🎧 Listen: The Thread Behind a Deadly Presidential Plot

Episode 3: The Greatest
Love Offering in the History of the World

In 1981, on his way to look for the actress Jodi Foster at Yale, where he had been stalking her, John Hinckley Jr. stopped off in Washington, D.C., and ended up shooting U.S. President Ronald Reagan in front of the Hilton Hotel. Hinckley claimed he was trying to impress Foster, with whom he was infatuated. He later described the incident in a letter to The New York Times as “the greatest love offering in the history of the world. ... I am Romeo and she is Juliet.
At trial, Hinckley successfully used the insanity defense — and the verdict caused an uproar. Learn how the fallout affected all modern-day insanity pleas, and reverberates today.”