FROM NY POST: Deranged killer Mark David Chapman gunned down John Lennon over a pathetic desire to “be a somebody,” he recently told a parole board, ahead of the shocking crime’s 45th anniversary.
Chapman, who assassinated the beloved 40-year-old Beatle outside the Dakota apartment building on Dec. 8, 1980, made his 14th unsuccessful attempt at getting sprung from prison. He apologized for causing “devastation” to fans and friends of the rock legend — but the board ultimately didn’t buy his sorrow, the records showed.
“This was for me and me alone, unfortunately, and it had everything to do with his popularity,” Chapman, 70, said from the Green Haven Correctional Facility in Dutchess County in late August, according to an interview transcript obtained by The Post on Friday.
“My crime was completely selfish,” he said, telling the board he decided to murder Lennon “to be famous, to be something I wasn’t.”
He said at some point he “just realized” what his goal was.
“I don’t have to die and I can be a somebody,” he said of his thinking at the time. “I had sunk that low.”
Chapman, who identified with Holden Caulfield from “The Catcher in the Rye” and believed Lennon was a “phony,” flew to New York from Hawaii and waited months for his opportunity.
Chapman, then 25, stalked Lennon over several months until that fateful December day.
“That morning of the 8th, I just knew. I don’t know how I knew but I just knew that was going to be the day that I was going to meet and kill him,” Chapman said.
When Lennon exited a limo with wife, Yoko Ono, Chapman shot him four times in the back.
Hours earlier, Lennon had signed an album for him.
John Lennon’s Killer Mark David Chapman Denied Parole for the 14th Time https://t.co/pafKihFSx5
— People (@people) September 11, 2025
Beatles assassin Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon ‘to be a somebody’ but officials don’t buy his message to fans: docs https://t.co/UyFccvOLnk pic.twitter.com/vKRaFFdvlq
— New York Post (@nypost) October 20, 2025
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