John Lennon is undoubtedly a legend of the music world, but his life was cut short by someone who simply wished to be famous.
Mark David Chapman, the killer responsible for shooting the Beatles star back in 1980, recently admitted the real reason why he shot the Imagine singer, as he applied for and was subsequently denied parole for the 14th time.
With music fans no doubt still in mourning for Lennon, who died when he was just 40, there was perhaps no real chance of Chapman ever becoming a free man again, even as he apologised for his crimes earlier this year. At the time, he finally shed more light on why he targeted the Liverpudlian in an unprovoked attack.
We've previously heard about Chapman's obsession with J.D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye, which he was found reading at the scene of Lennon's shooting in New York. He suggested that he believed the Beatles star to be a 'phony', a term coined by the book's main character Holden Caulfield.
Advert
However, just a few months ago, we heard that Chapman's main goal for shooting the star was simply to become famous himself, as he no doubt struggled to compare with a man from the band which were 'more popular than Jesus', according to Lennon himself.
Speaking to a parole board from the Green Haven Correctional Facility in August, Chapman said as per the New York Post: “This was for me and me alone, unfortunately, and it had everything to do with his popularity.
"My crime was completely selfish.”
When asked by a commissioner why he wanted to murder Lennon, he said: “To be famous, to be something I wasn’t.
“And then I just realised, hey, there is a goal here. I don’t have to die and I can be a somebody. I had sunk that low.
“That morning of the 8th, I just knew. I don’t know how I knew but I just knew that was going to be the day that I was going to meet and kill him.”
The Apple TV+ documentary John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial has also revealed Lennon's final words from that fateful day, as concierge Jay Hastings, who worked in the building where Lennon lived with Yoko Ono and their son Sean, shared what happened.
He said: “He runs past me. He goes, ‘I’m shot,’” he recalls in the documentary. “He had blood coming out of his mouth. He just collapsed on the floor.
“I half rolled him to his back and took his glasses off, put them on the desk. And Yoko was screaming, ‘Get an ambulance, get an ambulance, get an ambulance.’”
While Chapman did seem apologetic for his crime at the latest parole meeting, the parole board ruled that he lacked genuine remorse or meaningful empathy, something which a psychologist has also weighed in on.
“This was a human being,” he said, referring to Lennon.
“Here I am living so much longer, and not just family but his friends and the fans, I apologise for the devastation that I caused you, the agony that they must have gone through. I had no thought about that at all at the time of the crime, I didn’t care.
“I don’t have any interest at all in being famous. Put me under the rug somewhere. I don’t want to be famous anymore, period.”
Chapman, who is now 70, will have to wait until 2027 to apply for parole again.
James Moorhouse