Mark David Chapman

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Mark David Chapman (born May 10, 1955 in Fort Worth , Texas ) is an American who was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of the musician John Lennon .

Life

Before the crime, Mark David Chapman led an unsteady life. From childhood he adored the Beatles . As a teenager, he was temporarily addicted to drugs and was treated in a mental hospital. At the age of 16 he joined the evangelical “ Born Again Christians ”. He was a former student of Covenant Presbyterian College at Lookout Mountain, Georgia . After a nervous breakdownhis admiration for the Beatles and John Lennon turned into an obsession. As Chapman kept slipping, he began to blame Lennon for it. Chapman changed his view of Lennon significantly after his interview on March 4, 1966, in which Lennon said, "We are more popular than Jesus now". His extreme admiration turned into hatred of the "swindler" Lennon. Despite this hatred, Chapman married a Japanese woman because she reminded him of Yoko Ono .

The assassination of John Lennon

The entrance to the Dakota Building where Lennon was shot dead

On December 6, 1980, Mark David Chapman landed in New York - coming from Hawaii without a return ticket - and moved into a room at the YMCA on 63rd Street. Because he felt disturbed by two homosexuals there, Chapman moved to the Sheraton Center Hotel the next day. When the hotel room was later searched, the police found Chapman's belongings set up like an altar. Among other things, there was also a Bible there. The title Gospel According to John ( John's Gospel ) had Chapman extended with a ballpoint pen to the word "Lennon". In addition, Chapman had signed "John Lennon" on his last attendance receipt at his Waikiki job .

On December 8, Chapman left the hotel at 14:00, first bought Lennon's LP Double Fantasy and then in a stationery store a copy of the novel The Catcher in the Rye (The Catcher in the Rye) by JD Salinger ; Chapman had forgotten his previous copy in Hawaii. Chapman has been enthusiastic about Salinger's novel since childhood. In the later trial he stated that he had read the "Request" in this book to have to kill a celebrity in order to become famous himself. Another time he claimed that he intended to make Salinger's novel world famous.

On the same day, Lennon and Ono gave an interview to the radio station RKO-Radio in their apartment in the Dakota Building . Chapman was already in front of the building at the time. At around 5 p.m. Lennon and Yoko Ono came out of the building to get into their limousine. Chapman approached Lennon and asked him to sign the previously purchased album, which he did. This moment was captured by the photographer Paul Goresh, it is the last photo of the living Lennon. He asked Chapman if there was anything else he could do for him, which surprised Chapman. Lennon and Ono got into the limo and drove to the Record Plant studio. They returned to the Dakota Building at 10:50 pm, where Chapman was waiting for them.

Contrary to his habit, Lennon instructed his driver not to drive into the building's courtyard, but to let him and Ono get off in front of the house. Ono got out first. After walking past Chapman, who was standing at the archway of the Dakota building, he called out, “Mr. John Lennon? " and fired from about six meters with a gun of the caliber 38 on the musician. Of the five hollow point bullets firedhit two of Lennon's lungs, one on his left shoulder blade and one on his carotid artery. Lennon stumbled up the four steps to the front desk in the Dakota passage and shouted: “I'm shot, I'm shot!” ("I'm shot! I'm shot!") Before he collapsed. Lennon was still conscious when he was driven to Roosevelt General Hospital but succumbed to his serious injuries at 11:07 pm after losing 80 percent of his blood.

Chapman was immediately arrested by the police without resistance and confessed the following day. In the evening he was taken to the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital.

Condemnation and Punishment

Chapman pleaded "guilty" on the murder charge, against the advice of his attorney, and despite the fact that six out of nine psychiatric assessors found him to be psychotic . He was eventually sentenced in 1981 to at least 20 years in prison to life .

Since 2000, Lennon's widow Yoko Ono has regularly asked those responsible never to dismiss Chapman because she felt herself endangered, the perpetrator did not deserve a normal life and violence in turn caused violence (“violence begets violence”). Also in a documentary by Guido Knopp , Fred Seaman, who was Lennon's personal assistant from 1979 to 1980 and Ono's personal assistant until 1982 after his death, told him to this day that she was still afraid of Chapman.

In New York StateIf necessary, a single protest against a parole application is sufficient to reject it. In 2012, his request was denied by the parole commission on the following clear grounds: "Despite your positive efforts while in detention, your release at this point would severely undermine respect for the law and result in the tragic loss of life you have suffered." as a result of the heinous, unprovoked, violent, cold and calculated act. ”(“ Despite your positive efforts while incarcerated, your release at this time would greatly undermine respect for the law and tend to trivialize the tragic loss of life which you caused as a result of this heinous, unprovoked, violent, cold and calculated crime. ”) In August 2020, Chapman's eleventhRequest  - as in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018 - rejected by the parole board of the state of New York.

conspiracy theories

Lawyer and successful author Fenton Bresler noted in his book Who Killed John Lennon? 1989 the thesis that Chapman was not a crazy individual perpetrator, but was "programmed" by the CIA through the targeted use of drugs and brainwashing as part of the MK Ultra program to carry out the murder of Lennon. According to Bresler, the World Vision aid organization , for which Chapman worked, served as a CIA front organization with ties to the Peoples Temple sect . The motive for the murder was Lennon's prominent criticism of US foreign and domestic policy.

Film adaptations

The events around the murder of Lennon by Chapman are, based on various interviews and research, treated in the film Chapter 27 - The murder of John Lennon . The 2007 film shows the last days Chapman spent in New York before shooting Lennon. Chapman is played by Jared Leto , who gained around 28 kilograms for this film.

The biopic The Killing of John Lennon , published in 2006, presents Chapman's last three months before Lennon's assassination in detail and tries to explain the motive of his act biographically with numerous flashbacks in Chapman's past life and childhood. Chapman is played by Jonas Ball , John Lennon by Richard Shermon .

Belletristic representation

  • Jack Jones: Let Me Take You Down. Inside the Mind of Mark David Chapman, the Man Who Killed John Lennon , Villard Books, 1992, ISBN 978-0-8129-9170-3 .
  • Jack Jones: I'm the catcher in the rye. The man who shot John Lennon . From the American by Christoph Hahn. Goldmann, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-442-42402-X .

sources

  • Albert Goldmann: The Lives Of John Lennon. London 1988, ISBN 1-55652-399-8 .
  • TV documentary I Killed John Lennon (UK 2005), directed by Chris Wilson, produced by Prime Productions . First broadcast on December 8, 2005.
  • TV documentary Murder Case: John Lennon (D 2005), directed by Egon Koch and Friedrich Scherer, produced by ZDF / Arte . First broadcast on Arte on November 30, 2005, in the ZDF History series on December 4, 2005.
  • I was a nobody until I killed the greatest someone , commented photo series, Christian Neeb, In: one day , December 8, 2015.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Interview with John Lennon, March 4, 1966
  2. ↑ TV report "Murder Case: John Lennon" by Egon Koch and Friedrich Scherer (see below)
  3. ↑ [1]
  4. ↑ [2]
  5. ^ THE CITY; 4 Sought by Defense In Slaying of Lennon
  6. ^ Text of Ono's 2000 letter sent to parole hearings, from the BBC
  7. ↑ Mark David Chapman, John Lennon's Killer, Denied Parole For 7th Time In NY
  8. ↑ www.bbc.com: John Lennon's killer Mark Chapman denied parole again . BBC, accessed August 29, 2016
  9. ↑ John Lennon's murderer fails with a pardon . In: Spiegel Online . August 24, 2018 ( spiegel.de [accessed August 24, 2018]).
  10. ↑ Mark David Chapman: John Lennon's killer denied parole in New York . In: The Independent . August 27, 2020 ( independent.co.uk [accessed August 27, 2020]).
  11. ^ Fenton Bresler . The Telegraph, December 17, 2003
  12. ^ Jon E. Lewis: Mammoth Books presents Missing Persons and Mysterious Deaths . Hachette UK, 2012, p. 81
  13. ↑ www.nydailynews.com: Jared Leto gains 60 pounds to play Mark David Chapman . Accessed April 21, 2010.
personal data
SURNAME Chapman, Mark David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American assassin
DATE OF BIRTH May 10, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Fort Worth , Texas , USA