Is He Crazy About Her?

A plea of insanity, a cry for love

By any standard of common sense, it was an insane act: shooting a President to win the affections of a movie star. The legal definition of madness, however, is a bit more exacting (see LAW). Last week lawyers for John Hinckley, 26, the man who wounded President Reagan and three others on March 30 outside the Washington Hilton Hotel, declared in a court brief that they will argue Hinckley's innocence by reason of insanity. In a case where the facts of the crime are so starkly clear--the defense admits to the shooting--an insanity plea may be Hinckley's only chance for acquittal.

As if to demonstrate the slippery grip on reality his lawyers will claim for him, Hinckley has written a letter to TIME Washington Correspondent Evan Thomas elaborating on his one-sided courtship of Actress Jodie Foster, 18 (see box). Hinckley had written TIME several weeks earlier offering to answer any 20 questions the magazine posed. Thomas submitted the questions--on such subjects as Hinckley's childhood, his travels before the shooting and his friends--but Hinckley chose to address only his feelings about Foster. Atop the letter, Hinckley scrawled the title, The Lovesick Assassin.

In preliminary documents submitted to Federal District Court Judge Barrington Parker, Hinckley's attorneys asked that their client's case be heard by two separate juries, one to make the pro forma determination that Hinckley did indeed shoot Reagan, the other to make the critical judgment about his sanity. Hinckley's lawyers fear that once jurors see videotapes of the shooting and hear exhaustive FBI testimony about Hinckley's elaborate transcontinental drifting in the months that preceded the act, they would be incapable of reaching a verdict dispassionately on the question of his mental state. "Understandably," the attorneys contend in their brief, "there will be great rage and anger directed at Mr. Hinckley." The best guess of lawyers familiar with the case is that Judge Parker will rule in favor of a conventional, single-jury trial.

That proceeding will not begin before December. Once it is under way, the insanity defense will likely require that Hinckley's lawyers--members of the high-powered Washington firm of Williams and Connolly, home of Superlawyer Edward Bennett Williams--introduce as evidence every token of his preoccupation with Foster. A new addition to that curious lore surfaced last week, when authorities leaked a transcript of tape recordings, made by Hinckley last winter, of two telephone conversations he had with Foster. The calls, to the actress's Yale University dormitory in New Haven, were not acknowledged by her until last week. Says Foster: "It's not anything I can talk about."

The tapes depict Hinckley as a persistent and pathetic suitor. As he tells Foster in the first call, by way of introduction: "This is the person that's been leaving notes in your mail box for two days." At one point during the conversations, Foster's freshmen roommates giggled in the background. "They're laughing at you," she said to Hinckley, and to the girls in an aside: "I should tell him I am sitting here with a knife." Hinckley heard the remark. "Well," he assured her, "I'm not dangerous, I promise you that."

The tapes, recovered from Hinckley's Washington hotel room the day he shot the President, consist largely of requests that she permit more calls. Hinckley: "Can I call tomorrow night?" Foster: "That's fine." Hinckley: "Will you be in?" Foster: "Maybe." Hinckley: "Will you talk?" Foster: "Sure." Hinckley: "Well, you just changed your mind, see?"

Later, Foster grew impatient with the pestering. "Seriously," she said, "this isn't fair. Do me a favor and don't call back. All right?"

"How about tomorrow?" Hinckley pleaded.

"Oh, God. Oh, seriously. This is really starting to bother me. Do you mind if I hang up?"

"Jodie, please."

The most important thing in my life is Jodie Foster's love and admiration. If I can't have them, neither can anybody else. We are a historical couple, like Napoleon and Josephine, and a romantic couple like Romeo and Juliet.

I first saw Jodie in the movie Taxi Driver, which was the summer of 1976. I saw her over and over and over again over the next five years. I saw all of her movies and most of her TV appearances. My devotion for Jodie became an obsession in the summer of 1980 when I found out she would be attending Yale University in the fall of '80. The magazines like to call my love an erotomanic obsession. I don't even know what that means. All I know is that I was her number one fan and wanted to make sure that she knew it too. She was my first real love. This sounds like something out of True Confessions.

From head to toe, every square inch of Jodie is what attracts me. She reached her peak when she was twelve and then she reached a second peak following March 30, '81. Jodie's got the look I crave. What else can I say? It drives me crazy just looking at some of her photographs. Her voice and smile put stars in my eyes and send shivers everywhere. I only hope Yale doesn't destroy Jodie. Four years at that place is enough to ravage anyone. I tried to rescue her once, and it looks like I may have to do it again.

I gave Jodie approximately 100 poems and letters in the fall and winter of '80-'81, all of them signed. She probably read half of them. Also I talked to her on the phone a few times. Of course, on March 30 I made my love known to her in my own unique way.

She did not respond at all prior to March 30. I blame her and I don't blame her. After March 30, I finally got a response out of her. It's now six months later, and she's playing it cool again. I can't take much more of this silent treatment.

The ultimate expression of my love would be to take her away from Yale and the world permanently. Further elaboration is not necessary. Just stay tuned.

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