DALLAS, TEXAS
AUGUST 9, 1974
5:00 P.M.
As Richard Nixon flies into self-imposed exile, his plane passes just a few hundred miles north of this sprawling Texas city. Below, in a furnished rental apartment, John Hinckley Jr. lies around, strumming his guitar. The spartan room is tidy, for Hinckley is a fanatic about cleanliness and personal hygiene, often washing his face with such vigor that his father fears “he’d take the skin off.”
Hinckley is nineteen years old now, living in Dallas near his elder sister, Diane, while on summer break from college. He works in a local pizza joint called Gordo’s, where he sweeps floor and clears tables. Hinckley is already gaining the sixty pounds he will soon add to his five-foot-ten-inch build. His Paul McCartney–type haircut frames his face, bangs sweeping low across the tops of his eyebrows. When he smiles, Hinckley’s dull blue eyes come alive. Yet Hinckley rarely smiles; nor does he have any inclination to shed some of his expanding girth. He has little interest in physical fitness or presidential politics—or in anything, for that matter. While his elder brother, Scott, is being groomed to run their father’s oil company, and his sister is newly married and settling down, John has retreated into a world all his own. He speaks with a flat affect, and his gaze often lacks expression. His only solace comes through music.
The truth is John Hinckley is at a loss to explain what is happening in his brain. He has some form of schizophrenia, a mental disorder that causes the mind to distort reality. A combination of inherited traits and environmental factors has altered his genetic makeup, beginning with subtle changes in his teenage years. If left untreated, his condition can tailspin into delusions and violent behavior that will become dangerous to him and those around him.
His parents are currently building a new home in Evergreen, Colorado, a small mountain town populated largely by wealthy conservatives. They moved there from Dallas just a year ago, as John was beginning his freshman year at Texas Tech University. Having no friends in Evergreen, John Hinckley prefers to spend the summer in scorching-hot Dallas before heading back to school in the fall.
But Hinckley has no friends in Dallas, either. This is nothing new. Once, his high school classmates called him “as nice a guy as you’d ever want to meet.” He was popular and well liked, a member of the Spanish Club, Rodeo Club, and an association known as Students in Government. But halfway through high school, he abruptly stopped playing sports or taking part in school functions. His mother, Jo Ann, was heartbroken by the sudden change—and confused as to why it happened.
John Hinckley is no longer one to experience happiness. It has been a long time since he has known that emotion. But here in his room, at least he is content. He listens to the Beatles and plays guitar, day after day after day. Today is a Friday. The president of the United States has just quit. The world is in shock. Outside, the sun is shining on yet another baking-hot Texas summer afternoon. But John Hinckley does not notice. Within these walls, each day is just like any other. Friday might as well be Monday. It does not matter.
Hinckley’s parents think themselves lucky that their son does not drink, take drugs, or engage in sexual promiscuity. They are deeply religious evangelical Christians, and to know that their son is not violating biblical principles gives them some peace. So they leave him alone.
One day they will look back and realize that their son’s withdrawal from society was not normal.
By then, it will be too late.