John Lennon’s deranged killer reveals why he shot beloved Beatle as 45th anniversary looms
The front page of the New York Post on December 9, 1980.
Convicted murderer Mark David Chapman, who gunned down John Lennon outside the Dakota apartment building in 1980, told a New York parole board that he committed the shocking crime out of a selfish desire to “be a somebody.”
“This was for me and me alone, unfortunately, and it had everything to do with his popularity,” Chapman, now 70, said during his August parole hearing at Green Haven Correctional Facility in Dutchess County, according to transcripts obtained by The New York Post. “My crime was completely selfish.”
Chapman, who assassinated the 40-year-old Beatles legend on December 8, 1980, was denied parole for the 14th time. He expressed remorse for the “devastation” he caused Lennon’s fans, friends, and family — but the board concluded that his remorse lacked “genuine empathy.”
When asked why he killed Lennon, Chapman admitted it was to gain notoriety. “To be famous, to be something I wasn’t,” he said. “Then I realized, hey, there is a goal here — I don’t have to die, and I can be a somebody. I had sunk that low.”
In previous hearings, Chapman has made similar statements, acknowledging that he acted out of a dark craving for fame and that he “had evil in [his] heart.”
Chapman recounted how he planned Lennon’s murder for months, flying from Hawaii to New York City after identifying with Holden Caulfield, the main character in The Catcher in the Rye, and coming to believe that Lennon was a “phony.”
Initially, Chapman waited outside the Dakota in October 1980 but never encountered Lennon. He returned two months later when “the compulsion started building again.”
“That morning of the 8th, I just knew,” he told the board. “I don’t know how I knew, but I just knew that was going to be the day I would meet and kill him.”
When Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono returned home that evening, Chapman approached and fired four shots into Lennon’s back — just hours after Lennon had signed an album for him.
Chapman was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. Today, he spends his time studying the Bible, playing volleyball with other inmates, and speaking regularly with his wife, Gloria, to whom he’s been married for 46 years.
Reflecting on his crime, Chapman said, “This was a human being. Here I am living so much longer, and not just family but his friends and the fans — I apologize for the devastation that I caused. I had no thought about that at all at the time of the crime. I didn’t care.”
Despite repeated apologies over the years, the parole board once again denied his release, citing a lack of genuine remorse. He will be eligible for parole again in 2027.
Chapman now says he has no desire for the fame he once craved. “I don’t have any interest at all in being famous,” he said. “Put me under the rug somewhere. I don’t want to be famous anymore, period.”
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