Hinckley fits classic profile of assassins

Press, 19 May 1981, Page 24

Hinckley fits classic profile of assassins

By

PETER PRINGLE

. A WashingtonPsychiatrists have been astonished to find how closely John Hinckley, aged 25, accused of shooting President Ronald Reagan, conforms to their stereotype of an assassin. . The psychiatrists, specialists in violent behaviour, say potential assassins are aged between 20 and 30, usually have an elder brother, have failed in attempts to get a regular job or to have a love relationship, have a history of mental instability, but have retained the level of competency needed to plan and execute a presidential assassination. Hinckley fits the profile precisely. These basic characteristics emerge from a study, the National Commission . on Causes and Prevention of Violence, set up by the then President Lyndon Johnson after the murder of Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968. The full report, delivered to the United States Secret Service, the agency charged with the protection of public figures,

has neverbedh made "public? but Dr Lawrence Freeman, a psychiatrist at the University of Chicago, says there is a "remarkable consistency’” between . , the A commission’s profile of an assassin and the one of Hinckley how emerging in the American press. Historically, the ' most striking factor is that Hinckley has an elder, successful brother, who is a vice-presi-dent in his father’s oil company. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 by John Wilkes Booth, the younger brother of a man hailed as the leading actorof his time, Edwin Booth. Other assassins have been younger children — including Charles 'Guiteau, who killed President Garfield in 1881; Leon Czolgosz, who shot President McKinley; Lee Harvey Oswald, who killed President Kennedy; Sirhan Sirhan, who killed Robert Kennedy during his White House bid in 1968; and Arthur Bremer, who shot Governor George Wallace of Alabama. “Their family position encourages them to rebel

- against tradition and indulge in rivalry against thejr, elder brother,” says another Chi--cago psychiatrist, Dr Irving Harris, who has made a study of the problem. “When the younger brothers are. emotionally stable, like Ralph Nader, they tend to fight, against “bigness,” or, like Billy Carter, to steal some of the limelight from their elder brothers. When they are emotionally unstable, they may decide to attack presidents.” Dr Freeman warns against putting too much emphasis on the' elder brother syndrome: the number of examples are so small. Better indicators of potential violence are probably a person’s failure to settle down arid get a regular job, or failure to have a successful love relationship. . ■' . • Hinckley has been described as a drifter who failed to complete his college, education, and who for some time had hadd a one-sided love affair with the actress, Jodie Foster. He wrote her several letters expressing his

love, but she threw them away with the rest of her unsolicited fan mail. On . March 31 he set out to impress Miss Foster, aged • 18, with what he termed “a .7 historic act.” In the United States, as Dr Freeman points out, the President is the focus of power — "a highly visible celebrity and object of envy, all things the assassin is not.” “Assassination is often the product of a single mentally disturbed person who is alienated from society, who feels like a hero, is wanted by no-one and cannot get a job,” says Dr Sigmond Lebensohn. “We used to lock such people up, but our current legal attitude permits, them all to wander about.” Hinckley is no exception. He was a one-time member of the National Socialist Party of America, a neo-Nazi' group, but left, or was thrown out, because it was “not militant enough.”— Copyright, O.F.N.S.