Crimes of the Century (2013–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - The Murder of John Lennon - full transcript
One was world-renowned... Among the
greatest musicians of the 20th century.
John Lennon had charisma.
He was just special.
John Lennon
was my favorite Beatle.
The other was a lonely kid from Georgia with no
particular talents and no real direction in life.
Everyone said
he was a nice person.
He wanted to bring attention
to himself.
They were as different as night and day...
Two men on intense personal journeys
that converged
in a single shocking act.
I took five steps and fired...
Five shots.
I literally held John Lennon's
heart in my hand.
It was an unthinkable crime
that left millions in mourning.
"The Murder of John Lennon."
Next.
It's a chilly night
at around 10:45 P.M.
Police respond to a report
of a shooting at the Dakota,
an exclusive apartment building
on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
When we drove up to the Dakota, there was a
man standing in the middle of the street,
pointing into the archway saying,
"that's the man doing the shooting."
We get out of the car.
We approached the archway
on each side of it.
Looked in and saw a man
with his hands up.
Five shots have been fired.
All but one found their target.
So, I grabbed the guy
around the neck.
The doorman, Jose, said, "he's the one.
He's the only one.
He shot John Lennon."
I was totally in shock.
I threw him up against the wall,
and I said, "you did what?"
Former Beatle John Lennon has been shot with four
hollow-point .38-caliber bullets at close range.
Police officers rush Lennon to nearby
Roosevelt Hospital, but it's too late.
Shortly after 11:00 P.M.,
the emergency-room doctor
pronounces John Lennon dead.
Former Beatle John Lennon was gunned down in
front of his exclusive Manhattan apartment.
Four bullets ending the life of a folk hero...
co-op building where he was gunned down
as he entered the gates... The news
ripped through the air in shock waves.
John Lennon shot and killed in the Dakota
apartment building... It was really shocking.
40 years old,
John Lennon of the Beatles.
How could he be dead?
How could this have happened?
The city was in shock... not
just people of my generation
that grew up listening to
their music in the '60s.
I think just about everybody
felt that on so many levels
it was wrong.
It was terrible.
I mean, I think just the way so many
people that didn't even know John felt,
and it just hit home with me much
more because he befriended me,
and he didn't
have to befriend me.
In New York, CNN investigative reporter
Laura Didio has come up with some new facts
about John Lennon's
accused killer.
The killer was identified as Mark David Chapman,
a 25-year-old fan and drifter from Hawaii.
Nothing in his background set off
or would have cause to set off
any alarm bells whatsoever
on Chapman.
Chapman apparently was well-liked
by most of the people he knew.
The most common description we heard was open,
friendly, a hard worker with a ready smile.
I don't think I've ever seen anybody get mad
at him or say anything bad against him.
I couldn't believe it was Mark.
Just didn't seem to be
the type of person.
Normal, regular.
Everybody here liked him.
He was always very peaceful.
And he was just
a fine young man.
I couldn't have asked
for anything better.
Most of those can't believe he's the same
person charged with killing John Lennon.
Everybody that we interviewed... and there were
a lot... every one said he was a nice person,
not capable of doing
something like this.
It was a tragic conclusion
to an extraordinary life.
John Lennon, co-founder of
the legendary Beatles, was gone.
During the 1960s, the Beatles were
the biggest rock group in the world.
Their influence and popularity
were unparalleled.
I think the Beatles spoke to young people in
the '60s in a way that no other band did.
And they influenced people in so many
different ways, not just musically,
but socially, politically,
culturally.
They were the touchstone for everything
that was going on in the '60s.
Among the millions of American
kids who worshiped the Beatles
was a shy, reclusive teenager
named Mark David Chapman.
He was an especially fervent fan
of John Lennon.
During their heyday, the Beatles were open about
their experiences with psychedelic drugs.
Like his idols,
Chapman begins experimenting.
The defendant described that there
was periods of time in his life
when he was more of the hippie
nature, tried experimental drugs,
as many people during
that period of time did.
But in 1971, Chapman becomes
a born-again Christian.
He quits drugs and rejects Rock 'N' Roll,
the Beatles, and John Lennon in particular.
Well, I became a Christian
when I was 16, Larry,
and that lasted about a year
of genuine walking with him.
Through my life off and on, I have struggled
with different things, as we all do,
and at those times,
I would turn to the Lord.
Chapman's newfound faith comes into conflict
with his feelings about his former idol.
According to friends, Chapman was notably
bothered by Lennon's songs "God,"
in which he states,
"I don't believe in Jesus,"
and his hit "Imagine," with the lyrics, "imagine
there's no countries and no religion, too."
Chapman even wrote his own words to the song with
the altered lyric "imagine John Lennon dead."
The defendant claimed
that he was offended
by the statement
that John Lennon had made
that the Beatles had become
more popular than Jesus Christ.
It was an off-the-cuff comment made during an
interview in 1966, but it caused a lasting furor.
A number of people in the Bible Belt,
young and old, took this comment to be,
"oh, you're bigger than Jesus, you're
bigger than God, and this is blasphemy,
and how dare you say
something like this."
He was totally misquoted.
What he meant to say was that more
people paid attention to the Beatles
than paid attention to Jesus, and he was
only making an observation about that,
not putting any context to it or not saying
that was a good thing or a bad thing.
The Beatles weather the storm.
But in 1970, the band breaks up, and Lennon embarks
on a solo career with his new wife, Yoko Ono.
A year later, the Lennons
move to New York City
and take up residence
at the fabled Dakota apartments.
The Dakota's gothic façade had been
featured in the film "Rosemary's Baby."
It was home to some of the world's most
famous artists, actors, and musicians.
I think he felt it was time for a
change, and I think they viewed America
as being a breath of fresh air
for them at that time.
Little did they know
what trouble awaits them.
In New York, John and Yoko adopted a
high profile, politically and musically.
Perhaps inevitably their antiwar activism drew the
attention and ire of the Nixon Administration.
In the early '70s,
the United States government
began a campaign
against John Lennon
to silence him.
They were really concerned that
he would influence young people
who are going to be voting for the
first time in the 1972 election,
and they didn't want
that to happen.
They were conducting
surveillance operations.
They were monitoring him.
Cars would follow him around.
They did the whole
intelligence enchilada.
After Nixon was driven from office by the
Watergate scandal, the pressure on Lennon let up,
and by 1975, he had withdrawn
from the public eye.
He was not in hiding.
He was not a recluse.
What he was doing was devoting
full-time to raising his son, Sean.
That was his priority.
During those days, Lennon and Ono became
familiar figures in their neighborhood.
He liked the informality
of New York.
He liked the architecture.
He liked the ability to walk.
You would hear stories about how John would
be walking with his family down the street,
and people could walk up to him.
Matter of fact, if someone asked about
what it's like living in Manhattan,
he said, "people are cool.
They don't bug you."
He loved New York because
people didn't bother him.
In New York, they respected
his privacy and liked him.
They'd say, "hey, John,
how's things going,"
and they'd shake his hand.
"Hey, John, I love your music" or
something, but they didn't pester him.
In November 1980, Lennon emerged from his
retirement with the release of "Double Fantasy,"
an album he recorded with Ono.
Lennon had just turned 40.
To many, it seemed that John Lennon
had entered a promising new phase.
But this image of a happy,
contented husband and father
would only serve to enrage a young man in
Hawaii, a once-devoted fan, Mark David Chapman.
He was in the house, sitting naked in front of his
stereo, listening to really loud Beatles music
and invoking Satan to help him have
the power to kill John Lennon.
It was shortly before 11:00 Monday night...
John Lennon was gunned down
in front of his exclusive
Manhattan apartment.
The suspect was identified
as Mark David Chapman.
His assailant
waited with a .38 caliber.
On the night he shot John Lennon, Mark
David Chapman was just 25 years old.
It had been 25 years
of almost painful anonymity.
There was nothing that we learned
from the extensive interviews
and investigation of the defendant's background
that suggested that he was much different
than any other
25-year-old person.
At least on the surface.
Chapman grew up in Georgia,
the older of two children
in what seemed like
a typical suburban family.
The defendant claimed in interviews with
psychiatrists that he had a rough childhood
and had a less-than-ideal relationship with his
father, but there is nothing in his background
of such an extreme or extraordinary nature that
would suggest some kind of latent insanity
or mental disease or defect
caused by some childhood trauma.
After high school, Chapman begins
to drift through a series of jobs
and half-hearted attempts
at college.
In 1977, he flies to Hawaii,
where he plans to kill himself.
He reportedly tries twice
but fails.
Chapman stays in Hawaii.
Over the next three years, he is
hospitalized at least once, gets married,
takes a job in a print shop, then quits, and
goes to work as an unarmed security guard
at a luxury high-rise condo.
He's obsessed with J.D.
Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye,"
the classic novel
of adolescent angst.
Chapman identifies closely with the
book's protagonist, Holden Caulfield,
who rails against
the phonies he encounters.
Chapman would later claim that by the
summer of 1980, he was coming unhinged.
J.D. Salinger, who has not been heard
from in years... he's reclusive...
wrote "Catcher in the Rye,"
a book read by millions,
admired by millions.
I wonder what he must be thinking
as he, if he is, watching this?
In 1992, Larry King interviewed Mark Chapman
via a remote feed from Attica prison.
Mark, why are you
blaming a book?
I'm not blaming a book.
I blame myself
for crawling inside of the book.
And I certainly want to say that J.D.
Salinger and the "Catcher in the Rye"
didn't cause me
to kill John Lennon.
In fact,
I wrote to J.D. Salinger.
I got his box number from someone,
and I apologized to him for this.
In October 1980, Chapman turns his resentment
against phonies towards John Lennon,
when he reads an article
about the upcoming release
of "Double Fantasy."
This thing started, Larry,
when I got angry at Lennon.
I found a book in the library that
showed him on the roof of the Dakota,
and you're familiar
with the Dakota.
It's a very nice,
sumptuous building.
And crawling in on myself, I'm
angry at seeing him on the Dakota,
and I say to myself,
"that phony, that bastard."
I got that mad.
I took the book home to my wife,
and I said, "look. He's a phony."
This is his calendar from
September '79 to December of '80.
And it leads you all the way through his
manic months before Lennon's death.
Writer Jim Gaines spent hundreds
of hours between 1984 and 1985
interviewing Mark Chapman.
And you can see it becomes crazier and crazier
with crossings outs and things to do.
Chapman told Gaines that for years
his mind had been like a war zone,
occupied by opposing forces he described as
"the big people" and "the little people."
He had a whole population of little people
living in his head to whom he gave instructions,
who had meetings about
what his activities should be.
I mean, it was extreme.
Seething with anger, Chapman buys a five-shot
.38 caliber Charter Arms Special revolver.
The gun used to kill John Lennon was traced
by New York authorities to J&S Enterprises,
a gun shop a block away from
the Honolulu police department.
A sales receipt shows the gun was purchased
by Mark Chapman on October 27th of this year.
It shows Chapman paid $197
in cash for the gun.
Just before buying the gun, Chapman
had quit his job as a security guard.
When he signed out for the last time,
he inscribed the name John Lennon
in the condominium's logbook,
then crossed it out.
Six days later, on October 29th,
Mark Chapman flies to New York City.
Armed with the gun he bought in
Hawaii, he stakes out the Dakota,
waiting for his chance to take revenge on
the hero he believes has betrayed him.
But John Lennon is not
the only potential victim.
Chapman, it seems, has backups.
So he brought the gun with him, came to
New York, and had planned at that point
to kill someone
who was a celebrity,
in order the bring attention
to himself.
Lennon wasn't his only target.
He had a list of
substitute targets, if you will.
If he couldn't get to Lennon, then he would
have attempted to kill Walter Cronkite,
Johnny Carson, George C. Scott, Jackie
Kennedy Onassis, or Marlon Brando.
Any of these people were his
potential targets after Lennon.
Lennon was his first choice.
Even so, Chapman's agenda included
a wild scheme to kill Scott
while the actor was on stage
in a Broadway show.
The defendant said
he had front-row seats,
and his plan was to stand up
in the middle of the show,
take his gun, and fire into
the body of George C. Scott.
It wasn't a particularly adroit plan because
when he went to the gun store to buy bullets
in order to have ammunition
for his gun,
he was told that in New York you
cannot buy bullets for your gun.
After two weeks in New York,
Chapman flies back to Hawaii.
He reveals to his wife
that he is obsessed with John
Lennon and plans to kill him.
She convinces Chapman
to make an appointment with a
psychologist, but he doesn't keep it.
In early December, Chapman flies back
to New York, stopping over in Atlanta
to procure five .38-caliber
hollow-point bullets.
This was not someone who is interested in causing
serious physical injury or assaulting someone.
This is someone
intent upon committing a murder.
On the morning of December 6, 1980, Mark David
Chapman, the man who would soon kill John Lennon,
arrives in New York City.
He goes to the Dakota
shortly before noon
and joins a small group of fans
hovering near the entrance.
Chapman will spend the next two
days waiting for John Lennon.
Who was Mark David Chapman?
On December 8, 1980, Mark David
Chapman was a very confused person.
He was literally living inside of a paperback
novel, J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye."
He was vacillating between suicide, between
catching the first taxi home, back to Hawaii,
between killing,
as you said, an icon.
Around 3:00 A.M.
On the morning of December 8th,
Chapman checks in with his wife
back in Hawaii.
After hanging up, Chapman takes
his Bible from his suitcase
and turns to the New Testament
book of John.
He writes the name "Lennon"
after the words
"the gospel according to John."
Around 8:00 A.M.,
he heads back to the Dakota.
I had some type of premonition that this was the
last time I was going to leave my hotel room.
I hadn't seen him
up to that point.
That's what makes
it interesting.
I wasn't even sure
he was in the building.
And then I left the hotel room, bought
a copy of "The Catcher in the Rye,"
signed it, "to Holden Caulfield
from Holden Caulfield."
And wrote underneath that,
"this is my statement,"
underlining the word "this,"
the emphasis on the word "this."
I had planned not to say
anything after the shooting.
That morning, Chapman meets
another fan named Paul Goresh.
Goresh, an amateur photographer, had
come to know Lennon personally.
One of his photos
was later used as the cover
for Lennon's posthumous single
"Watching the Wheels."
When I got there, there was a guy standing
outside the archway on the right side,
as you went into the Dakota.
He was standing there, holding a copy
of "Double Fantasy" in his left arm,
and this guy approached me, and he said
to me, "are you waiting for Lennon?"
So, I said, "yeah."
And he said,
"do you work for John?"
And I said, "no."
And he said, "oh."
He said, "my name is Mark."
He said, "I'm from Hawaii."
What struck me strange is when he
said that, he had a Southern accent.
So, I said,
"well, if you're from Hawaii,
how come you have
a Southern accent?"
And he said, "well, originally,
I'm from Georgia."
And I said, "oh."
So, I then said, "well, where are you
staying while you're in the city?"
And with that he turned to me and
said, "why do you want to know?"
Sometime before 5:00 P.M., Lennon
and Ono leave their apartment
to go to Lennon's
last recording session.
Chapman and Goresh are both
on the sidewalk out front.
Chapman silently hands Lennon
his copy of "Double Fantasy."
The guy Mark came up on John's
left and held out the album.
And John turned and looked at him and
said, "do you want me to sign that?"
He nodded.
John took the album.
John said, "do you have a pen?"
He handed him a pen.
John started to sign the album.
I had my camera on my neck.
It looked like a good picture, so I looked
through the viewfinder, and I took the photo.
That was the photo of John signing
the album for his killer.
And he looked at me,
and he said, "is that all?
Do you want anything else?"
And I felt then and now that he
knew something subconsciously
that he was looking into the eyes of
the person that was going to kill him.
Once Lennon and Ono
leave for the recording studio,
only Chapman, Goresh,
and the Dakota doorman remain.
Around 8:00 P.M.,
Goresh calls it a night.
The guy Mark came over to me
and said, "are you leaving?"
And I said, "yeah."
He says, "well, I don't know
if I'd leave.
You might not see him again."
And I said,
"what are you talking about?
I see him all the time."
And he said,
"well, you never know.
He might go to Spain or something,
and you'll never see him again."
I wanted him to stay
because I wanted out of there.
There was a part... a great part of me...
that didn't want to be there.
You might have killed him
the next day.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
I would have probably come back.
After Goresh leaves, Chapman
remains in front of the Dakota.
He waits patiently
for some 2 1/2 hours.
I was sitting at the inside of the arch of the
Dakota building, and it was dark, it was windy.
Jose, the doorman, was out along the
sidewalk, and I see this limousine pull up,
and I said, "this is it."
And I stood up,
and Yoko got out.
John was far behind,
say, 20 feet, and he got out.
I nodded to Yoko
when she walked by me.
John came out, and he looked at
me, and I think he recognized,
"here's the fellow that
I signed the album earlier."
And he walked past me.
I took five steps toward the street,
turned, withdrew my Charter Arms .38...
and fired five shots
into his back.
I didn't even know if
the bullets were going to work.
And when they worked, I remember thinking,
"they're working. They're working."
Five bullets... The first misses,
hitting a window of the Dakota.
The next two strike Lennon
in the left side of his back.
Two more hit his left shoulder.
Mortally wounded, Lennon staggers up five
steps to the reception area and collapses.
I stood there with the gun hanging limply down on
my right side, and Jose the doorman came over,
and he's crying.
And he is grabbing my...
he's shaking my arm,
and he shook the gun right out of my hand,
and he kicked the gun across the pavement
and had somebody take it away.
And I was just...
I was stunned.
I didn't know what to do.
I took the "Catcher in the Rye"
out of my pocket.
I paced.
I tried to read it.
I just couldn't wait until
those police got there.
I was just devastated.
The first policemen are on the scene within
two minutes and take control of Chapman.
Just after, two more officers arrive
and immediately rush to aid Lennon.
Officer Frauenberger and Palma carried him out
to a radio car to take him to the hospital.
Of course there was no ambulance
on the way at that time.
And my partner and I took Chapman and put him in
the radio car to take him to the station house,
read him his rights.
Dr. Stephan Lynn is
on call at Roosevelt Hospital.
Two police officers came rushing through the
front door of the emergency department,
literally carrying over one of
their shoulders a limp body.
They said, "Dr. Lynn,
we can't get any vital signs."
Also in the emergency room was Alan Weiss, a
young news producer for WABC in New York,
who had been
in a motorcycle accident.
A police officer ran in... Yelling, "we
have a gunshot, gunshot in the chest."
The doctors... I'm almost positive...
someone replied, "when is he coming in?"
"It's hitting a door now"
was the answer.
At that moment,
a stretcher was wheeled in.
Six to eight police officers
around... they're trotting.
Running it back
as fast as they could.
We rushed into the trauma room.
There was no pulse.
There was no blood pressure.
We had an unresponsive patient.
And they brought him in literally to
the room that I am lying outside of.
The doctor ran in.
Some other medical people
ran in.
They pulled the curtain.
We didn't know who our patient
was at that moment of time.
It wasn't until the nurses took
his wallet out of his pocket,
as they always do in the process of identifying,
and somebody said, "this says John Lennon."
One police officer stood next to another police
officer and whispered, "it's John Lennon."
And we looked at the body in
front of us, and all of us said,
"this can't possibly
be John Lennon."
But in fact it was.
So, I hear sobbing behind me.
And I'm able to look behind me.
And I can see this woman is being
brought in by a police officer.
I asked the police officer,
"who is that?"
And they said it was Yoko Ono.
The only option, the only way that we could
give him any possibility of surviving
was to make an incision in his chest and to see
if there was some way to stop the bleeding.
And the most vivid memory that I have is
John's chest is being... it's just open,
and it's just blood.
I literally saw the doctor's
hands inside his chest.
We opened the chest.
We found a chest full of blood.
All of the blood vessels
leaving the heart
were completely destroyed.
We pumped fluid into the heart.
I literally held
John Lennon's heart in my hand.
We massaged the heart.
We tried to restore flow.
But there was absolutely nothing
that we could do.
We pronounced John Lennon dead on arrival
at the Roosevelt Hospital that evening.
Silence fell over
the emergency department.
Staff began to cry.
We didn't quite know
how to respond or how to react.
And it became my job to walk down to the
end of the hall to talk to Yoko Ono.
I walked into the room.
I think she knew as soon as I entered
the door what I was going to say.
There is Muzak playing, and it must
have been about 10 after 11:00.
The song "All My Loving"
starts to play.
The song ends.
A minute, two minutes later, there is a
scream, a shrill woman's voice screaming,
"no, no, no, oh, no."
It went on for about a minute,
a minute and a half.
It was constantly repeated.
And there was silence.
And finally the head nurse brought in
her husband's ring and gave it to her,
and she understood the finality
of the act that had occurred.
And the first thing that she said to me
was, "please delay making the announcement.
My son, Sean, is probably at
home sitting in front of the TV.
I don't want him to find out about his
father's death while watching a TV program."
I don't think it really hit me until I heard
that Muzak playing the song "All My Loving."
I called WABC, the newsroom.
Told them what I knew,
that John Lennon had been shot.
As I understand it, they passed it on to ABC
network, and ABC network made the decision
to pass it on to Howard Cosell
and Frank Gifford.
And Howard Cosell made the... broke the
news during "Monday Night Football."
The news ripped through
the air in shock waves.
By 11:35 P.M.,
the word was out.
Almost immediately,
mourners began gathering outside the
Dakota for a candlelight vigil.
They sang Beatles' songs and
chanted "give peace a chance."
I just felt like, you know, an incredible
weight was just pressing down on me.
It was just extraordinarily,
extraordinarily sad.
It impacted
all of us so severely.
It was as if a friend or
a family member had passed away.
I think that one of the reasons
that we felt that way about him
is because we had embraced him
as our own.
On December 10th, John Lennon was
cremated in a private ceremony.
Four days later, on December 14th,
millions of people around the world
responded to Yoko Ono's request to pause for
10 minutes of silence to remember John Lennon.
Over 225,000 people converged on
New York's Central Park.
For those 10 minutes, every radio station
in New York City went off the air.
On the morning of December 9th, Mark
Chapman, the man who killed John Lennon,
was put in a bulletproof vest and taken by van
to the New York City Criminal Courts building.
While Chapman was awaiting arraignment,
police were searching his hotel room,
looking for clues
that might reveal his motive.
In the hotel room, we found kind
of a display of all of his stuff,
and we had a Bible, a passport, photos, and
a tape by Todd Rundgren, airline tickets,
a letter of introduction from the
Young Men's Christian association,
a placemat with a picture of
the "Wizard of Oz"
and receipt from the YMCA there that
he stayed previously to the Sheraton.
The stuff was laying there, laid out in such a
way that he intended for somebody to find it
exactly the way it was laid out.
How do you feel
about taking this case?
I feel good about it.
Jonathan Marks, a former Assistant U.S.
Attorney, is appointed to defend Chapman.
Jonathan Marks was asked whether or not he
might ask for a change of venue for the trial,
and his response was,
"certainly not at this point."
He said, "even if we held the trial in
Paris, people would know about it."
The fact that a lot of people
are angry with Mr. Chapman,
the fact that you're going to represent
him, how do you feel about that?
I am simply a lawyer
representing a client.
This wasn't a whodunit.
The defendant
remained at the scene.
There were witnesses
that saw him do the shooting.
He made no effort
to flee the scene.
It was clear
from the initial investigation
that the defendant was going to
lodge an insanity defense.
The first order of business
is to have Chapman's
mental state evaluated.
The only issue in this trial
really will be
whether or not he was insane
at the time of the shooting.
This is the prison unit of Bellevue
Hospital, where Mark Chapman,
the alleged killer of former Beatle John
Lennon, is being held on a second-floor cell
amidst extraordinary security precautions
by the Department of Corrections.
Defense counsel called on me and asked me
if I would help him on the Chapman case.
I agreed.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Daniel
Schwartz interviewed Mark Chapman
on eight separate occasions
for the defense.
Clearly, Mr. Chapman
knew what he was doing.
He used a gun
in an all-too-accurate way.
He knew that it was a gun.
He knew that it could kill.
He pointed it at the intended victim,
and, unfortunately, it worked.
A serious question in this case is
whether or not his mental illness
impaired his ability to appreciate
that what he was doing was wrong.
Simply being mentally ill
does not acquit somebody.
It's only if this mental illness impairs
his ability to know and appreciate
the nature and consequence of
his conduct or that it's wrong.
Dr. Schwartz believes that Chapman's
mental illness began in childhood.
Mr. Chapman became seriously withdrawn
at about the age of 9 or 10.
It was about that age that he began imagining
a whole world of people, little people...
in the living room, in the walls of his living
room... and he was their emperor, their commander.
It was my clinical assessment that he
was both a paranoid schizophrenic,
as we understood the definition in those
days, and suffering from bipolar disorder.
I truly believe that when he went
after John Lennon, he was suicidal.
John Lennon was himself,
had become himself.
He believed that if he would kill
himself, he would be reborn.
In killing Lennon,
he was killing himself.
Mark David Chapman at that point was a
walking shell who didn't ever learn
how to let out his feelings of
anger, of rage, of disappointment.
Mark David Chapman
was a failure in his own mind.
He wanted to become
somebody important, Larry.
He didn't know how to handle
being a nobody.
Mark David Chapman struck out at something he
perceived to be phony, something he was angry at,
to become something he wasn't,
to become somebody.
Former Assistant District Attorney Kim
Hogrefe doesn't buy it for a minute.
Hogrefe left
the courthouse with no comment.
If he was obsessed with anything, it
was bringing attention to himself.
He was narcissistic.
He was grandiose.
He wanted to bring attention
to himself.
The fact that John Lennon was the victim here
was simply because John Lennon was available,
publicly available,
and others were not.
He wasn't crazed.
He wasn't obsessed.
He wasn't entitled
to the insanity defense.
We felt he was criminally responsible, that
he did not have a mental disease or defect,
and that whatever his mental state
was, it did not prevent him
from knowing the nature of his
conduct and that it was wrong.
With the evidence at hand, a grand
jury indictment is expected.
On June 22, 1981, just over six months after the
murder and the day his trial is set to begin,
Chapman changes his plea to guilty
against the advice of his defense team.
When the defendant entered the guilty
plea, I was disappointed by that fact.
I was looking forward to the opportunity
to prove the facts that we had assembled
in a public trial.
Mark David Chapman was
sentenced to 20 years to life
and sent to the New York
State Penitentiary at Attica.
In his interview with Larry King,
Chapman claimed to have recovered
from the mental illness
that had led to his crime.
It was me, Larry, and I accept full
responsibility for what I did.
I have seen places
where I am blaming the devil,
and I hope that isn't kept going
after this interview.
I'm not blaming the devil.
I'm blaming myself.
But in the major sense, it wasn't
me, because I'm better now.
I'm sorry for what I did.
I realize now that
I really ended a man's life.
I just saw him as a two-dimensional
celebrity with no real feelings.
He was an album cover to me.
In the years since John Lennon's death, many
people have tried to make sense of his murder.
In the early 1990s, journalist
and author Jack Jones
interviewed Chapman at length for his book,
Inside the Mind of Mark David Chapman."
Mark is an unusual individual.
He's a sociopath, but he is much more
intelligent than I think most of these people.
I think that his mind is capable
of almost infinite self-deception.
I believe that unlike a lot of people, he tries
very hard to empathize with other people.
He tries to sense that
other people have pain, also,
but it's mostly intellectual
sort of knowledge.
He doesn't really feel it.
He wanted to hurt the world.
Chapman told me at one point that he fantasized
about getting his hands on nuclear devices
and maybe blowing up a small city, injuring or
killing thousands, if not millions of people.
Chapman shot John Lennon because he
wanted his moment of glory in the sun.
That's it.
That's the conclusion that we came
to, and I stand by it to this day.
We're back with Jack Jones.
How do you react to those who say that we
shouldn't interview the Mark David Chapmans?
There shouldn't be television shows or books,
that we focus attention on the wrong area.
Probably these are the same kind of people who say
we shouldn't be writing about or studying AIDS
because it's a very unpleasant,
deadly topic.
We have an opportunity, particularly
with a guy like Mark Chapman,
who has agreed to open himself
up for exploration and study
in hopes of preventing other Mark
David Chapmans from coming along.
And people who criticize journalists for exploring
people like that I think miss the point.
It gives him publicity for this
horrendous act he committed.
The killers become as famous
as the people they killed.
And it's really unfortunate.
As with almost
any famous tragic event,
conspiracy theories have sprouted up
regarding the shooting of John Lennon.
The prevailing scenario has
Mark David Chapman as a patsy,
programmed by mysterious
government operatives
to kill Lennon.
There was absolutely no evidence suggesting that
he was assisted or aided by any other person.
He was simply someone that acted alone
and without assistance of other people.
I've been through every
FBI document in John's file.
There is not one shred of evidence
to suggest that the U.S. Government
had the least interest
in John after 1972.
What do you make of all the conspiracy theories
that have come up in the last 12 years...
C.I.A., mind control,
et cetera?
Against the death
of John Lennon?
Yeah.
Hogwash.
No one asked you to do it?
No one prompted you to do it,
no cabal, nothing?
No.
They probably wished
they would have had me, Larry.
But they didn't.
This was me doing it.
More than 30 years after killing John
Lennon, Mark Chapman remains in prison.
He first became eligible
for parole in the year 2000.
He has been denied
at least seven times since then.
I think it's best for Mark Chapman to
stay in psychiatric care as he is.
He committed a heinous act.
Whether or not he's been treated
or cured, I can't tell you.
I don't know.
He did something
that was horribly wrong.
He changed the track and the life
of the world, in my opinion.
I think he needs
to stay where he is.
This guy murdered him.
He shot him in the back, which
is what people don't realize.
He shot him in the back.
He's a coward.
I don't think the killer of John
Lennon should ever be paroled.
The damage that he wreaked on a wife, two
sons, Beatles fans around the world,
I can't imagine there is anything that he
could do or say that would warrant parole.
John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, has repeatedly
opposed Chapman's release from prison.
My husband, John Lennon, was a very
special man, a man of humble origin.
He brought light and hope to the whole
world with his words and music.
He tried to be a good power
for the world, and he was.
He gave encouragement,
inspiration, and dreams to people
regardless of their race,
creed, and gender.
For me, he was
the other half of the sky.
We were in love with each other like the
most vehement of lovers to the last moment.
For our son, Sean,
he was the world.
That world shattered when
the subject pulled the trigger.
For Julian,
it was losing his father twice.
For the people of the world, it was as
though the light went out for a moment,
and darkness prevailed.
With his one act of violence in those few seconds,
the subject managed to change my whole life,
devastate his sons, and bring deep
sorrow and fear to the world.
In 1985, New York City dedicated an area of
Central Park directly across from the Dakota
as "Strawberry Fields,"
for one of Lennon's
most famous songs.
Countries from around the world donated
trees, and the "Imagine" mosaic centerpiece
was a gift from the city of Naples...
tangible proof that the legacy of John Lennon
transcends borders
and generations.
I was walking down the street the other day, and
I saw a kid probably no older than 16 or 17
wearing a t-shirt
with John Lennon's face on it.
And I thought,
"this is really interesting.
Here it is.
He died more than 30 years ago.
And for this young person,
he still had resonance."
The best way to remember John Lennon is to
be inspired by his optimism, his integrity,
his clarity,
and his love for his family.
He was the real deal.
greatest musicians of the 20th century.
John Lennon had charisma.
He was just special.
John Lennon
was my favorite Beatle.
The other was a lonely kid from Georgia with no
particular talents and no real direction in life.
Everyone said
he was a nice person.
He wanted to bring attention
to himself.
They were as different as night and day...
Two men on intense personal journeys
that converged
in a single shocking act.
I took five steps and fired...
Five shots.
I literally held John Lennon's
heart in my hand.
It was an unthinkable crime
that left millions in mourning.
"The Murder of John Lennon."
Next.
It's a chilly night
at around 10:45 P.M.
Police respond to a report
of a shooting at the Dakota,
an exclusive apartment building
on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
When we drove up to the Dakota, there was a
man standing in the middle of the street,
pointing into the archway saying,
"that's the man doing the shooting."
We get out of the car.
We approached the archway
on each side of it.
Looked in and saw a man
with his hands up.
Five shots have been fired.
All but one found their target.
So, I grabbed the guy
around the neck.
The doorman, Jose, said, "he's the one.
He's the only one.
He shot John Lennon."
I was totally in shock.
I threw him up against the wall,
and I said, "you did what?"
Former Beatle John Lennon has been shot with four
hollow-point .38-caliber bullets at close range.
Police officers rush Lennon to nearby
Roosevelt Hospital, but it's too late.
Shortly after 11:00 P.M.,
the emergency-room doctor
pronounces John Lennon dead.
Former Beatle John Lennon was gunned down in
front of his exclusive Manhattan apartment.
Four bullets ending the life of a folk hero...
co-op building where he was gunned down
as he entered the gates... The news
ripped through the air in shock waves.
John Lennon shot and killed in the Dakota
apartment building... It was really shocking.
40 years old,
John Lennon of the Beatles.
How could he be dead?
How could this have happened?
The city was in shock... not
just people of my generation
that grew up listening to
their music in the '60s.
I think just about everybody
felt that on so many levels
it was wrong.
It was terrible.
I mean, I think just the way so many
people that didn't even know John felt,
and it just hit home with me much
more because he befriended me,
and he didn't
have to befriend me.
In New York, CNN investigative reporter
Laura Didio has come up with some new facts
about John Lennon's
accused killer.
The killer was identified as Mark David Chapman,
a 25-year-old fan and drifter from Hawaii.
Nothing in his background set off
or would have cause to set off
any alarm bells whatsoever
on Chapman.
Chapman apparently was well-liked
by most of the people he knew.
The most common description we heard was open,
friendly, a hard worker with a ready smile.
I don't think I've ever seen anybody get mad
at him or say anything bad against him.
I couldn't believe it was Mark.
Just didn't seem to be
the type of person.
Normal, regular.
Everybody here liked him.
He was always very peaceful.
And he was just
a fine young man.
I couldn't have asked
for anything better.
Most of those can't believe he's the same
person charged with killing John Lennon.
Everybody that we interviewed... and there were
a lot... every one said he was a nice person,
not capable of doing
something like this.
It was a tragic conclusion
to an extraordinary life.
John Lennon, co-founder of
the legendary Beatles, was gone.
During the 1960s, the Beatles were
the biggest rock group in the world.
Their influence and popularity
were unparalleled.
I think the Beatles spoke to young people in
the '60s in a way that no other band did.
And they influenced people in so many
different ways, not just musically,
but socially, politically,
culturally.
They were the touchstone for everything
that was going on in the '60s.
Among the millions of American
kids who worshiped the Beatles
was a shy, reclusive teenager
named Mark David Chapman.
He was an especially fervent fan
of John Lennon.
During their heyday, the Beatles were open about
their experiences with psychedelic drugs.
Like his idols,
Chapman begins experimenting.
The defendant described that there
was periods of time in his life
when he was more of the hippie
nature, tried experimental drugs,
as many people during
that period of time did.
But in 1971, Chapman becomes
a born-again Christian.
He quits drugs and rejects Rock 'N' Roll,
the Beatles, and John Lennon in particular.
Well, I became a Christian
when I was 16, Larry,
and that lasted about a year
of genuine walking with him.
Through my life off and on, I have struggled
with different things, as we all do,
and at those times,
I would turn to the Lord.
Chapman's newfound faith comes into conflict
with his feelings about his former idol.
According to friends, Chapman was notably
bothered by Lennon's songs "God,"
in which he states,
"I don't believe in Jesus,"
and his hit "Imagine," with the lyrics, "imagine
there's no countries and no religion, too."
Chapman even wrote his own words to the song with
the altered lyric "imagine John Lennon dead."
The defendant claimed
that he was offended
by the statement
that John Lennon had made
that the Beatles had become
more popular than Jesus Christ.
It was an off-the-cuff comment made during an
interview in 1966, but it caused a lasting furor.
A number of people in the Bible Belt,
young and old, took this comment to be,
"oh, you're bigger than Jesus, you're
bigger than God, and this is blasphemy,
and how dare you say
something like this."
He was totally misquoted.
What he meant to say was that more
people paid attention to the Beatles
than paid attention to Jesus, and he was
only making an observation about that,
not putting any context to it or not saying
that was a good thing or a bad thing.
The Beatles weather the storm.
But in 1970, the band breaks up, and Lennon embarks
on a solo career with his new wife, Yoko Ono.
A year later, the Lennons
move to New York City
and take up residence
at the fabled Dakota apartments.
The Dakota's gothic façade had been
featured in the film "Rosemary's Baby."
It was home to some of the world's most
famous artists, actors, and musicians.
I think he felt it was time for a
change, and I think they viewed America
as being a breath of fresh air
for them at that time.
Little did they know
what trouble awaits them.
In New York, John and Yoko adopted a
high profile, politically and musically.
Perhaps inevitably their antiwar activism drew the
attention and ire of the Nixon Administration.
In the early '70s,
the United States government
began a campaign
against John Lennon
to silence him.
They were really concerned that
he would influence young people
who are going to be voting for the
first time in the 1972 election,
and they didn't want
that to happen.
They were conducting
surveillance operations.
They were monitoring him.
Cars would follow him around.
They did the whole
intelligence enchilada.
After Nixon was driven from office by the
Watergate scandal, the pressure on Lennon let up,
and by 1975, he had withdrawn
from the public eye.
He was not in hiding.
He was not a recluse.
What he was doing was devoting
full-time to raising his son, Sean.
That was his priority.
During those days, Lennon and Ono became
familiar figures in their neighborhood.
He liked the informality
of New York.
He liked the architecture.
He liked the ability to walk.
You would hear stories about how John would
be walking with his family down the street,
and people could walk up to him.
Matter of fact, if someone asked about
what it's like living in Manhattan,
he said, "people are cool.
They don't bug you."
He loved New York because
people didn't bother him.
In New York, they respected
his privacy and liked him.
They'd say, "hey, John,
how's things going,"
and they'd shake his hand.
"Hey, John, I love your music" or
something, but they didn't pester him.
In November 1980, Lennon emerged from his
retirement with the release of "Double Fantasy,"
an album he recorded with Ono.
Lennon had just turned 40.
To many, it seemed that John Lennon
had entered a promising new phase.
But this image of a happy,
contented husband and father
would only serve to enrage a young man in
Hawaii, a once-devoted fan, Mark David Chapman.
He was in the house, sitting naked in front of his
stereo, listening to really loud Beatles music
and invoking Satan to help him have
the power to kill John Lennon.
It was shortly before 11:00 Monday night...
John Lennon was gunned down
in front of his exclusive
Manhattan apartment.
The suspect was identified
as Mark David Chapman.
His assailant
waited with a .38 caliber.
On the night he shot John Lennon, Mark
David Chapman was just 25 years old.
It had been 25 years
of almost painful anonymity.
There was nothing that we learned
from the extensive interviews
and investigation of the defendant's background
that suggested that he was much different
than any other
25-year-old person.
At least on the surface.
Chapman grew up in Georgia,
the older of two children
in what seemed like
a typical suburban family.
The defendant claimed in interviews with
psychiatrists that he had a rough childhood
and had a less-than-ideal relationship with his
father, but there is nothing in his background
of such an extreme or extraordinary nature that
would suggest some kind of latent insanity
or mental disease or defect
caused by some childhood trauma.
After high school, Chapman begins
to drift through a series of jobs
and half-hearted attempts
at college.
In 1977, he flies to Hawaii,
where he plans to kill himself.
He reportedly tries twice
but fails.
Chapman stays in Hawaii.
Over the next three years, he is
hospitalized at least once, gets married,
takes a job in a print shop, then quits, and
goes to work as an unarmed security guard
at a luxury high-rise condo.
He's obsessed with J.D.
Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye,"
the classic novel
of adolescent angst.
Chapman identifies closely with the
book's protagonist, Holden Caulfield,
who rails against
the phonies he encounters.
Chapman would later claim that by the
summer of 1980, he was coming unhinged.
J.D. Salinger, who has not been heard
from in years... he's reclusive...
wrote "Catcher in the Rye,"
a book read by millions,
admired by millions.
I wonder what he must be thinking
as he, if he is, watching this?
In 1992, Larry King interviewed Mark Chapman
via a remote feed from Attica prison.
Mark, why are you
blaming a book?
I'm not blaming a book.
I blame myself
for crawling inside of the book.
And I certainly want to say that J.D.
Salinger and the "Catcher in the Rye"
didn't cause me
to kill John Lennon.
In fact,
I wrote to J.D. Salinger.
I got his box number from someone,
and I apologized to him for this.
In October 1980, Chapman turns his resentment
against phonies towards John Lennon,
when he reads an article
about the upcoming release
of "Double Fantasy."
This thing started, Larry,
when I got angry at Lennon.
I found a book in the library that
showed him on the roof of the Dakota,
and you're familiar
with the Dakota.
It's a very nice,
sumptuous building.
And crawling in on myself, I'm
angry at seeing him on the Dakota,
and I say to myself,
"that phony, that bastard."
I got that mad.
I took the book home to my wife,
and I said, "look. He's a phony."
This is his calendar from
September '79 to December of '80.
And it leads you all the way through his
manic months before Lennon's death.
Writer Jim Gaines spent hundreds
of hours between 1984 and 1985
interviewing Mark Chapman.
And you can see it becomes crazier and crazier
with crossings outs and things to do.
Chapman told Gaines that for years
his mind had been like a war zone,
occupied by opposing forces he described as
"the big people" and "the little people."
He had a whole population of little people
living in his head to whom he gave instructions,
who had meetings about
what his activities should be.
I mean, it was extreme.
Seething with anger, Chapman buys a five-shot
.38 caliber Charter Arms Special revolver.
The gun used to kill John Lennon was traced
by New York authorities to J&S Enterprises,
a gun shop a block away from
the Honolulu police department.
A sales receipt shows the gun was purchased
by Mark Chapman on October 27th of this year.
It shows Chapman paid $197
in cash for the gun.
Just before buying the gun, Chapman
had quit his job as a security guard.
When he signed out for the last time,
he inscribed the name John Lennon
in the condominium's logbook,
then crossed it out.
Six days later, on October 29th,
Mark Chapman flies to New York City.
Armed with the gun he bought in
Hawaii, he stakes out the Dakota,
waiting for his chance to take revenge on
the hero he believes has betrayed him.
But John Lennon is not
the only potential victim.
Chapman, it seems, has backups.
So he brought the gun with him, came to
New York, and had planned at that point
to kill someone
who was a celebrity,
in order the bring attention
to himself.
Lennon wasn't his only target.
He had a list of
substitute targets, if you will.
If he couldn't get to Lennon, then he would
have attempted to kill Walter Cronkite,
Johnny Carson, George C. Scott, Jackie
Kennedy Onassis, or Marlon Brando.
Any of these people were his
potential targets after Lennon.
Lennon was his first choice.
Even so, Chapman's agenda included
a wild scheme to kill Scott
while the actor was on stage
in a Broadway show.
The defendant said
he had front-row seats,
and his plan was to stand up
in the middle of the show,
take his gun, and fire into
the body of George C. Scott.
It wasn't a particularly adroit plan because
when he went to the gun store to buy bullets
in order to have ammunition
for his gun,
he was told that in New York you
cannot buy bullets for your gun.
After two weeks in New York,
Chapman flies back to Hawaii.
He reveals to his wife
that he is obsessed with John
Lennon and plans to kill him.
She convinces Chapman
to make an appointment with a
psychologist, but he doesn't keep it.
In early December, Chapman flies back
to New York, stopping over in Atlanta
to procure five .38-caliber
hollow-point bullets.
This was not someone who is interested in causing
serious physical injury or assaulting someone.
This is someone
intent upon committing a murder.
On the morning of December 6, 1980, Mark David
Chapman, the man who would soon kill John Lennon,
arrives in New York City.
He goes to the Dakota
shortly before noon
and joins a small group of fans
hovering near the entrance.
Chapman will spend the next two
days waiting for John Lennon.
Who was Mark David Chapman?
On December 8, 1980, Mark David
Chapman was a very confused person.
He was literally living inside of a paperback
novel, J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye."
He was vacillating between suicide, between
catching the first taxi home, back to Hawaii,
between killing,
as you said, an icon.
Around 3:00 A.M.
On the morning of December 8th,
Chapman checks in with his wife
back in Hawaii.
After hanging up, Chapman takes
his Bible from his suitcase
and turns to the New Testament
book of John.
He writes the name "Lennon"
after the words
"the gospel according to John."
Around 8:00 A.M.,
he heads back to the Dakota.
I had some type of premonition that this was the
last time I was going to leave my hotel room.
I hadn't seen him
up to that point.
That's what makes
it interesting.
I wasn't even sure
he was in the building.
And then I left the hotel room, bought
a copy of "The Catcher in the Rye,"
signed it, "to Holden Caulfield
from Holden Caulfield."
And wrote underneath that,
"this is my statement,"
underlining the word "this,"
the emphasis on the word "this."
I had planned not to say
anything after the shooting.
That morning, Chapman meets
another fan named Paul Goresh.
Goresh, an amateur photographer, had
come to know Lennon personally.
One of his photos
was later used as the cover
for Lennon's posthumous single
"Watching the Wheels."
When I got there, there was a guy standing
outside the archway on the right side,
as you went into the Dakota.
He was standing there, holding a copy
of "Double Fantasy" in his left arm,
and this guy approached me, and he said
to me, "are you waiting for Lennon?"
So, I said, "yeah."
And he said,
"do you work for John?"
And I said, "no."
And he said, "oh."
He said, "my name is Mark."
He said, "I'm from Hawaii."
What struck me strange is when he
said that, he had a Southern accent.
So, I said,
"well, if you're from Hawaii,
how come you have
a Southern accent?"
And he said, "well, originally,
I'm from Georgia."
And I said, "oh."
So, I then said, "well, where are you
staying while you're in the city?"
And with that he turned to me and
said, "why do you want to know?"
Sometime before 5:00 P.M., Lennon
and Ono leave their apartment
to go to Lennon's
last recording session.
Chapman and Goresh are both
on the sidewalk out front.
Chapman silently hands Lennon
his copy of "Double Fantasy."
The guy Mark came up on John's
left and held out the album.
And John turned and looked at him and
said, "do you want me to sign that?"
He nodded.
John took the album.
John said, "do you have a pen?"
He handed him a pen.
John started to sign the album.
I had my camera on my neck.
It looked like a good picture, so I looked
through the viewfinder, and I took the photo.
That was the photo of John signing
the album for his killer.
And he looked at me,
and he said, "is that all?
Do you want anything else?"
And I felt then and now that he
knew something subconsciously
that he was looking into the eyes of
the person that was going to kill him.
Once Lennon and Ono
leave for the recording studio,
only Chapman, Goresh,
and the Dakota doorman remain.
Around 8:00 P.M.,
Goresh calls it a night.
The guy Mark came over to me
and said, "are you leaving?"
And I said, "yeah."
He says, "well, I don't know
if I'd leave.
You might not see him again."
And I said,
"what are you talking about?
I see him all the time."
And he said,
"well, you never know.
He might go to Spain or something,
and you'll never see him again."
I wanted him to stay
because I wanted out of there.
There was a part... a great part of me...
that didn't want to be there.
You might have killed him
the next day.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
I would have probably come back.
After Goresh leaves, Chapman
remains in front of the Dakota.
He waits patiently
for some 2 1/2 hours.
I was sitting at the inside of the arch of the
Dakota building, and it was dark, it was windy.
Jose, the doorman, was out along the
sidewalk, and I see this limousine pull up,
and I said, "this is it."
And I stood up,
and Yoko got out.
John was far behind,
say, 20 feet, and he got out.
I nodded to Yoko
when she walked by me.
John came out, and he looked at
me, and I think he recognized,
"here's the fellow that
I signed the album earlier."
And he walked past me.
I took five steps toward the street,
turned, withdrew my Charter Arms .38...
and fired five shots
into his back.
I didn't even know if
the bullets were going to work.
And when they worked, I remember thinking,
"they're working. They're working."
Five bullets... The first misses,
hitting a window of the Dakota.
The next two strike Lennon
in the left side of his back.
Two more hit his left shoulder.
Mortally wounded, Lennon staggers up five
steps to the reception area and collapses.
I stood there with the gun hanging limply down on
my right side, and Jose the doorman came over,
and he's crying.
And he is grabbing my...
he's shaking my arm,
and he shook the gun right out of my hand,
and he kicked the gun across the pavement
and had somebody take it away.
And I was just...
I was stunned.
I didn't know what to do.
I took the "Catcher in the Rye"
out of my pocket.
I paced.
I tried to read it.
I just couldn't wait until
those police got there.
I was just devastated.
The first policemen are on the scene within
two minutes and take control of Chapman.
Just after, two more officers arrive
and immediately rush to aid Lennon.
Officer Frauenberger and Palma carried him out
to a radio car to take him to the hospital.
Of course there was no ambulance
on the way at that time.
And my partner and I took Chapman and put him in
the radio car to take him to the station house,
read him his rights.
Dr. Stephan Lynn is
on call at Roosevelt Hospital.
Two police officers came rushing through the
front door of the emergency department,
literally carrying over one of
their shoulders a limp body.
They said, "Dr. Lynn,
we can't get any vital signs."
Also in the emergency room was Alan Weiss, a
young news producer for WABC in New York,
who had been
in a motorcycle accident.
A police officer ran in... Yelling, "we
have a gunshot, gunshot in the chest."
The doctors... I'm almost positive...
someone replied, "when is he coming in?"
"It's hitting a door now"
was the answer.
At that moment,
a stretcher was wheeled in.
Six to eight police officers
around... they're trotting.
Running it back
as fast as they could.
We rushed into the trauma room.
There was no pulse.
There was no blood pressure.
We had an unresponsive patient.
And they brought him in literally to
the room that I am lying outside of.
The doctor ran in.
Some other medical people
ran in.
They pulled the curtain.
We didn't know who our patient
was at that moment of time.
It wasn't until the nurses took
his wallet out of his pocket,
as they always do in the process of identifying,
and somebody said, "this says John Lennon."
One police officer stood next to another police
officer and whispered, "it's John Lennon."
And we looked at the body in
front of us, and all of us said,
"this can't possibly
be John Lennon."
But in fact it was.
So, I hear sobbing behind me.
And I'm able to look behind me.
And I can see this woman is being
brought in by a police officer.
I asked the police officer,
"who is that?"
And they said it was Yoko Ono.
The only option, the only way that we could
give him any possibility of surviving
was to make an incision in his chest and to see
if there was some way to stop the bleeding.
And the most vivid memory that I have is
John's chest is being... it's just open,
and it's just blood.
I literally saw the doctor's
hands inside his chest.
We opened the chest.
We found a chest full of blood.
All of the blood vessels
leaving the heart
were completely destroyed.
We pumped fluid into the heart.
I literally held
John Lennon's heart in my hand.
We massaged the heart.
We tried to restore flow.
But there was absolutely nothing
that we could do.
We pronounced John Lennon dead on arrival
at the Roosevelt Hospital that evening.
Silence fell over
the emergency department.
Staff began to cry.
We didn't quite know
how to respond or how to react.
And it became my job to walk down to the
end of the hall to talk to Yoko Ono.
I walked into the room.
I think she knew as soon as I entered
the door what I was going to say.
There is Muzak playing, and it must
have been about 10 after 11:00.
The song "All My Loving"
starts to play.
The song ends.
A minute, two minutes later, there is a
scream, a shrill woman's voice screaming,
"no, no, no, oh, no."
It went on for about a minute,
a minute and a half.
It was constantly repeated.
And there was silence.
And finally the head nurse brought in
her husband's ring and gave it to her,
and she understood the finality
of the act that had occurred.
And the first thing that she said to me
was, "please delay making the announcement.
My son, Sean, is probably at
home sitting in front of the TV.
I don't want him to find out about his
father's death while watching a TV program."
I don't think it really hit me until I heard
that Muzak playing the song "All My Loving."
I called WABC, the newsroom.
Told them what I knew,
that John Lennon had been shot.
As I understand it, they passed it on to ABC
network, and ABC network made the decision
to pass it on to Howard Cosell
and Frank Gifford.
And Howard Cosell made the... broke the
news during "Monday Night Football."
The news ripped through
the air in shock waves.
By 11:35 P.M.,
the word was out.
Almost immediately,
mourners began gathering outside the
Dakota for a candlelight vigil.
They sang Beatles' songs and
chanted "give peace a chance."
I just felt like, you know, an incredible
weight was just pressing down on me.
It was just extraordinarily,
extraordinarily sad.
It impacted
all of us so severely.
It was as if a friend or
a family member had passed away.
I think that one of the reasons
that we felt that way about him
is because we had embraced him
as our own.
On December 10th, John Lennon was
cremated in a private ceremony.
Four days later, on December 14th,
millions of people around the world
responded to Yoko Ono's request to pause for
10 minutes of silence to remember John Lennon.
Over 225,000 people converged on
New York's Central Park.
For those 10 minutes, every radio station
in New York City went off the air.
On the morning of December 9th, Mark
Chapman, the man who killed John Lennon,
was put in a bulletproof vest and taken by van
to the New York City Criminal Courts building.
While Chapman was awaiting arraignment,
police were searching his hotel room,
looking for clues
that might reveal his motive.
In the hotel room, we found kind
of a display of all of his stuff,
and we had a Bible, a passport, photos, and
a tape by Todd Rundgren, airline tickets,
a letter of introduction from the
Young Men's Christian association,
a placemat with a picture of
the "Wizard of Oz"
and receipt from the YMCA there that
he stayed previously to the Sheraton.
The stuff was laying there, laid out in such a
way that he intended for somebody to find it
exactly the way it was laid out.
How do you feel
about taking this case?
I feel good about it.
Jonathan Marks, a former Assistant U.S.
Attorney, is appointed to defend Chapman.
Jonathan Marks was asked whether or not he
might ask for a change of venue for the trial,
and his response was,
"certainly not at this point."
He said, "even if we held the trial in
Paris, people would know about it."
The fact that a lot of people
are angry with Mr. Chapman,
the fact that you're going to represent
him, how do you feel about that?
I am simply a lawyer
representing a client.
This wasn't a whodunit.
The defendant
remained at the scene.
There were witnesses
that saw him do the shooting.
He made no effort
to flee the scene.
It was clear
from the initial investigation
that the defendant was going to
lodge an insanity defense.
The first order of business
is to have Chapman's
mental state evaluated.
The only issue in this trial
really will be
whether or not he was insane
at the time of the shooting.
This is the prison unit of Bellevue
Hospital, where Mark Chapman,
the alleged killer of former Beatle John
Lennon, is being held on a second-floor cell
amidst extraordinary security precautions
by the Department of Corrections.
Defense counsel called on me and asked me
if I would help him on the Chapman case.
I agreed.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Daniel
Schwartz interviewed Mark Chapman
on eight separate occasions
for the defense.
Clearly, Mr. Chapman
knew what he was doing.
He used a gun
in an all-too-accurate way.
He knew that it was a gun.
He knew that it could kill.
He pointed it at the intended victim,
and, unfortunately, it worked.
A serious question in this case is
whether or not his mental illness
impaired his ability to appreciate
that what he was doing was wrong.
Simply being mentally ill
does not acquit somebody.
It's only if this mental illness impairs
his ability to know and appreciate
the nature and consequence of
his conduct or that it's wrong.
Dr. Schwartz believes that Chapman's
mental illness began in childhood.
Mr. Chapman became seriously withdrawn
at about the age of 9 or 10.
It was about that age that he began imagining
a whole world of people, little people...
in the living room, in the walls of his living
room... and he was their emperor, their commander.
It was my clinical assessment that he
was both a paranoid schizophrenic,
as we understood the definition in those
days, and suffering from bipolar disorder.
I truly believe that when he went
after John Lennon, he was suicidal.
John Lennon was himself,
had become himself.
He believed that if he would kill
himself, he would be reborn.
In killing Lennon,
he was killing himself.
Mark David Chapman at that point was a
walking shell who didn't ever learn
how to let out his feelings of
anger, of rage, of disappointment.
Mark David Chapman
was a failure in his own mind.
He wanted to become
somebody important, Larry.
He didn't know how to handle
being a nobody.
Mark David Chapman struck out at something he
perceived to be phony, something he was angry at,
to become something he wasn't,
to become somebody.
Former Assistant District Attorney Kim
Hogrefe doesn't buy it for a minute.
Hogrefe left
the courthouse with no comment.
If he was obsessed with anything, it
was bringing attention to himself.
He was narcissistic.
He was grandiose.
He wanted to bring attention
to himself.
The fact that John Lennon was the victim here
was simply because John Lennon was available,
publicly available,
and others were not.
He wasn't crazed.
He wasn't obsessed.
He wasn't entitled
to the insanity defense.
We felt he was criminally responsible, that
he did not have a mental disease or defect,
and that whatever his mental state
was, it did not prevent him
from knowing the nature of his
conduct and that it was wrong.
With the evidence at hand, a grand
jury indictment is expected.
On June 22, 1981, just over six months after the
murder and the day his trial is set to begin,
Chapman changes his plea to guilty
against the advice of his defense team.
When the defendant entered the guilty
plea, I was disappointed by that fact.
I was looking forward to the opportunity
to prove the facts that we had assembled
in a public trial.
Mark David Chapman was
sentenced to 20 years to life
and sent to the New York
State Penitentiary at Attica.
In his interview with Larry King,
Chapman claimed to have recovered
from the mental illness
that had led to his crime.
It was me, Larry, and I accept full
responsibility for what I did.
I have seen places
where I am blaming the devil,
and I hope that isn't kept going
after this interview.
I'm not blaming the devil.
I'm blaming myself.
But in the major sense, it wasn't
me, because I'm better now.
I'm sorry for what I did.
I realize now that
I really ended a man's life.
I just saw him as a two-dimensional
celebrity with no real feelings.
He was an album cover to me.
In the years since John Lennon's death, many
people have tried to make sense of his murder.
In the early 1990s, journalist
and author Jack Jones
interviewed Chapman at length for his book,
Inside the Mind of Mark David Chapman."
Mark is an unusual individual.
He's a sociopath, but he is much more
intelligent than I think most of these people.
I think that his mind is capable
of almost infinite self-deception.
I believe that unlike a lot of people, he tries
very hard to empathize with other people.
He tries to sense that
other people have pain, also,
but it's mostly intellectual
sort of knowledge.
He doesn't really feel it.
He wanted to hurt the world.
Chapman told me at one point that he fantasized
about getting his hands on nuclear devices
and maybe blowing up a small city, injuring or
killing thousands, if not millions of people.
Chapman shot John Lennon because he
wanted his moment of glory in the sun.
That's it.
That's the conclusion that we came
to, and I stand by it to this day.
We're back with Jack Jones.
How do you react to those who say that we
shouldn't interview the Mark David Chapmans?
There shouldn't be television shows or books,
that we focus attention on the wrong area.
Probably these are the same kind of people who say
we shouldn't be writing about or studying AIDS
because it's a very unpleasant,
deadly topic.
We have an opportunity, particularly
with a guy like Mark Chapman,
who has agreed to open himself
up for exploration and study
in hopes of preventing other Mark
David Chapmans from coming along.
And people who criticize journalists for exploring
people like that I think miss the point.
It gives him publicity for this
horrendous act he committed.
The killers become as famous
as the people they killed.
And it's really unfortunate.
As with almost
any famous tragic event,
conspiracy theories have sprouted up
regarding the shooting of John Lennon.
The prevailing scenario has
Mark David Chapman as a patsy,
programmed by mysterious
government operatives
to kill Lennon.
There was absolutely no evidence suggesting that
he was assisted or aided by any other person.
He was simply someone that acted alone
and without assistance of other people.
I've been through every
FBI document in John's file.
There is not one shred of evidence
to suggest that the U.S. Government
had the least interest
in John after 1972.
What do you make of all the conspiracy theories
that have come up in the last 12 years...
C.I.A., mind control,
et cetera?
Against the death
of John Lennon?
Yeah.
Hogwash.
No one asked you to do it?
No one prompted you to do it,
no cabal, nothing?
No.
They probably wished
they would have had me, Larry.
But they didn't.
This was me doing it.
More than 30 years after killing John
Lennon, Mark Chapman remains in prison.
He first became eligible
for parole in the year 2000.
He has been denied
at least seven times since then.
I think it's best for Mark Chapman to
stay in psychiatric care as he is.
He committed a heinous act.
Whether or not he's been treated
or cured, I can't tell you.
I don't know.
He did something
that was horribly wrong.
He changed the track and the life
of the world, in my opinion.
I think he needs
to stay where he is.
This guy murdered him.
He shot him in the back, which
is what people don't realize.
He shot him in the back.
He's a coward.
I don't think the killer of John
Lennon should ever be paroled.
The damage that he wreaked on a wife, two
sons, Beatles fans around the world,
I can't imagine there is anything that he
could do or say that would warrant parole.
John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, has repeatedly
opposed Chapman's release from prison.
My husband, John Lennon, was a very
special man, a man of humble origin.
He brought light and hope to the whole
world with his words and music.
He tried to be a good power
for the world, and he was.
He gave encouragement,
inspiration, and dreams to people
regardless of their race,
creed, and gender.
For me, he was
the other half of the sky.
We were in love with each other like the
most vehement of lovers to the last moment.
For our son, Sean,
he was the world.
That world shattered when
the subject pulled the trigger.
For Julian,
it was losing his father twice.
For the people of the world, it was as
though the light went out for a moment,
and darkness prevailed.
With his one act of violence in those few seconds,
the subject managed to change my whole life,
devastate his sons, and bring deep
sorrow and fear to the world.
In 1985, New York City dedicated an area of
Central Park directly across from the Dakota
as "Strawberry Fields,"
for one of Lennon's
most famous songs.
Countries from around the world donated
trees, and the "Imagine" mosaic centerpiece
was a gift from the city of Naples...
tangible proof that the legacy of John Lennon
transcends borders
and generations.
I was walking down the street the other day, and
I saw a kid probably no older than 16 or 17
wearing a t-shirt
with John Lennon's face on it.
And I thought,
"this is really interesting.
Here it is.
He died more than 30 years ago.
And for this young person,
he still had resonance."
The best way to remember John Lennon is to
be inspired by his optimism, his integrity,
his clarity,
and his love for his family.
He was the real deal.