I Just Shot John Lennon: The Mark David Chapman Story

[Music] former beatle john lennon who was 40 was shot and killed last night outside his luxury apartment in new york the alleged killer is an unemployed security guard and printer who had lived in hawaii very very sorry that this had to happen december 8 1980 was one of the darkest nights of my life news of london's death touched off a wave of shock and mourning around the world it was just full court pressing his story he knew something subconsciously that he was looking into the eyes of the person that's going to kill him nothing special about the sale pretty pretty strange character they brought out lennon he was his limp takes a deranged person to single out one of the most well-known people in the world first thing he said was i acted alone and i was ready for this to happen i even heard a voice my own inside of me say do it do it do it [Music] god sent my husband mark to me in march of 1978 [Music] i was a travel agent at the time i was the international expert and mark came to us for help in planning a vacation to the far east which quickly changed to a trip around the [Music] of world mark david chapman's troubled childhood unfolded in georgia in his teen years he experimented with drugs and showed the first signs of mental illness he would hear voices [Music] through my life off and on i've struggled with different things as we all do [Music] after dropping out of college chapman came to oahu depressed and suicidal he was admitted to castle memorial hospital for treatment once being released he started working at the facility he had gotten so well as a patient that he got a job there as a housekeeper mark chapman that i knew here at castle was a mark that had a lot of enthusiasm for his work he seemed to express an awful lot of happiness when he came in in the mornings he did his job well faithfully sometimes even beyond what we asked him to do he'd come up with even more creative suggestions and maybe what we had given to him he just was a just a good guy during the planning of that trip i got to know mark pretty well he came in often to make changes or ask me things and i found him to be kind generous sweet thoughtful and very smart just before he left he sent me this big teddy bear on this tray that came with a dozen red roses the morning that he left i had this compulsion i mean i never had done anything like this in my life but i felt compelled to go to his house although i didn't really know where it was so i just kind of knew the general area and i just felt compelled to go there and give him a lay and i remember making this left turn and he just at that moment putting his luggage into the chunk of a car i mean the timing was just perfect and i gave mark a kiss on the chi as i put the lay around his neck well i knew what hotels he was going to be staying at along the way since i planned this trip and made the reservations so i was able to surprise mark by having letters waiting for him at a few hotels and they were not love letters just friendly ones he reciprocated by sending me postcards as he traveled i think my love for mark began and grew with each arriving postcard when he arrived back in hawaii i was there to meet him at the airport and we began dating the very next night by the end of that year 1978 we felt as if we had known each other for years it was only one problem i was not a christian and i knew it was important to mark that it become one i was a new creation in christ hallelujah after mark helped gloria find her faith the couple married in june of 1979 but their happiness was short-lived not long after our wedding things started to change in our relationship first he lost his new job after a run-in with a nursing supervisor he would get angry with me more easily and on a couple of occasions he hurt me physically he started drinking alcohol and came home drunk a few times we still had good times together but he preferred not to join me and my friends when we had a party he began to withdraw into himself chapman developed several obsessions including with john lennon and the book the catcher in the rye a longtime beatles fan he now perceived lennon as a phony a theme of jd salinger's novel that now consumed his thoughts he grew angrier following lenin's highly publicized comment that the beatles were more popular than jesus mark why are you blaming a book i'm not blaming a book i blame myself for crawling inside of the book it's my fault i i crawled in found my pseudo-self within these pages but that's fiction and reality was standing in front of the dakota in october of 1980 chapman quit his job as a waikiki security guard and purchased a gun he then went to new york with intentions to kill lennon but backed out and returned to hawaii he came home and that one scared he told me he had planned to kill john lennon but he said my love had saved him and he even had me hold the gun which was still cold from being in the plane's cargo hold hood very cold the only reason i was okay with him making another trip to new york was because he had convinced me when he said he realized he needed to grow up as an adult as a husband maybe as a father someday he needed time to think about his life he wanted me to sacrifice a short time of being alone so that we could have a long happy marriage together brooke hart was gloria's attorney i could not identify any way she could have prevented it the power difference in the relationship with her husband was such that you know he did what he wanted to to do and if you wanted to go off to new york gloria i'll see you later i'm going to new york or to that extent and she certainly had no inkling that he was going to do something let alone kill one of the world's most well-known musicians december 8 1980 was one of the darkest nights of my life i had come home by bus from work fixed dinner and plopped on the sofa i was watching little house on the prairie when suddenly words ran across the bottom of the screen like a ticker tape john lennon had has been shot in new york city i just knew it was smart this is the cbs evening news with walter cronkite good evening the death of a man who sang and played the guitar overshadows the news from poland around and washington tonight former beetle john lennon who was 40 was shot and killed outside his luxury apartment in new york the alleged killer is an unemployed security guard and printer who had lived in hawaii news of lennon's death touched off a wave of shock and mourning around the world and within two minutes of time i got there they brought out lenin he was he was limp he had blood coming outside of his mouth uh he had his glasses on and there were maybe five or six police officers holding him carrying him putting him in the back seat of a car very quickly yoko was with [Music] lennon had been shot four times he was taken to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead chapman remained at the scene until he was picked up by police they brought from this kind of inside area inside the gate they were scuffling with a guy and brought him out he was handcuffed behind his back that apparently was the man that shot him the dakota's doorman yelled do you know what you just did and chapman responded calmly his face covered with lennon's blood i just shot john lennon [Music] we learned fairly quickly that the killer was a man from hawaii and it was a big story i was a brand new reporter in the newsrooms it was just full court press on this story newsroom 9 at 6. mark chapman worked here at 444 nahua street in waikiki as a security guard and maintenance man from december 21st 1979 until last october 23rd well he was very quiet most of the time and he was a very good worker we never had any problems with him but chapman did something very strange and they say out of character for him on october 23rd the day he suddenly quit his job he signed out on the employee's log as john lennon and we didn't know that we just overlooked that until today this morning it was discovered he normally signed chap for chapman that day he signed the name john lennon and then it is crossed out is that his crossout yes and you don't know why no not only had chapman signed his final log sheet as john lennon but led his replacement to think his name really was john lennon you know what he did the day that he left because that's the day that i was hired yeah right on his name taken yet trying to learn oh you're kidding i never noticed he wrote it on a piece of paper and taped it over his name most who knew mark chapman thought highly of him the job counselor at the employment agency who sent him to the waikiki condominium for whom chapman painted this watercolor rainbow but across the street at the church of scientology they knew a different mark chapman all of a sudden this guy chapman just jumps in on me and starts screaming at me about this place being a cult and something really peculiar and attacking me and swearing at me i couldn't believe it we both the guy and i looked at each other and kind of looked over chapman i thought well let me see if i can you know just talk to the guy sanely what was his physical demeanor when he started verbally attacking he was kind of jumping around and dodging his head oh yeah crazy he would stand out in front of the apartment building now the women that lived in the apartment building he seemed to know every single one of them by their first names and would greet them very cordially then other girls walking by on the street would get obscenities hey baby type remarks pretty pretty strange character and he he spent a lot of time pacing very nervously when you go out in front of the building he'd be pacing out there there's this incredible covert hostility about it i was at home late and i got a phone call in the middle of the night from a person it was a man's voice came on and said um mark david chapman has visited two mental health clinics in hawaii before going to new york to kill john lennon and i said uh really i mean literally i'm a reporter been six months and someone is giving me a tip on a huge national story the person who called me wasn't the person who had the information because when i said well can you tell me where he went the person goes can i tell him where and so the person was so concerned about being identified he didn't even want to talk on the phone with me the next day i came in and they wanted me to come to the legislature instead of covering that story so i gave the tip to another reporter both clinics admitted that they had basically turned him away you know the the the other big thing was just you know the huge national attention that was suddenly shifted on hawaii and i the fact that he had gone and sought mental health treatment you know here and and been turned away was kind of a black eye although you never know whether you know something like that would have really prevented anything he said he can't even remember vaguely we sell quite a few guns so it's not uh it's not as though it's it's something a rare event you know there's nothing special about the sale and nothing odd and just a normal gun sale a sale that apparently provided a murder weapon there's nothing i could do about it it was a strictly legitimate gun sale a guy looked like a normal uh upright human being when he bought it nobody knows he's a schizo and six weeks ago he buys it goes out and does something like this six weeks later what the hell can you do you know have you received threats for having sold the gun to mr chapman yeah but we're not really that concerned about why not just look around you would you be concerned if you was here the manager of kukui plaza where chapman has been living with his wife says threats have not been received there but extra security is on hand just in case a guard was posted this afternoon at the chapman's 21st floor apartment chapman's wife the former gloria abe is reported to be inside with a woman friend declining to speak with reporters we approached the door at about seven this morning before the guard was posted and heard crying now alone in our apartment i was i just paced around and all i could say over and over was oh my god oh my god i'm so thankful that i knew god at that terrifying moment so that i could call out to him to comfort me my life changed changed dramatically that night as you can imagine i was now mrs mark david chapman the wife of a murderer and not just any murderer but one whose victim was known and loved by millions around the world i just want to say that i'm just still again very concerned about mark and i'm just very very sorry that this had to happen to yokono and her family and that her husband had to die i called one of my friends at one of the stations and made room for the literally hundreds of representatives of the media who wanted to question gloria i don't feel bitter i don't think that's the right word i'm not bitter about it i think that maybe just somehow some good was is going to come out of this this all i don't know what but i'm just hoping and praying that some good will come out of it i'm just a very optimistic type person i feel i've always been a forgiving person and that i cannot recall that i've not forgived mark for any any wrong thing that he has done i love him very much and i'm just very sorry that all this had to happen that john lennon had to die and that his wife and son are going through what they're going through but we didn't know what what the situation was going to be but that that event seemed to solve for the most part gloria's concerns about the media and the degree of intrusion and the number of of persons who wanted to question her from the media got pretty much less bothersome for her i was standing there with a gun in my pocket knew you were going to shoot him sorry knew you were going to shoot him absolutely okay tried not to praying not to but knowing down deep it was probably going to come to that on the morning of the killing chapman purchased a copy of the catcher in the rye in it he wrote this is my statement and signed holden caulfield he was distracted by reading it as he stalked lennon outside the dakota and missed his first chance of seeing him john came back out i don't remember him going back in from the taxi but he was obviously back in the building he was doing an rko radio special and i said john would you sign my album and he said sure chapman is referencing the double fantasy album he had lennon signed as john and yoko headed to a recording studio a photographer was there and took a photo of what would be one of lenin's last autographs that image was soon plastered on newsstands around the world at around 10 50 that night the couple returned to the apartment building mark will you relive with us those terrible moments for you for the world for a lot of people around and in circles close to john lennon what happened that night he walked past me i took five steps toward the street turned withdrew my charter arms 38 and fired what happened before the shooting before i pulled the trigger and after were two different uh scenes in my mind before everything was like dead calm and i was ready for this to happen i even heard a voice my own inside of me say do it do it do it you know here we go and then afterwards it was like the film strip broke i fell in upon myself i i like went into a state of shock i stood there with the gun hanging limply down on my right side and jose the doorman came over and he's crying and he's grabbing my arm and he's shaking my arm and he shook the gun right out of my hand which is a very brave thing to do i i just couldn't wait larry until those police got there i was just devastated new york city police officer steve spiro arrived at the scene within minutes and arrested chapman the first thing he said was i acted alone i thought that was very strange and then he said don't hurt me and don't let anybody else hurt me and i said no nobody's going to hurt you you're with me he was going like this like with heartburn i said what's the matter so i have a little heartburn i said you want some aids or something like that he said you would do that for me i said yeah for some reason he trusted me because i guess i didn't beat him up or something for decades spiro held on to letters that chapman had written to him from prison one of the first things he asked in the letter that he wrote to me was do you know where my copy of the catcher of the writers and i wrote back shorts in the district attorney's office it was vouched and it's evidence you wrote back to him yeah why why i think because i wanted to have him admit certain things that never got to trial in this letter dated march 10 1983 one of four letters chapman wrote to spiro chapman writes lennon was a phony of the highest degree but there were others who could and would have served the same purpose he said that these people on the hit list including john lennon were phonies they were not taking their money and giving it to the charities that he thought they should be giving to mark david chapman at that point was a walking shell who didn't ever learn how to let out his feelings of anger of rage or disappointment mark david chapman was a failure in his own mind he wanted to become somebody important larry he didn't know how to handle being a nobody he tried to be a somebody through his years but as he progressively got worse and i believe i was schizophrenic at the time no one can tell me i wasn't although i was responsible mark david chapman struck out at something he perceived to be phony something he was angry at to become something he wasn't to become somebody we'll be right back you should never see daylight again i'm here today to call on the new york state parole board to deny the release of mark [Music] chapman [Music] i know that my father would have been really thrilled to be accepted in this way officially [Applause] [Music] i had so much enjoyment being with joan i am so lucky i feel very very lucky and yes the most complaint i have is that he's not here but he's somewhere in the sky i think [Music] i admit that when i got lonely and depressed in that first year of being apart from mark i thought maybe divorce was the right thing to do the only trouble was i loved mark and i really believed that he would kill himself if i left him even though sometimes in his pain and suffering from mental illnesses he wrote me very hurtful hate-filled letters i knew in my heart that he loved me too so i kept asking god what to do stay with mark relieve stay with mark or leave and i search the bible to read what god says about divorce finally in the book of malachi i read these words i hate divorce says the lord the god of israel that settled it i closed the book the bible from that moment on from that point on it didn't matter how long mark was in prison i would wait for him let me just bring you up to the present are you looking for truth from god's word that you can understand and apply to your life how do you reach out and still provide um what we might say that encouragement that godly wives would want to give to their husbands because you know he he's accepted his life in prison but it's still not in any form the kind of life that we would want to have so tell us about that mark has the gift of evangelism and he has the goal of reaching every man at that prison where he's at wendy correctional with the gospel i'm on the outside so i provide materials that he can give to inmates there mark has three brochures that he is written we've actually worked on them together even five minutes with mark that conversation is going to turn right around to jesus he loves to talk about jesus how do you know it isn't a crutch or in a way it's got to be a crutch because we all need a crutch life is not easy and life for me isn't easy and therefore i think the lord is has a tender spot in his heart for prisoners and i've leaned on him i if it's a crutch i've been leaning on a crutch but it's a it's a it's a crutch made out of the cross because without that i probably wouldn't be alive today today i'm different i read the bible i pray and i and i walk with him he forgives me he doesn't condone what i did he didn't like all the pain i caused everybody and especially john's widow but he forgives me and he hears me and he listens to me and he is the one all these years that has brought me out of the abyss [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Hawaii News Now

Views: 52,663

Keywords: Hawaii News Now, #HINews, HawaiiNewsNow Sunrise, Beatles, Lennon, Chapman, John Lennon, Hawaii, Documentary, Mark Chapman, Mark David Chapman

Id: lWYD2yIi-Ms

Length: 29min 0sec (1740 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020