Hinckley-Bundy Correspondence

In the pdf file provided at this link: https://archive.org/details/john-hinckley-ted-bundy-correspondence

...I'm sharing Ted Bundy's 1986 handwritten correspondence with failed presidential assassin John Hinckley Jr.. Hinckley was the first to write to Ted Bundy on death row, and the two established a correspondence which spanned about four months.

Two of Bundy's reply letters were discovered when Hinckley's room at St. Elizabeth's Psychiatric Hospital, where he was confined after being found not guilty by reason of insanity, was searched. The letters created a media sensation in April 1987, when federal prosecutors used them to protest Hinckley's request for a holiday furlough from the hospital, saying that they were evidence of Hinckley's obsession with Bundy.

During the subsequent investigation, Bundy claimed to have destroyed his letters from Hinckley. He hadn't destroyed them however: he first gave the letters to a friend to hold for him, fearing that the Secret Service would want to get a hold of them (and he was right about the interest the Secret Service had in getting those letters); and later he gave them to his attorneys.

The Secret Service confiscated the letters in Hinckley's possession when his relationship with Bundy was discovered. Hinckley's furlough request was denied as a result.

Many people presumed the Hinckley-Bundy letters would be unrecoverable, with Secret Service either having seized them, or Bundy discarding the ones he'd received. However, I found the letters Hinckley and Bundy wrote each other at the Special Collections Research Center at the Gelman Library (which is part of The George Washington University). The letters are included in the records of Roger M. Adelman, who served as the senior prosecutor for the United States attorney's office during the trial of John W. Hinckley, Jr. The records are related to this trial and Hinckley's attempted assassination of United States President Ronald Reagan.

Included in this pdf file is also a 1987 letter Bundy attempted to smuggle out to Hinckley's parents, by tucking it in a package of materials he mailed to John Tanner that he marked "CONFIDENTIAL - LEGAL MAIL", which meant it shouldn't be opened by the prison censors (however, the prison knew that John Tannner, though a lawyer, wasn't Bundy's lawyer, and considered Bundy's attempt an abuse of the legal mail privilege).

My transcripts of the entire handwritten correspondence have also been uploaded on archive.org by me separately, in a Word file, and can be accessed at this link: https://archive.org/details/hinckley-bundy-1986-correspondence-and-teds-1987-letter-to-hinckleys-parents

 

Maria Şerban