Would-be Reagan Assassin John Hinckley Adds Musician, Painter, Poet to His Resume

On the overcast Washington , D.C., afternoon of March 30th, 1981, a bullet entered the left underarm of then-president Ronald Wilson Reagan, a serious injury prompting emergency exploratory surgery.

The attempted assassin, John Warnock Hinckley, Jr., would emerge from psychiatric confinement 41 years later, in 2022, with an observable sensitivity for the visual arts and folk music.

However, Hinckley’s artistic career has not come without presenting its own unique obstacles. As a young adult, Hinckley attempted a career as a full-time folk singer-songwriter, though his attempts were fruitless. In the throes of hysteria, Hinckley developed an erotomanic obsession with young actress Jodie Foster and began stalking her. 

Foster’s perceived willful ignorance of Hinckley’s advances inspired Hinckley to try and take the President’s life in a last-ditch effort to spark Foster’s attention, as expressed in the following excerpt from a letter to Foster on the day before the attempt.

“The reason I’m going ahead with this attempt now is because I cannot wait any longer to impress you.”

In 2022, Hinckley entered a tenuous legal battle for the right to release music in his own name. He won the case and has since released one album in 2023, Redemption. The indie-folk fusion album has received mixed reviews.

“It’s decently made, albeit very overproduced,” musically-inclined senior Jonathan Lado commented on the track, “Neverending Quest.”

Redemption also received its own tour, which had struggled to secure a venue on account of safety concerns. Hinckley has cited several musical inspirations on his website, johnhinckleycommunity.com, such as Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Neil Young, Nick Drake, and The Beatles.

“Am I interested in supporting the music career of a criminal [Hinckley]? No,” AP US History teacher Ms. Sue Nagle told the Tiger Times.

“I had no idea this guy even made music,” AP Economics teacher Mrs. Dina Heffner said.

“I’m a musician. Nobody knows that,” Hinckley told the Associated Press. “They just see me as the guy who tried to kill Reagan.”

Hinckley is also an expressionist painter, though influences on his visual works are less clear than his aural. He has sold several of his works on the platform eBay for several thousand dollars a piece. Followers of his work will notice recurring themes in these paintings; such as cats, the female likeness, and specific anatomical features.

And perhaps the biggest surprise of them all, Hinckley, while distancing from poetry in recent years, is no stranger to it. His poetry canon has been popularized with the publication of The Insanity Defense and the Trial of John W. Hinckley, Jr., by Lincoln Caplan.

One excerpt from John Hinckley’s poem The Painful Evolution includes the following: “In the beginning/ It was a time for pretending/ The martyr in me played games/ and I was the young alienated loner./…Nearing the bend/ I should have turned back./ I could have taken the road/ that leads to meaningful existence./ In the end/ I cursed myself and suffered./ I have become what I wanted to be all along, a psychotic poet.”