chapman and gorish are on the sidewalk out front. chapman silently hands lennon his copy of silent fantasy. the guy mark came up on john s left and held up the album. and john turned and said to him, do you want me to sign that? he nodded, john took the album. john said do you have a pen? he handed him a pen. john started to sign the album, and i had my camera on my neck, and i looked through the view finder and i took the photo. that is the photo of john signing the album for his killer. and he looked at me, and he said, is that all? do you want anything else? and i felt then and now that he knew something subconsciously that he was looking into the eyes of the person that was going to kill him. once lennon and ono leave for
home to my wife and i said look, he s a phony. this is his calendar from december of 89 to december of 90. it leads you all the way through his manic months before lennon s death. writer jim gaines spent hundreds of hours between 1984 and 1985 interviewing mark chapman. and you can see it becomes crazier and crazier with crossings-out and things to do. chapman told gaines that for years his mind had been like a war zone. occupied by opposing forces he described as the big people and little people. he had a whole population of little people living in his head. to whom he gave instructions who had meetings about what his activities would be. i mean, it was extreme. seething with anger, chapman buys a five-shot .38 revolver.
but they didn t pester him. in november 1980, lennon emerged from retirement with an album he recorded with yoko ono. lennon had just turned 40. to many, it seemed that john lennon had entered a promising new phase. but this image of a happy, contempted husband and father would only serve to enrage a young man in hawaii, a once devoted fan, mark david chapman. he was in the house, sitting naked in front of his stereo listening to really loud beatles music and invoking satan to help him have the power to kill john lennon.
on the night he shot john lennon mark david chapman was just 25 years old. it had been 25 years of almost painful anonymity. it was nothing that we learned from the extensive interviews and the investigation of the defendant s background that suggested that he was much different than any other 25-year-old person. at least on the surface. chapman grew up in georgia, the older of two children in what seemed like a typical suburban family. the defendant claimed in interviews with psychiatrists that he had a rough childhood and had a less than ideal relationship with his father, but there is nothing of his background of such an extreme or extraordinary nature that would suggest some sort of latent insanity or mental disease or defect caused by some childhood trauma. after high school, chapman begins to drift through a series of jobs and half-hearted attempts at college. in 1977, he flies to hawaii where he plans to kill himself,
on the morning of december 6th, 1980, mark david chapman, the man who would soon kill john lennon arrives in new york city. he goes to the dakota shortly before noon and joins a small group of fans hovering near the entrance. chapman will spend the next two days waiting for john lennon. who was mark david chapman? on december 8, 1980, mark david chapman was a very confused person, he was literally living inside of a paper back novel, j.d. salinger s the catcher and the rye. and he was vacillating between suicide and taking a taxi back and forth to hawaii and back and forth between killing an icon.