Speaker 1: Caalaroga Shark Media. Good morning, I'm reed Carter. Saturday, December sixth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, forty five years ago, Monday, The World
Speaker 1: Lost John Lennon. December eighth, nineteen eighty, New York City,
Speaker 1: ten fifty pm. John Lennon and Yoko Ono step out
Speaker 1: of their limousine on West seventy second Street. They've just
Speaker 1: returned from the Record Plant studio, where they'd been mixing
Speaker 1: Yoko's song Walking on Thin Ice. John played lead guitar
Speaker 1: on the track, his last recording. They walked toward the Dakota,
Speaker 1: their gothic apartment building overlooking Central Park. A young man
Speaker 1: steps out of the shadows, twenty five years old, pudgy glasses.
Speaker 1: He'd been waiting there all day. Mark David Chapman drops
Speaker 1: into a combat stance, raises a point three to eight
Speaker 1: caliber Charter Arms revolver loaded with hollow points. Bullets fires
Speaker 1: five times. Four bullets tear through Lenin's back and shoulder.
Speaker 1: One misses, shattering a window of the Dakota. Lenin staggers
Speaker 1: up five steps into the security vestibule. I'm shot, I'm shot.
Speaker 1: Then he collapses, scattering the cassette tapes he'd been carrying.
Speaker 1: Chapman doesn't run, doesn't hide. The doorman, Jose Perdomo, shakes
Speaker 1: the gun from his hand and kicks it across the pavement.
Speaker 1: Do you know what you just did? Perdomo screams. Chapman
Speaker 1: is calm, almost serene. Yes, I just shot John Lennon.
Speaker 1: He removes his coat and hat, stands under a street lamp,
Speaker 1: pulls out a paperback book, and starts reading. When police
Speaker 1: officers Steven Spiro and Peter Cullen arrive two minutes later,
Speaker 1: they find Chapman standing peacefully on West seventy second Street
Speaker 1: reading The Catcher in the Rye. Inside the book he'd written,
Speaker 1: this is my statement, Holden Callfield. John Lennon was rushed
Speaker 1: to Roosevelt Hospital. Doctors worked frantically for twenty minutes, but
Speaker 1: he'd lost over eighty percent of his blood. At eleven
Speaker 1: fifteen pm, the former Beatle was pronounced dead. He was
Speaker 1: forty years old. I'm reed, Carter, this is celebrity trials today.
Speaker 1: The man who killed John Lennon mark David Chapman's twisted
Speaker 1: path from YMCA councilor to cold blooded assassin. How the
Speaker 1: Catcher in the Rye became his Bible and December eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty The Knight That Stole one of the greatest
Speaker 1: musicians who ever lived, Part one of two Chapman's troubled origins.
Speaker 1: Mark David Chapman was born May tenth, nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: in Fort Worth, Texas. His father, David Curtis Chapman, was
Speaker 1: a staff sergeant in the United States Air Force. His mother, Diane,
Speaker 1: was a nurse. When Mark was young, the family moved
Speaker 1: to Decatur, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. From the outside,
Speaker 1: the Chapmans looked like a normal American family. David was
Speaker 1: a boy Scout leader taught guitar at the local YMCA.
Speaker 1: Neighbors said they seemed happy, well adjusted, but inside the
Speaker 1: house things were different. Mark later claimed he lived in
Speaker 1: constant fear of his father. Said David was physically abusive
Speaker 1: toward his mother, emotionally distant from his son, unloving. Mark
Speaker 1: felt like an outsider in his own home, so he
Speaker 1: created his own world, imaginary friends he called the little people,
Speaker 1: thousands of them living in the walls of his bedroom.
Speaker 1: They worshiped him, followed his commands made him feel powerful, important, special,
Speaker 1: I used to fantasize that I was a king over
Speaker 1: these little people. Chapman would later say it was the
Speaker 1: first sign of something deeply wrong. By fourteen, Mark was
Speaker 1: using drugs marijuana, LSD, heroine, skipping classes, defying his parents,
Speaker 1: running with the wrong crowd. He once ran away from
Speaker 1: home and lived on the streets of Atlanta for two weeks.
Speaker 1: He was also bullied relentlessly at Columbia High School in Decatur.
Speaker 1: Wasn't athletic, didn't fit in. The other kids called him names,
Speaker 1: made him feel worthless. Then at sixteen, everything changed. Mark
Speaker 1: Chapman became a born again Christian. He started distributing biblical tracks,
Speaker 1: found his first girlfriend, a fellow believer named Jessica Blankenship.
Speaker 1: His grades improved, he stopped using drugs, and he devoted
Speaker 1: himself to the South DeKalb County YMCA. Mark became a
Speaker 1: summer camp counselor. And here's what's strange. He was exceptional
Speaker 1: at it. The children adored him. They nicknamed him Nemo,
Speaker 1: after Captain Nemo from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea.
Speaker 1: He'd get down on one knee to help a struggling
Speaker 1: kid play games with them for hours make them feel seen,
Speaker 1: valued important. When Mark won the award for Outstanding Counselor,
Speaker 1: the children were on their feet chanting his name, Neamo
Speaker 1: name Oh. The YMCA director called him a pied piper
Speaker 1: with the kids. Everyone who worked with him in caretaking
Speaker 1: professions said he was outstanding, compassionate patient, exactly the kind
Speaker 1: of person you'd want working with children. So how does
Speaker 1: that person become an assassin? It was around this time
Speaker 1: that a friend recommended a book, J. D. Salinger's The
Speaker 1: Catcher in the Rye, published in nineteen fifty one, the
Speaker 1: story of Holden Callfield, a disaffected teenager railing against the
Speaker 1: phoniness of the adult world. Mark felt an immediate connection
Speaker 1: Holden's alienation, his disgust with hypocrisy, his fantasy of being
Speaker 1: the Catcher in the Rye, standing at the edge of
Speaker 1: a cliff, saving innocent children from falling into the corrupt
Speaker 1: adult world. The book became Mark's new Bible, and Holden
Speaker 1: Callfield became his new identity. Something else happened during Mark's
Speaker 1: religious phase. He turned against one of his childhood heroes,
Speaker 1: John Lennon. In nineteen sixty six, Lenin had made his
Speaker 1: infamous comment about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus
Speaker 1: in the American South. That statement sparked outrage, album burnings, boycotts,
Speaker 1: death threats. Mark's Christian friends made a joke they'd sing
Speaker 1: Lenin's song Imagine with altered lyrics, Imagine Imagine if John
Speaker 1: Lennon was dead. Mark called the original song communist. Was
Speaker 1: furious about the line imagine there's no Heaven? Who did
Speaker 1: Lenin think? He was telling people not to believe in God?
Speaker 1: The seeds were planted, the contradiction was forming. Mark Chapman
Speaker 1: loved John Lennon's music, and Mark Chapman despised everything John
Speaker 1: Lennon stood for. After high school, Mark moved to Chicago
Speaker 1: briefly to play guitar in churches and Christian night spots,
Speaker 1: then came back to Georgia, worked odd jobs for the YMCA,
Speaker 1: attended community college. In nineteen seventy five, he went to
Speaker 1: work with Vietnamese refugees at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Again, he excelled,
Speaker 1: was promoted to assistant director. People trusted him with their
Speaker 1: most vulnerable populations, but the demons never went away. The
Speaker 1: little people still talked to him, and the darkness was
Speaker 1: always there. Waiting. In nineteen seventy seven, Mark's parents began
Speaker 1: divorce proceedings. His world was crumbling. He bought a one
Speaker 1: way ticket to Hawaii Paradise escape. Instead, he tried to
Speaker 1: kill himself carbon monoxide poisoning. Failed attempt, woke up in
Speaker 1: a hospital, and here's the twist. He recovered so well
Speaker 1: that the hospital hired him, first in maintenance, then in
Speaker 1: the print shop. For a while, things seemed better. Mark
Speaker 1: fell in love with his travel agent, a Japanese American
Speaker 1: woman named Gloria Abe. In nineteen seventy eight. He took
Speaker 1: a trip around the world Tokyo, Soul, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok,
Speaker 1: New Delhi, Beirut, Geneva, London, Paris, Dublin, came back and
Speaker 1: proposed to Gloria. They married on June second, nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: But happiness never lasted long for Mark David Chapman. He
Speaker 1: got fired from the hospital, rehired, then quit after an
Speaker 1: argument with a nurse. Took a job as a night
Speaker 1: security guard at a high end apartment complex, started drinking heavily,
Speaker 1: and the obsessions returned. The Little People The Catcher in
Speaker 1: the Rye artwork, music and John Lennon, the lavish lifestyle,
Speaker 1: the millions of dollars, the Dakota apartment overlooking Central Park.
Speaker 1: Reading Anthony Fawcett's book about Lenin's life in New York,
Speaker 1: the yachts, the farms, the country estates, while the man
Speaker 1: preached love and peace. In Mark's mind, twisted by the
Speaker 1: Catcher in the Rye, John Lennon was the ultimate phony,
Speaker 1: a hypocrite, someone who needed to be stopped. September nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: Mark wrote a letter to a free I'm going nuts.
Speaker 1: He signed it the Catcher in the Rye. The countdown
Speaker 1: had begun. The first trip to New York. Eight minutes
Speaker 1: October nineteen eighty, Mark David Chapman resigned from his job
Speaker 1: as a security guard. He told his wife he was
Speaker 1: going to New York, didn't tell her why. On October
Speaker 1: twenty seventh, he walked into a gun shop in Honolulu
Speaker 1: and purchased a Charter Arms point three to eight special revolver,
Speaker 1: five shot snub nosed, perfect for concealment. Two days later,
Speaker 1: he flew to New York City. Called the Federal Aviation
Speaker 1: Administration beforehand to learn how to transport a firearm. They
Speaker 1: told him. Bullets could be damaged during air travel, so
Speaker 1: he left the ammunition behind. Mark checked into a hotel
Speaker 1: on the Upper West Side, walked to the Dakota Building
Speaker 1: on Central Park West, just to look, just to see
Speaker 1: where John Lennon lived. He stood outside for hours, watching, waiting,
Speaker 1: but he didn't have bullets, and part of him, maybe
Speaker 1: the part that was once Nemo, the beloved camp counselor,
Speaker 1: didn't really want to go through with it, so he left,
Speaker 1: flew back to Hawaii, tried to put the murder out
Speaker 1: of his mind, but he couldn't stop thinking about it,
Speaker 1: couldn't stop reading The Catcher and the Rye, couldn't stop
Speaker 1: listening to John Lennon's music and getting angrier. I would
Speaker 1: listen to this music and I would get angry at him.
Speaker 1: Chapman later said, for saying that he didn't believe in God,
Speaker 1: that he just believed in him and Yoko, and that
Speaker 1: he didn't believe in the Beatles, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: scream out loud, who does he think he is saying
Speaker 1: these things about God and Heaven and the Beatles? In
Speaker 1: Mark's warped mind, killing Lenin wasn't murder. It was justice.
Speaker 1: Holden Caulfield's justice, punishing the phony, saving the world from hypocrisy.
Speaker 1: He needed bullets. Mark flew to Atlanta, visited an old
Speaker 1: friend from the shooting range, picked up hollow point ammunition,
Speaker 1: the kind that explodes on impact, designed to cause maximum damage.
Speaker 1: Then he practiced, went into the woods near Atlanta, fired
Speaker 1: round after round, getting comfortable with the gun, preparing for
Speaker 1: what came next. December sixth, nineteen eighty, two days before
Speaker 1: the murder, Mark David Chapman flew back to New York City.
Speaker 1: He checked into the YMCA on the Upper West Side
Speaker 1: for one night, fitting given his history with the organization,
Speaker 1: then moved to the Sheraton Hotel in Midtown, Manhattan. He
Speaker 1: had everything he needed, the gun, the bullets, the book,
Speaker 1: the target. December eighth, nineteen eighty, Monday morning, Mark left
Speaker 1: his hotel room, left behind personal items police would later find,
Speaker 1: including a copy of the album he planned to have signed,
Speaker 1: walked to a bookstore bought a fresh copy of The
Speaker 1: Catcher in the Rye. Inside the front cover, he wrote
Speaker 1: this is my statement and signed it Holden Callfield. Then
Speaker 1: he walked to the Dakota and waited. The day was
Speaker 1: cold but clear, Mark positioned himself outside the building's entrance
Speaker 1: on West seventy second Street. He wasn't alone. There were
Speaker 1: always fans waiting for a glimpse of Lenin. He blended
Speaker 1: in perfectly. Around mid morning, he missed seeing Lenin step
Speaker 1: out of a taxi and enter the building, but later
Speaker 1: he spotted Lenin's five year old son, Sean, returning from
Speaker 1: a walk with the family nanny, Helen Seaman. Mark approached them,
Speaker 1: reached out and shook Shawn's hand. He was a beautiful boy.
Speaker 1: Chapman later said he even quoted Lenin's song beautiful Boy
Speaker 1: to the child. Something should have stopped him then, holding
Speaker 1: the hand of an innocent child, knowing what he was
Speaker 1: about to do to that child's father, But the Holden
Speaker 1: Callfield delusion was too strong. The phonies had to be punished.
Speaker 1: Around five pm, John Lennon and Yoko Ono urged from
Speaker 1: the Dakota. They were heading to the record Plant studio
Speaker 1: to work on Yoko's song Walking on Thin Ice. A
Speaker 1: team from RKO Radio was there to interview them. Fans
Speaker 1: crowded around. Mark stepped forward with his copy of Double Fantasy,
Speaker 1: Lenin's recently released album with Yoko silently handed it to
Speaker 1: Lenin asked for an autograph. Lenin obliged. He was always
Speaker 1: gracious with fans, believed they'd earned it by waiting. Standing
Speaker 1: nearby was Paul Gorish, an amateur photographer and Lenin superfan.
Speaker 1: He'd been taking pictures of Lenin for years had developed
Speaker 1: a casual relationship with the musician. Gorrish raised his camera
Speaker 1: snapped a photograph. The image would become one of the
Speaker 1: most haunting in rock history. John Lennon head bowed, signing
Speaker 1: an album. Mark David Chapman beside him, watching intently. The
Speaker 1: assassin and his victim caught together in the same frame
Speaker 1: hours before the murder. After signing, Lenin looked at Chapman,
Speaker 1: Is this all you want? Chapman smiled, nodded. He was
Speaker 1: very kind to me, Chapman would later say, ironically, very
Speaker 1: kind and was very patient with me. He asked me
Speaker 1: if I needed anything else. I said no, no, sir,
Speaker 1: and he walked away, very cordial and decent. Man. Lennon
Speaker 1: and Ono got into the waiting limousine, drove to the
Speaker 1: recording studio, spent the evening mixing, walking on thin ice
Speaker 1: and Mark David Chapman stayed right where he was, waiting,
Speaker 1: the signed album in his hand, the gun in his pocket,
Speaker 1: the book ready to be read. Paul Gooresh talked to
Speaker 1: him briefly, asked where he was from Hawaii. Where are
Speaker 1: you staying? Chapman snapped at him, why do you want
Speaker 1: to know? Gor Esh backed off. As the hours passed,
Speaker 1: Gorsh decided to leave. It was getting late cold. He
Speaker 1: had the autograph he wanted, he told Chapman, and he
Speaker 1: was heading home. Chapman tried to stop him. I'd wait.
Speaker 1: You never know if you'll see him again. Gorsh left anyway,
Speaker 1: missed the murder by minutes. Mark David Chapman stood alone
Speaker 1: outside the Dakota reading The Catcher in the Rye, waiting
Speaker 1: for John Lennin to come home. Make it make sense.
Speaker 1: He had the autograph, Lenin had been kind to him,
Speaker 1: very cordial and decent. Chapman could have walked away, could
Speaker 1: have gone back to Hawaii, could have gotten help. Instead,
Speaker 1: he waited because in his twisted mind, kindness didn't matter.
Speaker 1: Fame was the crime, and the punishment was death. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back with December eighth, nineteen eighty The Night
Speaker 1: Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon outside the Dakota. The
Speaker 1: Hollow Point Bullets, the five Shots, the Last Words, and
Speaker 1: the book that explained nothing. Welcome Back to Celebrity Trials.
Speaker 1: I'm reed Carter. December eighth, nineteen eighty ten fifty pm.
Speaker 1: John Lennon and Yoko Ono returned to the Dakota after
Speaker 1: spending the evening at the Record Plant studio. Their driver,
Speaker 1: Doug McDougall, later said Lennon was in high spirits. The
Speaker 1: album was doing well. Double Fantasy had just gone gold,
Speaker 1: the new song was coming together. John wanted to get
Speaker 1: home quickly to say good night to Sean before going
Speaker 1: out for a late dinner at the Stage Deli. The
Speaker 1: limousine pulled up to the curb on West seventy second Street.
Speaker 1: Standard practice would have been to drive into the Dakota's
Speaker 1: secure interior courtyard, but Lennon liked to walk in from
Speaker 1: the street. Made him feel like a regular New Yorker,
Speaker 1: normal accessible. Yoko exited first, John followed, carrying a stack
Speaker 1: of cassette tapes. They walked toward the entrance. A figure
Speaker 1: stepped out of the shadows. Mark David Chapman still there
Speaker 1: still waiting five hours since the autograph. Freezing cold but patient, resolute,
Speaker 1: Lenin walked past him. Didn't recognize him, Why would he
Speaker 1: just another fan. Chapman was wearing a scarf and a
Speaker 1: winter coat underneath a promotional T shirt for Todd Rundgren's
Speaker 1: album Hermit of Mink Hollow, another of his obsessions. Mister Lenin,
Speaker 1: that's what some witnesses heard. Others heard nothing. Chapman himself
Speaker 1: claimed he didn't remember calling out. What happened next took seconds.
Speaker 1: Chapman dropped into what he called a combat stance, legs apart,
Speaker 1: arms extended, both hands gripping the thirty eight revolver. He
Speaker 1: fired five times, rapid succession, hollow point bullets designed to
Speaker 1: mushroom on impact to cause maximum internal damage. The first
Speaker 1: bullet missed shattered a window of the Dakota Building. Four
Speaker 1: bullets found their target. Two entered the left side of
Speaker 1: Lenin's back, one exiting through his chest, puncturing his lung,
Speaker 1: the other lodging in his neck. Two more hit his
Speaker 1: left shoulder. Lenin staggered forward, made it up five steps
Speaker 1: into the security vestibule, blood pouring from his wounds from
Speaker 1: his mouth, I'm shot, I'm shot. He collapsed on the floor.
Speaker 1: The cassette tapes scattered around him. His glasses, the famous
Speaker 1: round spectacles, smashed against his face. As he fell. Dorman
Speaker 1: Jose Perdomo grabbed Chapman's arm, shook the gun loose, kicked
Speaker 1: it across the pavement. The revolver came to rest in
Speaker 1: some bushes near Chapman signed copy of Double Fantasy. Do
Speaker 1: you know what you just did? Chapman was calm, almost peaceful. Yes,
Speaker 1: I just shot John Lennon. He removed his coat and hat,
Speaker 1: showed Perdomo he had no other weapons. Then he walked
Speaker 1: to the curb, sat down, pulled out the catcher in
Speaker 1: the rye, and started reading inside. Jay Hastings, the night concierge,
Speaker 1: rushed to Lenin's side started to make a tourniquet, but
Speaker 1: when he ripped open Lenin's shirt and saw the wounds,
Speaker 1: the blood, the destroyed tissue, he knew a tourniquet wouldn't help.
Speaker 1: He covered Lenin's chest with his uniform jacket, removed the
Speaker 1: blood covered glasses, called the police. Yoko was screaming, John's
Speaker 1: been shot, John's been shot. The responding officers Stephen Spiro
Speaker 1: and Peter Cullen arrived within two minutes. They found Chapman
Speaker 1: exactly where Perdomo had left him, on the street, reading
Speaker 1: his book, completely at peace with what he'd done. He
Speaker 1: was very docile. Spiro later recalled. He offered no resistance
Speaker 1: at all. They cuffed him put him in the back
Speaker 1: of the squad car. Chapman looked up and said, I
Speaker 1: acted alone. Inside the Dakota Lenin was dying. Too much
Speaker 1: blood loss, too much damage. The hallow point bullets had
Speaker 1: done exactly what they were designed to do. Another pair
Speaker 1: of officers, Bill Gamble and James Moran, lifted Lenin into
Speaker 1: their patrol car. No time to wait for an ambulance,
Speaker 1: they raced toward Roosevelt Hospital on West fifty ninth Street,
Speaker 1: sirens blaring. Moran looked back at Lenin, Are you John Lennon?
Speaker 1: Some accounts claim Lenin nodded, Others say he moaned. Others
Speaker 1: say he was already unconscious. The truth is unclear. What's
Speaker 1: certain is that John Lennon never spoke again. At Roosevelt Hospital,
Speaker 1: doctor Stephen Lynn and a team of emergency room physicians
Speaker 1: worked frantically. Lenin had no pulse when he arrived, no
Speaker 1: blood pressure. They opened his chest, tried to massage his heart,
Speaker 1: pumped unit after unit of blood, but he'd already lost
Speaker 1: over eighty percent of his blood supply. The damage was catastrophic.
Speaker 1: After nearly twenty minutes of effort, they stopped. At eleven
Speaker 1: fifteen pm, Doctor Lynn walked out to speak with Yoko Ono.
Speaker 1: We have very bad news. Unfortunately, in spite of massive efforts,
Speaker 1: your husband is dead. Yoko collapsed. No, tell me it's
Speaker 1: not true. Tell me he's okay. It wasn't okay. John Lennon,
Speaker 1: founding member of the Beatles, husband, father, artist, activist, was
Speaker 1: dead at forty years old. Outside the Dakota crowds were
Speaker 1: already gathering. Word had spread. Radio stations interrupted their broadcasts.
Speaker 1: Television networks broke into programming across the city, across the country,
Speaker 1: across the world. People stopped what they were doing. Howard
Speaker 1: Cosell delivered the news during Monday night football. An unspeakable tragedy.
Speaker 1: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West
Speaker 1: side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps of
Speaker 1: all of the Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed
Speaker 1: to Roosevelt Hospital dead on arrival. This morning, thousands of
Speaker 1: people gathered outside the Dakota crying, singing Lenin's songs, leaving flowers, candles, photographs,
Speaker 1: a spontaneous memorial that would last for days. And Mark
Speaker 1: David Chapman, he was in a holding cell at the
Speaker 1: twentieth Precinct Calm Cooperative, reciting passages from the Catcher in
Speaker 1: the Rye. When asked why he did it, he had
Speaker 1: one answer to be somebody, John Lennon was dead and
Speaker 1: Mark David Chapman finally had what he wanted fame. That's
Speaker 1: part one of our John Lennon Assassination Special tomorrow. The
Speaker 1: Trial that Never was Why Mark David Chapman pleaded guilty
Speaker 1: against his lawyer's advice, claiming God told him to the
Speaker 1: twenty years to life sentence, forty five years behind bars,
Speaker 1: fourteen parole denials, and the question that haunts us still,
Speaker 1: could anything have stopped him? John Winston Lennon was born
Speaker 1: October ninth, nineteen forty in liver England. Formed The Beatles
Speaker 1: with Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Changed music forever,
Speaker 1: changed culture forever. After the Beatles broke up. He moved
Speaker 1: to New York with Yoko, raised their son Sean, made
Speaker 1: music that still resonates today. Imagine all the people living
Speaker 1: life in peace. He should be eighty five years old,
Speaker 1: should be watching his grandchildren grow up, should be making music,
Speaker 1: should be alive. Instead, he's frozen at forty, shot in
Speaker 1: the back by a man who thought fame was worth
Speaker 1: more than human life. Someone has to say his name.
Speaker 1: John Lennon, husband, father, artist, Dreamer. Rest in peace, John,
Speaker 1: I'm read Carter. See you tomorrow for part two. This
Speaker 1: is Celebrity Trials