transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:24] Hello, and welcome back to What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast, full stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a movie that maybe kind of inspired someone to try to kill the president. I am one of your hosts, Lizzie Bassett, here as always with Chris Winterbauer, but because we are talking true crime today as it relates to Taxi Driver, spoiler alert, that's the movie, we have enlisted some experts to join us. I am extremely excited. I'm an enormous fan of their show. I've listened for years. We have Suruthi Bala and Hannah Maguire here with us from RedHanded. Thank you both so much for being here.

Speaker 2:
[01:10] Thank you for having us. We're really excited and I think Taxi Driver is quite a good, I was going to say microcosm, that's not quite the right word. It's a good parallel to what it's like being a true crime podcaster, just slowly watching the world decay around you and getting more and more angry every time someone else turns out to be a paedophile. I have to admit, I rewatched the first half an hour just now and I was like, am I Travis? Has it got like that now? I don't know. I'll just stay inside for a bit. No taxis for me.

Speaker 3:
[01:44] I reckon you've got two good years, two good years in you before we get there. I was also meant to watch it, and I failed in the mission. I was told about it with ample notice, but I have been very bad because I have been either writing the Cory Richen script because obviously she's been found guilty day before yesterday, and also watching Married at First Sight Australia. I'm not going to lie because I'm a trash person.

Speaker 1:
[02:08] Chris is mad at me because I've been watching Love is Blind instead of Seven Samurai. We're in the same boat here.

Speaker 3:
[02:12] I've also watched all of that. If any of those references come up, I'm all in.

Speaker 1:
[02:17] Have you seen Taxi Driver before ever?

Speaker 3:
[02:19] Years and years and years ago, as Hannah will tell you, I am really notoriously bad at not having watched a lot of the classic movies that everyone should have watched. I'm quite bad at that. I have really terrible taste in films because I almost exclusively watch horror films. That's great taste. The worst horror films out there.

Speaker 4:
[02:40] I don't think anyone can have bad taste. You just have your taste in movies. That's what we want to celebrate on this show. Also, a bunch of our audience probably will not have watched Taxi Driver. You can be a surrogate for those people as we make fun of them relentlessly. All right, Lizzie, please continue.

Speaker 3:
[02:53] Perfect. I'm here. I'm here for Taxi Driver. Let's go.

Speaker 1:
[02:56] Taxi Driver is a bit of a horror film, I would argue. You know the premise. You've seen it before. Hannah, you watched at least part of it. Chris and I have obviously rewatched it because we are going to be covering Taxi Driver. That episode will air on Monday. But because there's so much to cover on Taxi Driver itself, we wanted to separate out the story of Jodie Foster and John Hinckley Jr, which is what we are going to be talking about today. Before we jump in, I want to get everybody's reactions to what you remember about the film or what you experienced from just watching it. I guess particularly focusing a little bit on Jodie Foster's character in this movie. Hannah, what did you pick up on from the bit that you watched?

Speaker 2:
[03:41] I suppose my reaction to Jodie Foster specifically, we've just done our Patreon show under the DVA, which is every week, and we did quite a lot of unpacking of the Louis Theroux Manosphere documentary. My gut reaction to Jodie Foster was just like, oh my God, how little has changed. Like how all of these themes still exactly the same and still so at the front of everyone's minds would be my gut reaction.

Speaker 1:
[04:11] That was my experience too, because I could not believe how much this movie could have been released yesterday.

Speaker 2:
[04:17] Totally.

Speaker 1:
[04:17] And it would have been like, you don't have to change a thing. Even down to Jodie Foster talking about being a Libra and that's why we get along and the different air signs, it really blew me away. It feels extremely modern, particularly as it relates to the Manosphere and the sort of red pill community. It's like, I mean, Scorsese really saw something, I think, before it had become mainstream the way that it has today. And that's what he put on screen and it really freaked me out. Do you know how old she was when this was filmed?

Speaker 2:
[04:57] No. In my head, she's always just Tallulah and Bugsy Malone. So like I just don't... She's timeless.

Speaker 3:
[05:02] Wasn't she 15?

Speaker 4:
[05:03] Was she 15?

Speaker 1:
[05:04] No, she's 12.

Speaker 3:
[05:06] I was going to say she looks younger.

Speaker 4:
[05:08] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[05:09] Hannah's face is saying my feelings about that. Chris, what's your take on this and also her being 12?

Speaker 4:
[05:18] Not great, Bob. Well, we should mention Paul Schrader, who wrote the movie, I think deserves a lot of the credit for diagnosing the American fascination with like lone rangers and lone gunslingers. This is a very...

Speaker 1:
[05:31] Yes, I'm sorry. Absolutely.

Speaker 4:
[05:33] American frontier-based mythology. And this movie kind of follows a couple of movies, the Dirty Harry series with Clint Eastwood, which features the 44 Magnum that he buys, that he kind of fetishizes in this movie.

Speaker 1:
[05:46] Yeah, it's all a fantasy.

Speaker 4:
[05:47] And then this other movie with Charles Bronson called Death Wish that is totally absurd. That is, it's the, you know, the John Wick like Dead, Dead Wife Revenge fantasy, but we have now that type of movie like Taken, right, with Liam Neeson. Like those that this is the prototype. This movie is riffing or making fun of, I feel like, the prototype of those movies. And there's a scene in this movie later where he's monologuing his own descent into madness and he has to do it like a retake because he gets it wrong. And it's very, very much Scorsese just making fun of him. But I completely agree. It feels extremely modern. And yeah, this was a moment when we were, I think we think of fetishizing or like young women as a more modern trend because of like 90s pop stars or something like that. Britney Spears, John Benet-Ramsay, but this has been going on forever. And I think back to-

Speaker 1:
[06:38] Since the dawn of time.

Speaker 4:
[06:39] Yeah. And you know, around this time you had like Brooke Shields, for example, if you go back and look at the jeans commercial she was doing and what not and Lolita. So it feels as modern as ever. It's pretty unnerving to watch. And if anything, I feel like we've swung back into it. And I think Lizzie, if it was released now, it would feel very timely. In a weird way, I think if it had been released 10 years ago, it would have felt completely out of step. You know what I'm saying? It's really the last 10 years that we've swung back into this, at least in the United States, I feel.

Speaker 1:
[07:12] Well, today we're going to find out, team, how Taxi Driver turned Jodie Foster into a superstar and why one fan would do anything to get her attention even if it meant murdering the president of the United States.

Speaker 2:
[07:27] Okay. But are you going to tell me what you think actually happens at the end of Taxi Driver?

Speaker 1:
[07:31] Are you going to tell me what you think at the end? I think it's a total fantasy.

Speaker 2:
[07:33] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[07:34] I think it's not real. I think it's a total fantasy. I think, and we watched it, we went back, we rolled it back, we watched it all again. It's the way the music, the way that Bernard Herrmann scores that section, it goes back to the very noire jazz that you get earlier in the movie. It doesn't feel real. It doesn't feel grounded. The way that he's shot even looking in the mirror back at Sibyl Shepard.

Speaker 4:
[08:00] You're saying the Sibyl Shepard moment specifically.

Speaker 1:
[08:03] Yes, from when he shows back up with the scar on his neck and the hair, his hair regrown to the end, I think is a complete fantasy. I think he does kill those people.

Speaker 4:
[08:13] Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2:
[08:14] No, I think he definitely kills them. I think I'm probably with you.

Speaker 4:
[08:17] I thought Schrader was trying to make the media somewhat culpable here too, and how we're so quick to sensationalize this type of person and create a hero out of them, right? We show that what's so funny is he was obviously going to try to assassinate Palatine, the presidential candidate, and then chickens out and runs away, and then he kills a bunch of easier targets effectively. But I do agree the civil shepherd moment feels like what he's dreaming at the end. I would say to me, it feels like maybe the newspaper stuff is real, but we're splitting hairs.

Speaker 1:
[08:52] I think it's all a dream.

Speaker 4:
[08:53] You're probably right.

Speaker 1:
[08:54] I think he's dying, and this is the fantasy that he sees as he's dying, is like, oh, this is how I'll be remembered. Even you notice when they show Jodie Foster's parents, this is why I think that whole section is fake. They show her parents in the news article that's tacked to the board, and her parents are like 90 years old. It's super old people looking at the TV, and it's like, she's 12, like those are not her parents.

Speaker 2:
[09:17] That's a really good point. Okay, I'm with you, sold.

Speaker 1:
[09:21] Yeah, I don't think any of it's real, and I think you're supposed to laugh at how ridiculous his, because you are going to jail, sir. You're going to jail.

Speaker 3:
[09:31] Interesting. I thought it was interesting, you guys talking about how modern it feels, and again, I saw this film, I don't even know, pre-uni, so we're talking a very, very long time ago. But the idea of that sensationalism around a single killer, like this lone wolf kind of character, again, that feels very, very current. I mean, even when you look at things like, obviously coming from a true crime space rather than a movie analysis angle, if you take a look at cases that have happened recently, even stuff like Brian Coburger, just the media's complete obsession with this one man, lone wolf killer, and he was a genius, and all of these things, and it was like, well, no, he wasn't. No, he wasn't. He was just somebody who did this thing. Again, much like the sexualization of young girls, it's nothing new. It's not saying it's some hot take, but I think it's interesting that it's almost like Hannah was going to say, like a microcosm or at least an accumulation of all of these themes that we're seeing at the moment play out, especially in the world of true crime.

Speaker 1:
[10:36] Yeah. I want to start not with John Hinckley Jr, because we're going to have plenty of time to talk about him, but with Jodie Foster. A little bit of background. She started acting at three years old, mostly in commercials. At about nine years old, she filmed a Disney movie called Napoleon and Samantha, in which she starred opposite a lion. I would like to play you a little clip of Jodie Foster on the Graham Norton Show explaining what happened to her on that set.

Speaker 4:
[11:03] We're big fans of the Graham Norton Show over here.

Speaker 5:
[11:07] I was nine years old and well, I was working with three lions. There was one really old lion with no teeth, who was the actual lion we were supposed to be working with, and then there was a stunt lion who did all the crazy like rawr kind of stuff. Then there was the stand-in lion, so three lions. The old lion wouldn't move and you can't make a lion move because they're 500 pounds. So I was working with the stand-in lion and I guess he had a little piano wire that was pulling him and I would finish the take and I was going up the hill. All I remember is I remember seeing his mane come around and then he picked me up sideways and shook me in his mouth. And turned me around and every single person on the crew was running in the opposite direction. And I'm like sideways watching everybody and they took their equipment too. And I'm watching everybody leave going like, what's happening? Then I remember being like, oh it's an earthquake. Because I was getting shaken. The trainer said drop it and because the lion was so well trained, he opened his mouth and dropped me down and I went running and then he came after me and then just put one paw on me and then just waited. Like, I got her.

Speaker 3:
[12:20] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[12:21] Good times for a nine year old.

Speaker 3:
[12:24] That's amazing. It actually reminds me of an episode we did. If you guys looked at that film Raw, which is like the most dangerous film. I don't know why I'm doing this because it was the most dangerous film ever made.

Speaker 4:
[12:36] Yeah, I don't think there's air quotes needed on that one.

Speaker 3:
[12:38] No. Oh my God. I was just like reminding myself, and I think like how many people got injured. Apparently, it was 70 people got injured by some sort of wild animal.

Speaker 1:
[12:47] I remember that being an underestimate too. That there was probably more.

Speaker 3:
[12:50] That's like the cover-up number. Oh my God.

Speaker 1:
[12:53] Yeah. That's the publicly released number of maulings on that movie. Yeah. Did you say you covered it as well?

Speaker 3:
[12:59] We did it on shorthand, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[13:01] Okay. Listen to their shorthand episode. Check out our episode on that as well. It is a wild ride. I never want to work with a lion, that's for sure. But she was the breadwinner for her family before she was even a teenager. She was well-known and noticeable prior to Taxi Driver, which is important to remember. Then in 1976, at 12 years old, she starred as Iris opposite both Harvey Keitel, so creepy in this movie, and Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. Now, in case you're wondering if there was backlash against her age at the time of this movie, I think the answer is yes, there was some people weren't just totally chill with it. But I don't know that it was as much as there would be now if you cast a real 12-year-old in this. She has maintained that she's glad she did the movie. I don't think she had a bad time on set. I think she had a bit of an awkward, uncomfortable time on set just because no one knew what to do with a 12-year-old girl in the middle of this.

Speaker 2:
[14:00] It's not just a 12-year-old girl playing a sex worker. It's like an additional.

Speaker 1:
[14:06] How do you even explain that? Yeah. So they did have her sister Connie, I believe, who was 18 or 19 years old. She was a stand-in for a couple of moments. The only ones that I think she actually did stand in for her were when she drops her shirt. You just see the back of her shoulders. I don't think that's Jodie Foster. And then the other one is when she's dancing with Harvey Hytel in a scene that I never want to watch again. I believe he turns away from the camera for like two seconds. And I think they swap her at that point. Because when they turn back around, you never see her face. And he's kissing her. And they wouldn't have had him kiss Jodie Foster. They're not Brad Pitt in Interview with the Vampire.

Speaker 4:
[14:47] I was going to say.

Speaker 1:
[14:48] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[14:50] Can I ask, because I don't remember, how old is she meant to be in the film, if she's 12 in real life?

Speaker 1:
[14:56] 12.

Speaker 3:
[14:56] She's meant to be 12.

Speaker 1:
[14:57] 12.

Speaker 3:
[14:57] Oh, my God.

Speaker 1:
[14:59] They say, I believe they reference her age and it's 12. Wow. I have very mixed feelings about this because the visual impact of seeing an actual 12-year-old girl is big. And, you know, this is real. There are 12-year-olds who are sex workers and there are these adult men who are assaulting them. And do I think it was appropriate for a 12-year-old to do this? I guess my answer is I don't know because there is something important about seeing how young she is next to these men. It really makes you realize how creepy it is. And I do think that's the intention. But yeah, really weird. And apparently Martin Scorsese, when he was trying to like instruct her to unzip Robert De Niro's fly, he would just start laughing hysterically because he didn't know what to do. And so he was like, Bobby, you direct her in this. You explain this. Because Martin Scorsese was like, I'm out. I don't know what to do here. So she ended up like bonding with Robert De Niro. She said he was kind of like boring and weird, but that he gave her a lot of good acting advice. So, you know, she, I don't think she had a bad experience on this movie, but definitely strange for a 12 year old. But a 12 year old who was shaken by a lion.

Speaker 2:
[16:20] So, you know, I was going to say, if anyone can handle it. And I have absolutely no doubt that Robert De Niro is actually just boring and weird. I have a very unpopular opinion that to be an actor, well, like to truly be like one of the greats, you have to have something quite fundamentally wrong with you. I think being alive for you is very, very difficult. I think that's what makes an incredible actor, which...

Speaker 1:
[16:50] Interesting. A hot take.

Speaker 2:
[16:52] Yeah, you can have that one for free.

Speaker 1:
[16:54] Great, thank you. So just this year, she told NPR's Terry Gross on Fresh Air, quote, I think there's a part of me that has been made resilient by what I've done for a living and has been able to control my emotions in order to do that in a role. When you're older, those survival skills get in the way and you have to learn how to ditch them when they're not serving you anymore. And unfortunately, her survival skills will definitely come in to play today. All right. Let's talk about a man named John Hinkley Sr. Ooh, plot twist, known as Jack. He was a very successful businessman. He was self-made. In the 50s, he was chairman and president of the Vanderbilt Energy Corporation, which was an oil and gas exploration company. And according to his employees, pretty great boss. He was frequently described as a good leader. He seemed very comfortable, not micromanaging his employees. But when it came to his children, the situation may have been a little bit different. He and his wife Joanne had three children. Now, Scott and Diane were overachievers, popular, golden children, and Jack was thrilled with them. And then he named his youngest child, born in 1955 after himself, John Hinkley Jr. But this boy could not have been more different from his father. John Jr. was extremely passive. He never seemed to really apply himself to anything. And this was something his father lectured him about constantly. His father was really struggled with John Hinkley Jr. John was extremely clingy and dependent on his mother, who in turn was also very passive and not prone to discipline. By some reports, she actually may have also been agoraphobic when he was a child. Joanne and John would later write a book called Breaking Points about their struggle with John's mental illness. But I want to read an excerpt of Laura Obolenski's review of that book for the New Republic. She said, quote, perhaps it is fear of what lies outside that makes the interior of the family so rigid and subdued, like life in a well-run bunker. The world of the Hinckley's was the rootless middle-class sunbelt culture that nurtures pro-family values, Christian fundamentalism, and occasional mass murderers. Now, it should be noted the Hinckley's were Episcopalian. So fundamentalist is a little bit of a stretch there. They were religiously active, but I would not say that they were Christian fundamentalists. But you get the idea. At around four years old in 1959, the family moved to a very, very ritzy suburb of Dallas in Texas called Highland Park. John actually did pretty well here, and these are his pre-teen years. He was the president of his homeroom, he had friends, he did well in sports, and he has even said, I'm not even sure how I did this because it never happened again. In 1964, at only nine years old, he started to descend into very obsessive thinking. Now, nine years old, 1964, any guesses what his first obsession was?

Speaker 2:
[19:43] Skinning cats.

Speaker 1:
[19:46] No.

Speaker 4:
[19:47] Wow, we really...

Speaker 2:
[19:48] Sometimes it is, often it is.

Speaker 1:
[19:50] Sorry, I should have specified. It's a famous...

Speaker 3:
[19:53] Yeah, I was going to say something specific to 1964. What was going on in 1964?

Speaker 1:
[19:58] Skinning cats.

Speaker 3:
[20:01] It was all the rage.

Speaker 4:
[20:02] Is he obsessed with Lee Harvey Oswald?

Speaker 1:
[20:06] No.

Speaker 3:
[20:07] A bit early for the space race. Is it a person?

Speaker 1:
[20:11] It's a group of people.

Speaker 2:
[20:12] The Beatles?

Speaker 1:
[20:13] Yes, the Beatles.

Speaker 3:
[20:15] There we go. Good job. We got there in the end.

Speaker 1:
[20:17] Started with Skinning Cats, ended with the Beatles. But he didn't just love the Beatles, he wanted to be the Beatles, and he was convinced that he was going to be the biggest star in the history of music. Now, over the course of high school, he started to massively withdraw to the point where he basically disappeared. This is the craziest quote I've ever seen, but one of his classmates described him as a non-guy, which I hope no one ever describes me as that. It's sad.

Speaker 4:
[20:45] The forerunner to NPC, which is my least favorite descriptor.

Speaker 1:
[20:49] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[20:49] Oh, I do like calling people non though. It is a good adjective.

Speaker 2:
[20:56] People described Dennis Nielsen as non, just a gray man.

Speaker 3:
[21:02] It's one of my favorite adjectives, unfortunately, for those people.

Speaker 1:
[21:05] His own brother actually said the last time he remembered John having any kind of emotional reaction or even laughing was about 12 years old.

Speaker 2:
[21:14] Oh, no.

Speaker 1:
[21:15] This was especially noticeable because his siblings and particularly his sister were very charming and very popular. It was his sister who he was extremely jealous of. Now, in 1973, the family relocated to Denver along with his father's business. According to New York Magazine, they had oil portraits of the whole family hung over the mantelpiece in their home. Except John Jr, there was no portrait of him. He's literally Buster Bluth. He's seen but not heard. It's very sad.

Speaker 3:
[21:46] That is very sad.

Speaker 1:
[21:48] He spent his time really holed up in his room, listening to the Beatles and just drifting farther and farther away from reality.

Speaker 3:
[21:56] I was interested actually because we haven't covered this case. I was interested in what diagnosis, if any, he has. I don't know if you're going to talk about that.

Speaker 1:
[22:04] He has quite a few.

Speaker 3:
[22:05] He sounds like he has quite a few, but even from what you were describing, that passiveness, that disconnection from reality, that lack of enthusiasm for anything and delusional, magical thinking, I was like, oh, ding, ding, ding, yeah, no surprises, schizotypal personality disorder. And also one linked with a lot of would-be killers, a lot of killers, a lot of mass murderers. So very interesting.

Speaker 1:
[22:30] Yes, spoiler alert, he has quite an array of mental health issues which we are going to get into, which are, because this was the 60s and 70s, not treated appropriately. So that same year he enrolled in college at Texas Tech in Lubbock. According to John himself, this was around the time that he, quote, took the first steps out of his mind, which is such a spooky way to say that. By the way, when I read quotes from John, they are from the book that he wrote in 2025, which was actually about this whole experience. By April of that year, John had left college, moved to Hollywood to fulfill his destiny of becoming a famous singer-songwriter. He sat in his apartment day after day just waiting for someone to call and offer him a recording contract, because he thought that's how this is supposed to work. He said, quote, it would be nothing for Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, hell, even George Harrison, to show up at my door and say, John, we heard you play, and we were wowed. It doesn't work like that.

Speaker 4:
[23:30] I thought that way for a little while in fifth grade. You do have those fantasies of, I think when we're very young, someone will recognize this brilliance, this genius, and that is where, as you were mentioning, Suruthi, I think you need those touch points of the people in your life who provide the reality checks for you, and hopefully a loving way, as my mom did in third grade. You're probably not going to be in the NBA. But this is where-

Speaker 1:
[23:59] You are tall.

Speaker 4:
[24:00] Not for the NBA. I'm tall for women's college basketball. But I do think this is where community is just so- It always, that reinforcement of the need for community and with the modern manosphere, and Taxi Driver, the worship of self, the worship of the individual. These things are so, I think, detrimentally devastating to a lot of people.

Speaker 3:
[24:26] Absolutely. And you kind of would think, though, with his family being quite harsh towards him, and that's one of the roles that siblings can play, which is knock you down a peg or two when you think, oh, I'm going to be the next fucking Beatle solo. And they're like, no, you're not, you weird freak.

Speaker 1:
[24:45] They were very protective of him.

Speaker 3:
[24:47] Oh, really? I know. Okay. So they're not including him.

Speaker 1:
[24:49] I actually think his siblings-

Speaker 3:
[24:50] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[24:51] No, his dad is the one who was really hard on him. His mom was not at all, and I think his siblings were kind of always pretty concerned. His siblings in particular were like, something is wrong.

Speaker 3:
[25:02] Okay, so he's not being included in oil paintings, but they're kind of not really telling him that.

Speaker 4:
[25:07] My guess is that's the father.

Speaker 1:
[25:08] You know, like, that's John Hinckley Sr. Okay, okay, yeah, that would be my guess.

Speaker 3:
[25:13] Got it.

Speaker 1:
[25:14] So he wrote back to his mother in Denver and told her, United Artists is interested in signing me. And his mom is like, great. Oh, mom, get your shit together. You've heard him. You know that's not true, but whatever. So here's what was actually happening. Over the course of that summer in 1976, John Hinckley Jr. saw Taxi Driver 15 times in theaters. Now, I would like to note, I have mentioned on this podcast before that I saw Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, 13 times in theaters and I am beginning to rethink how many people I've told that fun fact to, given the story. I don't think I've ever gone to the cinema twice.

Speaker 3:
[25:55] No.

Speaker 4:
[25:56] I've seen some movies a couple of times in theaters, no more than two or three. Never.

Speaker 1:
[26:02] I should stop saying that. It's weirder than I realized. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[26:06] 13 is like-

Speaker 1:
[26:06] Well, he did 15.

Speaker 4:
[26:07] Okay. Yeah. Well, that's the line.

Speaker 1:
[26:09] It was Taxi Driver, 15 times Taxi Driver. I was really in love with Orlando Bloom, but only with his beautiful long hair as Legolas.

Speaker 4:
[26:18] We should mention, because of Lord of the Rings Running Time, you spent more hours in the theater watching that than he did watching-

Speaker 1:
[26:24] Than John Hinckley Jr. I'm aware. Yeah, I did the math as well. I didn't want to share that. But yeah. Okay. So John was so completely taken with the movie because he couldn't believe how much he identified with Travis Bickle. And I think that this is picking up on something that we've all mentioned. But like, and Suruthi, you mentioned the diagnosis here. We see it in Travis. Travis is very sort of disassociated. He has a lot of trouble interacting with the actual people around him. So it makes complete sense to me, having watched this, knowing this story, that he would identify so heavily with Travis Bickle. And he also started to really focus on Bickle's relationship with Iris in a way that I think I'm sure is not quite the way that Scorsese and Schrader intended. But here's what he had to say. He said, here you had a guy who had hardly anything going on, who had no issue spending time with the dregs of society, who'd been shit on by so many, but still had a certain compassion for someone else, someone he hardly knew. And I think he starts to kind of idolize Travis because of this in particular. At the end of that summer, he left Hollywood, moved back to Colorado and at 21 years old, he started keeping a diary, wearing an army fatigue jacket and boots, drinking peach brandy and developing a fascination with guns. Who does that sound like?

Speaker 4:
[27:47] Andrew Tate, Travis Bickle.

Speaker 1:
[27:49] Travis Bickle, yes, bingo. But he had not completely given up on becoming John Lennon, so he actually went back to Hollywood one more time to give it one more shot. And he kept sending out his recordings to companies hoping to be discovered, but spoiler alert, he was not. So he gave up again. And the mounting failures were really doing a number on his mental health. He was descending into deeper and deeper depression at this point. He returned to college, dropping in and out of classes, switching majors, and after seven years, he would still never get a degree. He wrote home to his parents during this time though, detailing a very serious relationship with a woman named Lynn Collins. He told them about the trips they'd taken together, the dates they'd gone on, how they'd met, breakups that they'd had. But Hannah and Suruthi, if there was one problem with this relationship, what do you think it might be?

Speaker 3:
[28:35] Might it be that Ms. Lynn doesn't exist?

Speaker 1:
[28:40] Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner. Lynn did not exist. That's right. And later when the FBI would reveal this fact to John's mother, Joanne, she was actually devastated because she felt like she had lost someone because in her mind, Lynn was the only person she'd ever known to have a relationship with her son.

Speaker 3:
[28:57] Oh, that's so sad. Oh, delusional.

Speaker 1:
[29:00] It's really sad.

Speaker 3:
[29:00] It's also delusional, but it's so sad. It's just like you would hope that parents have some extra level of insight into their children and are able to.

Speaker 1:
[29:11] Oh, God. I have a one-year-old daughter. I'm so scared.

Speaker 3:
[29:14] But then again, he didn't get it from nowhere. There's obviously some delusion.

Speaker 1:
[29:19] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[29:20] Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Like she made it.

Speaker 3:
[29:21] Hanging about in the Dean pool there.

Speaker 2:
[29:23] It's the way it is. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[29:25] It's just really, really very desperately sad, isn't it? But it's not something we haven't come across before. I'm sure that him lying to them is partly obviously to make himself feel better. I'm sure he was engaging in that fantasy and maybe even writing it down was providing some relief for him, some way through.

Speaker 1:
[29:45] Yeah, it's like fan fiction.

Speaker 3:
[29:46] Yeah, exactly. Fan fiction for yourself, for your own life. And I'm sure it was also probably a way to try and get the approval of his father. Look, dad, I'm a normal person. I found a woman who loves me and here's all the things that we're doing in our life. And yeah, it's just all very sad.

Speaker 1:
[30:04] I know. So in August of 1979, he purchased his first gun. In 1980, he added Devastator Bullets to this collection. Those get their name because the nose contains a dynamite cap that actually explodes inside the victim's body. All this time, he identified more and more with Travis Bickle. And as he slid deeper into this character, his obsession turned almost completely to Iris and then to Jodie Foster. Now in his 2025 retelling, he said that the film was not the first time he'd seen Jodie Foster and that, quote, Taxi Driver didn't get me interested in Jodie, but it reached out and yanked me into her world, or at least the world I saw on screen. It didn't just make me fall further for her, it showed me who I could become and why I should try so hard to do so. In June of 1980, John went to see Dr. Baruch Rosen complaining about pains in his forearm, ringing in his ears, heart palpitations, dizzy spells, and stomach pains. Now, Rosen did note that John had a stone-like appearance and didn't seem to respond to any kind of emotional stimuli. He prescribed him an antidepressant and a tranquilizer. He prescribed him Valium. Delicious. Thank you. The research on this is pretty mixed. But one of Hinckley's doctors later on in his trial would argue that Valium can impair self-control in patients with severe mental illness like John. There is some evidence to back this up. There's also plenty to the contrary, so I don't really know how much of a role this played in this, but worth mentioning. One month earlier though, in May of 1980, Jodie Foster shocked Hollywood by saying she was taking a break to attend college at Yale because yes, she's smart as shit. I would like to just take a quick little look-see at the cover of People Magazine announcing this information. Can either of you describe what you're seeing on screen right now?

Speaker 2:
[31:58] We're looking at Jodie Foster looking very angular and beautiful as usual, on the cover of People Magazine and it says, Foxy Jodie Foster stuns showbiz by putting her career on hold for college lucky Yale in brackets. The first thing that came into my head was it was probably the Sun. I cannot remember specifically which like gutter press tabloid it was here in the UK, but they had a countdown to when Emma Watson turned 16, which is the age of consent in the UK.

Speaker 4:
[32:31] They did the same thing with Natalie Portman here, and it was almost the exact same coverage when she went to Harvard. It was very much the same.

Speaker 1:
[32:39] Yeah, I remember that.

Speaker 4:
[32:40] She was receiving letters from men saying, I can't wait for you to turn 18, I can't wait for you to be your first new scene. This was when she was 15, coming off of the professional. Clearly, there's a recipe here that we continue to follow.

Speaker 2:
[32:55] Yeah, and Emma Watson went to Columbia, I think, or Brown.

Speaker 1:
[32:59] Brown, that's right, I remember that.

Speaker 2:
[33:02] Hidious, but it was ever thus.

Speaker 1:
[33:06] Well, John obviously clocked this immediately, and asked his parents to pay for a short writing course at Yale. It was $3,600. That seems like a great deal for a short writing course at Yale. Bargain. His parents agreed, and John promised that he would work his butt off at this writing course, just writing and writing in the course that any guesses what might be wrong with this course.

Speaker 2:
[33:30] I'm just not sure that Yale offer short courses.

Speaker 3:
[33:34] They might, but it's not for this one.

Speaker 2:
[33:36] That anyone can just walk into. I'm just not sure about that.

Speaker 1:
[33:40] Yeah, it was not real. But John headed to New Haven, Connecticut all the same. In September of 1980, Hinkley, armed with a fake name, walked into the registrar's office and said he was looking for his friend. She was a freshman, but he wasn't sure exactly where she was living. So they handed him the student directory to flip through, and he found exactly what he was looking for, Alicia Christian Foster, better known as Jodie. Right away, he starts dropping notes under her dorm room door. Here's one. Quote, Jodie, I love you six trillion times. Don't you maybe like me a little bit? You must admit it, I am different. It would make all the difference. John Hinkley Jr. On September 20th, he finally made contact. He called six times and then Jodie Foster actually picked up. On this first call, she's confused. She doesn't know who he is, even though he keeps insisting that she might know him, and proceeds to tell her what she was wearing that day. Eventually, she says she has to go, and she really isn't supposed to talk to people she doesn't know, and so she hangs up. A few days later, he manages to get her on the phone again, this time around midnight. Now, Hinckley recorded many of these calls with Foster, and I would like to play you this one. This is courtesy of CNN.

Speaker 5:
[34:57] Who is this? Oh, no. Who is this?

Speaker 3:
[35:03] Who is this?

Speaker 1:
[35:04] It's John.

Speaker 5:
[35:08] Oh, no. Not you. I can't.

Speaker 1:
[35:11] Look, I really can't touch you, okay?

Speaker 5:
[35:13] But do me a really big favor. You understand why I can't carry on these conversations with people. I don't know. You understand that it's dangerous, and it's just not fair, it's rude.

Speaker 1:
[35:25] All right?

Speaker 5:
[35:27] Well, I understand that, but it's the same thing, okay?

Speaker 1:
[35:32] So you just don't ever want to be called?

Speaker 5:
[35:34] No. It's really nice, pardon me.

Speaker 1:
[35:38] It's hard to hear, but what he says on that call is, oh, but I'm not dangerous. I think it's very interesting the way that she handles herself on these calls. She feels very mature at times, but then also clearly doesn't understand the gravity of what's happening at all, which makes sense. She's 18 years old. It's funny to her and I understand why that would be your reaction.

Speaker 2:
[36:05] I also just having to live in a world with no caller ID makes me want to jump off the bridge. Like she has to pick up the phone, she literally never knows who it is. I thinking that when-

Speaker 1:
[36:15] She has roommates.

Speaker 2:
[36:16] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[36:17] They could pick up. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[36:18] That's true. I think that was my overwhelming response to watching Travis call Betsy over and over again of every one in five phone calls is going to be him, but she doesn't know which one.

Speaker 1:
[36:30] Right. Yeah. There's no way you can screen calls the way that you could now. While hanging out in New Haven trying to talk to Jodie, Hinckley would also make trips into New York City, frequenting Times Square, particularly the X-rated theaters, a la Travis, and sinking deeper into his Travis Bickle fantasy. During this time, he did also start seeking out sex workers and sleeping with at least four of them, three of whom were teenagers, one of whom looked just like Jodie Foster. He reportedly tried to find that one again, but was unable to locate her. It was during this time that he began planning to kill President Jimmy Carter. He said, quote, I was going to kill the president. The individual name of the man was irrelevant. Maybe for the first time in my life, I could say that I had accomplished something. And it definitely was irrelevant given that the president he eventually shoots is not named Jimmy Carter. So he really didn't care. The whole idea revolved around getting Jodie Foster's attention. And he figured, well, surely, murdering the president would accomplish that. And he is correct. That would get a woman's attention, certainly.

Speaker 3:
[37:33] Yeah, this is definitely again, I mean, not unsurprising that we've come across this multiple times on a true crime podcast, but this idea of people whose lives aren't amounting to much or going in the direction that they feel that they should be. Obviously, there's multiple motives that can exist for a murder. But with something like this, which is an assassination, not something that's personally connected to you, this especially when it's like a public figure, this is such a classic motivation. It's like, I don't have enough eyes on me. I am owed more dues than this. The world isn't paying attention to me. In this case, it's very specifically around Jodie Foster, but I think it probably is also his dad and other people, and I'm going to do something that is so reality shifting. So it's going to force everybody to-

Speaker 1:
[38:23] They'll have to know my name.

Speaker 3:
[38:25] Also for himself, the psychology there of nothing I do makes a difference. I have no agency in life. Everything just happens to me. It's happening around me. If I go out, take a gun, and shoot the President of the United States, whoever that might be by the time I get this plan in action, then it will mean I have changed reality in some way, and therefore, I do really exist. Which for somebody with schizotypal personality, which is just one of the many disorders, as you said, he was diagnosed with, it's not unsurprising that feeling of not even existing, not even being in reality, and this being a way for him to almost breathe on like a window and be like, oh look, I do exist. Like you can see something tangible of yourself reflected back.

Speaker 1:
[39:07] Well, and he's doing what Travis couldn't pull off, right? Like we'll get into this a little bit more, but the way that he is perceiving Travis Bickle and Taxi Driver at this point is that he is Travis and they are reflecting his life back to him. It's like someone has done him a favor and they're putting his life up on the screen so he can see it both past and present and what to do next. And to your point, that is the only way I think he feels like he has an identity is that it's this identity up on the screen, that's me, which is really scary when you think about what Taxi Driver is. I think it's a very important movie. I think it's an excellent movie. I also totally understand how someone like John Hinckley Jr. watched it and felt that. Beginning in October of that year, he started taking quite a few trips. First to Dayton, Ohio, requesting a room with a view of the Convention Center, where Carter was giving a speech. Don't give somebody that room, hotel. If they're asking for a view of the place the president is, say no. Then to Lincoln, Nebraska, to try and meet with quote, one of the leading ideologicians, I don't know how to say that, one of the leaders of the American Nazi Party. Now, there is some debate about whether or not he actually joined the National Socialist Party, but he did confirm it himself in his book that he did. He explains it was literally because he figured, I'm white and Christian, it's a club where they have to accept me. It is one of the few places that I can automatically belong to.

Speaker 2:
[40:46] If the Nazis reject you, that is really depressing.

Speaker 1:
[40:49] Yeah, that's the last club I think you should try.

Speaker 2:
[40:53] That would probably be push me over the edge, to be honest.

Speaker 1:
[40:55] Well, they didn't reject him.

Speaker 2:
[40:58] Finally, some good news.

Speaker 1:
[40:59] Then he hopped on another flight to Nashville to catch up with Carter's campaign again, but there was a little hiccup because it turns out even in the 80s, you couldn't bring guns on the plane in your luggage. But it was still the 80s, so his guns were just confiscated and he was fined $62.50.

Speaker 3:
[41:15] That's a bargain.

Speaker 1:
[41:16] He was not charged with anything. For the rest of that month, he kept flying all over until he burned through his parents $3,600, and he was forced to go back home where he overdosed on antidepressants. His parents took him to a doctor who of course expressed grave concern about his mental health and they all made it their priority to get him the help that he needed. Just kidding, this doctor basically said, he's lazy, needs to get a job and you should probably cut him off financially. This doctor would later admit that he had misdiagnosed John. So John said, don't worry parents, I will find a job and I will fix everything. But on December 8th of 1980, Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon in front of his Manhattan apartment building and this was in many ways the final straw for Hinkley. He spiraled into an incredibly deep depression to the point where he contemplated suicide and then slowly but surely, his obsession with John Lennon's murder pivoted back to Jodie Foster. And now she was all he could think about. He recorded this monologue on December 31st. Quote, my obsession is Jodie Foster. I've got to find her and talk to her some way in person or something. That's all I want her to know is that I love her. I don't want to hurt her. I think I'd rather just see her not on Earth than being with other guys. I wouldn't want to stay here on Earth without her.

Speaker 3:
[42:36] It's really similar to how he thinks he's going to get discovered when he's younger. I mean, he is at least taking some, not that I'm giving him credit or saying this was a good thing, but he's taking some proactive actions here where he's like, I'm actually going to find her. But it's like he thinks I just need to be in front of her and then she'll see, she'll get it.

Speaker 1:
[42:54] Then she'll love me. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[42:56] She'll get it.

Speaker 1:
[42:57] By March of 1981, John Hinckley Sr., or Jack, told John he was not welcome in their home any longer because he had not found a job. Now, John's siblings were extremely concerned about his mental health, and they expressed that he should be institutionalized. But his parents did not agree. They thought, maybe he's depending too much on the Valium, and they tried to get him into a drug treatment center in Arizona. But that doctor said, none of the above, friends. John is A-okay. Why?

Speaker 3:
[43:28] The fact that it wasn't even, I get that the siblings are like, okay, there's something wrong with him. We should get him diagnosed. Maybe the parents were somewhat reluctant. Maybe the shame of a few crazy mental disorders thrown in is not something they're particularly keen on with him. And maybe they're in denial. But why? If they've got to the point that they've got him in front of a doctor, this doctor is like, no, he's fine. There's nothing to worry about here.

Speaker 1:
[43:53] That's the thing. And that's where people are blaming the parents, like how could you not see this? Well, they have a literal doctor telling them that he's fine. And also to their credit, later on, they become very active in the world of mental health and recognizing it earlier. And so I think they are aware that this was not handled appropriately. So on March 25th, 1981, John Hinkley Jr. flew back to Los Angeles, California, and stayed for one day before hopping on a cross-country bus to Washington DC. So why fly west to eventually go east? Investigators believe it was to retrieve a gun. After all, he learned his lesson. You can't put those on planes, but you can certainly get them on a bus.

Speaker 2:
[44:38] You shouldn't be able to, though.

Speaker 1:
[44:41] You should not.

Speaker 2:
[44:42] Seems like something that should not be allowed. Anyway.

Speaker 1:
[44:45] I agree.

Speaker 2:
[44:46] What do I know? I'm just a dumb Brit. We don't have guns.

Speaker 4:
[44:49] I was going to say, come on.

Speaker 1:
[44:50] Get out of here.

Speaker 4:
[44:51] There's a reason your lives are terrible over there and you don't have to live in the fear of being shot all the time.

Speaker 2:
[44:56] We just stab each other instead. Don't worry.

Speaker 4:
[44:58] Yeah. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is an even worse guy with a gun and so that's what we follow here in the United States.

Speaker 1:
[45:06] That's right. It's fun over here. We feel good and are doing great. Well, on the morning of March 30th, John ate breakfast at McDonald's and picked up a copy of The Washington Star which listed President Reagan's schedule for the day, brand new President Ronald Reagan. Maybe don't list a schedule, just a thought. He went back to his hotel room and he wrote a letter to Jodie Foster after explaining to her what he was going to do, that he might die in the process, just like the letter Travis Bickle writes, and most menacingly that he knows what a topic of conversation he had been in her dormitory at Yale, very heavily implying that he'd been hanging around physically which he had. He wrote this, quote, Jodie.

Speaker 3:
[45:48] 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'm going ahead with this attempt now is because I cannot wait any longer to impress you. I've got to do something now to make you understand, in no uncertain terms, that I'm 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'm asking you to please look into your heart and at least give me the chance with this historical deed to gain your respect and love. I love you forever, John Hinckley.

Speaker 1:
[46:36] A very good blind reading.

Speaker 3:
[46:38] Happy to help.

Speaker 1:
[46:40] He's writing this an hour before he's about to leave. She's in New Haven. She's not going to get this note, so I don't know how she's supposed to step in and stop this.

Speaker 3:
[46:52] No, it's never about that.

Speaker 1:
[46:54] This is just complete disconnection from reality at this point.

Speaker 3:
[46:57] Yeah, total disconnection, or it's never about that, and it's just about maybe he's thinking like, I don't want everyone to just think I said this later. I need Jodie to know I was thinking it before I did it.

Speaker 1:
[47:08] Right. It's like the theater of it.

Speaker 3:
[47:09] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[47:10] Well, he's in Assassins. He's in a musical. John Hinckley Jr. is a character in Assassins, the Sondheim show.

Speaker 1:
[47:15] That's true.

Speaker 2:
[47:16] That has been the back of my head for the last 10 minutes, and it only just cropped to the front of my brain. So I had to look it up whether he was, he is a character in Assassins.

Speaker 1:
[47:27] Okay. So he hopped in a cab to the Washington Hilton where brand new president Ronald Reagan was speaking to 5,000 members of the AFL-CIO, which is the largest Federation of Labor Unions in the US. At 2:27 PM, as Reagan walked from the hotel to his limousine, John Hinckley Jr. stepped forward out of the crowd of media and onlookers and fired six shots from his Rome R6-14 revolver, and he was using the Devastator bullets. You can actually see footage of what happened on YouTube, the immediate aftermath, but Hinckley was tackled by the crowd so fast. It's actually pretty impressive how many people jumped on this guy as soon as he fired, and Secret Service officers jumped in immediately to handcuff him. But the bullets had struck four people. Press Secretary James Brady was hit in the left temple. Police Officer Thomas De La Hanty was hit in the neck. Secret Service Agent Timothy McCarthy was hit in the stomach. The sixth and final bullet ricocheted off the side of the presidential limousine and struck Ronald Reagan in the left chest. All four were rushed to the hospital. Reagan underwent surgery immediately after suffering from a broken rib, punctured lung and pretty substantial internal bleeding. He did make a full recovery as did Special Agent Timothy McCarthy. Now, Thomas Delahanty suffered major injuries from the bullet which had lodged in his spine, damaging his arm and shoulder permanently and forcing him into early retirement. And unfortunately for press secretary James Brady, his life was also changed forever. The bullet had struck his brain. TV commentators declared him dead following the shooting because of the extent of his injuries, but he did actually pull through. He was, however, left partially paralyzed with permanently slurred speech. Back in Colorado on March 30th, Joanne Hinckley received a call from a reporter who was the first to inform her that her son had shot the president. She assumed it was a joke.

Speaker 3:
[49:29] I like that she doesn't believe that, but she believes everything that her son had been telling her until this point.

Speaker 1:
[49:34] I know, Joanne.

Speaker 3:
[49:36] Oh dear.

Speaker 4:
[49:37] But I mean, I do think because it's the president, right? If it's like John hurt someone, I think she probably would say, oh no, I believe that. I feel like it's the inaccessibility of the- it's like, how would he even get close enough? It just doesn't compute.

Speaker 3:
[49:55] He's so passive. I can't believe he-

Speaker 1:
[49:57] Kind of.

Speaker 3:
[49:57] I can't believe he shot the president.

Speaker 4:
[49:59] The logistics involved, right?

Speaker 1:
[50:00] He's so lazy.

Speaker 3:
[50:02] That's far too much work and he's so busy with his writing course.

Speaker 1:
[50:05] Oh no, and his girlfriend. So as for Jodie Foster, she'd just finished the first weekend of her big play and was enjoying a hard-earned break on Monday before getting ready for the second weekend of shows. Now, as she crossed the quad that afternoon, someone yelled at her that Reagan had been shot. Foster detailed in an Esquire article entitled Why Me? What Happened Next? She and her friends went about their day, obviously concerned about the news, but not really paying too much attention to it. They're college kids. They're freshmen in college. Until she opened the door to her dorm that night and was greeted with one word from her roommate, John. Her roommate told her she was pretty sure John Hinkley Jr, Jodie Foster's biggest fan, was the one who had shot Reagan. Jodie didn't believe her. Then her phone rang. It was the dean informing her that the FBI was in the office waiting to speak with her. She vacillated between laughing and crying. The following weekend, she insisted in going on stage for the remaining performances of her play because she felt like she had to prove that she was strong and that this did not impact her and that this wouldn't stop her. In retrospect, I think she realized she probably should not have done this. During her performances, she noticed a bearded man sitting in the same seat both nights and something about him didn't quite feel right. After one of the shows, she received a death threat, ended up being a prank. But a few days after the play closed, she received a very real death threat, this time under the door of her dorm. The next morning, her security team told her the man who had left the death threat had been apprehended. His last name was Richardson and he had a beard. He'd been arrested on his way to Washington DC, carrying a loaded gun with the intention of finishing what John Hinkley Jr. Had started, killing the president. He too was obsessed with Jodie, but had decided she was too pretty to kill after seeing her on stage in her play. Oh, wow. Jodie said, quote, I started perceiving death in the most mundane but distressing events. Being photographed felt like being shot. It still does. I thought everyone was looking at me in crowds, perhaps they were. Every sick letter I received, I made sure to read, to laugh at, to read again. People were punishing me because I was there. They were sending bullets, pulling triggers, exercising the simple law of cause and effect. They were hurting me intentionally without any physical contact. They were manifesting a need to wound and I just happened to be the victim. Jodie Foster would never perform on stage again. And she has acknowledged that this experience is the very understandable reason why. As for Hinkley, while he awaited trial, he underwent extensive psychiatric evaluation. And the lead expert of his defense team, Dr. William Carpenter, determined that Hinkley suffered not from a lack of motivation to do better at life. This is the earliest diagnosis, but he said it was schizophrenia. His defense team, backed by many experts, argued that even though, yes, he seems to intellectually understand that murdering the president was wrong, he did not understand it emotionally, nor did he understand the human ramifications of it. Now, somewhere quick to point out, Hinkley hadn't been claiming to hear voices or any of the common symptoms of schizophrenia that a lay person might be familiar with. But again, his defense made the point, this is actually an indicator that he's not faking the mental illness because he didn't try to check all of the boxes. People suffering from schizophrenia can also struggle to define their own identity, potentially why he had come to believe that he and Travis Bickel were one and the same. Now, there's a lot more we could get into here, but TLDR is that he was absolutely suffering from severe mental illness at the time of the assassination attempt. But the question became, was he legally insane because they entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity? Maybe you two could talk a little bit here about how rare this plea is and if it ever even works.

Speaker 2:
[53:51] It's a dangerous game. Very rarely is someone actually found not guilty by a reason of insanity. I think the reality of it is, if you murder someone and you get sent to prison for it, you will have a date when that ends. Obviously, it can go on and on based on behavior. If you are committed to a psychiatric hospital, there is no end date. I don't think being found not guilty, being found criminally insane is actually better. Because it's really hard to get out of prison, it is almost impossible to get out of a psych unit.

Speaker 3:
[54:32] Yeah. It's a very, very rare, as Hannah said, successful defense that you're going to be able to mount in a court of law. I think people misunderstand it sometimes. I think they think that it means that, was this person completely out of their mind when they did it? That is a part of it, but it isn't as simple as that. Because the definitions of right, wrong doesn't have a legal definition to that. There isn't a legal weight to that. What they're actually looking for is, what was the reason that you were doing it? There's a really good example of a case that we've covered, for example, that we've really dug into this. The case of Andrea Yates who murdered her children. Now, Andrea Yates wasn't well when she did what she did. But there are lots of different definitions of what not well can mean. But the difference with Andrea Yates was that she knew what she was doing was wrong. Because as soon as she did it, she actually called the police. So it wasn't that she didn't know what she was doing was wrong. But she felt that by the way in which her brain was working, the mental illness she was suffering from, the delusion she was suffering from, she still believed that even though legally what she did was wrong, morally what she was doing was right. Because she believed that by killing her children, she was sending them to heaven instead of allowing them to become sinners, in which case they would then go on to burn in eternity, burn in hell for all of eternity. So it is very, very complicated, and I think it isn't as black and white as people think it is, and I think that's why it's so hard to prove. It's also very hard to prove if people are malingering or not, if they're pretending to have a mental illness when they don't. Yeah, I think it's very rare that you even see it brought up for these very reasons. Very hard to prove, and then if you do prove it, as Hannah said, not necessarily the best outcome anyway.

Speaker 4:
[56:20] Isn't there a case right now going on in the UK with that, it's an American, Henry McGowan. He was just found not guilty. He killed his 66-year-old father, John McGowan. It was by reason of insanity. That was-

Speaker 3:
[56:34] Wow. Oh no, I haven't come across that one, no.

Speaker 1:
[56:37] Looks like a wealthy kid from New York.

Speaker 4:
[56:39] Really, really tragic story. The New York Times did a profile on it and shows the complication of dealing with a child that has mental health issues and whatnot, and how difficult it is to reach that child, this man was just trying to get his son back, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3:
[56:56] It's very hard.

Speaker 1:
[56:57] It makes me think of Rob Reiner.

Speaker 3:
[56:58] Yeah, absolutely, a case that we are definitely keeping our eyes on, because I think this is it. People sometimes think that just as long as the condition of mental illness is achieved, that that means that that is enough for a not guilty by reason of insanity. That's also not true. That isn't a sufficient condition. The condition has to be then that the mental illness somehow impaired their understanding or ability to understand what they were doing. And it's just so hard, so hard. And sometimes, like we said, is it even worth it? Because it could lead to a far worse situation for you if you don't want to be indefinitely incarcerated.

Speaker 1:
[57:33] Well, I would love to hear you all cover this case on RedHanded at some point, because it actually marks a pretty major change in the way not guilty by reason of insanity works. So prior to and including this trial, if you pled not guilty by reason of insanity, the burden of proof was on the prosecution to prove that the defendant was sane, not on the defense to prove insanity. We'll get into why that changed momentarily. So Hinkley agreed to cooperate with his defense team on this plea on one condition. He insisted that Jodie Foster should testify, and he wanted to be present in the room when she did. And his lawyers made it happen in a closed testimony that would be videotaped and played later at trial. Only the lawyers, judge and Hinkley were in the room when Foster took the stand. And when he found out that he'd gotten his wish, he told his parents, mom, dad, I'll be right there in the same room. Wow. But her testimony disappointed him. She didn't look at him or address him directly at any point. And when she finished, he threw a pen at her and screamed, I'll get you, Foster. Following her deposition, he wrote a poem. Here is an excerpt, quote, She is scared to death about me. She knew I had bad intentions in my eyes. She couldn't come to me, so I raped her and killed her and shot myself. According to the staff at St. Elizabeth's Hospital where he was being housed, he seemed to feel like he'd achieved his mission in terms of the assassination attempt because he was famous now. But there was one part of his plan that was still missing, and that was Jodie Foster. When asked during evaluations if he was dangerous to her, he said, quote, not now. If released, I will go the other way. But in one or two years, if things go on the same, no response from her, then I'll kill her. The prosecution argued that Hinkley wasn't insane at all. He just had behavioral issues and your run-of-the-mill obsession with a starlet. After all, he'd booked all those trips and flights. He'd concealed a handgun. He had known when the president was going to be outside the hotel. He was capable of extensive planning and premeditation. Besides, his parents had thought he was fine. They were shocked by the shooting. How could they not have known if he had really been suffering from such severe mental illness as the defense says? To which I say, you took him to the worst doctor in the world, in the world. Also, no one wants to believe there's something wrong with their kid. If you have somebody telling you that they're fine, you're going to listen to them. But the burden of proof was on the prosecution to prove that Hinckley was sane at the time of the shooting. On June 21st, 1982, after seven weeks of testimony and three to four, sources differ, days of deliberation by the jury, John Hinckley Jr. was found not guilty by reason of insanity and the backlash was immediate. Some people claimed that it was due to the jury being predominantly black and that this verdict had been turned in. I guess the argument was that because black people don't like Reagan and therefore they must have let his assassin off the hook. It's not true. It's because the burden was on the prosecution to prove that he was sane at the time of the shooting and they couldn't do it. Senator Arlen Spector said, Let's flip the burden of proof in insanity cases. Instead of the prosecution having to prove a defendant was sane, the defendant would have to now prove that they were insane. Reagan unsurprisingly backed this in 1984, the Insanity Defense Reform Act was passed. Defendants now had to prove that they had a severe mental illness that left them, as you said, unable to understand that what they were doing was wrong, in their definition of right and wrong, and that they could no longer argue that they just couldn't control themselves. Within years of the Hinckley verdict, two-thirds of states had made it harder to claim insanity. Eight states introduced a middle ground verdict of guilty but mentally ill, and some states actually abolished the Insanity Defense completely. After the acquittal, St. Elizabeth's, the hospital where he was receiving treatment, diagnosed him with the following conditions, and this is where we get the official diagnosis that you referenced earlier, Suruthi. So the main primary diagnosis is Schizotypal Personality Disorder. You really hit the nail on the head as to what this is. If anyone is curious because I was not super familiar with this, it is similar to schizophrenia. It is not identical to it. It does not include the same type of psychosis present in schizophrenia. He also has borderline personality disorder.

Speaker 2:
[61:55] It's very rare for men to get diagnosed with BPD. Usually, they just chuck it at women that they don't really know what to do with. But if you look up the, it's vastly more likely that you'll be diagnosed with BPD if you're a woman.

Speaker 1:
[62:11] If you're a woman.

Speaker 3:
[62:12] Yeah. Because they tend to diagnose men who truly have BPD with having antisocial personality disorder because of the way in which it presents itself. Typically, in women, the BPD can present as sort of histrionic behavior, overly emotional, which is like they're more primed to see that link to BPD. But with the men, when they see the violence and the anger presenting itself, they tend to misdiagnose them with antisocial personality disorder. But I'm not surprised he's got BPD and I'm not surprised that that's the connection being made with stalking because it's that fear of rejection. Even though he doesn't ever really seem to see that, he seems to think like Jodie Foster will love me. It's just a matter of time. But it's interesting. It is interesting.

Speaker 2:
[62:54] There's a really famous book about BPD, which has been debunked now. It's not particularly sensitive wording, but it's called, I Hate You, Please Don't Leave Me. I think for people who have literally no information about BPD, that is quite a good stepping stone into understanding what it is adjacent to, if not definitely.

Speaker 1:
[63:23] Yeah. I mean, that tracks here. He's saying, if you don't respond to me, I will eliminate you basically.

Speaker 2:
[63:31] Totally.

Speaker 1:
[63:32] He also was diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, recurrent major depression, and schizoid personality disorder as well. The hospital noted though, that all of these diagnoses taken together were still not enough to encompass the severity of his obsession with Jodie Foster. As of 1982, he thought every single day about killing her. Now, through time and extensive treatment, the hospital reported many years later that Hinkley's mental illness was in full sustained remission. In 2016, he was released to live with his mother in Williamsburg, Virginia under the following conditions. No contact with past or present presidents or their relatives' homes or graves. No contact with Jodie Foster or any other entertainers. No watching of violent movies, television or online digital materials. No traveling knowingly to places where current or former presidents may be present. And he may play his guitar in private, but in the interest of containing his narcissism, he may not play gigs.

Speaker 2:
[64:35] That last one, I wish I could apply to several people I know. I feel quite sad for him. It's that bad.

Speaker 1:
[64:44] I know. In September of 2021, he was approved for unconditional release. And in 2023, he released an album, followed by the book in 2025. In 2024, he went on TV following the Trump assassination attempt and urged people to forgo violence and instead quote, give peace a chance.

Speaker 2:
[65:04] But has he appeared as himself in assassins? That's the real.

Speaker 1:
[65:08] I'm sure he's waiting for the call, Hannah.

Speaker 2:
[65:10] I'll ring him myself.

Speaker 1:
[65:11] I think he would. Just in January of this year, he told TMZ that he believed he was the reason Jodie Foster was a lesbian. It was simply all due to the trauma that he had inflicted on her. Alert, alert, narcissism alert, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Speaker 3:
[65:27] Yeah. Again, classic narcissistic behavior like we're talking about before, like this feeling of I don't actually mean anything. I don't have an impact on the world, and here is a way I had a major impact on this woman. She became a lesbian because of me. Yeah, it tracks. It makes sense.

Speaker 1:
[65:44] I would like to end though with former Press Secretary James Brady. Now, for decades after the shooting, Brady and his wife Sarah fought endlessly for tougher gun control laws, particularly waiting periods for guns. During a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1989, he was asked if he thought a waiting period would be too much of an inconvenience for gun buyers. And he said, I need help getting out of bed, help taking a shower, help getting dressed, and damn it, I need help going to the bathroom. I guess I'm paying for their convenience. In 1993, Congress passed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which was the largest change in federal firearms regulation in years. The law required background checks and, critically, a five-day waiting period to buy handguns, both of which might have stopped John Hinkley Jr or at least slowed him down. Unfortunately, in 1998, a new law passed that dropped the federal waiting period in favor of an instant background check, which is what we have today. Only 13 states currently implement a waiting period. In August of 2014, James Brady died at age 73 due to complications from his injuries. His death was ruled a homicide, but the district attorney declined to charge Hinkley in the murder. That is the story of John Hinkley Jr and his obsession with Jodie Foster.

Speaker 3:
[67:04] Wow. Thank you. That was really interesting. I knew so little about that, actually. I knew so little about that whole story. Yeah, I'm going to go watch Taxi Driver now, very late in the game.

Speaker 1:
[67:19] It's a weird experience when you know this story. Honestly, it's more upsetting.

Speaker 3:
[67:24] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[67:24] I can't get over how easy it is to get a gun. That has really thrown me because it's so not in our existence. We just don't even consider it.

Speaker 1:
[67:40] It depends on where you are. California is one of the states that does have, I could be wrong, I believe it's a 10-day waiting period in California. But today, only 13 states and the District of Columbia implement a waiting period that applies to some sort of firearm. Thirteen states. Wild.

Speaker 4:
[67:59] What went right, Lizzie? Just kidding. It's a segment we do on a normal episode, it's not these ones.

Speaker 1:
[68:06] I have, this is maybe bad to say, I have very mixed feelings about the fact that he was released. Obviously, these are mental health professionals that were treating him. They're saying that he's in remission. That's good. Obviously, I'm very happy for him that that's the case. But I don't know. Some of his comments, some of the stuff that he has released since then, it doesn't make me feel great about it.

Speaker 2:
[68:39] I think it's tricky because in order to be comfortable with release, you have to really believe that he has consistent access to the help and support that he needs. And in order to stop him from being a danger to others and himself, and I just, I'm never convinced, I don't think I'm convinced enough that he has that access, which isn't his fault, but I don't think it's there.

Speaker 1:
[69:12] I don't know enough to say whether he does or doesn't have enough support to be honest, but I should note that I think both of his parents have since passed away, although I believe his brother did move in order to be closer to John.

Speaker 2:
[69:24] Wow. I hope he's all right. I feel for him.

Speaker 1:
[69:27] I do too. I mean, this is a case where, just based on the fact that he continued to say every day, like, yes, I am obsessed with Jodie Foster, I think, about killing her, this was not faked. This was not someone who understood fully the actual human repercussions of what he was doing. Anyway, thanks for joining us on this bummer of a journey.

Speaker 3:
[69:50] No, that was really interesting.

Speaker 2:
[69:53] We're in the business of bummer, he knows, we love it.

Speaker 3:
[69:54] Yeah. Thank you for telling us the story. It was really interesting.

Speaker 1:
[69:58] Of course. Thank you so much for being here. If you've not listened to RedHanded, you absolutely must. It is one of my all-time favorite podcasts. I love the work that you do, the amount of research you do, the writing is so good and you just handle it all so beautifully. I'm truly a fan, listeners, if you have not checked out their show, you absolutely must. I think if you like our show, you would really like RedHanded. You are such excellent storytellers that it just always sucks me in.

Speaker 3:
[70:27] Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[70:28] I love your True Crime Adjacent episodes too. Your shorthand episodes are honestly some of my favorites.

Speaker 3:
[70:33] Thank you very much. Thank you, Chris. Thank you both for having us. We had a really great time. It was nice to listen and just react, which we don't get to do very often. So it was very compelling and fantastic storytelling. That was really good. I feel like I've learned a lot. I'm going to go look into this case and watch that movie.

Speaker 1:
[70:51] Let us know what you think of Taxi Driver. I will. Watch the whole thing because it's a tough one to wrap your head around. Listeners, come back on Monday for a main feed episode on Taxi Driver itself. All right. Well, thank you both so much for being here and I'll be listening to you.

Speaker 6:
[71:12] To support What Went Wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, subscribe on Patreon, Apple or Spotify for $5 a month. Patreon subscriptions also come with an ad-free RSS feed. You can also visit our website, whatwentwrongpod.com for more info. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Laura Woods.