"Something happened to that boy in the last six years"
It cannot be said fairly that John Warnock Hinckley Jr., 25, was destined for infamy.
He is accused of a shooting that, perhaps even to him, is a surprise; the first openly extraordinary act of his life. This son of Sunbelt affluence —blond, blue-eyed, with the fleshy good looks of a country club lay-about—had never been outwardly quirky or unpleasant. His unremarkability confounds the desire for tidy, comforting explanations.
Says a family friend: "There but for the grace of God goes anyone's kid." Beverly McBeath...