John Hinckley Left The Mental Hospital Seven Months Ago

Can a Man Who Tried to Murder a President Be Rehabilitated?

- Lisa Miller

AT 2:30 ON SATURDAY afternoon, September 10, a hired SUV pulled up to the curb of a low-slung brick-and-wood house in suburban Virginia and let a passenger out. The man, who wore a tan baseball cap and a black T-shirt, did not glance at the paparazzi lenses trained on him but walked straight inside. He is far older now than in the notorious photos, but in many ways John Hinckley looks the same: blond, pudgy, nondescript. On June 21, 1982, a jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity for shooting and attempting to kill President Ronald Reagan in a display of romantic devotion to the actress Jodie Foster, who was then 19. Now, after 34 years in residence at St. Elizabeths Hospital, a public psychiatric facility in Washington, D.C., John Hinckley is home.

Hinckley is 61. He lives with his 91-year-old mother, Jo Ann, in a gated community in Williamsburg, Virginia. He sometimes suffers from constipation, allergies, and arthritis, according to court documents. He has long taken daily doses of Zoloft, for depression. He takes a prophylactic dose of Risperdal, a drug for psychosis, under his mother’s supervision.