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Catcher in the Crosshairs: When a Banned Book Gets Blamed for Murder | Banned Books Podcast · Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship

On December 8th, 1980, after John Lennon was shot outside his apartment in New York City, police found the shooter sitting on a sidewalk reading a book.
Welcome to the special bonus episode of Band Camp.
This is the last episode of season 10, Jennifer and I did some research, and we discovered there are three high-profile murder and attempted murder cases tied to this book in popular culture.
One of them you almost certainly know.
It's one of the most famous crimes of the last 50 years.
Today we're gonna talk about what those cases were, whether Holden Caulfield actually had anything to do with them, and what it means for a book that is already one of the most banned books in American history.
And Jennifer, the reason this episode exists really is based on something you said in the very last chapter of The Catcher in the Rye" while we were reading it with Beowulf.
What exactly did you say? Do you remember? Yeah, I finished reading The Catcher in the Rye thinking that Holden is fundamentally good and he seems to be spiraling, but y- ultimately he wants to do the right thing.
He wants to catch the kids before they off the metaphorical cliff into adulthood, and I just could not imagine anyone reading that and thinking, "Okay, let's go hurt someone."
It didn't compute with me And yet three cases.
Let's go through them All right.
Let's start with the first one, the big one, the most famous one.
And this is the one where the connection to the book is the most real, and that's Mark David Chapman who shot and killed John Lennon outside his apartment building, called the Dakota Building in New York City on December 8th, 1980.
Now, Chapman was found on the sidewalk afterwards sitting just calmly reading his copy of The Catcher in the Rye.
He had written an inscription on the title page the morning before the shooting, and it said, "To Holden Caulfield from Holden Caulfield.
This is my statement."
And at sentencing, when he was asked if he had anything to say, he just stood up and a passage out loud, and it's the one where Holden describes catching the children before they fall off the cliff.
It's chapter 22 of the book.
Chapman believed that John Lennon was the ultimate phony, and in his mind, the only thing standing between him and him becoming Holden Caulfield was that John Lennon was still alive So all he had to do was kill John Lennon, and then he would become the fictional character Holden Caulfield.
Seems to make sense.
you can actually see why Chapman thought Lennon was a phony.
I mean, he sang Imagine, a song about a world with no possessions, while living in this fancy Dakota penthouse.
He had a driver, he had fancy clothes.
He had two sons, one of which he completely ignored, the other he doted on.
So Chapman wasn't completely crazy to see the contradiction here.
It's just he was crazy in how he responded to it Let's move on to case two...
Just one year later, 1981, the John Lennon killing still very much in the zeitgeist.
And still fresh on the minds of everyone...,
John Hinckley Jr.
attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan.
When agents searched his hotel room, they found a copy of The Catcher in the Rye.
The media immediately connected it to Chapman, and the connection became part of the cultural narrative around the shooting.
But here's the thing: Hinckley never said anything about the book, never mentioned Holden Caulfield, In fact, it appeared that he didn't really seem to have much of an obsession with the catcher in the rye.
Who Hinckley actually was obsessed with was Jodie Foster.
Hinckley became fixated on Jodie Foster after seeing her in the movie Taxi Driver, where she played a young girl who was being exploited, and a disturbed loner decides to save her.
Hinckley saw himself, though as Travis Bickle, who was the main character in the movie.
So the morning of the shooting, he wrote Foster a letter that said, I'm gonna read this directly from the letter, dear Jodie, by by sacrificing my freedom and possibly my life, I hope to change your mind about me, Jodie.
I'm asking you to please look into your heart and at least give me the chance with this historical deed to gain your respect and love."
So, so he, before he shot Reagan, he wrote Jodie Foster this letter, giving her a quick heads-up.
Wow His connection to The Catcher in the Rye was almost certainly the media drawing a line between two famous crimes that happened to share a prop So he writes her this crazy letter saying he's gonna do this to try and win her affection.
That is the sign of somebody who is extremely disturbed.
Wait.
Oh, oh, Or maybe did she give him a chance? You don't know.
I don't know much about Jodie Foster this.
Did they get married? pretty sure she was not on board and probably was pretty horrified by his actions.
And, uh, again, just shows the mental, instability in of these people.
Let's move on to case three So case three is incredibly tragic.
1989, a 19-year-old named Robert John Bardo stalked and murdered actress Rebecca Schaeffer, who starred in the TV show My Sister Sam.
Bardo had been obsessed with her for years.
He called the production company so many times that they referred him to a psychiatrist Wait, so he was a known entity to Rebecca Schaeffer and her team or people around her? Yeah.
It even makes it more tragic because they knew it could happen or it...
Well, they probably didn't think it would happen.
They probably felt sorry for the person, but oh my God, that's tragic Yeah, I don't think people took stalking as seriously back then as they don't now.
I mean, they still don't take it seriously enough, Yeah in my opinion.
Before he committed the murder, he wrote his sister, quote, "I have an obsession with the unattainable, and I have to eliminate what I cannot attain."
Makes sense.
It makes no sense.
makes sense.
logical at all.
If I can't have you, nobody can have you Is that what that means? God, down with the patriarchy.
He, he paid a private investigator $250 to get her home address from the Department of Motor Vehicles, which was completely legal at the time.
Right.
Then he went to her apartment, knocked on her door, turned around and left, thought about it, came back an hour later and killed her.
He had a copy of The Catcher in the Rye in his backpack, but while he was fleeing, he took it out and threw it on top of a rooftop I, I call that suspicious.
I mean, a lot of people say, it had nothing to-- this had nothing to do with, like, his love of the book or whatever, but I, I don't know.
It's kinda like, "Oh no, it has nothing to do with this."
You know, like, why would he do that? You He does Breaking Bad move, a He does it Breaking Bad, like with the pizza.
But I still, I can't get caught with this book.
I don't understand that at all I think of the three cases, uh, the Bardo case is probably the weakest connection to the book.
I just think he was probably copying Chapman more than he was actually, like, connecting with Holden or the book or whatever one thing that came out of this, which is actually, it's terrible that Rebecca Schaeffer got murdered, of course, but one good thing that came out of it is that the DMV is no longer allowed to give out personal information to people.
Um, it led to California passing the nation's first anti-stalking law, and in 1994, the Driver's Policy Protection Act made it illegal for the DMV all across the country to release private addresses to anyone at DMVs all over the, the country.
So something good did come out of something incredibly terrible So before we get into actually what we think happened with these three cases, we need to talk about the book itself for a second, because the real question isn't whether these guys read the book, it's why this specific book.
Of all of the books in the world...
why does The Catcher in the Rye keep showing up, Jennifer? I mean, we just spent an entire season with Holden.
What is it about this kid that could get inside, uh, somebody's broken head and get them to react like this? If you think about the way the book is written, Holden talks directly to you, the reader.
First person every single page.
It's like he's talking right into your head.
For most people, that's why they love it.
For a broken person though, that intimacy can be dangerous 'cause they are, they are hearing it like it's real, and it feels like the book was written specifically for them.
They don't see it as like just a work of literature that everyone can kind of identify with.
It's like, "No, this is for me.
This is for me, Mark David Chapman."
And that intimacy is what makes it dangerous for someone who's already broken.
he is talking to you.
He's like a friend.
You're sharing a one-on-one conversation.
It's a one-way conversation.
Uh, I don't know, maybe Mark David Chapman and Bardo and all these guys, like, maybe they did talk back.
I don't know.
We weren't there.
But, it is a really intimate thing, and I suppose when you are listening to Holden Caulfield he is talking to you.
And if you are looking at Holden like he is the hero in the book, I can totally see where it would almost in a way give them permission to identify with them like that I identified with Holden, you identified with Holden.
We hear from our Scary Book People listeners.
Everyone seems to on some level, in some way identify with Holden Caulfield.
Yeah That's the whole point of the book.
It's like a, y- people call it a coming-of-age story or a coming to realization of the way the world is.
And, and we've all, as human beings, have had to go through that, and J.D.
Salinger does such a great job of describing that, that everyone can identify with him But, you know, for someone whose mind isn't right or isn't firing on all cylinders, that identification with a character can go too far, and they don't just relate to him, they actually become him w- I Think maybe what happens is, like Salinger never said, "This is a story about a kid who screwed up.
Here's what you should think about it."
Right? The book never really tells you what to do with any of these feelings and, and the thoughts you have about, Holden Caulfield, right? Salinger just kinda wrote about him.
He left it there for you to figure out.
And for the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of the people who read the book, it's like a really nice cathartic feeling, right? It's like, "This was a fun story.
I'm happy I read it.
The kid drove me nuts.
The kid made me laugh."
It's whatever it is.
But such small group of people who already aren't as stable as perhaps they should be, it gives them permission.
It's like giving them a permission slip to act out on it Yeah, the book becomes a mirror, not just a motive.
Chapman didn't read the book and decide to kill somebody.
He already had some serious things the matter with him.
The book just became the vehic- like the thing that his broken mind g- longed onto.
It just user error, really It doesn't seem like he got to the end of the book kinda seems like he didn't finish it, right? I, you know why? Because when we read chapter 25, it was a long chapter.
We had to do three Band Camp episodes for it.
I know what happened exactly.
This guy's reading that chapter 25, he got two-thirds in and thought, "All right, I get where this is going."
And he stopped reading right before Holden figured it out, and he realized, "No, sometimes bad things happen.
Don't worry about it."
Right before Phoebe reached for the golden ring, and we don't know if she fell or not.
That's when he put the book down.
"I know where this is going.
I don't have to finish up.
Good book.
Good book."
so Here's what we actually think happened.
We did a lot of research.
We read There's one really cool A&E Crime and Investigation piece from February of this year.
We're gonna link it in the show notes.
there's a lot of theories out there, but I wanna ask you, Jennifer, of, of these three cases, which one do you think had a genuine connection to the book, and which ones do you think were something else entirely different? Chapman was probably the most real.
He read the book obsessively and personally, and he wrote the inscription that morning.
He stood up in the courtroom and red the passage about The Catcher in the Rye from the Robert Burns poem.
he's just all in on this book Yeah, th- this guy's a major league fan.
He's a Rye Head.
That's what we call him.
What about Hinkley, though? Well, now he never even mentioned Holden once.
the book happened to be in his hotel room.
Now, like I could understand people saying it had nothing to do with him, If he just happened to have it on his bookshelf at home...
you know.
But he had it, he traveled and had it with him in his hotel room.
So I think that's a little bit suspicious.
but on the other hand, lots of people travel with books.
It could've been the book of the month for him, you And then I guess we know what happened with Bardo.
Like, w- is he a true fan or like why the hell did he throw the book on the roof when he was running away? I think all three of these, you think about the title of The Catcher in the Rye, all three of these, they were trying to, prevent corruption of something.
John Lennon corrupting people because he's the ultimate phony, and he wanted to put a end to his voice in the world I think he just didn't like Double Fantasy and he's not a huge Yoko Ono fan, and he did not want a second album of that ilk coming out You her by a microphone and it's like, wow.
Every- everything out of your mouth is, like, real tough on the ears, friend...
Oh.
he wanted to...
He was obsessed with Jodie Foster, and, you know, she plays this like 12-year-old prostitute.
And I'm assuming he's trying to, um, protect her innocence in some way, like, which I don't really understand 'cause it's just a movie and, like she's a prostitute in the movie.
She's not a, like a little girl that's going to become a prostitute.
But in any case, he probably h- had some weird idea about Catcher in the Rye with that.
And then with Bardo, he didn't like Rebecca Schaeffer being in like a love scene with an older actor.
So kind of obsessed with her a- from My Sister Sam, and he liked her character, but then she did another movie where she was...
I mean, she's an actress.
Actresses are gonna be in movies.
then he saw a, a love scene with an older man, and that is the thing that probably set him off, you, you think? I'm assuming so.
I mean, he, he was in love and obsessed with her, and I'm assuming he wanted to, protect what he assumed was her innocence, which is, uh, which is really funny.
I'm having a flashback to Catcher in the Rye when, he got into that horrible fight with Stradlater because he was thinking about Stradlater being with the girl he liked, Jane.
And I remember when that happened, I was like, "What right does he have to...
What, what if Jane wants to, like, get together with Stradlater?" You know? So kind of like that along that same line where it's like, oh, I need, I must protect the innocence of this woman or this girl or...
And it's like, actually, you don't have to do that.
And, um, so I think that's kind of what Bardo was doing even though, you know, it was just a, um, in the, in a, a scene in a movie, really interesting because that makes me think, do you think one thing that maybe these three guys share in common that it took you and I until literally the moment it was said in the book that before we got it, and even then you got it before I did? it almost sounds like from the start as these guys are reading it, they connected with Holden immediately just with all the initial phony talk of like, "This guy's the true hero.
He's 100% right.
He's just trying to save the world.
This is like me.
I'm trying to save the world.
I'm trying to save good people."
Like, they probably had that thought, all three of them.
You could almost see in a way having that thought from the beginning of the book as they're reading it, so they identified with him maybe.
S- s- for sure maybe Mark David Chapman, 'cause I know Mark David Chapman had a, a tough life.
His dad was a real asshole, and there was a lot of abuse in his family.
So there are reasons why he, he did have, um, you know, some issues that he was dealing I think really interesting.
You know, when we were doing the research, I, I s- I mentioned this article that we read, from A&E, and it was neat because they had a bunch of, uh, biographers, and one of the biographers was this, um, Kenneth Slawenski, and he was J.D.
Salinger's, And there was this quote...
that Slawenski said.
He said, "After Chapman, you had clever criminals and probably even more clever lawyers who said, 'You know what? Make sure they see you in jail reading The Catcher in the Rye.'"
Like, in other words, they borrowed Chapman's costume, you know, his whole premise there, and the book stopped being something that they connected with and became more of a prop or a, like a, a, a prop you'd use in a courtroom, like in, in, as a defense strategy.
because like it was so connected with the first case that it's kinda like a copycat.
Like, oh, well, I did it for the same reason because I went crazy 'cause of this book And then because it's in the zeitgeist, it just gave America, "Yeah, that, that's right."
And it gave all those people who were trying to ban...
I think back, this is probably when there was the war against Judas Priest and heavy metal lyrics, all of that kind of stuff.
Like, heavy metal is killing kids.
And then I think it was probably around the same time where Dungeons Dragons are killing kids, which is very Moms for Liberty style thinking.
I see.
So it's not like the person that was the villain, it's like the book or the music or whatever that becomes vilified Something's dawning on me.
Robot, when was the Dakota, the, the building, when was the Dakota built? 1880 to 1884.
And for the record, it took me longer than usual to get to my microphone because there is a rolled-up rug blocking my path Oh, yeah.
Sorry about that.
Uh, Jennifer Beatrix peed on the floor in my studio, so I had to get a new rug, and I didn't I didn't wanna trip on it, so I rolled it up and put it in his corner, 'cause I don't wanna it.
Anyway, robot, so 1880 to 1884.
Okay, so here's the thing, Jennifer.
Here's what I'm thinking.
The Dakota, built long before the story of The Catcher in the Rye.
Holden's safe place, one of the places he knew like the back of his hand, get this, was Central Park.
of the book Oh.
Central Park is across the street from The Dakota.
and I bet you Holden himself as a fake character while he was walking around in Central Park probably looked over and saw the building because it's a unique looking building cree- that's creepy.
So I mean, Holden Caulfield walked through there.
Like, the-- imagine this, right? You have a fake kid in a book walk through the exact spot that became a memorial, Strawberry Field, that, that with the, uh, Imagine mosaic on the ground.
That is, that is a memorial to the most famous murder, which happens to be connected to that book.
Wow That's pretty wild That is.
Yeah, I never even really put two and two together, like, uh, which is kind of silly of me because, I mean, I know where Central Park is, and I, I've seen pictures of the Dakota right next to it, and yeah, that's like, that's, that's basically where the whole book takes place, all the important parts.
So that's...
Salinger didn't see coming No, for sure So there's one more piece of the story we have to talk about.
J.D.
Salinger was still alive when John Lennon was murdered.
He was actually alive for all three of these cases.
Um, so I just, I wonder, did Salinger ever say anything public about it? Because I'm sure he was horrified.
I'm sure this is the kind of thing he doesn't want to happen in the world Robot, did J.D.
Salinger...
Start moving to the microphone now at him.
gotta get him snow chains or something Little tank wheels Robot, J.D.
Salinger ever make a public statement about Chapman or Hinckley or Bardo or any of this stuff? Salinger gave his final interview in 1980 and went completely silent for the rest of his life.
He died in 2010, never having addressed the Chapman connection, the Hinckley connection, or any of it publicly.
The man whose book was being cited in courtrooms and crime scenes said nothing, ever.
The rug is still here, by the way.
I had to take the long way around.
I'm logging this as a workplace hazard Okay, that's good to know.
Robot, o- one more quick question.
I, I have a theory.
How many people have read The Catcher in the Rye since it was published in 1951? Over 65 million All right, 65 million versus 3, and 2 of those were copycats probably.
So one genuinely broken person.
Moms for Liberty, you understand, and you too Ron DeSantis, this is not a great argument for banning a book, 65 million to 3.
cause I don't even think you could quantify three out of 65 million, I think it did more good than harm in the world.
And, uh, 'cause I've heard the book has helped a lot of people get through some hard times or even have someone to identify with was actually a good thing for them.
so again, it's just user error.
people are mentally unwell and it, it, it could come out in so many other ways.
I mean, that's, that's my opinion.
What, do you think the book is dangerous? No, I mean, it's just, it, it's a book.
But, you know, it, it's-- in, in psychiatry, I know that a lot of people say that they can look at books the same way that doctors look at, um, Rorschach tests.
Those-- called, those little white, Rorsch- yeah, the inkblots, yeah Yeah, and I think that is what every good book is, what every piece of art is, basically.
Again, it's like what I said about Salinger.
He wrote this book, and he presented it to the world, here is the art.
Do with it what you will."
And that is like, it's kinda like a Rorschach test.
The, the vast, vast, vast majority, 65 million-- uh, and 999,999,999.9%
I think of the world who read it probably thought, "This is a pretty good book.
The kid drove me nuts half of the time.
He made some good points the other half of the time.
Maybe looking at the bigger picture, maybe we could do a better job with, uh, treating people with disabilities or, you know, with mental disabilities a little better."
Whatever they took from it, they took from it, and it a net positive.
But for this tiny, tiny .00...
I mean, I think you're right.
I don't know if you can qualify a number that tiny...
think you Robot, what do you think? Did "The Catcher in the Rye" do more good than harm? Look at him.
Oh, he's still trying to get over the rug.
Poor guy You know, we all have our own rug to get over.
For Jennifer and me, our, our rug is how do you read The Handmaid's Tale for an entire season without completely losing your mind? For the scary book people, maybe your rug is pressure at work or pressure at home or just the general feeling that the world has gone completely sideways and nobody's doing anything about it.
For Robot, his rug is a rug, literally, that will probably be peed on by Beatrix about 10 seconds after I put down.
what a, it's a wonderful way to wrap up our true crime special, and an even more beautiful way to wrap season 10 of Band Camp.
Thank you to everybody for listening.
It means so much to us to have an audience who listens and participates.
We appreciate everyone who writes in and everyone who shares the show and subscribes.
This work has been so meaningful to me, and I'm so grateful to each and every one of you Yep, we love doing it and we're gonna need your continued support as we start Handmaid's Tale because I'm not kidding, it's, it's, uh, nerve-wracking when you are looking.
We just climbed up Mount Catcher in the Rye only to find an even bigger mountain that we must climb.
And this one looks like some kinda mountain out of Frankenstein.
It looks real dark and stormy up on top, and it's like, "Ah, why are we climbing this mountain?" Anyway, we will see you Tuesday, June 9th as we begin season 11 of Band Camp.
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And as any good lawyer knows, whether you win or lose in the highest court depends on the facts, the evidence, and how you frame your arguments.
But that's not the only thing that matters.
I'm Laura Jarrett, senior legal correspondent at NBC News, and this month, in a new series for our Here's the Scoop podcast, I'm talking to legal experts and lawyers whose past legal victories are now the building blocks for the biggest cases still left to be decided.
I wanna know how they convinced the court they were right when the stakes were high, what special sauce locked it in, and what could be different this time around.
Join us for Here's the Scoop: Supreme Court Edition, new episodes every Saturday.
You can find Here's the Scoop from NBC News on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
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