Would-Be Reagan Assassin John Hinckley's Colorado Connections

On June 1, U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman set the official date for lifting the last restrictions on John Hinckley, who tried and failed to assassinate President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981. As of June 15, Hinckley, 67, will be free to promote his fledgling music career by touring beyond his current home base in Virginia, and he's already reportedly booked a show in Brooklyn for July 8.

Based on performance videos he's posted on his YouTube channel over the past year or so (see one below), Hinckley seems ultra-unlikely to become the next big pop sensation. But if he decides to launch a national junket anyhow, a logical stop would be metro Denver, where his parents lived — and where he spent two weeks at a Lakewood motel shortly before heading to Washington, D.C., for his date with destiny. Hinckley opened fire on Reagan as he left an appearance at a Hilton Hotel, seriously wounding the president and his press secretary, future gun-control advocate James Brady, during a misbegotten attempt to impress Jodie Foster, who'd co-starred in Taxi Driver, a film that includes an attempt to kill a presidential candidate.

A New York Times article published days after Hinckley was taken into custody notes that his father, John W. Hinckley, was the president and chairman of Colorado-based Vanderbilt Energy Corporation, an oil and gas firm said to have generated annual revenues in excess of $4 million. And while he mainly grew up in Texas, Hinckley spent extended stretches in the Mile High City. During the fall of 1980, the Times noted, he "applied to the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News for 'any writing job'" — an offer that was accepted by neither newspaper. In addition, the Times stated that he worked as a bartender at an unnamed Lakewood supper club.

Hinckley lived in the Denver area during the early months of 1981, and that March, he took up residence at the Golden Hours Motel, at 11080 West Colfax in Lakewood — a stay that received renewed attention locally more than two decades later.

In December 2003, a federal judge ruled that Hinckley, who'd spent most of the twenty years since he'd been found not guilty by reason of insanity at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in D.C., could take part in unsupervised meetings with his parents, who'd moved to the area. The ensuing controversy prompted Kathy Lee, a popular on-air personality for 103.5/The Fox (where she still stars to this day), to reveal that her parents once owned the Golden Hours, and she remembered interacting with Hinckley as a kid. The story is told in "Just the ’Fax, Man," Westword's 2004 slice-of-life look at Colfax.

Lee remembered Hinckley as rather nondescript: He favored brown pants, brown jackets, brown button-down shirts and a semi-conservative hairstyle. Still, he made an impression on her even before he drew a bead on the chief executive. She and her sister Linda, two years her senior, loved to jump rope or play on the stairs at the motel, "and he would hang out where we were playing, buy everyone sodas and sit there and watch us, ask us questions," she said. "I remember him asking about Jodie Foster. He told us, 'She's my favorite movie star. What do you think about her?'"

Given that Foster's character in Taxi Driver was a child prostitute, Hinckley's inquiry could have been interpreted as molester talk. But Lee didn't take it that way. "He just seemed like a normal person asking questions," she recalled. "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 Hinckley 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 remembered. 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, which was 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 claimed 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 included "Elvis Is Everywhere" and "Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child" — wasn't exactly unimpeachable. Even so, Kauffman sounded a cautious, albeit wry note when asked about it in 2004. "The current ownership of the Ogden Theatre takes no responsibility for Mr. Hinckley's actions," he deadpanned.

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 didn't recall any particular demand for Room 30, the unit Hinckley rented, but she did say weird things seemed to happen there up until her parents sold the motel in 1986. On one occasion (she wasn't 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.

By 2004, the numbers on the rooms had been changed, and Room 30, on the motel's second floor, was designated Room 120; there was no reference to the room's one confirmed celebrity occupant. The McDonald's didn't sport any references to Hinckley, either — and the distinctive saddle seats were gone. But the store manager, Denese Klocker, was 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. She found the idea of Hinckley's unsupervised trips from the hospital "kind of scary. This is his old hunting ground. What if he were to walk in here? I wouldn't even know him."

There was no need to worry. Hinckley caused no trouble beyond the hospital walls, and over time, he was allowed more freedom. Finally, in July 2016, he was formally released from the hospital and allowed to move in with his mother, then age ninety and living in Williamsburg, Virginia. However, officials retained the right to monitor his email and electronic devices, and he couldn't travel more than 75 miles away from home unless he gave authorities a heads-up at least three days in advance.

Five years later, Hinckley's mother died; his father had passed in 2008. But the Associated Press confirms that Hinckley remained in the area, living in a place of his own and picking up a few dollars here and there by selling items at a nearby antiques mall.

Thanks to Judge Friedman, who determined that he's no longer a danger to himself or anyone else, Hinckley will now be able to text without oversight and go anywhere he wants without notifying the law in advance.

These days, Hinckley's main weapon is a guitar. Here's a clip showing what he can do with it.