaza Hotel were he spent the night at a cost of thirty-nine dollars. The next day...

Dr. Carpenter: "He went back to Dallas to replenish the arsenal. He purchased two .22-caliber handguns."

Rearmed, John returned to New Haven. Naturally. He checked into the Sheraton Park Plaza Hotel were he stayed for two days. The bill was seventy-eight dollars.

Next, he flew to Washington where he registered at the Quality Inn Downtown. Again, he stayed only two days. The bill was $56.80. Then he flew home.

Father:

"I remember JoAnn and I picked him up at the airport. It was still daylight, and I remember how depressed he was and how confused and wiped out and disoriented. When we were riding in the car, I remember one comment he made: 'I have learned one thing for sure. I sure don't know how to handle money.'

"And I thought: Well, maybe there is a ray of hope. But, when we got home, it was even more depressing."

Mother: "My son was looking just haunted, just in total despair. It frightened me he looked so bad. Hopper told us we had to make him wait forty-eight hours. We talked him down to twenty-four hours. We decided John could come home after one more night out on the streets."

Father: "I learned from my wife that John called several time at the house during the day and was just frantic."

When their son called the next morning, after the prescribed night on the streets of New York City, his parents told him yes, all right, he could come home.

Father:

"He said: 'I done' have any money to get to the airport. I don't have any money to get anything to eat.'

"In accordance with Hopper's instructions I said: 'John, that is tough. Try to find some money. Go to the Salvation Army or a church or a policeman or anybody you think might have enough money to serve your needs.'

"And so we hung up. And he called back again about an hour and said: 'I still don't have any money.' So I called a friend of mine who lived in Manhattan and made arrangements for John to walk over and borrow enough money to get to the airport."

This time, John's mother did not meet his plane.

Mother: "I could not go. I had been crying all day. And the last few sessions with Dr. Hopper were just crying sessions for me. I was very torn up about this plan of ours to cut him off. I didn't like the plan and was just going along to present a united front with my husband."

Father:

"I met him at the airport Saturday night, March 7th around eight or nine o'clock. He was in very bad shape. He needed a shave. He wad dazed. He was wiped out. He could hardly walk from the plane. He was just dragging. I took him to a waiting area that wasn't being used and we sat down. I told him how disappointed I was in Him. How he had let us down. And how he had not followed the plan that we had agreed on. And that he had just left us no choice but to not take him back to the house again--but to force him to go on his own. And so that's what I did. I took him to his old car, which was parked at the airport. I put some antifreeze in it, and we got the car started. I had a couple of hundred dollars with me that I had brought from the house. I give that to him. And I suggested that he go to the YMCA. And he said, no, he didn't want to do that. I said: 'Okay, you're on your own. Do what you want.'

"And in looking back on that. I'm sure that was the greatest mistake in my life. I am the cause of John's tragedy. We forced him out at a time when he simply couldn't cope. I wish to God that I could trade places with him now."

And having said so much, John W. Hinckley Sr. cried.

Barred by his parents from his home--which Robert Frost defined as the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in--John Hinckley checked into the Golden Hours Motel in Lakewood. His time there did not live up to the name on the sign. He spent most of the next week sitting alone in a motel room with the blinds drawn. The few times he ventured out were to convert his movable possessions into cash. He sold his typewriter, his records (even his Beatles albums) and all but one of his guns to raise money for one last trip. When a policeman stopped him for jaywalking one day, he got frightened. He decided it was time to pay his bill ($110) and check out.

John Hinckley moved into the Motel 6 in Lakewood and registered under the name of J.Travis. Mr. Travis stayed only two nights. His bill was $25.34.

Father: "John called and said he was thinking of going to California. And I was very upset to hear this story again. And we talked about his old car, whether it would make it to California. He even proposed that I sell the car and give him the money. I refused to do that. When I quit talking to John, he was still talking with JoAnn. I really did not know whether he was going to California or staying in Denver."

Mother:

"Well, I took him to the airport the next day. I guess it was March 25th. And I gave him--I broke the plan for the first time, and I gave him some money of my own, about a hundred dollars that I had found around the house. I just couldn't stand to see him go off without any money. We got in the car. And we didn't say one word to each other all the way down to the airport. He looked so bad and so sad and so absolutely in total despair. I was frightened and felt once again that John might try to take his own life. But I didn't want John to know I was thinking those thoughts. I just--no conversation. And so that was our drive to the airport. John got out of the car, and I couldn't even look at him. And he said: 'Well, Mom, I want to thank you for everything you have ever done for me.'

"And I said: 'Well, you are very welcome.' I said it so coldly because I didn't want him to know what I was thinking. I drove off, and that was the last I saw of John."

Once he got to Hollywood, John Hinckley stayed less than twenty-four hours. Having flown to one coast one day, he turned around and headed for the other coast the next day. But this time he traveled by bus. He bought a ticket for New Haven but decided to go via Washington. He spent the next four days and nights on a Greyhound. Sleeping poorly, the larva from the bottom of the American Dream twisted and turned, dreamed and schemed, from coast to coast.

Arriving in Washington around noon, John Hinckley went to the Park Central Hotel, a block and a half from the White House, registered, and was shown to room 312. He went to bed early, about 8:30 p.m., but slept badly.

Dr. Dietz:

"He said: 'I remember waking up early in the morning, seven or eight, and thinking, why couldn't I sleep?' He watched television, probably the Today Show or Good Morning America, until about nine o'clock . He walked over to the McDonald's across the street. He ate an Egg McMuffin for breakfast. At McDonald's he debated whether to stay in D.C. and try to sleep or to go to New Haven and get it all over with, namely, suicide in New Haven. He sat at a table in McDonald's debating what to do. At that point, he had about $150 left. At approximately 11:30 a.m.,he arrived back at the hotel and bought a Washington Star out of a machine."

Dr. Bear:

"In that newspaper was President Reagan's schedule for the day. He saw the paper and got this signal: 'This is it, this is for me.' That signal may well have led him to move in the direction of shooting the president.

"So he took a shower. He described a terrible agony of deliberation: What to do? He said: 'I'm on a roller coaster, I've got to end it, this is a time for ending.' So there was an internal frenzy. He felt paralyzed. He said: 'I don't know what to do.' There were three different ideas: go to New Haven and shoot Jodie Foster; shoot himself; shoot the president. They couldn't all be done. He was frozen. That is why he was in agony in that shower. It was similar to the agony in Dayton and in Nashville. And it was worse because there was the additional pressure of his depression and the cutoff from his family.

"What next? Well, he took Valium. He claims he took four tablets twenty milligrams of Valium. If he took it around noon, that medicine would be in his bloodstream at peak level at 1:45 or two p.m.

"At 12:45 p.m. he sat down and wrote a letter:

'Dear Jodie: There is a definite possibility that I will be killed in my attempt to get Reagan. It is for the very reason that I am writing you this letter now. As you well know by now, I love you very much. I feel very good about the fact that you at least know my name and how I feel about 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 am going ahead with this attempt now is because I just cannot wait any longer to impress you. I have 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 am asking you, please look into your heart and at least give me the chance with this historical deed to gain your respect and love.'"

Having written his letter, John picked up a red John Lennon Button and put it in his left coat pocket. Then he put his .22 in his right pocket; for almost the only thing he did with his right hand, which was controlled by the nondreamy, nonfantasy side of his brain, was fire a gun. Armed with his button and his .22--the Rock Star Dream and Assassination Dream united at last--he left his room.

Dr. Bear:

"When he arrived at the hotel, he saw President Reagan wave to the crowd. Again, he had the feeling: 'He's looking right at me, this is the moment.'

"Then President Reagan went into the hotel John had the sense that events were going very quickly, a sense of time racing. President Reagan came out of the hotel. John was in the press area. He was perhaps twenty feet from the president. He had this thought: 'By gosh I'm amazed I got so close. Why isn't the Secret Service here?'

"He remembered: Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver had planned to kill a presidential candidate. At the last moment, the Secret Service identified him. They stopped him.

"Hinckley's thought was this: 'I hope someone will stop me. I hope like Travis there will be something that does stop me. I hope the agent will stop me.'

"He always had two thoughts: 'I'll kill, I won't kill.' We know his political thoughts. He has stated: 'President Reagan is the greatest president of the century.' So there is admiration for Reagan and yet the feeling: 'I must shoot.'

"When President Reagan came out so quickly, he was amazed. He said: 'I wasn't ready, I didn't know yet. It was a surprise he came out so fast.' He took out his gun.

"His next thought was this: 'They saw the gun. People saw the gun. Every eye knows it. Now I have no choice. I have to go forward and shoot.'

"After the shooting, after six bullets were shot and people pounced, John said: 'I'm relieved. It is over.'"

John Hinckley Jr. shot the president of the United States on the day before his parents planned to stop supporting him. In his mind, he shot the national father figure, the president, in order to attain his own private mother figure, Jodie Foster. Now he would be take care of, watched over.

Father:

"I was at the office. I was interviewing a fellow for a job. And while we were standing there in my office, our chief accountant came in. He was just white. And he said: 'Jack, I think there is something you need to hear.'

"I knew something was wrong. We went back to his office, the radio was on, and that is when I head John's name."

Mother: "On March 30th I received a telephone call. It was a reporter from the Washington Post who said: 'Do you have your television on?' And I said: 'Yes.' And he said: 'Did you know that your son, John Hinckley, is the man they have identified as shooting the president?'"

At first, it must have seemed like another bad made-for-television fantasy, but this time it was real.

Dr. Bear, psychiatrist for the defense, told me before the verdict: "The law needs to be changed. If John Hinckley is found not guilty, they will have to change the law."

John Hinckley Sr. paid Dr. Bear to testify on behalf of his son. He paid lots of doctors. The Rich Daddy American Dream worked again.

As John Hinckley told one of the psychiatrists: "The movie isn't over yet."

Now the movie's setting has been shifted to St. Elizabeth's mental hospital, where John Hinckley has access to a telephone. He has already started calling his lawyers--whom he seems to regard as the only "friends" he has ever had--all day long. He has called the Washington Post. Soon he may try calling Jodie Foster. Already, he can taste the freedom of wandering through the nation's communications network in search of his dreams. And one of these days he may be free altogether to stalk his dreams though society once more.

So, I find that I cannot help fantasizing about a call he may someday make:

"Hello, Daddy, I just shot Jodie Foster. Can I come home?"