Authorities Seek to Block Hinckley Release for Easter

John W. Hinckley Jr., who tried to assassinate President Reagan to impress actress Jodie Foster, later wrote a letter asking another person to kill Foster or to hijack an airplane to gain his release, court documents filed Saturday say.

Hinckley’s letter was filed in U.S. District Court by federal prosecutors seeking to block his request for an unescorted Easter visit with his family away from St. Elizabeths Hospital, the mental institution where he is being held.

Hinckley was found innocent by reason of insanity of attempting to kill Reagan. The President, Press Secretary James S. Brady, a Secret Service agent and a Washington police officer were wounded in the March 30, 1981, attack.

Recipient Not Identified

Prosecutors did not identify the recipient of Hinckley’s letter and did not specify when it was sent, beyond saying that it was after his admission to St. Elizabeths in 1982 and before the government stopped monitoring his mail in 1984.

Hinckley refers to the recipient as “Penny” in his handwritten, two-page letter.

In 1984, the FBI arrested Penny Lynn Bailey, who was a 19-year-old junior college student in Chicago, on charges of threatening the life of her former high school teacher, Janet Swanson. The FBI said Bailey and Hinckley wrote to each other in September, 1982, and that she had offered to kill Foster for him. Copies of their letters had not been released.

“Penny, I’m putting all my trust in you and I know you won’t let me down,” Hinckley wrote in his letter filed in court Saturday. “You are one in a million. Our dream will be realized very, very soon.”

He Sought Pistol

In the letter, Hinckley outlined three courses of action: Mail him a .38-caliber pistol so he could escape; take the bus to New Haven, Conn., to kill Foster, who was then a student at Yale University; hijack an airplane from Chicago to Washington’s National Airport, where she was to demand that Hinckley and Foster be brought to the airport.

Of the three options, only the one that involved killing Foster did not appear intended to result in Hinckley’s escape.

“You would have to take the bus to New Haven, Connecticut where Jodie is at school, and kill her yourself,” Hinckley wrote.