The Greyhound bus ticket cost about a hundred and seventeen dollars. It bought twenty five year old John Hinckley Junior a trip from California to Washington, d C. In March of nineteen eighty one. The bus passed through Las Vegas, Cheyenne, Chicago, Cleveland, and other cities during the four day journey. Hinckley spent much of the trip slouched in his bus seat, watching the scenery go by outside his window. The failed songwriter also passed the time on the bus reading The Catcher
in the Rhye by J. D. Sovinger. The famous novel had been in the news a lot at the time because of its connection to a grisly murder. John Lennon is dead. The former Beatle, who was forty, was returning home from a recording studio with his wife, Yoko Ono, when he was murdered. Police have a suspect in custody whom they describe only as a local screwball. His attacker made no attempt to flee. Police say he is marked David Chapman, twenty five, who came to New York a
week ago. As we saw in season one of The Thread, police found Lennon's killer Mark David Chapman reading The Catcher in the Rye just minutes after shooting the rock star. John Hinckley had a lot in common with Chapman, and much more than just his love of the Salinger novel. Hinckley was also a pudgy, twenty five year old loner, one who battled depression for years. He too found himself
drawn towards darker fantasies to stalking his favorite celebrity. He also felt a need to leave his mark upon the world, and he too would pull the trigger when the time came. John Hinckley's Greyhound bus fair proved to be more than just his passage across the country. It was his ticket to a date with destiny. You see, John Hinckley was on his way to shoot the President of the United States. He just didn't know it yet. Why Lord, why must I learn to testify when all alone to bees just
the catcher and the right. History contains many sliding doors, fateful moments that seem unrelated but that are actually connected. Every season on the Thread we take a six degrees of separation approach to sharing some of history's greatest interconnected stories. We explore how these stories hinge on the past and influence the future. In this special bonus episode, We're Gonna
pull on a meta thread. We'll explore some of the surprising connections between this past season of The Thread on the insanity defense and accused killers like John Hinckley, and our first season of The Thread about the murder of John Lennon and some of the events that led to it. Lennon's death made its own ways in history, and one of those was in the life of John Hinckley Jr. The man who took Greyhound bus across the country and
tried to kill President Ronald Reagan. But this tale really starts with the book Hinckley was reading on that bus ride. Why Lord, Why must I learn to testify? When all alone wna Be is just the Catcher and the Rock. The author J. D. Salinger almost didn't live long enough to write The Catcher in the Rye and the novels beloved protagonist, the teenage rebel Holden Caulfield, could easily have been relegated to the pages of a single story of The New Yorker, but fate had a far more powerful
ending in store Salinger's life. Like those of so many Americans was up ended in December ninety yesterday desembus some nineteen forty one, a date which will live in infamy. Salinger was drafted after Pearl Harbor and assigned to the fourth Infantry Division. In January four he left for England, where he joined tens of thousands of American soldiers preparing for the Allied invasion of Europe. When D Day came, Sergeant Salinger crowded into a landing craft with thirty men,
ladies and gentlemen. We may be approaching a fateful hour, all night long bulletness of Parian from Berlin, claiming that D Day is here, claiming that the invasion of Western Europe has begun. Salinger landed with the second Wave on Utah Beach just after six thirty in the morning on June six. Salinger wrote that when he stormed the beach of Normandy on D Day, he had with him on his person six chapters of The Catcher on the Rye. This is Kin Slowinski, author of J. D. Salinger, A
life no one else had copies. In other words, if something were to happen to Salinger, Holden would die. Salinger lived through D Day and he carried these six chapters throughout the war as if, I think, as if there were sort of talisman, as if he derive strength from them. The Catcher in the Rye would also survive the war, but its survival and publication meant that others would die,
most famously John Lennon and nearly Donald Reagan too. Okay, flash forward thirty five years to the streets of New York City. Salinger's great novel has found its way into the hands of the person that news reports will soon refer to as the local screw ball. On December, Mark David Chapman was a very confused person. He was literally living inside of a paperback novel J D. Salingers a catching a Rye. This is Mark David Chapman speaking to
CNN's Larry King. He's talking about himself in the third person. He was vacillating between suicide, between catching the first taxi home, between killing uh as you said an icon. In his mind, Chapman believed that he had become a living version of the novel's protagonist. He had come to New York the scene of the novel, in part because he felt like he was destined to become Holden Caulfield. Chapman was also
tired of being a nobody. He wanted to do something that would make himself famous and draw attention to his favorite novel. Chapman got a hotel room and then uh I left the hotel room, bought a copy of The Catcher in the Rye, signed it to Holding Caufield from Holding Caufield, and wrote underneath that this is my statement.
But Chapman was still vacillating. He was looking for a sign, a sign that he was meant to be doing what he was in New York to do, that he was meant to go down in history as the killer of John Lennon. Then he found it on page on the book read it was Monday and all and pretty near Christmas, and all the stores were open. Chapman couldn't believe it. It was Monday, near Christmas and he was in New York with new hope. Chapman pursued his mission, with The
Catcher in the Rye in hand. He waited for Lenin outside the musician's apartment building near Central Park. Later, Chapman fired five hollow point bullets and his childhood hero. Then he returned to his book. This is Lennen biographer Tim Riley. The report sorry that he starts reading this novel as the chaos erupted around him. So the police cars arrived. People point out, this is the gunman right here. He's standing there reading this novel. It's bizarre. Years later, Chapman
described the scene to see an End's Larry King. It was like the film strip broke. I took the Catch in the Ryo out of my pocket. I paced, I tried to read it. I I just couldn't wait, Larry until those police got there. I was just devastated. John Hinkle, Jr. Was born just nineteen days after Mark David Chapman in the year nineteen fifty. He was born in Ardmore, Oklahoma, just one miles north of Chapman's birthplace in Fort Worth, Texas. He was also a loner who kept to himself. He
too had a vivid fantasy life. Hinkley was infatuated with the teenage actress Jodie Foster. He her long love letters. He called her on the phone, conversations he tape recorded, who is there? Hell? Oh, no, Luke, I really. Hinckley became obsessed with winning the love of Jodie Foster, and that quest took on a new urgency when Hinkley's favorite musician, John Lennon, was gunned down on New York sidewalk in December, an unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in
New York City. John Lennon shot twice and looked back. Rushed the Roseveld Hospital, dead on arrival. Three weeks after Lennon died, John Hinckley spent New Year's Eve alone. He was extremely depressed. He drank peach brandy and ranted into a tape recorder. The audio from those tapes was never made public, but some of the statements Hinkley made on them were in them. He drew a direct line between
John Lennon's death in his own situation. I just want to say goodbye to the old year, which was nothing. Total misery, total death. John Lennon is dead. The world is over. Forget it. Anything that I might do in one would be solely for Jodie Foster's sake. One of my idols was murdered, and now Jody is the only one left. In another recording, Hinckley played the guitar and saying Lennon's hit song Oh Yoko, substituting the name Jody
for Yoko. His love of Jodie Foster, along with John Lennon's untimely death, was about to lead Hinckley to attempt his own historic murder. Almost four months later, after his epic greyhound bus ride, John Hinckley checked into a hotel in Washington, d C. In his suitcase, he carried his copy of The Catcher in the Rye as well as a biography of John Lennon. He had started to fantasize about something new, a way to draw attention to himself
and demonstrate to Foster how much he loved her. Hinkley had read in the newspaper that President Reagan was giving a speech across town that day. So that morning, March thirtieth, Hinckley stood in his Washington hotel room. He loaded his gun and stashed it in his jacket pocket. He placed a John Lennon penn into another pocket. He then left the hotel. He, like Mark David Chapman, was about to
leave his mark on history. There were shots fired to justice President Reagan E. Merchanty from the Washington Hilton Hotel Today after delivering a speech, Ronald Reagan had a life threatening gunshot wound, but he survived. After Reagan's near death and John Lennon's murder, The Catcher in the Ride kept turning up at crime scenes. In nine, Robert John Bardo had a copy of it on him when he murdered
the actress Rebecca Schaefer, so they container I did. Throughout the eighties, Kinselwinski again become the symbol of now just only disaffected youth, which to what it had been for us before that, but it's crazy disaffected youth. Mark David Chapman was his seck individual. Chapman's defense lawyers were confident he would be found not guilty by reason of insanity, but Chapman insisted on pleading guilty. He claimed he killed Lennon to promote the reading of The Catcher in the Rye.
When the judge asked if he had anything to say at his sentencing hearing in Chapman stood and read a passage from the book. He was sentenced to twenty years to life, and he remains incarcerated in a maximum security prison in New York State. John Hinckley Jr. Did plead insanity at his trial, which lasted seven weeks. The jury's verdict in that case shocked many across the country. John W. Hinkley Jr. Has been found not guilty by reason of
insanity on all thirteen counts. Hinckley was sentenced to be confined to a psychiatric hospital in Washington, d c. Where he would remain until he was released in twenty sixteen. The real legacy of Hinckley's trial, however, came in the changes to the law that followed, including efforts in many states to narrow or abolish insanity plea laws. The U. S. Supreme Court will hear challenge to one of those laws this October. And such is the way that history so
often works. One thing leads to another like a series of domino slowly falling. J. D. Salinger survives the war he finishes writing The Catcher in the Rye. The novel finds its way into the hands of a disturbed young man named Mark David Chapman. Chapman murders his hero John Lennon, an equally disturbed fan of Lenin's, decides to leave his
own mark on the world. Five months later, John Hinckley Jr. Nearly kills the President of the United States and the public outrage over his acquittal on grounds of insanity, changes how decades of criminal defendants will be treated, and the dominoes keep falling and will continue to fall. The Thread is produced by Robert Coulos, Sophia Perpetua and me Sean braswell. Chris Hoff engineered our show. This episode features the song
Catcher in the Rye by Sammy Walker. To learn more about The Thread, visit aussi dot com, Slash the thread all one word, and make sure to subscribe to the Thread on Apple podcasts, follow us on I Heart Radio or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Check us out at ausi dot com or on Twitter and Facebook. If you love surprising, engaging stories from history, look no further than the flashback section of ausi dot com. That's o z y dot com.