A Drifter Who Stalked Success

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By 1970 John's father had amassed capital of $120,000 and set up his own oil exploration business. Hinckley Oil, now known as Vanderbilt Energy Corp., affirmed the man's entrepreneurial mettle. And Son Scott, an engineering major at Vanderbilt University, would soon join his dad's wildcat enterprise.

In the fall of 1970, John Jr. began classes at Highland Park High School, where his sister was a senior. That year Diane Hinckley apparently burst forth as a campus star; she performed in a school operetta, she was head cheerleader, homecoming queen candidate, vice president of the choir, member of both the student council and the A-students' National Honor Society. There are at least ten pictures of her in the yearbook, which cited her as one of the class's eight "favorites." She was a formidable sibling presence for Sophomore John.

During his junior year John was a member of the civic affairs club, and as a senior he was in the Rodeo Club, which organized barbecues, square dances and junkets to rodeos. In his yearbook John's roster of activities was scanty but unembarrassing, just as his senior-picture hair length seemed perfectly median, neither long nor short. Bill Lierman, the Rodeo Club's sponsor, recalled nothing untoward. Says Lierman: "He wasn't a rowdy. He got along fine with all the kids." And a sampling of schoolmates' reminiscences shows a consensus. David Wildman, the basketball captain, calls him "a middle-of-the-roader."

Only Sally Bentley, 26, disputes the hazy image of genial blandness. "He was well known because his sister was well known," says the woman. "John was mousy. His sister was friendly and cute and alive. I thought he was sour about that. John never did anything outstanding or memorable."

Lubbock, dry and bleak, is 318 miles from Dallas on the flat cap rock of west Texas. The population is 180,000, and 22,000 are Texas Tech students. John Hinckley Jr. was one of them, a business major, as of September 1973. He never finished, but over the next seven years Hinckley attended classes more than half the time. By 1977 he had dropped business in favor of liberal arts and earned at least a B average—good enough to be on the dean's list. But once away from home, he made not even a token effort to fashion a social life. Says a Texas Tech spokesman:-"We can't find a single university-recognized activity he participated in."

In 1975, John's parents moved to Evergreen, Colo., a Ponderosa town some 25 miles outside Denver. It is that city's choicest mountain suburb: a place of steep, piney cul-de-sacs and well-to-do placidity. On some of his periodic sabbaticals from Texas Tech, John Jr. alighted at the new family home, and while there he often loitered at the local high school, presumably seeking companionship.

Not a single pal or girlfriend has turned up from those seven sketchy years at Texas Tech. His few acquaintances recall Hinckley as an expressionless blank.