An apology to police, four infamous words, and one No. 1 dance hit. The
death of John Lennon was one of the most notorious moments of the 20th century,
but there are things about it you still don’t know. Keep watching for the details.
Mark David Chapman was nothing if not troubled,
but John Lennon might still be alive today if his killer hadn't come across a pair of books.
The first: J.D. Salinger's classic Catcher in the Rye, which Chapman was famously obsessed with,
identifying strongly with its iconoclast main character, Holden Caulfield. The second: John
Lennon: One Day at a Time, a biographical work by author Anthony Fawcett. Chapman recalled during
a 2000 parole hearing that the book solidified his opinion of Lennon — that he was a hypocrite,
a phony who sang about imagining no possessions while living the luxurious life of a rock star.
"I just saw him as a… as a two-dimensional celebrity with no real feelings."
Chapman described how he had flown to New York several months before the shooting
intending to kill the Beatle, but managed to talk himself out of it. But then, he said:
"The urges started building in me again to do this crime, and I flew back to
New York on December 6th and checked into a hotel, and then on the day of December 8th,
stayed outside the Dakota waiting for him with intent to shoot and kill him."
Chapman wasn't alone, either — there was usually a small contingent of fans milling
around outside the Dakota. He would later tell CNN that, as he was engaged in conversation,
he missed Lennon getting out of a cab and entering the building.
Not long after, legendary Rolling Stone photographer Annie Leibovitz arrived to
finish work on a photoshoot for the magazine, which had been brewing a cover story about
John Lennon's return to music after a brief hiatus. She later told Smithsonian Magazine:
"John came to the door in a black leather jacket, and he had his hair slicked back.
I was thrown a little bit by it. He had that early Beatle look."
Leibovitz was going for a striking image, but also on her mind was the cover of Lennon and Yoko Ono's
new album Double Fantasy, which featured a simple black-and-white photo of the couple kissing.
At first, she pitched the idea of photographing the couple naked, but when Ono balked,
she came up with another idea: a shot of a naked Lennon holding a fully-clothed Ono.
She took a Polaroid version of the shot as a test, and Lennon was immediately sold on the idea.
The image, of course, has since become iconic — not only as a brilliant encapsulation of
the relationship between the pair, but as the last professional photo of Lennon ever taken.
After the shoot, John Lennon gave an interview to Dave Sholin of RKO Radio that was intended for
use on a syndicated radio show. Lennon spoke with the interviewer for nearly two hours;
ironically, he expressed optimism for the new decade. Lennon said:
"I hope the young kids like Double Fantasy, as well, but I'm really talking to the people who
grew up with me. And saying, 'Here I am now. How are you? [...] Wasn't the '70s a drag,
you know? Here we are, well, let's try to make the eighties good, you know?'
'Cause it's still up to us to make what we can of it."
Lennon also offered a frank and foreboding assessment of
his work as a musician to that point. He said:
"I always considered my work one piece, whether it be with the Beatles,
David Bowie, Elton John, Yoko Ono... and I consider that my work won't be
finished until I'm dead and buried, and I hope that's a long, long time."
After the interview had concluded, Lennon asked Sholin for a lift to the Record Plant recording
studio, where he hoped to get in some work on a new song. Sholin agreed — but as they left
the Dakota, Lennon had a fateful encounter with what appeared to be an autograph seeking-fan.
As John Lennon exited the Dakota, he was met by Paul Goresh,
an amateur photographer who had previously snapped some pictures of him. As Goresh was
showing Lennon his proofs, Mark Chapman approached — not with a gun in his hand,
but a copy of Double Fantasy for Lennon to sign. At another parole hearing in 2012,
Chapman described what sounded like a pleasant, if awkward, encounter. He said:
"He was very kind to me. [...] The limousine was waiting, his wife was waiting in the limousine,
and he took his time with me, and he got the pen going, and he signed my album. He asked me if I
needed anything else. I said, 'No. No, sir,' and he walked away. Very cordial and very decent man."
When asked if the encounter had given him pause in his plan to shoot Lennon,
Chapman said that it had — but only briefly. He remembered:
"There was an inner struggle for a while there, you know,
what am I doing here? [...] I did try to tell myself to leave. [...] But I was so compelled
to commit that murder that nothing would have dragged me away from that building."
The song that John Lennon and Yoko Ono went off to work on was one that had been sticking
in Lennon's craw for some time: "Walking On Thin Ice," a dance-y track with Ono on lead vocals.
Its prolonged gestation in the studio meant that it had missed the cut for the November
release of Double Fantasy, but the sessions on the song had been reignited a week or so prior.
Lennon spent that evening tweaking the mix on the song with the help of producer Jack Douglas,
and by the evening's end, they had hit a mix that the musician was happy with.
In fact, he remarked that Ono had just cut her first No. 1 single — and he was later proven
right when a remixed version of the song hit the top of the U.S. dance charts in 2003. For
its initial release in February 1981, Ono penned a touching tribute in the liner notes. It read:
"Getting this together after what happened was hard. But I knew John
would not rest his mind if I hadn't. I hope you like it, John. I did my best."
After completing the mix at about 10:30 p.m., John Lennon decided to call it quits.
He suggested that he and Yoko Ono should grab a bite to eat before heading home,
and by all accounts, the pair arrived back at the Dakota at about 10:45 p.m.
For an unknown reason, the pair elected to use an entrance on a side street next to
the lobby attendant's office rather than the main courtyard entrance.
This is where Mark Chapman was waiting. According to witnesses and the killer's own recollection of
the event to CNN, Mark Chapman stood up, called out, "Mr. Lennon!" and fired five hollow-point
rounds from a .38 revolver at John Lennon's back. One round missed, two struck his left shoulder,
and the other two caused fatal damage to his left lung and the arteries above his heart.
"They went inside the gate, and all of a sudden I heard five or six shots, and that was it."
Upon hearing gunfire, Yoko Ono instinctively fled around the corner,
returning when she realized Lennon hadn't followed. Lennon managed to
stagger onto a flight of stairs and tell the doorman he was shot.
In yet another hearing before the parole board in 2019, Chapman confirmed
his chilling reason for specifically using hollow-point ammunition. He said:
"I secured those bullets to make sure he would be dead.
It was immediately after the crime that I was concerned that he did not suffer."
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Chapman simply stood with the empty revolver
by his side, feeling a combination of calm and shock. He was approached by doorman Jose Perdomo,
in tears, who asked if he knew what he had done. Chapman responded:
"I just shot John Lennon."
Perdomo proceeded to shake the gun loose from Chapman's grip and kick it away. After that,
Chapman produced his copy of The Catcher in the Rye and began calmly reading while he
waited for the police to arrive. On the front inside cover of the book,
he had written four words, which have since become infamous:
"This is my statement."
Speaking with The New York Post in 2020, Officer Peter Cullen remembered how he
and his partner Steve Spiro were greeted with a bizarre scene when they arrived at the Dakota:
Mark Chapman reading, Jose Perdomo screaming, and Yoko Ono in complete hysterics. Spiro
slammed Chapman against a wall to cuff him, while Cullen observed that John Lennon was in bad shape:
he explained that the musician was "laying face down with blood coming out of his mouth."
More officers shortly arrived, two of whom loaded Lennon into the back of a squad car,
realizing he was in no condition to wait for an ambulance.
As Chapman was being arrested,
Cullen recalled that he didn't put up a fight. He told The New York Post:
"He apologized to us for ruining our night. I turned around and said to him,
'You've got to be f---ing kidding me. You're worried about our night? Do you
know what you just did to your life?' We read him his rights more than once."
Lennon was still alive when he was rushed to the hospital,
but he had incurred injuries that no human being could survive for any reasonable length of time.
Doctors attempted to resuscitate him for 45 minutes, but to no avail. He died en route.
"Former Beatle John Lennon, who was 40,
was shot and killed last night outside his luxury apartment in New York."
As John Lennon was rushed into the emergency room, one man instinctually keyed in to the fact that
a major story was unfolding right before him. His name was Alan Weiss, a man in the hospital
after a minor motorcycle crash. He also happened to be a news producer for New York's WABC-TV.
Weiss at first assumed the gunshot victim who was briskly wheeled past his own gurney to be a drug
dealer, until he overheard a conversation between two attending police officers.
Speaking with The News-Times in 2014, Weiss recalled:
"There are two police officers, carrying a man. And they literally take him to the room that I am
laying outside of. [...] The two cops come out, and they're literally standing right by my bed,
over my head. And one cop says to the other, 'Can you believe it, John Lennon?'"
Weiss, whose head was still ringing from his own accident, wasn't sure he'd heard correctly
until he spotted Yoko Ono, at which point he flew into journalist mode. Weiss got on the
phone with his editor, and a short time later, he was conducting a phone interview with ABC Radio.
The information he imparted would soon be passed on to the ABC television network,
and it wasn't until afterward that Weiss began to worry that Sean Lennon
would hear the news on TV and not from his mother. In 2010, though,
The Guardian was able to speak with the hospital administrator at the time, who assured Weiss that
an information blackout had been in place until Yoko was able to deliver the news to her son.
"It was so sudden and I think that that was…
that was very difficult for me."
Needless to say, Lennon's loss affected all those who loved him deeply and continues to
do so to this day. His ex-bandmates, with whom he often quarreled, uniformly offered short,
direct public statements that betrayed their utter shock at his death. Paul McCartney, in particular,
has never really gotten over the death of his musical soulmate. In 2020, he told NME:
"It's very difficult for me, and I occasionally will have thoughts and sort of say,
'I don't know, why don't I just break down crying every day?' Because it's that bad."
As for Lennon's millions of fans, the loss of such a distinctive, incisive artistic voice was nearly
impossible to process. At Yoko Ono's request, though, they did their best: On December 14th,
1980 countless fans in New York and around the world took a moment of silent prayer in his honor.
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