Lennon's Killer Wanted Fame

cbs ^ | 10-15-04

[LouAvul]

Mark David Chapman felt like a nobody and wanted to "steal John Lennon's fame" when he shot the former Beatle outside his New York City apartment in 1980, according to a transcript of Chapman's most recent parole hearing, released Thursday.

Chapman, 49, told the panel Oct. 5 he'd accomplished his goal of transferring Lennon's fame to himself in one sense, but in other ways, "I'm a bigger nobody than I was before."

"Because, you know, people hate me now instead of, you know, for something positive," he said. "So that's a worse state."

Chapman was denied parole; it was his third bid for freedom. He was denied release in 2000 and again in 2002.

Chapman said he had flown to New York to kill Lennon once before but stopped himself, telling his wife over the telephone, "Your love has saved me."

"What are you talking about?" was her reply.

The assassination occurred a few weeks later.

"It was just a tremendous compulsion of just feeling this big hole, of being what I thought was a big nobody, a big nothing, and I couldn't let it go," he said. "And it just kept going very strongly, and I couldn't stop it."

Chapman told the board he remembered Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono, looking at him through the window of a police cruiser just after his arrest. "That was a very traumatic thing that I blocked out of my memory for several months," he said.

snip......

He said he plans to start a ministry with his wife and distribute a short story titled "The Prisoner's Letter," and that he has a farm job lined up.

[LouAvul]

he has a farm job lined up

Not in this lifetime.

[baltodog]

Regardless of whom he has killed, there is no guarantee that he won't do it again.

He was nuts when it happened, he has been "healed", prove to me that he won't do it again.

Replace John Lennon with the local grocer, or gas station owner, or etc.

[ClearCase_guy]

I expect him to buy the farm at some point. Then he can push up daisies.

[tallhappy]

He's still nuts.

But nuts or sane, he murdered someone in cold blod and should not be on this Earth. That he wasn't executed is wrong. That he could get out is absurd.

[Billthedrill]

He's still a nobody. While Harrison was still alive he referred to him as "he who is not to be named." A fitting epitaph.

[Hildy]

As much as I hate Yoko Ono, she had one thing exactly right. She was outraged when TIME put him on the cover. She said when you do that you feed into these people's fantasy. She was right, listen to what he says here. He wanted the recognition. And he got it. That started the whole obsession with demystifying these monsters by making them celebrities. She fights everytime he's up for parole.

[freepertoo]

Poor John. I know he was a liberal, but I loved so much of his music.