John Lennon and Mark David Chapman (The John Lennon Story, Chapter Nine)

called friends. This especial agent Jim Steele with the Federal Bureau of Investigation work in case number double oh nine DA zero eight zero four nine one. Case subject is Lennon John Winston oh No. This information pertains to a period ending December. Interview subject because Chapman Mark David interview number zero death seven one Dash six nine dash five one recail number one December. I knew what I was going to shoot him that night. I absolutely did. I

tried not to. I prayed that it wouldn't happen, but deep down I knew it would come to that. I stood in front of the mirror in my hotel room at the Sheraton and thought, look, this is me, probably this is the real me, this is my past, and I'm I'm going, I'm going to another place. It was like I was going through a door, the poet's door, William Blake's door, Jim Morrison's door. I was leaving my past. I was leaving what I was and going into a

future of uncertainty. There were tremendous feelings of Holden Caulfield and The Catcher and the Rye. The paragraphs and sentences of that book were flowing through my brain and entering my blood, influencing my thoughts and actions. My very soul was breathing between the pages of The Catcher in the Rye. Then I loaded cartridges into the five empty slots on the cylinder of my charter arms thirty eight pistol, and

looked into the mirror once again. I held the pistol up in my right hand, close to the chamber, with a flick of my wrist, and I looked dead into my own eyes and said out loud, the Catcher and the Rye of my generation, Chapter twenty. And I walked out the front door of the Sheritan and made my way over to the Dakota. John Lennard's songs wouldn't leave my head. All I could hear was John le I could see the songs. They were on the asphalts of in the clouds, and they tumbled down the stairways of

subway stations. The songs were covered in blood. Blood all over the songs, blood all the tracks. Chapter nine, John Lennon and Mark David Chapman. He do you want to know what goes on inside my head? Do you really want to know? That's why you're here? Isn't it to dig through the depths of my mind to determine once and for all why I did what I did? Why did Mark David Chapman shoot John Lennon in the back four times on the evening of December eighth, ninety Why? Why? Oh?

I've told the headshrinkers everything, already told them over and over again. I've probably talked with a dozen of them for hundreds of hours, if not thousands. I'm serious. I'm just about sick to death of it. Like I told them, I was a nobody. Mark David Chapman was a nobody, a failure. I couldn't even hold down a job at the hospital. The same hospital in Hawaii that I was rushed to when I tried to take my own life at two. That was just three years before I took

someone else's life, John Lennon's life. Anyway, the hospital probably took pity on me and gave me a job in the print shop. But I failed that, just like I failed everything else. Being a nobody, Being a failure, I was sick to death of that too, made me angry. I've been angry for years, mostly at other kids in school and at my father. Abusive, neglectful. He really did a number on my mother when he left, left us with nothing. For years, I focused my anger on him.

This fantasy played out over and over again in my head. I tracked my father down, get him alone, bring a gun with me, I leave a competition to the part. I'd press it to his temple, press it so hard that it would leave a mark, and I'd remind him about all the awful things he'd done to my mother and tell him that he would pay for it. He'd pay for her pain, he'd pay for my anger. And then I'd ask him if he was scared, if he was scared of dying, if he was scared of going

to hell. I'd say, well, this is it, Dad, and then I'd pull the trigger. But I never did, never followed through. It was too weak, too scared. There was nobody now take John Lennon. John Lennon was somebody. He was a somebody. He was the leader of the Beatles. The Beatles were my favorite band shot But John Lennon squandered what he had. I'm not saying that he took it for granted. I mean that he turned his back on it. He turned his back on who he truly was.

He was a phony, That's what Holding Caulfield would say, a real phony. He was a millionaire who saying imagine no possessions. He was a hypocrite. John Lennon saying that he didn't believe in God, didn't believe in Beatles. Who in the hell does he think he is? That's what I would ask myself, Who in the hell does John Lennon think he is? To say that he's bigger than Jesus? And that really rubbed me the wrong way. John Lennon had walked through a door. He left behind who he

used to be and became someone different. But the person he became, the place he went to Phony. I figured I could show the world that John Lennon didn't deserve to be somebody. I could have suppose him for what he truly was, and in doing so I could become somebody. I could be famous, I could get attention. I didn't just come around to this on the fly. All Willy Nilly I had practiced. I was a king once. I was king of the little people. The little people were

much smaller than me. They lived inside the walls. I wasn't just their king, I was their hero. My face was on the front page of the newspapers that they read. I was on the televisions that they watched. They even worshiped me. I was a god to them. I play them my Beatles records. But sometimes the dark clouds came, not to the little people, to me, the dark clouds

in my head. The clouds would come and I would start to think about my father, all right, think about the kids who beat on me on the basketball court back in high school. Would happen Where I think about John Lennon, the Phony Beatle recovered bod I'd get angry. There was a couch in my living room. The couch had a button. I think it was to help the couch reclined. But in my mind, the button was directly wired two explosives in the wall right where the little

people lived. I was the only one who had access to that button. I had the power. I knew it would come to that. The clouds would gather in my head and I would get so furious, and my thumb would press down hard on that button. My thumb would ache like it had been stunned. The wall would explode, hundreds of little people dead, thousands of little people dead. I old off entire families, villages, reports. Then I calm down, the clouds would break up. I'd regret what I had done.

I'd apologize to the little people, to those who had been spared. I would apologize to them, and then they would all forgive me. They're king, they're hero, their God, and then everything would go back to normal. At first, I didn't want to tell anyone anything. They charged me with second degree murder. They said I was insane, this is me that I wasn't fit to stand trial. Probably fine, I thought, let them think I'm insane. They were holding

me at Riker's Island. They put me in a bulletproof vest and walked me over to court just so my attorney you could withdraw from my case. People were threatening his life. I guess he called the trial and albatross, and people were dying all because he had died. Some sixteen year old girl in Florida took a handful of pills took her own life. And then a man in Salt Lake City swallowed the barrel of a gun and pulled the trigger. People just couldn't live in a world

that didn't include John Lennon. Apparently, fans were flooding Yoko Ono's mailbox with straw letters, so many letters that she had to appear on television simply so that people all over the world wouldn't lose hope. I don't know if you'd call this hope, But it was at this time that I got the message, the message from God. I've been waiting to hear from God for so long. He told me to change my plea. I was not insane. I was a nobody who wanted to be as somebody.

And if I wanted to be as somebody, I had to plead guilty. I had to show them all who I really was, and so I did. I asked the judge to change my plea. The new attorney they've given me an agree with that choice. He thought I was alone and argued that I wasn't what do you call it. I wasn't of sound mind or whatever they say in court. But I wasn't capable of making that decision on my own. But I went out. I convinced the judge did how

was that there was no more trial. I was guilty, guilty in the eyes of God and guilty in the eyes of every Beatles fan in the world. Wouldn't my good? And then I wouldn't talk to anyone about anything because I was angry again. I was still angry at John Lennon, and now I was angry at God for putting me in this position. I was angry at my own wife. My wife flew into New York from Hawaii. I refused to see her. She knew this was going to happen,

she did nothing about it. I first came to New York in October of I came to kill John Lennon all, but I didn't follow through. I've gone back home to Hawaii and told my wife all about my plan. I showed her my gun. I made her understand what I was capable of She could have prevented the whole thing, could have called the police, could have had me locked up. But she didn't. So when she came to see me, when I changed my plea, I refused to see her. I shaved my head, flew into a rage. I smashed

a TV set and then a radio. I tore the pages out of my Bible. The thing was lousy with lies. I thought of holding Caufield, how he flew into a rage when his brother died and broke his hand by punching out windows in the garage. He said his hands still hurt years after. He couldn't even make a fist when it rained. Generation. I stopped in the my outburst, think if anything hurt my hand that had smashed the TV set, or my fingers that had torn so many

pages from that book. I wondered if things that hurt now would still hurt years later, Like holding it said, I figured that they probably would. I took the torn pages from the Bible and stuffed them down the toilet in my cell. Tried to flush it all down, the whole crummy thing, but it wouldn't go down, and the water backed up flooded the floor of my cell. A couple of prison guards came in to find out what

the hell was going on. So I dipped my hands in the toilet and threw dirty Bible water at them. Like ripped the clothes from my body. I screened out loud. Took six guards to get me under control. Once they had me subdued, they drove me out to Bellevue to the loony bin. This was August, and to think, just nine months before that, on December seven night, I was sitting at the hotel bar at the Sheridan Center Seventh

Avenue and fifty Street. I was drinking Heineken. I was thinking, of course, about John Lennon, but I was also thinking about Holden Caufield, about how he had rented a hotel room in New York City just like me. He was dissatisfied with people, just like me. I thought about holding some more, and I wondered if I could step through a door and step into holden shoes, I could be Holden. Because I wanted to be Holden, and I think I was destined to be Holden, to become him, to live

out the rest of his life. I decided to start that very night. I called a prostitute up to my room, just like Holden had of my generation. She came upstairs, we sat on the bed and talked. That was all, no sex, Just like Holden. I paid her. She left around three in the morning. I thought about how Holden had to deal with the elevator operator in the book, the guy who got him the prostitute in the first place.

Now that guy then tried to extort holding by charging him twice the rate they had agreed upon entering my blood. He insulted Holden, attacked him. Holden wanted revenge, but all he had was fantasy. He fantasized about having a gun, about aiming it at that smarmy elevator operator, making him beg for his life, and then shooting him in the stomach six times. I knew that, unlike Holden, I had

more than fantasy at my disposal. I knew that I could step through a door, I could leave myself behind, and I could do all the things that Holden Caulfield had wanted to do but couldn't. I could be somebody, and this is how it happened. We'll be right back after this word word. I was standing around like a real idiot, waiting for him to come back. I didn't want to be there, but also knew that I had

to be there. I wanted to step through that door, I had to remain right where I was outside the Dakota, waiting for John Lennon. It was Dember eighth. I met him for the first time earlier in the day, late afternoon, maybe almost dinnertime. I've been hanging around the Dakota with this guy, Paul Gorrish. People called him Fat Dave, who was a photographer, though I don't know who. He took

pictures for. People like Fat Dave hung around outside the Dakota, hoping to get a photo, or a handshake or an autograph. When John emerged from inside, Dale thought I was one of them, another Fat Dave. But I wasn't anything like them. I wasn't there to fawn over John Lennon the phony. I wasn't there to usher my way into his life. I was there to end his. When at long last John and Yoko came out that afternoon, I almost didn't

say anything. I climbed up, my muscles clenched tight. Fat Dave pushed me into John's path, said I came here all the way from Hawaii. This was my chance like I was just like him. I was holding a copy of John and Yoko's Double Fantasy, along with a red paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye. I asked John to sign the album. He did. He signed the album cover right on Yoko's neck, and then he looked me in the eyes. I've talked about this before, but

I feel that it is important to restate. He looked me right in the eyes, and I looked dead into my own eyes and said, is that all? Do you want anything else? It was like he looked into my eyes and knew that I was the person who was going to take his life, that his life would end that day. That night, John and Yoko left in a limousine, and so I waited again. I told myself I would wait until they returned. I killed time talking with the

doorman at the Dakota. I found out he was from Cuba, so naturally that made me think of the Bay of Pigs, and so we talked about Kennedy's assassination. Oh almost man asked me for money, so I gave him ten bucks, and for hours on end, I prayed to God. I prayed to God to help me find a way out. God delivered to me another fan who was hanging around the Dakota, a girl named Jude, And if you can believe it, I asked her out to dinner that night, thinking that she could be the reason why I didn't

go through with it. She could save me. God could save me through this woman. But she turned me down. She said no. And here I thought God was going to help, so I prayed to the devil instead. I asked the devil to give me strength to help me see through what I knew I had to do. I told the devil that I had already talked to God and that God did not answer. That God did not care. God didn't care that I was a nobody, But the Devil cared, and the devil wanted me to be somebody.

The devil knew who I really was, what I really was. The devil I knew what I was capable of, and the Devil was with me at ten fifty that evening, when the limousine returned, do it, the devil said to me. I heard the devil as the rear passenger door of the limo opened and Yoko stepped out. John followed shortly behind. And I heard the devil again. Do it? Yoko walked right past me. I mumbled hellow to her, but she didn't respond. John got closer to me, and the voice

in my head got louder. Do it. As John by me, he didn't look at me. I think he registered that it was me, that I was still there all these hours later. Perhaps he thought I was just like the rest of them, some desperate fan. Perhaps you remember the conversation we had earlier in the day when he had asked me, do you want anything else? Perhaps he knew that this was the something else, the thing that was

about to happen, But he just kept walking. If he walked right by towards the front gate of the Dakota, didn't say a goddamn word. I reached in the pocket of my jacket and felt my shaking hand grab onto the handle of the charter Arms thirty eight. It was a snub nosed pistol, so it was easy to conceal, easy to hold, easy to aim. I didn't know if the bullets would even work. I'd never shot a gun

at a person before. My hand wouldn't stop shaking as I pulled the thirty eight out into the coal December Air. Do it? I heard in my head, do it? Do it? I aimed right at his back, and I pulled the trigger twice. Both shots hit John in the back. The devil got louder. Do it. John turned around and stumbled. I thought of Holden's fantasy with the elevator operator. I was the gangster that Holden wanted so desperately to be. I'd play it out for him and was going through.

I fired three more times. Two of the shots caught him in the shoulder, the third missed. I heard glass shadow on the ash, and then everything went blurry for a few seconds. It was like the film script broke. I didn't know if I'd made it through the door or not, but I felt different than I had ever felt before. I stood there on the sidewalk. My arm was hanging at my side. I was holding on to

the thirty eight. The doorman, who I had spoken with earlier, ran up to me and knocked the gun from my hand. Things got clearer. Then I felt the air pinched my face. I couldn't see John anywhere, wouldn't leave my head. I later learned that he had been able to make his way up the stairs towards the Dakota, where he collapsed. I waited for more instruction, to hear the voice of the devil once more. But the devil was gone, No devil, no God. I was alone. I wanted to walk through

that door. The paragraph and sentences of that book were flowing through my brain and entering my blood. I wanted to live out the life that Holden Caufield had left behind. I'm again to pace. I paced back and forth in front of the Dakota. I didn't know what to do with myself, so I pulled the paper, a copy of The Catcher in the Ride from my back pocket, and started to reread True. And as I waited for the police to arrive and for the ambulance to arrive, I

wondered what everyone would think of me now. I wondered if they would all look at me and see somebody having all will let it run down? Well, we're in finally down. You'll let this second stick off to give Miamian no offer tunity whatsoever. Donna was called three sockets, remitting John Smith. Because I'm alive, I don't care what's on the line. Howard, you were about to say, but we go in the book. Yes, we have to say it. Remember this is just a football game. I'm out of

who win, saw loses? An unspeakable tragedy conferred to us by ABC News in New York City. John Lennon outside of his apartment building on the West side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps of all of the Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed the rose, found hospital dead on arrival, caught to go back to the game after that news squash, which in duty found we had

to take right. Indeed it is NYPD. Officers Peter Collin and Steve Spear were the first to arrive at the scene, the Dakota seventy Street in Central Park West, December eighth night. There have been reports of loud noises, five bangs in quick succession, gunshots. Maybe Colin and Spiro thought the more likely explanation was fireworks. It was the Chinese New Year, and even at eleven o'clock at night in the city that never slept, someone was always out celebrating something. But

there was no celebration at the Dakota, no fireworks. When Colin and Spiro pulled up in their police cruiser, they unknowingly walked into an unforgettable tragedy. The Dakota, it's late nineteenth century goth expires, turrets and gargoyles cast in erie.

Paul Colin and Spiro could feel the building's hulking gray frame looking down on them, and on the small but gathering crowd, and on two men in particular, one standing still on the sidewalk in an overcoat, his hands raised over his head, a red paperback clenched between his fingers, the other on the floor of the Dakota's vestibule, bleeding from his mouth and chest. Colin was surprised to find

that the man still had a pulse. He was even more surprised, as he searched for a face behind the bloodstained eyeglasses, that he realized exactly who the man was, New York's most famous resident, one of America's best loved adopted sons. Colin couldn't believe it. John Lennon was dying right there fast. Meanwhile, Spiro tended to the man in the overcoat with the red paperback above his head. The Dakota's doorman, Jose Perdomo, made the man mark David Chapman

as the one who fired the fatal shots. Spirow pushed Chapman up against the wall of the Dakota, read him his rights, cuffed him. John Lennon was bleeding out in front of Colin's eyes. Colin radio dispatch for an ambulance. Ten that's out. They didn't have ten minutes. John would be dead in ten minutes. More officers arrived from the scene in another squad car, and Colin helped carry John's body to the car's back seat. John was barely conscious.

The officers asked him some basic questions, and he silently nodded his head in response. Colin told the officers to take John to Roosevelt Hospital, thirteen blocks away. Radio it in, he said, but don't say that you have John Lennon in the back seat. The place will be a zoo by the time you get there. Minutes later, at Roosevelt, Dr David haller At, a twenty nine year old general surgeon in his third year, held John Lennon's heart in

his hands. The team of doctors and nurses had rushed John from the back of the squad car, cut away John's fur lined leather jacket, his shirt, his jeans. John had lost so much blood that his pulse had faded, so Dr Hallarin opened John's chest and he prefer warm cardiac massage, hands directly on John Lennon's heart. Hallarin continued to perform cardiac massage for forty five minutes, and John

Lennon was declared dead that night. Back at the Dakota, officers Cullen and Spireau got Mark David Chapman into the back of their police cruiser and headed towards the station. Colin tried to keep his anger at bay. He clenched his fists, he shook his head. He wanted to throw Chapman on the fucking window and into oncoming traffic. He attempted to refrain from saying something he would regret, but

he just couldn't hold back. Are you fucking crazy? Colin shouted back and Chapman from the front seat, he just threw your whole life away. Chapman looked at Colin through the rear view mirror. He blinked his eyes and responded calmly. There was a little person and a big person inside of me, and tonight the little person one. Colin didn't know what the funk Chapman was going on about, or

what was going on in his head. Colin just wanted to book the asshole and get him out of his face before he did something he really couldn't come back from. At the police station, other officers followed Collin's lead. They couldn't believe what had happened. I couldn't understand, and their anger, their frustration, it all bubbled up and then burst through the surface and words that couldn't do their disbelief justice. You know what you just did? Do you know who

you just shot? Chapman blinked some more. His eyes started from one officer to another. He tried to play back what had happened in his mind, but the film strip was still broken. He couldn't go back, He could only go forward. I am John Lennon, Chapman answered, and I killed myself. Of course, Mark David Chapman was not John Lennon, far from it. Mark David Chapman would never be on on it. He would never be that brave, never be

that smart or that magnetic. He would never be that talented, and he would never capture the world with his songs or inspire a generation with his vision. Mark David Chapman only inspired contempt and disgusted from his fellow man as he sat alone at the police station, waiting, waiting in vain for a door to open that would never open, waiting for a transfiguration that was clearly as fantastical as the sentences and paragraphs and a work of fiction. Mark

David Chapman was not John Lennon. He did not become Holden Caufield. He remained unchanged. But the rest of the world would never be the same again. Where once there was hope, now there was despair. And where once there was beautiful music, now there was just Blood on the Tracks. All right, everybody, Thanks for listening to Blood on the Tracks.

If you like what you hear, be sure to find and follow Blood on the Tracks on Apple podcast, I Heart Radio, app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. On this season two of Blood on the Tracks, we'll be releasing ten episodes on the incredible life of John Lennon, with a new episode every Thursday. You can also binge all ten episodes of season one on the insane story of the notorious record producer Phil Spector right now. It's

available wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of Blood on the Tracks was written by Zeth Lundie and hosted an executive produced by me Jake Brennan, also executive produced by Brady sad Story and copy editing by Pat Healy. This episode was mixed by Colin Fleming. Additional music and score elements by Ryan Spreaker. This episode featured Alan Adams as Mark David Chapman. Blood on the Track Acts is produced by Double Elvis and partnership with I Heart Radio.

Sources for this episode are available at Double Elvis dot com on the Blood on the Tracks series page. If you want to chat about this show or hear more about the other shows, we're making a Double Elvis tap in on Instagram at double Elvis, on Twitter at Double Elvis FM, and now on Twitch, where we're streaming three days a week at Twitch dot tv slash Double Elvis podcast. And finally, be sure to check out disgrace Land, the award winning music and true crime podcast that I also host.

Disgraceland is available only on the free Amazon Music. To hear tons of insane stories about your favorite musicians getting away with murder and behaving very badly, go to Amazon dot com slash disgrace lamb, or if you have an Echo device, just say Alexa play the disgrace Land podcast Rock Alone, Dad,