John Hinckley jnr, the man who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981, was released from a mental hospital yesterday despite objections from Reagan's family and his soon-to-be neighbours.
Hinckley successfully pleaded insanity after shooting Reagan in the chest and wounding three others outside the Washington Hilton hotel, in an act inspired by his obsession with the actress Jodie Foster. Reagan's press secretary, James Brady, was permanently disabled after being shot in the head.
Hinckley was sent to St Elizabeth's psychiatric hospital in the south-eastern corner of Washington where he would remain for 35 years as a patient, and a subject of public fascination.
A judge ruled last month that Hinckley, now 61, no longer posed a threat to the public or to himself, setting the course for his release yesterday, and drawing the ire of one of Reagan's daughters. "Forgiving someone in your heart doesn't mean that you let them loose in Virginia to pursue whatever dark agendas they may still hold dear," Patti Davis, the third of Reagan's four surviving children, wrote.
Hinckley is to relocate from one secluded locale to another, moving in with his elderly mother to Kingsmill, a gated community in Williamsburg, Virginia. Some 9km from the stagecoaches and the tricorne hatted-reenactors of Colonial Williamsburg, Hinckley will settle into a home on the 13th hole of a golf course. His room has been decorated with paintings of houses and cats that he created while at St Elizabeth's, and furnished with a king size bed and television.
