The Man Who Shot John Lennon (True Crime Documentary) | Real Stories

[Music] early in december 1980 an unknown young man traveled to new york city to kill the most famous pop singer in the world this film is the killer's story as told by those who knew him and loved him it's the story the killer told afterwards to detectives and psychiatrists but it's also a film about the danger of stories and of one story in particular a story used as a murder weapon in 1980 a vital key to the killing of john lennon proved to be a simple story prompted by a favorite old song [Music] by the evening of monday 8th of december the unknown young man was standing outside the new york apartment of the famous pop singer here in his own words is what happened next if you have a good chance go to the dakota building just look at it and think that's where it happened there was no emotion there was no way there was nothing it was dead silence in my brain did cold quiet he walked up he looked at me i'm telling you the man was gonna be dead in less than five minutes and he looked at me and i looked at him and he walked past me and then i heard in my head said do it do it do it over and over again do it do [Music] i don't remember aiming i must have though but i don't remember drawing a bead or whatever you call it and i just pulled the trigger steady five times this individual who is unidentified at this point but will be identified soon fired five shots from a 38 caliber charter arms pistol um mr lennon was struck several times we're not positive at this time as to how many times he was struck it appears at this time that the individual is from out of town possibly hawaii that's the way it looks at the moment [Music] the unknown young man three hours after he killed john lennon his name is mark david chapman and this police video taken that night through a two-way mirror marks the beginning of the investigation into what turned him into a murderer police had found him minutes after the shooting waiting for them quietly at the scene of the crime he dropped his gun and in its place was only carrying a paperback novel inside he'd written to holden caulfield from holden caulfield this is my statement from that night onward the catcher in the rye haunted the investigation into lennon's killing let me have your date of birth okay may 10 1955 and that makes you how old now 25 okay and you spell your first name m-a-r-k in prison interviews with detectives and psychiatrists chapman constantly returned to the same theme anyone he said who understood literature would understand why can you read the book you think about me in the terrible fall and you read i'm sorry i told so many people about it don't ever tell anybody anything and it might hit you you might really come to the full scope of understanding of what i've stood for in my life what the terrible fall is and what i'm doing now and what i will be doing in the future it just might come to you i'm praying that it will that you realize that something very extraordinary has happened with an extraordinary book and without ego an extraordinary person and lenin an extraordinary person the beatles an extraordinary cultural movement in the 60s and early 70s probably the cultural experience musically and culturally they changed the world as we know it and i changed them at his trial chapman pleaded guilty sentence was passed without his evidence being heard until now no one outside a prison cell has heard from chapman himself why lennon had to die the reason i killed john lennon was to gain prominence to promote the reading of jd salinger's the catcher in the rock i'm not saying i'm the messiah or nothing like that if you read the book and if you understand my past would you seem to understand my past pretty well and you would see that i am indeed the catcher in the ride of this generation our book for discussion in clash this morning is jd salinger's catcher in the rye it is a book that is at the top of the list of the most banned books in the united states the banning of catcher in the rye in many american schools is a curious fate for an acclaimed work of literature yet this funny sad novel about a teenager driven to despair by the phoniness and hypocrisy of the adult world is often outlawed as dangerously subversive the theme of phoniness certainly is a predominant theme throughout the book a crusade against phoniness one critic called it and teachers have been well aware how deeply the book impresses some students and how intensely they identify with its hero holden caulfield but listen now anyway he started concentrating again then he said this fall i think you're writing for is a special kind of fall a horrible kind the man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom he just keeps falling and falling tells him it's a special kind of fall it's a horrible kind and it is look at what's happened to my life on the surface i murdered a man but not only did i fall but i took a lot more with me than just myself a whole era ended it was the last nail in the coffin of the 60s [Music] this is a recording mark chapman made of one of his own songs written in the late sixties [Music] it doesn't matter who you are mark was a southern boy born in texas but raised here in this quiet respectable suburb of decatur near atlanta in georgia later he'd speak of an unhappy childhood spent in this house with a father he called cold and unresponsive but his mother questioned after the killing has said she noticed nothing wrong in those early days at first he'd done well at school and everything seemed normal when trouble came rather than anything wrong with mark himself it had seemed more like a sign of the changing times [Applause] in august 1964 the beatles arrived in america and from the first they provoked a response difficult to contain in concert stadiums with their arrival the turbulent world of the 60s had begun little here to reassure conservative america and in 1966 lennon's remarks about the beatles and jesus scratched a raw nerve i'm not saying that we're better or greater or comparing us with jesus christ as a person or god as a thing or whatever it is you know i just said what i said and it was wrong or was taken wrong and now it's all this this is doug layton and tommy charles reminding you that our fantastic beetle boycott is still in effect don't you forget what the beatles have said don't forget to take your beetle records and your beetle paraphernalia to any one of our 14 pickup points in birmingham alabama and turn them in this week if possible the group were big enough to ride out the controversy but lennon sharp-tongued hard-edged and philosophical had already begun to find a place apart from the other beatles in atlanta mark chapman was swept along with the spirit of the times his beatle haircut and the beatles songs he himself sang were only outward expressions of a more profound change [Applause] his school had become a center for the local drugs trade pupils boasted that colombia high was rated number one for drugs in the state and as mark slipped into the drug culture he became known as a garbage head someone who'd take almost anything in the family he became rebellious and hostile when he was 15 he ran away from home on another occasion after taking lsd he spent the night in police custody he was at his lowest point when suddenly he heard the beat of another drummer [Music] you know all across the country there's a real jesus revolution going on he is the ultimate eternal trip and we want you to go out and share everywhere that you go what jesus christ has done in 1971 this service in a local church conducted by the californian preacher arthur blessed was one of several religious experiences which suddenly brought mark chapman to christ many of you just made a real commitment of your life to jesus christ and at his place when someone turns unto jesus we have them share their testimony and many are loaded on drugs or have drugs in their possession so we go into the to the restroom and we have a toilet service and we read a passage of scripture we say a word of prayer and then we drop the drugs in the john and just as we start to mash the handle down we sing a little song says down down down down all my dope is gone we flush her down remember jesus christ is life's greatest trip i had an encounter with jesus christ and he came into my life i was just nothing but a dope head and i asked christ come into my life and um he came i mean i didn't see him but he was there you know i knew it was there and i felt forgiving of all my sins and felt like my life was headed on the right track again i read the bible and i worked in inner city atlanta with with kids that you just wouldn't believe it was after his conversion that mark met the girl who many years later in prison he would still call his only one true love he had changed his drug days he had changed into being a christian he had very high morals very high standards for himself and for me and we were not to sway from those standards at 15 as in love as i could be at the time and of course he was 17 and growing up a little bit more grown up than i was but yes we were we were in love no doubt about that he had his own ways of thinking about things that's the only way i can describe it at his own way of how he felt about things about real things and that's the way we had to be with each other he was very honest and open he had no no there was no place in our relationship for anything that was phony no lies no games it was me in the end that said goodbye and it was very hard for mark he didn't he didn't go on he didn't say okay you know so that didn't work now i need to pick myself back up and maybe spend some time with myself and like all of us do when a relationship comes to an end and we learn from it and we go on that didn't happen with tomorrow talking to you has you know brought a lot of things back for me and um i remember quite clearly finding out and how shocked i just i wouldn't register for the longest time and now it's like i feel totally helpless almost you know i just what can i what could i do everyone i can't even tell i can't tell friends because they would hate me i had nothing to do with it but there's very few people you know that i would even tell about this it's a very hard thing to think about him spending the rest of his years there you know because he was such a special person such a kind and gentle very gentle person i i make no i'm not undermining in any way what he did [Music] and for a long long time and still you know my sympathies for yoko and and all the all of the people that loved linen so much you know that is so strong in me but i also try to separate that as i said separate remark that i knew from what really happened and it's not it wasn't mark it just wasn't he just wasn't he couldn't have been in his right mind when he did it [Music] it was now that mark chapman read catcher in the rye for the first time he was 16 the same age as the book's hero holden caulfield and like holden who fears the loss of the innocent world of childhood mark now began to spend more of his time with children this is his application form to become a camp leader at the ymca in decatur where he worked with vince smith i knew mark chapman quite well he served as a assistant director when i was director at camp coda he was particularly good with little children in fact i've never seen a boy of his age that was so good with little children he was like a pied piper they'd follow him around he struck me as just a fine young boy i didn't see a fault in mark he tended to um he tended to have grand ideas that would grant passions that would stick with him and then one day they'd be gone and another one would come back i felt that uh the catcher in the rye business was one of mark's passions but i didn't see anything and i'm familiar with the book i didn't see anything in there that that made me think that was going to be a more serious passion in another book in fact i figured that next week he'd have another book that he'd be trying to get everybody to read he certainly didn't seem like holden caulfield to me and nemo was his camp name nemo and i called myself nemo for seven years at the ymca day camp until i found out what nemo means in latin what's it mean means nothing literally nothing well cindy was a very shy child and she was nine years old the summer she started to camp and the first day that i took her she was very nervous and and cried and i left her crying and i worried all day of course how she was doing and when i came back to pick her up she was walking up the hill and she had her arm around mark and he had his arm around her and there was this big smile on her face and i knew that she had found a friend he was just totally honest totally sincere he truly cared for me and that is very odd for an adult to react that way for a child he did not treat me like a child he never spoke to me like i was a child he spoke to me like i was his age and that i could understand everything that he was saying to me but then again he didn't really act like an adult well it was unconditional love on your part that you had for mark there was no criticism or no you accepted him as he was and loved him as he was and i i think that's the reason that mark became close to me well i think i think the fact that he was so so gentle and passive with the children was was a lot of what he wanted to be he wanted to portray this very kind gentle person with the children because he loved them very much but obviously like any other young person he did have problems in his life he really never said much of anything negative well i think i think he did did express at times that that he was disappointed in people that they didn't live up to what they should that they they needed to give their very best at all times and that they did not but as far as any any specifics he did say that when someone was gone they were dead yes he did have an expression that once once you did something that made him very angry to the point that he never wanted to see you again he would say well he's dead and i questioned him about that one time i said oh they've they've died and he said no not really they've died but to me they're dead so when when you did fall out fall out of grace with mark he marked you off his list and lyndon fell out of the grace of mark someone asked us not long ago if we feel any hatred or any hostility toward him for what he did although we were appalled at his crime no one can condone murder can they we were shocked and we were horrified but to us he was still the mark who loved us and who gave us so much of himself and we will always love him mark went on to win recognition and distinction with the ymca he worked briefly for them in the lebanon and in 1975 he was sent to fort chaffee in arkansas to help refugee children from vietnam my name is mark chapman and i came to work at fort chaffee about three months ago this is truly one of the best experiences i've ever had it's so good to work closely with the vietnamese people and to exchange culture and ideas despite the confident voice on the camp radio and glowing reports from his superiors hall was far from well with mark chapman at chaffee he was closer than ever to the children to whom he remained the pied piper the cheerful organizer of camp games but to co-workers he appeared tense he was something of a loner moody and frequently depressed at chaffey he'd had his first sexual experience but afterwards felt ashamed and full of guilt to one friend it seemed he'd fallen out of grace with himself certainly he changed from that point on um i didn't really go towards mark like i used to i didn't run up and hug him i would speak but i would keep a distance it wasn't like he was the same person i had known at camp he came to visit one time and he came into the kitchen and i started to run up to hug him but his face looked different his eyes were cold and i backed off and mom says aren't you going to go up and hug mark and i kind of shook my head and i said he looks different she says it's the same old mark but it wasn't the same old mark he had shark eyes and he had no feeling in his face he he looked very cold and very unhappy he scared me something was going wrong with the pied piper something he couldn't control and now he looked for a way of escape in 1977 mark chapman arrived in hawaii [Music] in the past year he'd walked out of the ymca failed at college and broken off an engagement now he'd come to paradise [Music] he'd come to spend all his money in one last fling at the smart hotels on waikiki beach and when it ran out to kill himself [Music] on june 20th he drove his car to the remote north of the island then connecting a hose to the exhaust he tried to asphyxiate himself the suicide bid ended when a fisherman knocked at the car window i think of myself chapman told doctors in the hospital afterwards as a boxer in the 27th round my face all bloody and bruised to escape his depression he'd come to hawaii to kill himself next time three years later he'd strike out at someone else in the late 70s john lennon guru and idol of millions of fans withdrew from the limelight and into private life for five years he gave no interviews and made no records he disappeared from the public stage in the autumn of 1980 journalist larry shames got his first big assignment to find out what had happened to john lennon with no direct route open to lennon himself shames realized his research must take a more enterprising course he'd heard that lennon had acquired an exclusive estate on long island and so set off by boat to investigate the lenin i went looking for was a man who had always taken chances musical chances political chances chances with his own sanity i went looking for the lenin who by his appalling honesty had shamed the world into examining itself i went looking for the lenin whose pained goofy earnest and paranoid visage was the emblem and conscience of an age the lenin i would have found was a 40 year old businessman who watches a lot of television who's got a 150 million dollars a son whom he dotes on and a wife who intercepts his phone calls he doesn't do ridiculous things anymore he stopped making errors and he stopped making music shames voyage of inquiry never reached lennon himself but his account of what he did discover revealed a far more comfortable side to the rock star's tough iconoclastic image we now know that this esquire article was at the forefront of chapman's mind as he plotted to kill lennon i felt just terrible when i heard about chapman uh the thought that that my article in any way might have been one of the things that went through his mind was was devastating to me the article at the beginning had been undertaken rather in the spirit of a journalistic caper the reporting itself was fun and lennon himself in life was was such a towering figure that it didn't seem that he could in any way be hurt or even really touched by this sort of story in hawaii mark chapman's own story seemed headed for karma waters he'd seen the failure of his suicide attempt as a message from god that he should make a new life for himself at first he'd settled here at kailua he'd come to castle hospital for treatment after the suicide bid but stayed on to become a popular and useful employee to nurse judy harvey whom he dated mark seemed cheerful outgoing and untroubled by past problems others weren't so sure on the surface i think most people would say that mark was getting along fine that uh that he was well balanced that uh the past episode in his life when he tried to take his life was over and that he was doing well but there were certain little glimpses you would get of mark occasionally that would let you know that things weren't all just right when he was down he was quiet he was sullen he really didn't want to talk too much i didn't see mark vent any of his anger and happiness in any violent way but i would describe it as being sullen and he would sulk seemed to be he would just not want to talk you could always read mark's moods like a book you come in the morning in the first glance at mark and the expression on his face you knew what mark's frame of mind was in 1978 mark met gloria abe a travel agent who'd helped him plan a world trip the following year they married yet despite the romance his spells of depression continued to the growing concern of his friends we were concerned because of mark's history and the fact that he had tried to kill himself and when he would sink into a depressed mood that would that would get some of us rather worried and granted all of us have ups and downs but with mark the the up seem to be a little higher and the down seemed to be a little lower and with his history we were concerned these were markings and signs of a very troubled young man uh capable we thought of inflicting damage to himself as i mentioned to you before when we heard that he shot john lennon didn't particularly surprise us that he was capable of violence we just didn't think he would direct the violence of someone else throughout 1980 the cycle of depression became worse think about it hawaiian beautiful place to live weather is perfect then it would be ideal it would be like the garden of eden but i was getting depressed again and i was just sick and tired of everything things i thought were going to be so good and they turned out the exact opposite autumn 1980 in honolulu chapman began a new project his plan was to go through every book in the state library it had been a year of projects taken up enthusiastically and dropped suddenly but now chapman found something that reawoke an older passion in james lundqvist's critical study of jd salinger chapman re-entered the world of the catcher in the rye and its hero holden caulfield in holden chapman discerned a powerful reflection of his own condition his admiring letter to professor lundqvist was signed a 25 year old catcher at the same time he continued in the library and when i read it i found out some strange things he did and i was probably angry at his phoniness i mean i wasn't fuming but i was saying what a fake he was what a phony he was then i thought to myself that i was going to kill john lennon for lennon there could be no escape from celebrity pictures like these were still too powerful lennon's long career of public self-exposure had summed up the whole era of the 60s now he was seeking seclusion but no one had forgotten be sure that instead of making words but just staying there let's stay in bed for the spring and grow your hair yes it was funny he stated that himself he said it was a publicity thing he said about peace he said without giving things to charity he protested he whined he screamed he went through the primal scream you know it's all a self-centered the man was just you know a complete family [Music] is [Music] if a body meter body come in through the rye the first words are robbie byrne's famous song but in the novel the catcher in the rye the hero holden caulfield is spellbound by a young child singing if a body catch a body come in through the ride from this small difference holden derives his philosophy his disgust of the phoniness of adults his love of the innocence of children and why he himself should become the catcher in the rye sees himself standing on the edge of a cliff [Music] and stopping children from accidentally falling over the cliff or rather the fall of a child that's symbolic of the transference from adolescence to adulthood when a child falls off the cliff he becomes an adult nine times out of ten he becomes a phony ponton doesn't want to see that he wants to see the whole world full of nothing in the children and he wants to catch them and keep them but you see what happens to holden yes he does he does fall and that's what's happened to me i will never hit bottom never i'll just keep falling falling and falling fell off the cliff but i never did become an adult on october 23rd mark chapman signed his timesheet john lennon and quit work for the last time four days later he bought a gun a 38-caliber saturday night special now at their apartment in honolulu while his wife worked chapman stayed at home listening to beatles tapes and drawing up his plan i want to tell you i had it made i had a great wife fantastic apartment everything was just on the surface to mends i don't know what happened i just got depressed again quit my job bought the gun and came over here and killed somebody that's what happened from heaven to hell in about a month in november 1980 chapman arrived back in atlanta he just spent a week in new york waiting in vain to see john lennon the last time i heard from him was in november or in the first week of december i remember on the phone he said i won't be back through here again and i said what do you mean you won't be back into the states meaning from hawaii again and he said i just don't think i'll be back through atlanta again and he said i'd like to get together and i and i thought we could talk over old times and i was very uncomfortable with that i felt like why do you want to talk about old times you know this is now those were then i thought that was all settled i thought that was all settled and he got very upset and he said aren't they important to you i remember him almost almost almost at the point of tears you know it was very emotional for him aren't they aren't they important to you so that was the time that last i could have seen him and i guess we never said goodbye and it's not that he's dead in my mind is that he's gone i guess he was gone a long time ago and i just didn't know it i'm in a sense he i think he stayed back in 1972. chapman had also come to atlanta for bullets and for target practice in the nearby woods where five years before verlin florence had been his shooting instructor mark chapman was a little better than average shot if he were a academically graded student that would be about a c-plus for ability he was like this distance from my grandmother who has been dead many years couldn't miss you it this way the fact that he had any training at all at this range has nothing to do with anything well your training is in value is when you go backwards and when that other person can shoot back lennon as far as i know wasn't armed was he so was chapman any danger no whatsoever [Music] on saturday december the 6th 1980 mark chapman returned to new york city new york was where john lennon lived it was also the setting for the catcher in the rye for three days in the book from saturday to monday holden caulfield drifts from place to place in growing desperation now from saturday to monday chapman's three days began partly on the track of lennon partly in the footsteps of the catcher in the rye [Music] in the book holden annoyed impatient taxi drivers with the question where do the ducks in central park go in winter chapman now went to central park to ask the same question [Music] in the book holden checked into a cheap hotel and felt ill at ease in his small miserable room now lodged at the 16 a night ymca chapman quickly became dejected and like holden he took great offense at noises from across the hallway [Music] when the book was published in 1951 one critic wrote the character of holden caulfield is hardly the model parents would want for their children fortunately he went on there can't be many of them yet [Music] on his last night chapman had a prostitute sent up to his room in this too he was following the book and as with holden before him there was no sex he paid the woman twice the normal rate before sending her away these coincidences chapman would later describe as accidental signs he claimed that destiny was at work [Music] the story of catcher in the rye ends back in central park by the carousel [Music] here as he watches his little sister go round and round the tired and confused young hero of the novel finds a kind of grace at last and relief from the mental turmoil that's haunted him throughout the book but for chapman watching the carousel that final weekend there would be no grace for him there'd be one more chapter do you think holden's a real nice kind of uh a guy everything wouldn't hurt a flea but he wouldn't at least up to the point in the book i think holt was capable of killing someone while chapman sat by the carousel a few hundred yards away in the dakota building john lennon and yoko ono were at home unaware they were spending their last weekend together within the past few weeks lennon had suddenly re-emerged on the public stage there was a new record in the shops and long interviews in the press chapman would later say that these interviews had summed up lennon's whole life and in the lyrics on the new album chapman found a confirmation that lennon had recognized his destiny and that their two paths would now converge [Music] so [Music] people say i'm crazy doing what i'm doing well they give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin i'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round i really love to watch them roll no longer riding on the merry-go-round i just had to let it go it's incredible the whole thing is just it's incredible does this does this person look like a person that could shoot somebody on december the 8th chapman who'd moved into the expensive sheraton center hotel in midtown manhattan woke up late at around 10 30. he dressed warmly and on his table he made a display of his possessions his bible his passport and a still of his favorite film i just got up and laid out the things and went down and bought the catcher in the ride and i went outside on the street and i wrote [Music] and i wrote this is my statement and i just knew that i'd never returned i just that's the way destiny works you don't always question that you just do it i kept saying just go back to the hotel pack bags and go home now you know don't do it go back to your hotel get get the doorman to get you a cab right now do it now you know but i didn't do it [Music] it was like a movie it was like i was in a movie i got a gun i got powerpoint bullets i thought he would just drop right in front of me and that was it he was about 25 feet away but i thought he was just going to fall down like in the movies fall down dead 38 caliber my god it's enough to knock him in on his feet i don't know why i chose him exactly but i was just fed up with the world and i thought if i murdered this guy then it would be all over for me and then that would would kind of be a solution in a way to everything but kind of the self-destruction would would be a blessing if you knew what holden went through and if you knew that holden wanted to die really then you'd understand and holden had kept it in for so long and yet he understood what he was doing he understood that it was against phoniness mug shots are photographs of criminals they reveal nothing about why someone commits a crime in chapman's case there was no shortage of explanations some far-fetched some conspiratorial some clearly derived from the police headlines like these addressed a deep need for an explanation but did they explain anything if chapman's motive was a mystery it was also a battlefield the prosecution believed he killed lennon to become famous the defense because he was insane the psychiatrists disagreed before them was a young killer who certainly knew he was mark chapman but also believed he was the personification of a fictional character but you see this whole thing lending me the book is so much bigger than guilty and not guilty unless you know the book unless you know me you can't really understand it i think people have fantasies all the time and people identify with stories they read all the time you become involved in a book or you become involved in a movie but to have it become your life and use it as a script for carrying out some very strongly felt mission there's something quite unusual and i think he identifies with the gentleness of holden caulfield because mark identifies also with the innocent children of the world he sees himself as their advocate he feels himself to be one of the innocent children of the world and he is going to do everything in his power to avoid hitting the bottom of that cliff mark probably saw john lennon as a representative of a very well-known representative of an individual who had been an innocent child and had fallen off the cliff and become an evil exploitative phony adult and deserving of whatever punishment mark was going to meet out with lennon's murder mark chapman joined the growing ranks of america's celebrity killers understanding them has become a matter of urgency they're unpredictable they strike at random and come from nowhere gavin de becker a specialist in security for the famous is working with the fbi on research to understand more about celebrity attackers you know our office has about four thousand people under assessment and we have a whole group that are similar to chapman in terms of the pre-incident indicators the factors that are part of their lives before they commit their uh their attack and uh chapman is not unfamiliar to us they are unsettled and uh and unhappy and travel to somewhere else only to find themselves unsettled and traveling again and you see that randomized travel in almost every serious case where a public figure attack or near attack occurs this society is focusing on uh famous people and celebrities and making celebrities with a fury that's never existed before in days gone by the mass media really was just the bible the bible was a story that your grandmother told you and that's what you eventually went on to learn well now the media and media figures play a much greater role in all of our lives you and i maybe can draw the line between what's appropriate and inappropriate in terms of that relationship but mentally ill people cannot effectively edit out the inappropriate and against that background we have to see ourselves in them as well because there is an acceptable level of idolatry all of us have idols and pursue those but what is a mild drug for some of us is a poison for some others and chapman is one of those others this is hogan's alley it is a stage set a fantasy world where the fbi rehearses the stakeouts sieges and gunfights that are the reality of violence in america today but the rise of the so-called media criminals has meant concentrating on new targets dr park dietz is a forensic psychiatrist who for the past five years has been studying the relationship between the public and celebrities for the national institute of justice people who identify with characters and books and films and begin to take on some of their characteristics in real life are choosing to do that it's fashionable to think of this as an involuntary process in which somehow the individual's mind is taken over by the character or they become possessed a kind of demonological view of it but in fact they're choosing to go to that film they're choosing that character for identification and it is a normal process of development to choose particular features from role models to choose what we want to be from among the various options available to us the individual who subjects himself repeatedly to exposure to inappropriate models who takes on those characteristics to try to become like that is choosing his fate the role of the artist is to invent fantasy worlds people may choose to enter them temporarily enjoy them and leave and exit to reality but for a large segment of our population the fantasy world becomes reality and there are those who live within that fantasy central park not far from the dakota not far from the carousel here every saturday during the summer children come to listen to stories underneath the statue of hans christian anderson from time to time we all fall under the spell of the storyteller but little is known of how these stories affect our imagination of how we grow up knowing what stories to believe or by what means we draw the line between what we call fantasy and what we call reality and it is an important line stories can delight us and enchant us but stories can be dangerous a single story can lead to murder [Music] december 1980 at a vigil outside the dakota building new yorkers lament the death of john lennon amongst the crowd another young man with a gun in his pocket his name was john hinckley four months later he shot president reagan [Music] amongst possessions seized when police broke into his hotel room there was a paperback novel a well-thumbed copy of the catcher in the rye [Music] since the controversy which followed its publication in the 50s jd salinger has always refused to interpret catcher in the rye people must make up their own minds he said must put their own interpretation on it of course mark chapman might have chosen another story but this one as it happens became the enabling myth for murder a murder for which he's now serving life in attica prison upstate new york that's all from us we'll be back on the first tuesday in march until then good night [Music] you

Channel: Real Stories

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Keywords: john lennon, history, the beatles, history documentary, who shot john lennon, Real Stories, Real Stories Full Documentary, Real Stories Documentary, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, full documentary, full episode, yoko ono, mark david chapman, crimes of the century, true crime, crime documentary, true crime documentary, beatles documentary, the beatles documentary, get back, sgt peppers lonely hearts club band

Id: aJVPoyQFX9c

Length: 53min 41sec (3221 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 27 2021