In this age of looking back, it was inevitable that a documentary would be made of the footage surrounding the fatal shooting on December 8, 1980, of former Beatle, John Lennon. The shooter, Mark David Chapman, will come up for parole for the 13th time in February 2024. Maybe 13 will be his lucky number, but it's unlikely. The world will not forgive him, no matter how unstable he was at the time of the crime. It's been 43 years since that terrible moment when Lennon died from multiple gunshot wounds. For many fans, it's still horribly fresh.
The new three-part documentary, John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial (produced by 72 Films), is available on Apple TV+ for the grim anniversary. It contains footage we've seen about the shooting. Still, thanks to multiple Freedom of Information Act acquisitions, we also hear from people who haven't been shown before sharing their experience that day.
From a taxi driver to attorneys and psychiatrists who interviewed Chapman during the days following the shooting, there's an array of new perspectives on the wretched offender. For lore collectors, this series is a needed addition to the records. Still, questions remain.
At first, it seemed that Chapman would offer an insanity defense. His legal team was prepared, and there seemed to be a good reason for this stance. The various diagnoses differed, but several mental health experts were prepared to testify for the defense that Chapman was psychotic. He'd shown different facades during the assessments, but because he also had good contact with his mental state evaluators, he fit into a gray area. The prosecution offered three clinicians who said Chapman's delusions, while fantastical, fell short of psychosis. He was found competent to stand trial.
One controversial expert was Milton Kline, a psychologist versed in hypnosis who'd once consulted for the CIA's mind control program and had bragged that he could persuade people to act against their will. In 1981, he was charged with perjury for falsifying his credentials. (He admitted that his doctorate was in education rather than psychology.)
Chapman reportedly told Kline that he wanted to use the trial to promote J.D. Salinger's novel A Catcher in the Rye. He thought that was an excellent way to engage with the legal proceedings. "Everybody's going to be reading this book… They'll have to come out with a deluxe edition."
He intended to read it during the trial as a living advertisement. He described several grandiose fantasies about how he'd present it.
Then, two weeks before the trial was to commence, Chapman announced that God had told him to plead guilty. The defense team tried to talk him out of it, and his attorney requested another competency assessment. The judge thought Chapman was aware of what he was doing and accepted the plea. Chapman was sentenced to 20-to-life and sent to the Green Haven Correctional Facility in New York. He's now 67.
For a while, Chapman avoided interviews, but then he spoke with several journalists and TV news anchors. Over the years, his perspective on, and motivation for, the shooting morphed. In a 2012 interview, he said,
It wasn't all totally cold-blooded, but most of it was. I did try to tell myself to leave. I've got the album; take it home, show my wife, and everything will be fine. But I was so compelled to commit that murder that nothing would have dragged me away from that building.
He'd supposedly thought about killing other celebrities as well. He'd also considered leaping from the Statue of Liberty. He was certainly an unstable man with serious psychiatric issues and a history of past suicide attempts.
Chapman has come up for parole every two years. He's always been denied on the grounds that he'd shown a callous disregard for human pain and suffering. In an interview with Larry King, however, Chapman said he'd become religious and now knew that the person he'd been when he'd shot Lennon was long gone. He didn't understand how he could have done such a thing.
At the time, he'd thought that by shooting what he viewed as the "ultimate phony," he'd transform from his squat, average form into Holden Caulfield, the tall, slender character from J. D. Salinger's novel A Catcher in the Rye.
The docu-series allows us to revisit the time period of the shooting to see what several people involved recalled, especially those who were close to Lennon on his final day alive. It's worth a look.
The Psychiatric Evaluation of Lennon’s Killer
20
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02.12.2023
In this age of looking back, it was inevitable that a documentary would be made of the footage surrounding the fatal shooting on December 8, 1980, of former Beatle, John Lennon. The shooter, Mark David Chapman, will come up for parole for the 13th time in February 2024. Maybe 13 will be his lucky number, but it's unlikely. The world will not forgive him, no matter how unstable he was at the time of the crime. It's been 43 years since that terrible moment when Lennon died from multiple gunshot wounds. For many fans, it's still horribly fresh.
The new three-part documentary, John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial (produced by 72 Films), is available on Apple TV for the grim anniversary. It contains footage we've seen about the shooting. Still, thanks to multiple Freedom of Information Act acquisitions, we also hear from people who haven't been shown before sharing their experience that day.
From a taxi driver to attorneys and psychiatrists who interviewed Chapman during the days following the shooting, there's an array of new perspectives on the wretched offender. For lore collectors, this series is a needed........
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