Murder Weekly - Crime, Espionage, and Murder Thrillers · Caloroga Shark Media / Short Crime Mystery

"THE MAN WHO KILLED JOHN LENNON: 45 YEARS OF DENIAL & THE PAROLE BOARD'S VERDICT - PART 2"

·23 min·10 clips

The story opens right after John Lennon’s murder, with the facts still fresh and hard to shake. Chapman waits outside the Dakota, gets the autograph, then fires five shots. Lennon dies on the floor of his own apartment building. The episode keeps circling that night, and it does not let the listener look away for long. In court, Chapman reads from the book that supposedly explains what he did. The show treats that as empty theater, because the book explains nothing. Judge Edwards gives him 20 years to life, just under the maximum. Psychiatric treatment is ordered during incarceration. The hope is simple enough: maybe doctors can make sense of Chapman and help prevent another killing like this. Chapman gives no visible reaction. He is led away in handcuffs. Attica Correctional Facility is next. It is a maximum security prison in upstate New York with a brutal reputation, and it still carries the memory of the 1971 riot. Chapman is put in protective custody because of who he is. He spends 23 hours a day in a cell. One hour is left for exercise. Contact with other inmates stays minimal. The show presents that isolation as both necessary and grim. In February 1982, Chapman goes on a 26-day hunger strike. Gloria is pulled into the story too. She knew about his plans before the second trip to New York. She did not take him seriously. By the time she understood what was happening, it was too late. The marriage ends. She goes back to Hawaii and tries to build a new life, but the stigma follows her anyway. The show keeps returning to that point. She will always be tied to him. She will always be the woman who was married to John Lennon’s killer. The years pass, and parole becomes the next front in the story. Chapman first becomes eligible in August 2000, nineteen years after entering Attica. The world has had time to wait for remorse or explanation. None arrives cleanly. The episode keeps its focus on the repeated denials and on how the system keeps refusing him. Fourteen parole denials pile up. The next hearing is set for February 2027, then 2029, then 2031. The show closes by saying Chapman wanted attention and got it, but Lennon still got remembered too. It returns to the music, the peace sign, the bed-ins, and the fact that the message outlived the man who tried to erase it.

As heard by us

A blunt, unsparing look at punishment, parole, and the long shadow of Lennon’s murder.

The episode keeps Mark David Chapman at the center, tracing the sentence, confinement, and long wait for parole from the Dakota to Attica and on through the denials that followed.

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Why you'd press play

You want the murder, the sentence, and the years that followed.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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