John Warnock Hinckley Jr. – Things You Already Should Know

John Hinckley will be released from a mental hospital August 5, 2016.  You know that he was sentenced to be held in that hospital as a result of someone attempting to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981.  You also know that Hinckley’s obsession with Jodie Foster was a basis for finding him not guilty by reason of insanity.  If you read Wikipedia, you also know that Hinckley is featured as a central character of Stephen Sonheim’s musical Assassins.  Additionally, you could find out that American new wave band Devo recorded a song “I Desire”…which brought the brought the band controversy because the lyrics were taken directly from a poem written by Hinckley.

Other things you should know – if you read beyond the headlines and Wikipedia.  The father, John Warnock Hinckley, Sr., was president of World Vision United States.  The gunman’s father was also a multi-millionaire Texas oilman and President and Chairman of the independent oil and gas exploration firm Vanderbilt Energy Corporation.  What was rarely if ever reported was that Hinckley Sr. was a major financial contributor to the failed 1980 Presidential campaign of the Vice President, George H.W. Bush. Hinckley’s older brother, Scott, had a dinner date scheduled at the home of Neil Bush, the Vice President’s son, the day after the assassination attempt on Reagan. A March 31, 1981 news headline by Associated Press confirmed this: Bush Son Had Dinner Plans With Hinckley Brother Before Shooting.  George H.W. Bush’s other son, George W. Bush, also admitted to journalists that he may have had dealings with Scott Hinckley who was Vice-President of Vanderbilt Energy, but could not remember either way.

Cui bono.