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

"THE MAN WHO KILLED JOHN LENNON: MARK DAVID CHAPMAN'S TWISTED PATH TO MURDER - PART 1"

·24 min·1 clip

Chapman fired five hollow-point shots, then sat reading The Catcher in the Rye while police arrived.

1. Celebrity Trials centers on Mark David Chapman and the December 8th, 1980 shooting of John Lennon outside the Dakota on West 72nd Street. 2. Reed Carter hosts the episode, and his role is to narrate Chapman's life story and the shooting chronology. 3. The episode asks how a former YMCA counselor and born-again Christian came to kill John Lennon after waiting outside the Dakota. 4. Chapman was born on May 10th, 1955, in Fort Worth, Texas, and the family later moved to Decatur, Georgia. 5. He later said he feared his father, David Curtis Chapman, and created imaginary "Little People" in his bedroom. 6. By age 14, Chapman was using marijuana, LSD, and heroin, and he also ran away from home for two weeks in Atlanta. 7. At 16, Chapman became a born-again Christian, distributed biblical tracts, and began working at the South DeKalb County YMCA. 8. The YMCA children nicknamed him "Nemo," and the director called him "a pied piper with the kids." 9. A friend recommended J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, and Chapman identified with Holden Caulfield's disgust with adult "phoniness." 10. Lennon became a target after Chapman's Christian circle mocked "Imagine" and reacted to Lennon's 1966 remark about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus. 11. Chapman later worked with Vietnamese refugees at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, and the episode says he excelled there too. 12. In 1977, after his parents began divorce proceedings, Chapman bought a one-way ticket to Hawaii and attempted suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. 13. He recovered, met Gloria Abe, traveled through Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, New Delhi, Beirut, Geneva, London, Paris, and Dublin, and married her on June 2, 1979. 14. The episode says Chapman's obsessions returned with drinking, firing from and quitting jobs, and renewed focus on Lennon, the Dakota, and Anthony Fawcett's book about Lennon's New York life. 15. In October 1980, Chapman bought a Charter Arms .38 Special revolver in Honolulu and flew to New York after asking the FAA about transporting a firearm. 16. He first visited the Dakota without bullets, returned to Hawaii, then came back to New York with hollow-point ammunition and a copy of The Catcher in the Rye signed "Holden Caulfield." 17. On December 8th, Chapman shook Sean Lennon's hand, asked John Lennon for an autograph, and was described by Lennon as someone to whom he was very kind and patient. 18. Hours later, Chapman waited outside the Dakota with the book, the gun, and the signed album until Lennon and Yoko Ono returned from the Record Plant studio. 19. The episode's tone is documentary and chronological, with Reed Carter using precise times, quotes, and eyewitness details from the Dakota scene. 20. Listeners who want a compact account of Lennon's killing and Chapman's background will get the most from this episode, while listeners seeking a broad Beatles history may skip it.

As heard by us

A hard, unsparing account of how obsession curdles into murder.

This episode treats John Lennon’s murder as a slow, ugly sequence rather than a sensational headline. It opens at the Dakota on December 8, 1980, then works backward and forward through Mark David Chapman’s fixation, disgust, return to New York, and the ordinary steps that led…

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Why you'd press play

For when you want the Lennon killing traced from obsession to gunfire.

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