Loser of a One-Man Race

How John Hinckley, on trial for shooting Reagan, saw himself

I remain the far side of crazy

I remain the mortal enemy of man

The poetic self-indictment was among the assorted scribblings that FBI agents found in a hotel room rented by John W. Hinckley Jr., 26, the day before his attempted assassination of President Reagan on March 30, 1981. The agents also seized a paperback book called The Fox Is Crazy Too, about a master criminal who used an insanity defense to escape conviction. "Was he crazy or just pretending?" asked a blurb on the...

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