Just the 'Fax, man

Hinckley would later explain that he thought he could impress the child star by slaying Reagan. But even before he gained national notoriety, considering that Foster's Taxi Driver character was a child prostitute, Hinckley's inquiry could have been interpreted as molester talk. Lee didn't take it that way. "He just seemed like a normal person asking questions," she says. "It wasn't that we were afraid of him or thought he was creepy. Believe me, there were way creepier people. There was one guy who lived at the motel full-time who never wanted the maids to clean his room and always carried a paper bag with him. We never found out what was in the bag." In a youthful attempt to torment him, Lee and her playmates "used to stick naked Barbie dolls on his door."

Before Hinckley could receive such treatment, he split without paying his bill; according to Lee, his father later covered the outstanding balance (reportedly $55.40). The next time she saw him was on television at a friend's house immediately after the shooting. "I'm like, 'Wait a minute. That guy lives at our motel,'" Lee remembers. She returned home to discover that cops and the media already had the Golden Hours under siege.

The police investigation determined that Hinckley had purchased most of his meals across the street at a McDonald's (#418), differentiated from other restaurants in the hamburger chain by a row of seats made to look like Western saddles. Newspaper articles from the period suggest he may also have headed to 935 East Colfax for a March 11 screening of Taxi Driver at the Ogden Theatre, a movie house that eventually became a concert venue. Promoter Doug Kauffman, whose company, Nobody in Particular Presents, purchased the Ogden a decade later, was told by someone who claims to have been at the same show that Hinckley did indeed catch the flick. His source -- former Denver resident Kirby McMillan Jr., aka Mojo Nixon, whose hit songs include "Elvis Is Everywhere" and "Debbie Gibson is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child" -- isn't exactly unimpeachable. Even so, Kauffman sounds a cautious, albeit wry note. "The current ownership of the Ogden Theatre takes no responsibility for Mr. Hinckley's actions," he deadpans.

The Lees were guiltless, too, but Kathy's parents and her oldest sister, Diane, still had to fly to Washington, D.C., for a pre-trial hearing. By the time they returned, things had calmed down at the motel. Lee doesn't recall any particular demand for Room 30, the unit Hinckley rented, but she does say weird things seemed to happen there up until her parents sold the motel in 1986. On one occasion (she's not sure if it was before Hinckley's stay or after), she and a maid discovered that a forty-something man had committed suicide in the bathtub, leaving behind only a scattering of cocaine and a spoon.

Paul Kim, who bought the motel over two years ago, hasn't had anyone specifically ask for the Hinckley suite and says he couldn't satisfy such a request even if someone offered to pay more than the going rate of $35 per night "because I don't know which one it is." Indeed, there have been plenty of changes at the Golden Hours since the early '80s. The pool where Lee once played is gone, and all of the room numbers are different, running from "101" through "128," with a "131" thrown in for good measure.

From Lee's description, though, it seems clear that Room 120, on the motel's second floor, used to be Room 30. Inside it, a maid named Rachel (she keeps her last name to herself) is tidying up with a vengeance; she tosses a pair of old phone books out the open door to the pavement below, where they land with a thwap! After saying she's clueless about Hinckley's stay at the Golden Hours, she heads to another room while giving casual permission to visit the one she left behind -- and a lovely space it is. Green and blue carpeting with occasional stains and tears. Twin beds with floral covers that sort of match the thick, multi-colored curtains over the adjacent window, but not really. A gold lamp with a dusty beige shade. A phone with a piece of duct tape on the cord. A light-red armchair covered in smudges. And nothing at all on the walls -- not even a plaque commemorating the room's one confirmed celebrity occupant.

The McDonald's doesn't sport any references to Hinckley, either -- and, even worse, the distinctive saddle seats are gone. But at least the store manager, Denese Klocker, is up to speed on the Golden Hours-Hinckley connection, having heard Lee talk about it on the Fox during a live remote at nearby Lakewood Fordland in December. Days later, the ruling allowing Hinckley's unsupervised trips from the hospital was announced, and Klocker found it "kind of scary," she says. "This is his old hunting ground. What if he were to walk in here? I wouldn't even know him."

Neither would anyone else in the neighborhood. John Hinckley's gone, and he's mostly forgotten. -- Michael Roberts