In March 1981, he embarked on a cross-country odyssey driven by his obsession with the actress Jodie Foster. After seeing the movie Taxi Driver, he became convinced that he could impress Foster by assassinating Ronald Reagan, the president of the United States.
A suggestion for the Keynote Speaker at the Republic Party's National Convention in 2016: get someone who is part of the
living history of Williamsburg as well as Washington DC.
As yet there is no memorial to Ronald Reagan in James City County, VA so perhaps The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project of Americans for Tax Reform could designate John Hinckley Jr, a living memorial there.
(And as an aside - if a benefactor could be found, the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center should have its trauma center designated the Iran-Contra Wing.)
These days, John Hinckley Jr. lives much of the year like any average Joe: shopping, eating out, watching movies at a local Regal Cinemas.
Hinckley was just 25 when he shot President Ronald Reagan and three others in 1981, and when jurors found him not guilty by reason of insanity they said he needed treatment, not a lifetime in confinement. The verdict left open the possibility that he would one day live outside a mental hospital.
For the past year, under a judge's order, Hinckley has spent 17 days a month at his mother's home in Williamsburg, a small southeastern Virginia city known for its colonial roots. Freedom has come in stages and with strict requirements: meeting regularly while in town with both a psychiatrist and a therapist, getting a volunteer job. It has all been part of a lengthy process meant to reintegrate Hinckley, now nearing 60, back into society.
On Wednesday, court hearings are set to begin on whether to expand Hinckley's time in Williamsburg further. His doctors' recommendation isn't yet public, but the latest plan could see him living here permanently...
Prosecutors have also said Hinckley's relationships with women remain troubling. They took issue with some of the romantic relationships he formed with a few patients at St. Elizabeths. He also once feigned a toothache to try to see his female dentist and looked up pictures of her on the Internet.
More recently, they cited a July 2011 incident in which he was supposed to go see a movie in Williamsburg and instead went to a nearby Barnes & Noble. The Secret Service, whose agents sporadically tail Hinckley while he is in town, reported he was observed looking at shelves that contained several books about Reagan and the attempted assassination, though he didn't pick anything up.