Several shootings have been associated with Salinger's novel, including Robert John Bardo's murder of Rebecca Schaeffer and John Hinckley Jr.'s assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. Additionally, after fatally shooting John Lennon, Mark David Chapman was arrested with a copy of the book that he had purchased that same day, inside of which he had written: "To Holden Caulfield, From Holden Caulfield, This is my statement".[51][52]
Commenting on the fascination of Hinckley and Chapman, Harvey Solomon-Brady wrote:
- Compared to books lauded by other killers – George Orwell's 1984 by John F. Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, C.S. Lewis's meditations on Christianity by Gianni Versace's murderer Andrew Cunanan and Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent by Unabomber Ted Kaczynski – The "Catcher in the Rye" stands out in its devastating ability to influence without explicit instruction. [53]
