"THE MAN WHO KILLED JOHN LENNON: MARK DAVID CHAPMAN'S TWISTED PATH TO MURDER - PART 1"

0:03 Caalaroga Shark Media. Good morning, I'm reed Carter. Saturday, December sixth, twenty twenty five, forty five years ago, Monday, The World Lost John Lennon. December eighth, nineteen eighty, New York City, ten fifty pm. John Lennon and Yoko Ono step out of their limousine on West seventy second Street. They've just returned from the Record Plant studio, where they'd been mixing Yoko's song Walking on Thin Ice. John played lead guitar on the track, his last recording. They walked toward the Dakota, their gothic apartment building overlooking Central Park. A young man steps out of the shadows, twenty five years old, pudgy glasses.

0:51 He'd been waiting there all day. Mark David Chapman drops into a combat stance, raises a point three to eight caliber Charter Arms revolver loaded with hollow points. Bullets fires five times. Four bullets tear through Lenin's back and shoulder. One misses, shattering a window of the Dakota. Lenin staggers up five steps into the security vestibule. I'm shot, I'm shot. Then he collapses, scattering the cassette tapes he'd been carrying. Chapman doesn't run, doesn't hide. The doorman, Jose Perdomo, shakes the gun from his hand and kicks it across the pavement. Do you know what you just did? Perdomo screams. Chapman is calm, almost serene. Yes, I just shot John Lennon.

1:36 He removes his coat and hat, stands under a street lamp, pulls out a paperback book, and starts reading. When police officers Steven Spiro and Peter Cullen arrive two minutes later, they find Chapman standing peacefully on West seventy second Street reading The Catcher in the Rye. Inside the book he'd written, this is my statement, Holden Callfield. John Lennon was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital. Doctors worked frantically for twenty minutes, but he'd lost over eighty percent of his blood. At eleven fifteen pm, the former Beatle was pronounced dead. He was forty years old. I'm reed, Carter, this is celebrity trials today.

2:16 The man who killed John Lennon mark David Chapman's twisted path from YMCA councilor to cold blooded assassin. How the Catcher in the Rye became his Bible and December eighth, nineteen eighty The Knight That Stole one of the greatest musicians who ever lived, Part one of two Chapman's troubled origins. Mark David Chapman was born May tenth, nineteen fifty five, in Fort Worth, Texas. His father, David Curtis Chapman, was a staff sergeant in the United States Air Force. His mother, Diane, was a nurse. When Mark was young, the family moved to Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. From the outside, the Chapmans looked like a normal American family. David was a boy Scout leader taught guitar at the local YMCA.

3:06 Neighbors said they seemed happy, well adjusted, but inside the house things were different. Mark later claimed he lived in constant fear of his father. Said David was physically abusive toward his mother, emotionally distant from his son, unloving. Mark felt like an outsider in his own home, so he created his own world, imaginary friends he called the little people, thousands of them living in the walls of his bedroom. They worshiped him, followed his commands made him feel powerful, important, special, I used to fantasize that I was a king over these little people. Chapman would later say it was the first sign of something deeply wrong. By fourteen, Mark was using drugs marijuana, LSD, heroine, skipping classes, defying his parents, running with the wrong crowd. He once ran away from home and lived on the streets of Atlanta for two weeks.

4:02 He was also bullied relentlessly at Columbia High School in Decatur. Wasn't athletic, didn't fit in. The other kids called him names, made him feel worthless. Then at sixteen, everything changed. Mark Chapman became a born again Christian. He started distributing biblical tracks, found his first girlfriend, a fellow believer named Jessica Blankenship. His grades improved, he stopped using drugs, and he devoted himself to the South DeKalb County YMCA. Mark became a summer camp counselor. And here's what's strange. He was exceptional at it. The children adored him. They nicknamed him Nemo, after Captain Nemo from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea.

4:44 He'd get down on one knee to help a struggling kid play games with them for hours make them feel seen, valued important. When Mark won the award for Outstanding Counselor, the children were on their feet chanting his name, Neamo name Oh. The YMCA director called him a pied piper with the kids. Everyone who worked with him in caretaking professions said he was outstanding, compassionate patient, exactly the kind of person you'd want working with children. So how does that person become an assassin? It was around this time that a friend recommended a book, J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, published in nineteen fifty one, the story of Holden Callfield, a disaffected teenager railing against the phoniness of the adult world. Mark felt an immediate connection Holden's alienation, his disgust with hypocrisy, his fantasy of being the Catcher in the Rye, standing at the edge of a cliff, saving innocent children from falling into the corrupt adult world. The book became Mark's new Bible, and Holden Callfield became his new identity. Something else happened during Mark's religious phase. He turned against one of his childhood heroes, John Lennon. In nineteen sixty six, Lenin had made his infamous comment about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus in the American South. That statement sparked outrage, album burnings, boycotts,

6:15 death threats. Mark's Christian friends made a joke they'd sing Lenin's song Imagine with altered lyrics, Imagine Imagine if John Lennon was dead. Mark called the original song communist. Was furious about the line imagine there's no Heaven? Who did Lenin think? He was telling people not to believe in God? The seeds were planted, the contradiction was forming. Mark Chapman loved John Lennon's music, and Mark Chapman despised everything John Lennon stood for. After high school, Mark moved to Chicago briefly to play guitar in churches and Christian night spots, then came back to Georgia, worked odd jobs for the YMCA, attended community college. In nineteen seventy five, he went to work with Vietnamese refugees at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Again, he excelled, was promoted to assistant director. People trusted him with their most vulnerable populations, but the demons never went away. The little people still talked to him, and the darkness was always there. Waiting. In nineteen seventy seven, Mark's parents began divorce proceedings. His world was crumbling. He bought a one way ticket to Hawaii Paradise escape. Instead, he tried to kill himself carbon monoxide poisoning. Failed attempt, woke up in a hospital, and here's the twist. He recovered so well that the hospital hired him, first in maintenance, then in the print shop. For a while, things seemed better. Mark

7:49 fell in love with his travel agent, a Japanese American woman named Gloria Abe. In nineteen seventy eight. He took a trip around the world Tokyo, Soul, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, New Delhi, Beirut, Geneva, London, Paris, Dublin, came back and proposed to Gloria. They married on June second, nineteen seventy nine. But happiness never lasted long for Mark David Chapman. He got fired from the hospital, rehired, then quit after an argument with a nurse. Took a job as a night security guard at a high end apartment complex, started drinking heavily, and the obsessions returned. The Little People The Catcher in the Rye artwork, music and John Lennon, the lavish lifestyle, the millions of dollars, the Dakota apartment overlooking Central Park.

8:38 Reading Anthony Fawcett's book about Lenin's life in New York, the yachts, the farms, the country estates, while the man preached love and peace. In Mark's mind, twisted by the Catcher in the Rye, John Lennon was the ultimate phony, a hypocrite, someone who needed to be stopped. September nineteen eighty, Mark wrote a letter to a free I'm going nuts. He signed it the Catcher in the Rye. The countdown had begun. The first trip to New York. Eight minutes October nineteen eighty, Mark David Chapman resigned from his job as a security guard. He told his wife he was going to New York, didn't tell her why. On October twenty seventh, he walked into a gun shop in Honolulu and purchased a Charter Arms point three to eight special revolver, five shot snub nosed, perfect for concealment. Two days later, he flew to New York City. Called the Federal Aviation Administration beforehand to learn how to transport a firearm. They told him. Bullets could be damaged during air travel, so he left the ammunition behind. Mark checked into a hotel on the Upper West Side, walked to the Dakota Building on Central Park West, just to look, just to see where John Lennon lived. He stood outside for hours, watching, waiting, but he didn't have bullets, and part of him, maybe the part that was once Nemo, the beloved camp counselor, didn't really want to go through with it, so he left, flew back to Hawaii, tried to put the murder out

10:09 of his mind, but he couldn't stop thinking about it, couldn't stop reading The Catcher and the Rye, couldn't stop listening to John Lennon's music and getting angrier. I would listen to this music and I would get angry at him. Chapman later said, for saying that he didn't believe in God, that he just believed in him and Yoko, and that he didn't believe in the Beatles, I just wanted to scream out loud, who does he think he is saying these things about God and Heaven and the Beatles? In Mark's warped mind, killing Lenin wasn't murder. It was justice. Holden Caulfield's justice, punishing the phony, saving the world from hypocrisy. He needed bullets. Mark flew to Atlanta, visited an old friend from the shooting range, picked up hollow point ammunition, the kind that explodes on impact, designed to cause maximum damage.

10:59 Then he practiced, went into the woods near Atlanta, fired round after round, getting comfortable with the gun, preparing for what came next. December sixth, nineteen eighty, two days before the murder, Mark David Chapman flew back to New York City. He checked into the YMCA on the Upper West Side for one night, fitting given his history with the organization, then moved to the Sheraton Hotel in Midtown, Manhattan. He had everything he needed, the gun, the bullets, the book, the target. December eighth, nineteen eighty, Monday morning, Mark left his hotel room, left behind personal items police would later find, including a copy of the album he planned to have signed, walked to a bookstore bought a fresh copy of The Catcher in the Rye. Inside the front cover, he wrote this is my statement and signed it Holden Callfield. Then he walked to the Dakota and waited. The day was cold but clear, Mark positioned himself outside the building's entrance on West seventy second Street. He wasn't alone. There were always fans waiting for a glimpse of Lenin. He blended in perfectly. Around mid morning, he missed seeing Lenin step out of a taxi and enter the building, but later he spotted Lenin's five year old son, Sean, returning from

12:30 a walk with the family nanny, Helen Seaman. Mark approached them, reached out and shook Shawn's hand. He was a beautiful boy. Chapman later said he even quoted Lenin's song beautiful Boy to the child. Something should have stopped him then, holding the hand of an innocent child, knowing what he was about to do to that child's father, But the Holden Callfield delusion was too strong. The phonies had to be punished. Around five pm, John Lennon and Yoko Ono urged from the Dakota. They were heading to the record Plant studio to work on Yoko's song Walking on Thin Ice. A team from RKO Radio was there to interview them. Fans crowded around. Mark stepped forward with his copy of Double Fantasy, Lenin's recently released album with Yoko silently handed it to Lenin asked for an autograph. Lenin obliged. He was always gracious with fans, believed they'd earned it by waiting. Standing nearby was Paul Gorish, an amateur photographer and Lenin superfan.

13:33 He'd been taking pictures of Lenin for years had developed a casual relationship with the musician. Gorrish raised his camera snapped a photograph. The image would become one of the most haunting in rock history. John Lennon head bowed, signing an album. Mark David Chapman beside him, watching intently. The assassin and his victim caught together in the same frame hours before the murder. After signing, Lenin looked at Chapman, Is this all you want? Chapman smiled, nodded. He was very kind to me, Chapman would later say, ironically, very kind and was very patient with me. He asked me if I needed anything else. I said no, no, sir, and he walked away, very cordial and decent. Man. Lennon and Ono got into the waiting limousine, drove to the recording studio, spent the evening mixing, walking on thin ice and Mark David Chapman stayed right where he was, waiting, the signed album in his hand, the gun in his pocket, the book ready to be read. Paul Gooresh talked to him briefly, asked where he was from Hawaii. Where are you staying? Chapman snapped at him, why do you want to know? Gor Esh backed off. As the hours passed, Gorsh decided to leave. It was getting late cold. He had the autograph he wanted, he told Chapman, and he was heading home. Chapman tried to stop him. I'd wait.

15:04 You never know if you'll see him again. Gorsh left anyway, missed the murder by minutes. Mark David Chapman stood alone outside the Dakota reading The Catcher in the Rye, waiting for John Lennin to come home. Make it make sense. He had the autograph, Lenin had been kind to him, very cordial and decent. Chapman could have walked away, could have gone back to Hawaii, could have gotten help. Instead, he waited because in his twisted mind, kindness didn't matter. Fame was the crime, and the punishment was death. We'll be right back with December eighth, nineteen eighty The Night Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon outside the Dakota. The Hollow Point Bullets, the five Shots, the Last Words, and the book that explained nothing. Welcome Back to Celebrity Trials.

16:06 I'm reed Carter. December eighth, nineteen eighty ten fifty pm. John Lennon and Yoko Ono returned to the Dakota after spending the evening at the Record Plant studio. Their driver, Doug McDougall, later said Lennon was in high spirits. The album was doing well. Double Fantasy had just gone gold, the new song was coming together. John wanted to get home quickly to say good night to Sean before going out for a late dinner at the Stage Deli. The limousine pulled up to the curb on West seventy second Street. Standard practice would have been to drive into the Dakota's secure interior courtyard, but Lennon liked to walk in from the street. Made him feel like a regular New Yorker, normal accessible. Yoko exited first, John followed, carrying a stack of cassette tapes. They walked toward the entrance. A figure stepped out of the shadows. Mark David Chapman still there still waiting five hours since the autograph. Freezing cold but patient, resolute, Lenin walked past him. Didn't recognize him, Why would he just another fan. Chapman was wearing a scarf and a winter coat underneath a promotional T shirt for Todd Rundgren's album Hermit of Mink Hollow, another of his obsessions. Mister Lenin, that's what some witnesses heard. Others heard nothing. Chapman himself claimed he didn't remember calling out. What happened next took seconds.

17:34 Chapman dropped into what he called a combat stance, legs apart, arms extended, both hands gripping the thirty eight revolver. He fired five times, rapid succession, hollow point bullets designed to mushroom on impact to cause maximum internal damage. The first bullet missed shattered a window of the Dakota Building. Four bullets found their target. Two entered the left side of Lenin's back, one exiting through his chest, puncturing his lung, the other lodging in his neck. Two more hit his left shoulder. Lenin staggered forward, made it up five steps into the security vestibule, blood pouring from his wounds from his mouth, I'm shot, I'm shot. He collapsed on the floor.

18:19 The cassette tapes scattered around him. His glasses, the famous round spectacles, smashed against his face. As he fell. Dorman Jose Perdomo grabbed Chapman's arm, shook the gun loose, kicked it across the pavement. The revolver came to rest in some bushes near Chapman signed copy of Double Fantasy. Do you know what you just did? Chapman was calm, almost peaceful. Yes, I just shot John Lennon. He removed his coat and hat, showed Perdomo he had no other weapons. Then he walked to the curb, sat down, pulled out the catcher in the rye, and started reading inside. Jay Hastings, the night concierge, rushed to Lenin's side started to make a tourniquet, but when he ripped open Lenin's shirt and saw the wounds, the blood, the destroyed tissue, he knew a tourniquet wouldn't help.

19:14 He covered Lenin's chest with his uniform jacket, removed the blood covered glasses, called the police. Yoko was screaming, John's been shot, John's been shot. The responding officers Stephen Spiro and Peter Cullen arrived within two minutes. They found Chapman exactly where Perdomo had left him, on the street, reading his book, completely at peace with what he'd done. He was very docile. Spiro later recalled. He offered no resistance at all. They cuffed him put him in the back of the squad car. Chapman looked up and said, I acted alone. Inside the Dakota Lenin was dying. Too much blood loss, too much damage. The hallow point bullets had done exactly what they were designed to do. Another pair of officers, Bill Gamble and James Moran, lifted Lenin into their patrol car. No time to wait for an ambulance, they raced toward Roosevelt Hospital on West fifty ninth Street, sirens blaring. Moran looked back at Lenin, Are you John Lennon?

20:20 Some accounts claim Lenin nodded, Others say he moaned. Others say he was already unconscious. The truth is unclear. What's certain is that John Lennon never spoke again. At Roosevelt Hospital, doctor Stephen Lynn and a team of emergency room physicians worked frantically. Lenin had no pulse when he arrived, no blood pressure. They opened his chest, tried to massage his heart, pumped unit after unit of blood, but he'd already lost over eighty percent of his blood supply. The damage was catastrophic. After nearly twenty minutes of effort, they stopped. At eleven fifteen pm, Doctor Lynn walked out to speak with Yoko Ono.

21:01 We have very bad news. Unfortunately, in spite of massive efforts, your husband is dead. Yoko collapsed. No, tell me it's not true. Tell me he's okay. It wasn't okay. John Lennon, founding member of the Beatles, husband, father, artist, activist, was dead at forty years old. Outside the Dakota crowds were already gathering. Word had spread. Radio stations interrupted their broadcasts. Television networks broke into programming across the city, across the country, across the world. People stopped what they were doing. Howard Cosell delivered the news during Monday night football. An unspeakable tragedy.

21:47 John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps of all of the Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital dead on arrival. This morning, thousands of people gathered outside the Dakota crying, singing Lenin's songs, leaving flowers, candles, photographs, a spontaneous memorial that would last for days. And Mark David Chapman, he was in a holding cell at the twentieth Precinct Calm Cooperative, reciting passages from the Catcher in the Rye. When asked why he did it, he had one answer to be somebody, John Lennon was dead and Mark David Chapman finally had what he wanted fame. That's part one of our John Lennon Assassination Special tomorrow. The Trial that Never was Why Mark David Chapman pleaded guilty against his lawyer's advice, claiming God told him to the twenty years to life sentence, forty five years behind bars, fourteen parole denials, and the question that haunts us still, could anything have stopped him? John Winston Lennon was born October ninth, nineteen forty in liver England. Formed The Beatles with Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Changed music forever, changed culture forever. After the Beatles broke up. He moved to New York with Yoko, raised their son Sean, made music that still resonates today. Imagine all the people living

23:20 life in peace. He should be eighty five years old, should be watching his grandchildren grow up, should be making music, should be alive. Instead, he's frozen at forty, shot in the back by a man who thought fame was worth more than human life. Someone has to say his name. John Lennon, husband, father, artist, Dreamer. Rest in peace, John, I'm read Carter. See you tomorrow for part two. This is Celebrity Trials