John Lennon's killer remains behind bars on the 42nd anniversary of the former Beatle's murder — with his widow opposing his parole for 22 years.
Mark Chapman lay in wait for Lennon outside his apartment at the swanky Dakota building in Manhattan on December 8 1980.
The Beatles fan from Decatur, Georgia, had found Lennon's comment on the band's first US tour that they were "bigger than Jesus Christ" offensive after Chapman became a devout Christian.
He also considered Lennon's millionaire lifestyle hypocritical in contrast to the message of "peace and love" and rejecting personal wealth in his music.
"He told us to imagine no possessions and there he was, with millions of dollars and yachts and farms and country estates, laughing at people like me who had believed the lies and bought the records and built a big part of their lives around his music," Chapman said years later.
As the Liverpudlian and his wife Yoko Ono left for a recording session at 5pm, Chapman got the star to sign a copy of his new album 'Double Fantasy'. He was still there in the cold New York night when the couple returned at 10:50pm.
As the couple walked past him to enter the building, Chapman drew a .38-calibre revolver and fired all five shots, four of which hit Lennon in the back. He was dead before he reached the Roosevelt Hospital.
Chapman remained at the scene until the police arrived to arrest him, reading J. D. Salinger's novel Catcher in the Rye — which he later quoted in court and interviews as a kind of manifesto for his actions.
Guilty Plea
The killer was sentenced in 1981 to life imprisonment with a minimum of 20 years to serve, after rejecting his defense attorney's instruction to plead not guilty on grounds of insanity.
Chapman had been interviewed by more than a dozen psychologists in the six months leading up to his trial: three on behalf of the prosecution, six for the defense and others paid by the court.
He was notably more cooperative with the prosecution's doctors than those hired by his own defence, all of whom concluded that he was psychotic while five of the six also diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia. The experts for the prosecution gave the opinion that Chapman was merely suffering from personality disorders.
One psychiatrist speculated that Chapman did not want to be branded "crazy" — which he believed his defense had paid the six to declare.
Chapman has been before a parole board hearing every two years since 2000, each time unsuccessfully. Ono, who witnessed Lennon's murder at close hand, has always opposed his release. Ahead of the 2020 her lawyer Jonas Herbsman said she had submitted objections to the board "consistent with the prior letters" — despite Chapman's apology to her that year.
The gunman has repeatedly admitted that he killed Lennon for fame and "glory".
"I felt that by killing John Lennon I would become somebody, and instead of that I became a murderer, and murderers are not somebodies," Chapman said in 2010.
In 2018 the board wrote that Chapman "admittedly carefully planned and executed the murder of a world-famous person for no reason other than to gain notoriety."
Last Words
Lennon's widow told BBC Radio 1's Desert Island Discs in 2007 of his touching last words to her, where he fatefully chose to return home to see their five-year-old son rather than go out for a late dinner.
"Shall we go and have dinner before we go home?" she asked Lennon. "No, let’s go home because I want to see Sean before he goes to sleep," he replied.
Sean Lennon recalls that that he remained unaware of his father's death for "a few days", during which his grief-stricken mother was unable to get out of bed.
"I remember kind of glancing at a headline on a newspaper," Lennon's son said. "I could barely read; I didn’t really know what it meant."
"Your dad's dead," Ono eventually told the young Sean. "She said it really straight up, like that: ‘He’s been killed’."
"I remember really wanting to be mature about it for some reason," he recalled. "I said: ‘Don’t worry, mom, you’re still young. You’ll find somebody.’ Which was an intense thing to say, when I think about it."
Lennon had just ended a five-year hiatus from the music business — ostensibly to focus on having children with Ono, who had previously suffered three miscarriages. But music writers have pointed out that period coincided with a nadir in the output of his former Beatles bandmate and rival Paul McCartney's new group Wings, and ended after Lennon heard 'Coming Up, the first single from McCartney's acclaimed second solo album.
Lost Weekend
That break followed Lennon's 18-month "Lost Weekend", when he separated from Ono and began an affair with their personal assistant May Pang — at his wife's suggestion.
Lennon moved into a beach house with singer Harry Nilsson, fellow former Beatle Ringo Starr and Who drummer Keith Moon. All four were members of the notorious Hollywood Vampires club of all-star alcoholics, along with Alice Cooper and Mickey Dolenz, formerly of The Monkees.
During that period, Lennon embraced the wild rock star lifestyle in Los Angeles, while recording his fifth solo album 'Walls and Bridges' and 50's covers album 'Rock 'n' Roll' in chaotic sessions with legendary producer Phil Spectre — who at one point fired a gun in the studio and later claimed to have lost the tapes of the sessions in a car crash.
But he also reconciled with his first son Julian — thanks to Pang — and played with all three of the Beatles, including George Harrison, on several recordings.