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The Murder of John Lennon · Stuff You Should Know

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0:48
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:58
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Josh, and there's Chuck
1:01
Speaker 1: and Jerry's here too, And this is Stuff you should Know.
1:05
Speaker 1: Solemn edition.
1:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty solemn.
1:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a solemn occasion to this episode is coming
1:14
Speaker 1: out on the anniversary of John Lennon's death, and not coincidentally,
1:19
Speaker 1: because we're actually doing an episode on the death of
1:22
Speaker 1: John Lennon, so it's appropriate.
1:24
Speaker 2: It's actually the day before his death. If we're being
1:27
Speaker 2: nippicking close enough.
1:29
Speaker 1: I was very close to Chuck.
1:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm not one to commemorate death dates, especially
1:36
Speaker 2: murder dates. But I did want to do this episode,
1:40
Speaker 2: and since I saw it alined, I thought, you know,
1:42
Speaker 2: if we can get this out quicker than maybe it's timely.
1:46
Speaker 3: I don't know.
1:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, had you decided you wanted to do this before
1:51
Speaker 1: we did JD. Salinger or did it all just kind
1:54
Speaker 1: of work out like that.
1:56
Speaker 2: I think it just worked out like that, Like the
1:58
Speaker 2: two were completely unrelated in my mind, such that when
2:02
Speaker 2: you suggested we put them both out on the same week,
2:05
Speaker 2: I was like, why.
2:07
Speaker 1: Oh, they're related. The two are related for sure.
2:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, so let's.
2:12
Speaker 1: Talk about this. I knew about the death of John
2:15
Speaker 1: Lennon some, but certainly not to the degree I do now.
2:19
Speaker 1: I like, for example, I knew he was forty, I
2:22
Speaker 1: knew he was shot I knew he died in front
2:25
Speaker 1: of his apartment building the Dakota, which we've talked about before.
2:30
Speaker 1: I knew a few other things, but certainly not the details.
2:33
Speaker 1: And I didn't know much about the guy who killed
2:35
Speaker 1: them that either.
2:36
Speaker 3: Yeah.
2:38
Speaker 1: Well, let's tell everybody what we've learned. Huh.
2:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember this happening, believe it or not. Wow,
2:44
Speaker 2: because I was, But I guess. And I would have been.
2:50
Speaker 3: Nine. When's my birthday? March?
2:53
Speaker 1: Yes, so yeah, you would have been nine.
2:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would have been nine years old. And I
2:57
Speaker 2: remember just like you know, I didn't. I grew up
3:00
Speaker 2: in a house that didn't have a lot of music
3:02
Speaker 2: in it except for my room and my brother's room,
3:05
Speaker 2: So it wasn't like the Beatles were a household name
3:08
Speaker 2: or anything like most kids of my age who had
3:10
Speaker 2: parents who may or may not have been into the Beatles.
3:13
Speaker 2: My parents didn't tell me anything about the Beatles, right,
3:16
Speaker 2: But I knew they were a thing, and I knew
3:18
Speaker 2: like John Lennon is the guy with the round glasses
3:22
Speaker 2: because I was just a kid, and I remember it
3:24
Speaker 2: being like a big news and I was like, oh,
3:26
Speaker 2: that that singer guy, that one of those round Glasses
3:28
Speaker 2: was killed.
3:29
Speaker 3: That's sad.
3:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really big news, as we'll see. I mean,
3:33
Speaker 1: it's still big news today, but at the time it
3:35
Speaker 1: was just earth shattering for sure.
3:38
Speaker 2: Thanks to Olivia for the help with this one. And
3:41
Speaker 2: I guess we should start with talking a little bit
3:44
Speaker 2: about John Lennon and his love affair with New York City.
3:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure when he moved to New York City.
3:52
Speaker 1: I just know that they moved to the Dakota he
3:54
Speaker 1: and Yoko in nineteen seventy three. When did they move
3:58
Speaker 1: to New.
3:58
Speaker 2: York, you know, I don't know if the Bank Street
4:03
Speaker 2: apartment was the first one, but they moved to Bank
4:06
Speaker 2: Street in seventy one, so that may have been their
4:09
Speaker 2: first New York place. I know they lived a sort
4:13
Speaker 2: of partially lived in one of the hotels there for
4:15
Speaker 2: a while, but they lived at this very nondescript house
4:19
Speaker 2: at one oh five Bank Street in the West Village
4:22
Speaker 2: and for a couple of years. But one of the
4:24
Speaker 2: reasons they moved is because they were robbed in the
4:28
Speaker 2: apartment and people busted in former tenants apparently and stole
4:32
Speaker 2: some artwork and the TV and Lennon's wallet and his
4:36
Speaker 2: address book and supposedly he put the word out on
4:39
Speaker 2: the street that Bobby Seal's people are going to exact
4:43
Speaker 2: revenge if I don't get that address book back.
4:46
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like the Black Panthers.
4:48
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know if he had a legit connection.
4:51
Speaker 2: I mean, he seems like the kind of guy that
4:52
Speaker 2: would have known the Black Panthers and Bobby Seal. But
4:56
Speaker 2: it was enough to where that address book was in
4:58
Speaker 2: fact returned, and I guess that was enough to where
5:01
Speaker 2: they were like, hey, Yoko, I'm one of the most
5:04
Speaker 2: famous people in the world. Maybe we should move to
5:07
Speaker 2: a building that's a little more secure.
5:09
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why they moved to the Dakota Is
5:11
Speaker 1: that had a security guard, that had a doorman. There
5:16
Speaker 1: was a driveway that was gated, so you could drive
5:18
Speaker 1: in through the gate and they'd close the gate behind you,
5:20
Speaker 1: and then you got out of your car in the
5:22
Speaker 1: courtyard so you didn't have to get out on the street.
5:24
Speaker 1: It was much much safer. But saying that, I've read
5:28
Speaker 1: interviews with John Lennon where he talks about his life
5:31
Speaker 1: in Manhattan, and like he would walk around Central Park,
5:33
Speaker 1: he would go get breakfast, like down the street, he
5:36
Speaker 1: was just like living like a normal New Yorker. And
5:40
Speaker 1: he said that people would like say hi or whatever,
5:42
Speaker 1: but rarely would anybody ever bug him. So he was
5:46
Speaker 1: living he was super super famous, but at the same
5:49
Speaker 1: time he was just living like a normal person by
5:52
Speaker 1: this time.
5:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's one of the allures of New
5:55
Speaker 2: York is you can be one of the most famous
5:57
Speaker 2: people in the world and generally, like New Yorkers themselves
6:01
Speaker 2: aren't the ones that are gonna bug you anyway.
6:03
Speaker 3: It's any tourists probably.
6:05
Speaker 1: You know.
6:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, But otherwise you can kind of live in New
6:08
Speaker 2: York and walk around and just do your thing. And
6:11
Speaker 2: that's what they did when they bought five apartments at
6:13
Speaker 2: the Dakota. They lived in a couple of them. They
6:16
Speaker 2: had a studio one which was Yoko's work studio, and
6:22
Speaker 2: they had a guest apartment, very nice thing to have,
6:25
Speaker 2: and then a storage apartment.
6:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they also had Sean Lennon in nineteen seventy five,
6:33
Speaker 1: and this whole era from about that time until his
6:37
Speaker 1: death has a couple of different portrayals depending on who
6:41
Speaker 1: you ask. Yeah, a lot of times is portrayed is
6:43
Speaker 1: John Lennon's house husband era. He reputedly would bake bread
6:49
Speaker 1: and he would take Sean to go walk in Central
6:52
Speaker 1: Park and just being like a stay at home dad.
6:55
Speaker 1: He turned his business affairs over to Yoko and just
6:57
Speaker 1: basically was like, I'm just here to live. Yeah, And
7:02
Speaker 1: another set of reporting, including from people who were like
7:07
Speaker 1: there part of his life, like at least one personal
7:10
Speaker 1: assistant who was there. Toward the end, he said, that's
7:13
Speaker 1: kind of a charade, that he was actually really depressed.
7:16
Speaker 1: He would lock himself in his room and just watch
7:18
Speaker 1: TV for days on end. He was into the occult
7:21
Speaker 1: may or may not have been doing drugs, but he
7:24
Speaker 1: wasn't like baking bread and just been paying attention to Sean.
7:27
Speaker 1: He was he was depressed. But even if that holds true,
7:32
Speaker 1: by the time his death rolled around, he had turned
7:37
Speaker 1: some sort of corner because he was on a schooner
7:39
Speaker 1: somewhere on the way to Bermuda and ended up being
7:42
Speaker 1: the only person on the ship that wasn't seasick and
7:45
Speaker 1: was asked to like steer the boat through a storm,
7:49
Speaker 1: and apparently going through that gauntlet made him like just
7:53
Speaker 1: it just gave him some confidence or produce a spark
7:56
Speaker 1: in him that had been missing. So even if the
7:58
Speaker 1: people who said that his last years were pretty depressing,
8:02
Speaker 1: the last year of his life was different than that.
8:04
Speaker 1: It was renewed.
8:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it was probably a little bit of both.
8:08
Speaker 2: John Lennon struggled his entire life with you know, with
8:14
Speaker 2: just issues. He had issues from the moment he was
8:17
Speaker 2: raised until the day he died, generally speaking in and
8:22
Speaker 2: out of drugs, stuff like that. So it was probably both,
8:25
Speaker 2: would be my guess as far as the work goes.
8:29
Speaker 2: That fall of nineteen eighty is when the album Double
8:32
Speaker 2: Fantasy came out. Great record released on November seventeen, the
8:37
Speaker 2: first one since Sean was born, and it was you know,
8:42
Speaker 2: things were looking I think more positive. You know, he
8:47
Speaker 2: regretted how he fathered Julian. I think he felt like
8:50
Speaker 2: he had a second chance here with Sean. He was
8:53
Speaker 2: madly in love with Yoko Ono, just like partners and everything,
8:57
Speaker 2: and things were looking pretty good. I think he had
9:00
Speaker 2: largely sort of let the Beatles thing. That was a
9:03
Speaker 2: tough breakup, you know, so he had to get through.
9:06
Speaker 1: That, Yeah, But it sounds like he kind of had
9:09
Speaker 1: by the time Double Fantasy came out because it was
9:12
Speaker 1: a fairly upbeat album about like family life and stuff, right, Yeah,
9:16
Speaker 1: a lot of it was Yeah, so that's John Lennon.
9:20
Speaker 1: Kareening toreed him on a separate but soon to intersect path.
9:26
Speaker 1: Was another person who was not in any way famous,
9:29
Speaker 1: and depending on what interview you read of his, who
9:31
Speaker 1: you talk to, what psychiatrist notes you read, was very
9:36
Speaker 1: disappointed that he was not famous or that he was
9:39
Speaker 1: a nobody. His name was Mark David Chapman, and I
9:43
Speaker 1: should say, right out of the gate truck, there's a
9:45
Speaker 1: lot of people who are like, don't even mention that
9:47
Speaker 1: guy's name. Yeah, because he said multiple times that the
9:52
Speaker 1: reason that he killed John Lennon spoiler alert, Mark David
9:55
Speaker 1: Chapman was the person who killed John Lennon to gain fame,
9:59
Speaker 1: to like basically basque in the reflective glow that he
10:03
Speaker 1: would gain from taking John Lennon's life. So people are like,
10:06
Speaker 1: don't give that guy any publicity. You can't talk about
10:09
Speaker 1: the death of John Lennon unless you talk about Mark
10:11
Speaker 1: David Chapman. And from interviews that I've wrote with him,
10:16
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to the story than him just
10:18
Speaker 1: killing John Lennon because he wanted to be famous.
10:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, although I mean, like you said, he has literally
10:24
Speaker 2: said I thought I could acquire his fame by killing him.
10:28
Speaker 2: So he was born in nineteen fifty five in Fort Worth, Texas,
10:34
Speaker 2: to an Air Force father and a nurse mother, and
10:37
Speaker 2: he grew up four miles from my house. Wowee, Yeah,
10:42
Speaker 2: I had looked it up before years ago, and I
10:45
Speaker 2: did it again today because I couldn't remember. He had
10:47
Speaker 2: a Decatur address, but it wasn't like a Decatur Decatur
10:50
Speaker 2: like we think of it. He went to Columbia High School,
10:54
Speaker 2: which was a rival high school to my high school
10:56
Speaker 2: that I went to. Obviously older than me, but yeah,
11:00
Speaker 2: he grew up right down the road. And his dad
11:03
Speaker 2: was a pretty tough guy. Apparently there were stories that
11:06
Speaker 2: he told about physical abuse against his mother in which
11:10
Speaker 2: he would step in to defend her. The mother did
11:14
Speaker 2: say that there were there was some abuse, but she,
11:17
Speaker 2: you know, I think, like a lot of women of
11:19
Speaker 2: the time, down played that. But he didn't seem like
11:22
Speaker 2: a very good guy, as evidenced by the fact that
11:24
Speaker 2: at one point, as we'll see, Chapman thought about killing
11:28
Speaker 2: his father, like he wanted to kill somebody, right, And
11:32
Speaker 2: we'll get into all that, But as a kid, there
11:34
Speaker 2: were you know, he was sort of a go get
11:37
Speaker 2: her in some ways. He started a newspaper for the neighborhood,
11:40
Speaker 2: he was a coin collector. He was kind of a
11:42
Speaker 2: normal kid in some ways. But then he also, you know,
11:46
Speaker 2: Olivia found this one thing, and I've seen this elsewhere
11:48
Speaker 2: that he would create these fantasies about people who lived
11:52
Speaker 2: in the walls and that he was their king. And
11:55
Speaker 2: you know, initially, I'm like, that's that's kids stuff, Like
11:57
Speaker 2: kids do all kinds of things like that. But the
12:00
Speaker 2: more and more I read, it seemed like it was
12:02
Speaker 2: it bordered on like like a godlike complex rather than
12:06
Speaker 2: just sort of you know, make belief friends.
12:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, they considered him important, and they were the only
12:12
Speaker 1: ones who considered him important supposedly. Yeah, but I think
12:16
Speaker 1: like that's a good illustration that he was showing signs
12:19
Speaker 1: that could be taken a mental illness, like as early
12:23
Speaker 1: as childhood. Yeah, there's a lot of debate on the
12:26
Speaker 1: internet whether he's mentally ill at all. It seems like
12:30
Speaker 1: the growing consensus is, especially as we understand mental illness
12:33
Speaker 1: more and more, that yeah, he's probably very mentally ill,
12:37
Speaker 1: which makes the fact that he's not being treated for
12:39
Speaker 1: mental illness in prison like that much worse, you know. Yeah,
12:43
Speaker 1: of course, So he came of age in like the
12:46
Speaker 1: sixties and really kind of bought into the whole hippie
12:49
Speaker 1: thing for a little while. When he was in high school,
12:52
Speaker 1: started doing drugs. I think he started huffing in Halen's
12:55
Speaker 1: which is that's what you do when you start trying
12:57
Speaker 1: drugs in Georgia. And then he just moved on and
13:01
Speaker 1: eventually came to acid. I think he tried heroin a
13:04
Speaker 1: few times. Like he definitely tried all the drugs. And
13:07
Speaker 1: he also was into the Beatles. His favorite album was
13:10
Speaker 1: Sergeant Pepper's. He also kind of got into conspiracy theories
13:14
Speaker 1: in UFOs. Who's just kind of like into all the
13:17
Speaker 1: stuff you get into when you start doing lots of drugs, right,
13:21
Speaker 1: And then he had a turning point, Chuck, He like
13:24
Speaker 1: completely didn't about face during high school.
13:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was only he only had did drugs for
13:30
Speaker 2: a couple of years, and you know, from fourteen to
13:34
Speaker 2: sixteen at Columbia High School he became a born again
13:39
Speaker 2: Presbyterian Christian quit drugging and during his drug years, like,
13:45
Speaker 2: you know, I saw those just weed and LSDVE, but
13:47
Speaker 2: I guess some other things were sprinkled in there. But
13:50
Speaker 2: he was actually ran away from home and was living
13:53
Speaker 2: on the streets of Atlanta for a couple of weeks
13:55
Speaker 2: as like a fifteen year old.
13:56
Speaker 1: Wow.
13:57
Speaker 2: But when he straightened himself out, he got a job
14:00
Speaker 2: at the YMCA after he graduated and was a counselor.
14:04
Speaker 2: He worked with Vietnamese refugees in Arkansas, and by all accounts,
14:09
Speaker 2: was really good at it. He was popular with the kids,
14:12
Speaker 2: he was popular with the campers. This is sort of
14:16
Speaker 2: I guess where we can start talking about the Catcher
14:18
Speaker 2: and the Rye. Yeah, because the one thing that he
14:21
Speaker 2: sort of identified with was well Holden call Field as
14:26
Speaker 2: a whole, but Holden call Field and his liking kids
14:30
Speaker 2: more than he liked adults, and that was certainly seen
14:33
Speaker 2: to be true with Chapman.
14:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, he definitely came to identify with Holden call Field
14:37
Speaker 1: for sure. I read a people Like People magazine interview
14:43
Speaker 1: with him from nineteen eighty seven. It's really long piece
14:46
Speaker 1: by a guy named James R. Gaines, and in it
14:50
Speaker 1: you get the impression that Mark David Chapman during this
14:53
Speaker 1: time is struggling with trying to be sane, trying to
14:58
Speaker 1: be good, try not to be bad, trying not to
15:01
Speaker 1: feel like he's going crazy. Yeah, and at one point
15:05
Speaker 1: he finally got to the point where he's like he
15:08
Speaker 1: was apparently tired of struggling. He started he basically turns
15:11
Speaker 1: his back on God and started praying to Satan and
15:13
Speaker 1: was just like, just turn me crazy. I'm basically I'm
15:16
Speaker 1: sick of trying not to be crazy. From that point
15:19
Speaker 1: on his words, yeah, Yeah, from that point on, he
15:25
Speaker 1: just kept really going downhill from there essentially.
15:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that can be the case, as
15:34
Speaker 2: you you know, depending on what sort of mental illness
15:37
Speaker 2: you have, as you get up in your upper teenage years,
15:39
Speaker 2: things can really sort of settle in.
15:41
Speaker 1: Yeah.
15:42
Speaker 2: And I saw a lot of interviews. He talked a
15:44
Speaker 2: lot about the two sides of himself. As we'll see later,
15:49
Speaker 2: there were certain psychiatrists after, like during the trial, that
15:53
Speaker 2: diagnosed him as having paranoid schizophrenia. He heard voices in
15:59
Speaker 2: his head like things like that were starting to happen
16:02
Speaker 2: with more regularity. So in nineteen seventy seven he kind
16:07
Speaker 2: of dropped out and moved to Hawaii. I think thinking
16:10
Speaker 2: it would be good for him. He did have a
16:13
Speaker 2: suicide attempt there, but he also got treatment for depression
16:17
Speaker 2: and started traveling and stuff.
16:19
Speaker 1: Like that he did. This is really strange. He at
16:23
Speaker 1: this time managed to travel the world. I could not
16:28
Speaker 1: find how he paid for it, but I know that
16:30
Speaker 1: he paid for a later trip by selling an original
16:33
Speaker 1: Norman Rockwell that he had acquired. So this guy who
16:37
Speaker 1: is like basically living on the beach in Waikiki with
16:39
Speaker 1: no money, suddenly goes on a trip around the world
16:43
Speaker 1: to Asia to the Middle East during this several month
16:47
Speaker 1: period between oh, I think it's sometime in nineteen seventy eight.
16:52
Speaker 1: It's a really bizarre little footnote that there's not a
16:55
Speaker 1: lot of information on. But that's one thing he did.
16:58
Speaker 1: And the reason that we bring this up is because
17:00
Speaker 1: his travel agent, a woman named Gloria Abbe, ended up
17:05
Speaker 1: marrying him and they're still married.
17:07
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, they were. I mean that may be one
17:11
Speaker 2: of the facts of the podcast. They were married for
17:14
Speaker 2: eighteen months before he murdered John Lennon, and she has
17:18
Speaker 2: subsequently stayed married to him. And the interviews that I read,
17:22
Speaker 2: she's like, you know, I took an oath of marriage
17:27
Speaker 2: in front of God and everybody, and I'm gonna honor that.
17:32
Speaker 2: So that's basically the end of the story. I mean,
17:35
Speaker 2: there's really not more to it than that she has
17:37
Speaker 2: stayed by his side. You know, does regular conjugal visits
17:42
Speaker 2: with him in prison, and they're you know, they're still
17:45
Speaker 2: going strong, I guess. But in Hawaii is when although
17:49
Speaker 2: he was getting depression treatment, he really went downhill with
17:53
Speaker 2: his mental health there and that's where he started obsessing
17:57
Speaker 2: about killing somebody famous in order to gain fame. And
18:01
Speaker 2: Lennon was on a list as well as Johnny Carson
18:05
Speaker 2: and Elizabeth Taylor, Paul McCartney, George C. Scott, the governor
18:11
Speaker 2: of Hawaii, Ronald Reagan, apparently David Bowie was on the list.
18:14
Speaker 3: It was a big list.
18:15
Speaker 2: Of people that, you know, the police found this upon
18:19
Speaker 2: their investigations of people that he wanted to murder.
18:22
Speaker 1: Yes, alarmingly, he was hired as a security guard and
18:28
Speaker 1: outfitted with a gun during this period, and in nineteen
18:32
Speaker 1: eighty he quit his job and he bought his own gun.
18:36
Speaker 1: He flew from Hawaii to New York with a gun
18:40
Speaker 1: in November of nineteen eighty and by this time, like
18:43
Speaker 1: you said he'd come up with a list of famous
18:45
Speaker 1: people who he might kill. And during this trip, he
18:48
Speaker 1: later said that he visited both Reagan's and Carter's election
18:52
Speaker 1: night parties, probably with a gun, kind of like a
18:57
Speaker 1: Travis Beck yeah, bikel kind of thing.
19:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he.
19:03
Speaker 1: Didn't do anything, obviously, And he actually went back to
19:08
Speaker 1: Hawaii afterward.
19:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, And before he did that, he went to Georgia
19:13
Speaker 2: to get bullets because at the time, you know, the
19:18
Speaker 2: good old days, you could not even buy bullets in
19:20
Speaker 2: New York City. So he went back to Georgia to
19:23
Speaker 2: get bullets. And I don't know if he couldn't buy
19:25
Speaker 2: them there or what, but his plan was to get
19:28
Speaker 2: them from a cop friend of his and said that
19:32
Speaker 2: he was thinking about killing his dad. And then, you know,
19:35
Speaker 2: went back to Hawaii at that point, then went back
19:38
Speaker 2: to New York on December sixth, which was a Saturday.
19:42
Speaker 2: And maybe that's a good time to take a break,
19:45
Speaker 2: what do you think? Yeah, all right, we'll be right.
19:47
Speaker 3: Back, all right.
20:22
Speaker 2: So Mark David Chapman is in New York on December eighth.
20:26
Speaker 2: John Lennon and Yoko Ono are promoting the album they
20:29
Speaker 2: had just released, Double Fantasy, they went to breakfast. John
20:33
Speaker 2: Lennon went got a haircut. He had that awesome hair
20:36
Speaker 2: at the time. It's when he was sort of in his.
20:40
Speaker 3: Kind of like grease or stray cats look.
20:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you're right.
20:45
Speaker 3: That was kind of kind of a cool.
20:46
Speaker 2: Look because he always had this long hair usually, and
20:48
Speaker 2: all of a sudden he had sort of this greaser look,
20:50
Speaker 2: which is which is super cool. Yeah, And he had
20:53
Speaker 2: a very very famous photo shoot done at his apartment
20:57
Speaker 2: that day with Annie Leibovitz for Rolling Stone. What a Day,
21:01
Speaker 2: the iconic cover that was released much later in January
21:05
Speaker 2: of nineteen eighty one, where John Lennon is curled up
21:09
Speaker 2: naked beside Yoko Ono and the picture's kind of taken
21:12
Speaker 2: from above, very very famous photograph.
21:14
Speaker 1: And that photograph was, you said, taken on the day
21:17
Speaker 1: he died.
21:18
Speaker 3: That's right.
21:18
Speaker 1: Isn't that nuts?
21:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, not as nuts as one of the other photographs taken.
21:23
Speaker 1: That No, that is it's great foreshadowing. So after the
21:27
Speaker 1: Annie Leebowitz photo shoot, they went downstairs to Yoko's studio
21:32
Speaker 1: and they were interviewed by RKO Radio and then after
21:35
Speaker 1: that was time to go to work. It's like five
21:37
Speaker 1: PM and Yoko and John leave the Dakota to go
21:42
Speaker 1: to the Record Plant, a recording studio, to work on
21:47
Speaker 1: a new single called Walking on Thin Ice. This is
21:50
Speaker 1: around five o'clock and they leave the Dakota and as
21:53
Speaker 1: they're leaving, they met a fan who was standing out
21:57
Speaker 1: on the sidewalk, and it turns out had been standing
21:59
Speaker 1: out on the sidewalk essentially for the last few days
22:03
Speaker 1: to waiting to run into John Lennon. And that fan
22:07
Speaker 1: was in fact, Mark David Chapman.
22:09
Speaker 3: Yeah.
22:10
Speaker 2: As an odd side note, and I think this just
22:12
Speaker 2: came out in sort of semi recent years. He was
22:16
Speaker 2: not the only person to meet Mark David Chapman as
22:18
Speaker 2: a musician there. Yeah, But James Taylor said that he
22:22
Speaker 2: bumped into him. He lived, i think a couple of
22:24
Speaker 2: buildings up from the Dakota, and he met Mark David
22:28
Speaker 2: Chapman on the subway and he told the story, you know,
22:32
Speaker 2: in the past few years. He said that he had
22:35
Speaker 2: button holed me in the tube station right in front
22:38
Speaker 2: of seventy second Street the day before the murder, and
22:40
Speaker 2: he had sort of pinned me to the wall, not physically,
22:43
Speaker 2: but you know, just sort of metaphorically. I guess he
22:46
Speaker 2: was glistening with my niacal sweat and talking some freak
22:49
Speaker 2: speak about what he was going to do with this stuff,
22:52
Speaker 2: and how John Lennon was interested, because I don't think
22:55
Speaker 2: we mentioned he wanted to be a he wanted to
22:59
Speaker 2: be famous, but he supposedly tried to play guitar. I'm
23:02
Speaker 2: not sure how much he fancied himself a musician, but
23:05
Speaker 2: I don't think it's like he was delivering demo tapes
23:08
Speaker 2: or anything unless I had never caught that. But freak
23:12
Speaker 2: speak about what he was going to do, how Lennon
23:14
Speaker 2: was interested in how he's going to get in touch
23:15
Speaker 2: with John Lennon. He said he seemed either drugged or
23:19
Speaker 2: in a manic break of some sort. His eyes were
23:22
Speaker 2: darting all over the place, dilated like crazy. And then
23:26
Speaker 2: he closed by saying he was just someone who knew
23:28
Speaker 2: me and who I didn't know, and he had an
23:31
Speaker 2: agenda that I couldn't deal with, and I knew that
23:34
Speaker 2: I needed to get away from him.
23:36
Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy? He met James Taylor the day before
23:38
Speaker 1: he killed John Lennon.
23:40
Speaker 2: And Taylor heard the shots from his apartment. Yeah, when
23:43
Speaker 2: it happened.
23:44
Speaker 1: So all but before that, after he met James Taylor,
23:48
Speaker 1: but before he shot John Lennon. This is still where
23:51
Speaker 1: around five o'clock, when Yoko and John are leaving the
23:54
Speaker 1: Dakota for the record plant, Mark Chapman walks up and
23:58
Speaker 1: asks him to sign his copy of Double Fantasy, that
24:01
Speaker 1: record that had just come out the month before. And
24:05
Speaker 1: that photo that you referenced, Chuck, that even weirder photo.
24:09
Speaker 1: There's a picture of this happening of John Lennon signing
24:13
Speaker 1: Mark David Chapman's copy of Double Fantasy. Just so happened
24:16
Speaker 1: that there was somebody with the camera standing on the
24:18
Speaker 1: sidewalk that decided to snap a picture of John Lennon
24:22
Speaker 1: signing an album for the man who would take his
24:25
Speaker 1: life a few hours later.
24:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of the creepier photos that exists, especially
24:32
Speaker 2: if you're a Beatles fan. It was a photographer named
24:35
Speaker 2: Paul Garesh, and.
24:37
Speaker 3: He didn't quite happen to be there.
24:39
Speaker 2: He was someone who hung out there all the time, okay,
24:42
Speaker 2: to get pictures of Lenin and they were in fact
24:44
Speaker 2: friendly because he was always around and you know, obviously
24:47
Speaker 2: a huge Beatles fan and John Lennon like he would
24:50
Speaker 2: chat him up, and he was he was really he
24:53
Speaker 2: was a generous human as a super famous musician, right,
24:58
Speaker 2: and so he would spend time talking with Gorsh and
25:00
Speaker 2: stuff like that when they were he was waiting on
25:02
Speaker 2: a car or something like that. And that's why he
25:05
Speaker 2: was out there for a few minutes this time, as
25:07
Speaker 2: they were kind of just waiting on their car. And yeah,
25:10
Speaker 2: he signed it in pen. That record was auctioned off
25:14
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago for nine hundred thousand dollars
25:19
Speaker 2: and was signed in pen. But it also has you know,
25:22
Speaker 2: like police sharpie markings, like evidence markings on it and
25:26
Speaker 2: stuff like that.
25:26
Speaker 1: It also has Chapman's enhanced thumbprint, like from police forensics
25:31
Speaker 1: testing it.
25:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I mean, I don't know one other.
25:35
Speaker 2: I'm not going to cast his persions on who would
25:38
Speaker 2: buy something like that for almost a million dollars. Yeah,
25:41
Speaker 2: but you know, ten people been on it, so I
25:44
Speaker 2: guess I'm not sure if it was a Beatles fan
25:46
Speaker 2: looking to show it off or destroy it or what.
25:49
Speaker 3: I didn't get any information about who bought it.
25:51
Speaker 1: There's one other creepy footnote of this initial meeting too.
25:54
Speaker 1: Apparently somebody reported who was there when all this happened
25:58
Speaker 1: that John Lennon asked Mark David Chapman, is that all
26:02
Speaker 1: you want? And Mark David Chapman apparently just stood there
26:06
Speaker 1: and stunned silence, and John Lennon asked him again, is
26:09
Speaker 1: that all you want? And I guess Mark David Chapman
26:11
Speaker 1: said yeah or something like that, And so John Lennon said, okay,
26:14
Speaker 1: see you later and turned around and got in the
26:17
Speaker 1: car and left.
26:19
Speaker 3: For the record, planted yeah, and that was enough.
26:22
Speaker 2: That interaction was so amicable and friendly as a super
26:27
Speaker 2: famous guy talking with someone, you know, stalking outside of
26:32
Speaker 2: his apartment that Mark David Chapman reconsidered in that moment
26:37
Speaker 2: and was like, geez, you know, maybe I should go
26:40
Speaker 2: home and show my wife this autograph that I got.
26:42
Speaker 2: He was really kind to me, but that didn't happen
26:46
Speaker 2: because he has mental illness. He heard in his head.
26:51
Speaker 2: When he came back Lennon and Yoko Ono got back
26:55
Speaker 2: just before eleven, he was still there. That limousine, like
26:59
Speaker 2: you said, could pulled in that courtyard area where they
27:03
Speaker 2: would have had a gate behind them, but they dropped
27:05
Speaker 2: them off on the sidewalk, and in his brain he
27:10
Speaker 2: said he heard a voice saying do it, do it?
27:13
Speaker 3: Do it?
27:14
Speaker 2: With his external human voice, he just said, mister Lennon,
27:18
Speaker 2: and John Lennon turned around, and he fired his thirty
27:21
Speaker 2: eight pistol five times and hit him four times.
27:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. So John Lennon stumbles forward, and I believe it
27:31
Speaker 1: was either the doormant or the security guard is standing
27:35
Speaker 1: there and John Lennon says to him, I've been shot.
27:39
Speaker 1: And there's a three part documentary series coming out on
27:41
Speaker 1: Apple Plus called John Lennon Colon Murder without a Trial.
27:47
Speaker 1: And I guess some publicists didn't do their research or whatever,
27:50
Speaker 1: because all of the stuff that all of like the
27:53
Speaker 1: ink that's being written about that documentary in the last
27:56
Speaker 1: week is about how it reveals John Lennon's last words,
28:00
Speaker 1: which turned out to be I've been shot. But anybody
28:02
Speaker 1: who cared to even go read even the first couple
28:05
Speaker 1: articles that covered this at the time, we'll see that
28:08
Speaker 1: his last words were I've been shot.
28:10
Speaker 3: But they made it sound like it was breaking news.
28:12
Speaker 1: Yes, they made it sound like at long last, this documentary,
28:15
Speaker 1: forty three years later is revealed his last words, but
28:17
Speaker 1: his last words were I've been shot. Technically, his last
28:22
Speaker 1: word was yes, because when he was laying there on
28:24
Speaker 1: the sidewalk, the police got there within two minutes and
28:27
Speaker 1: one of the cops that, are you John Lennon? And
28:29
Speaker 1: he said yes, and that was the last thing he
28:31
Speaker 1: ever said. The cops got there really quickly. But the
28:35
Speaker 1: thing that they found that was extraordinarily creepy was what
28:39
Speaker 1: Mark David Chapman did after he shot John Lennon.
28:42
Speaker 3: Right yeah.
28:43
Speaker 2: The security guard yelled out, do you know what you
28:46
Speaker 2: just did? And Chapman said, I just shot John Lennon,
28:50
Speaker 2: which would become a Cranberrys song in nineteen ninety six,
28:54
Speaker 2: that was about the murder of John Lennon. And he
28:59
Speaker 2: picked up his copy of Ketchri and the Rye and
29:01
Speaker 2: he leaned against the building and started thumbing through it.
29:04
Speaker 2: I think it was a he had bought a new
29:05
Speaker 2: copy that day of his favorite book. And he you know,
29:09
Speaker 2: didn't try and get away, didn't try and do anything,
29:11
Speaker 2: went very peacefully. The police when they got there, knew
29:16
Speaker 2: how dire this was. You know, four bullets at close
29:18
Speaker 2: range like that was, you know, basically a death sentence,
29:23
Speaker 2: and they knew they certainly couldn't wait for an ambulance,
29:26
Speaker 2: so they put him in the squad car, drove him
29:28
Speaker 2: to what was the time Roosevelt Hospital now Mount Sinai West,
29:34
Speaker 2: and supposedly, I mean I saw that he was listed
29:39
Speaker 2: as dead on arrival. They tried to resuscitate him, I
29:44
Speaker 2: think for about twenty minutes. Yeah, and they finally pronounced
29:47
Speaker 2: him dead at eleven fifteen. But I've heard different accounts
29:50
Speaker 2: that he died in the police car too. He died,
29:52
Speaker 2: you know, upon arrival at the hospital, And I'm not
29:55
Speaker 2: really sure anyone knows the exact moment.
29:57
Speaker 1: No. I read a interview with the emergency room doctor
30:02
Speaker 1: that tried to save him, Stephan Glynn, and he said,
30:05
Speaker 1: like the bullets were so incredibly well placed that he
30:10
Speaker 1: actually had Lennon's heart in his hand trying to pump
30:14
Speaker 1: the blood to keep the blood flow going, and he
30:17
Speaker 1: said there was nothing to pump. He'd lost so much blood,
30:20
Speaker 1: there was no blood to pump in at any rate.
30:22
Speaker 1: All the arteries around the heart were so torn up
30:24
Speaker 1: they couldn't move any blood anyway. So it's probably likely
30:28
Speaker 1: he was dead in just that short car trip to
30:31
Speaker 1: the hospital.
30:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, the official autopsy found two bullets went into his
30:37
Speaker 2: back and went through his left lung, another went through
30:39
Speaker 2: his left shoulder, also through his left lung and then
30:42
Speaker 2: lodged in his neck, and the other one hit his
30:45
Speaker 2: left armbone. And in a very sort of strange turn
30:50
Speaker 2: of events, this news got out very quickly because there
30:53
Speaker 2: was a producer for WABCTV there in the emergency room
30:58
Speaker 2: named Alan j Weiss who was being treated after a
31:01
Speaker 2: motorcycle crash, and all of a sudden, you know, it's
31:06
Speaker 2: not like a just a regular person being wheeled into
31:09
Speaker 2: an er. It was people were sort of losing their
31:13
Speaker 2: minds and it was really chaotic. He knew that something
31:17
Speaker 2: was going on, and he just gathered from sort of
31:20
Speaker 2: hearing things that it was in fact John Lennon. And
31:23
Speaker 2: as he says, and this sounds I'm not sure why,
31:27
Speaker 2: I don't want to believe it, but he says that
31:31
Speaker 2: the musaic playing in the room while they were trying
31:33
Speaker 2: to revive him was all my Loving.
31:35
Speaker 1: Yeah Beatles song. Yeah for those of us who aren't
31:39
Speaker 1: really into the Beatles enough to know that that's a
31:41
Speaker 1: Beatles song.
31:43
Speaker 2: Sure, because he would not mention all my Lovin by
31:46
Speaker 2: the Everly Brothers.
31:47
Speaker 1: You never know, He's like, that's just weird. He also
31:52
Speaker 1: said that he heard Yoko and no scream, and he
31:55
Speaker 1: talked to one of the doctors attending to him and
31:57
Speaker 1: they agreed that John Lennon probably was and he was
32:01
Speaker 1: convinced enough that he called the station WABC and told
32:05
Speaker 1: them the news. And so the news broke on ABC,
32:09
Speaker 1: which just so happened to be airing Monday night football,
32:12
Speaker 1: and it was Howard Cosell that broke the news to
32:15
Speaker 1: the world essentially of John Lennon's death.
32:18
Speaker 3: Yeah.
32:18
Speaker 2: It was a Patriots Dolphins game, tied up in the
32:21
Speaker 2: fourth quarter, and Frank Gifford, you know, while they were
32:24
Speaker 2: in commercial, they discussed, like what should we do here?
32:27
Speaker 3: This is too big to kind of sit on.
32:30
Speaker 2: Apparently coselle did not really want to do it, but
32:33
Speaker 2: Frank Gifford was like, we kind of have to. And
32:36
Speaker 2: so as the quote goes, Gifford said, you know, three
32:40
Speaker 2: seconds remaining, John Smith is on the line, and I
32:44
Speaker 2: don't care what's on the line, Howard, you've got to
32:46
Speaker 2: say what we know. In the booth, and Howard Cosell
32:49
Speaker 2: talked about, you know, this is just a football game.
32:53
Speaker 2: He said, Lennon was shot twice, so the you know,
32:56
Speaker 2: the news wasn't even accurate that quickly off the you know,
32:59
Speaker 2: off the wire, or I guess it wouldn't even a
33:01
Speaker 2: wire at that point. But he said that he was
33:03
Speaker 2: dead on arrival and that it's hard to go back
33:07
Speaker 2: to the game at that point.
33:08
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I also read Stevie Wonder stopped his concert
33:12
Speaker 1: in Oakland when he heard the news and broke it
33:14
Speaker 1: to his fans too. It was a huge, huge deal.
33:18
Speaker 1: I mean, like you said, you were even aware of it,
33:20
Speaker 1: and you weren't even like a Beatles fan or very
33:23
Speaker 1: aware of the Beatles if you were a Beatles fan
33:26
Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah, right, yeah, if you were a
33:29
Speaker 1: Beatles fan at the time, it was the most devastating
33:32
Speaker 1: news you've heard since the Beatles were breaking up. Maybe
33:35
Speaker 1: even more devastating than.
33:37
Speaker 2: That, I would say, so, probably because that ruined any
33:40
Speaker 2: chance of it ever being reunited.
33:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, fair point. I saw that somebody was like, what
33:46
Speaker 1: would have happened if John Lennon hadn't been killed. Somebody
33:49
Speaker 1: was like, they probably would have played together here or there,
33:52
Speaker 1: you know once in a while. So yeah, yeah, I'm
33:55
Speaker 1: sure it was much worse.
33:56
Speaker 2: But well, he and Paul had had repaired their relationship
34:01
Speaker 2: by that point, and the whole you know, the Beatles
34:05
Speaker 2: breakup was it was acrimonious in that they were all
34:08
Speaker 2: sort of not tired of each other, but just tired
34:12
Speaker 2: of being in that band together. But it wasn't you know,
34:15
Speaker 2: they never hated each other. It was like any long
34:17
Speaker 2: term creative partnership. They had a strain, but they had
34:21
Speaker 2: worked it out, and they were hanging out together in
34:23
Speaker 2: New York some when Paul was in town, and you know,
34:25
Speaker 2: it wasn't like, you know, they weren't talking anymore or
34:28
Speaker 2: anything like that. Things were headed toward reconciliation, if not professionally,
34:33
Speaker 2: certainly personally.
34:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, they did work it out. Please, I think with that, Chuck,
34:41
Speaker 1: we should probably take a break.
34:42
Speaker 3: Huh, let's do it.
35:19
Speaker 1: Okay. So we're back and the world is now just
35:22
Speaker 1: learning that John Lennon has been killed. Yoko No, I'm
35:26
Speaker 1: not sure exactly when she did it, but she released
35:28
Speaker 1: a statement saying like there's not going to be a funeral,
35:31
Speaker 1: which is probably a wise move because I can't imagine
35:33
Speaker 1: what John Lennon's funeral would have looked like. It would
35:35
Speaker 1: have just been chaos. But instead she said, I think
35:39
Speaker 1: it would be more appropriate to have like a ten
35:41
Speaker 1: minute silent vigil. And around the world people observe this
35:45
Speaker 1: ten minute silent vigil, and apparently in Central Park there
35:49
Speaker 1: was upwards of fifty thousand people standing there silently for
35:53
Speaker 1: ten minutes. And I heard a report that the only
35:55
Speaker 1: thing you could hear in Central Park in Manhattan at
35:58
Speaker 1: the time where the helicopters s whirling overhead who were
36:02
Speaker 1: covering this for the news, Like no one talked to
36:05
Speaker 1: car horns. There was nothing for that ten minute vigil,
36:08
Speaker 1: which must have just really kind of driven home like
36:10
Speaker 1: the significance of that moment, you.
36:13
Speaker 2: Know, Yeah, I mean it was before that though the Dakota,
36:17
Speaker 2: like there are pictures of I mean, it looked like
36:19
Speaker 2: a you know, a festival, a concert, festival of people
36:24
Speaker 2: just outside the Dakota. I mean, it's not a stretch
36:28
Speaker 2: to say it was like on the manner of like
36:31
Speaker 2: the Queen dying or something like that. I mean, people
36:34
Speaker 2: all over the world, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands
36:38
Speaker 2: gathering together to mourn his death, and even very sadly,
36:42
Speaker 2: a couple of people in the following days took their
36:45
Speaker 2: life by suicide. Mentioning Lenin's death and depression kind of
36:51
Speaker 2: pushing them over the edge and their suicide notes.
36:53
Speaker 1: Yes, Paul McCartney when he heard the news and was,
36:57
Speaker 1: I guess asked by a reporter Tom on it, he
37:01
Speaker 1: said something like drag, isn't it okay? Cheers and was
37:06
Speaker 1: very widely criticized for it, and he, in his defense
37:10
Speaker 1: said like, I couldn't bring to words like what I
37:12
Speaker 1: was feeling at the moment. I was in shock. Apparently
37:15
Speaker 1: he went off and wrote a a song about the
37:18
Speaker 1: whole thing called Here Today. Have you heard that song?
37:21
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, it's on the Tug of War record, the
37:24
Speaker 2: Good One. It's okay, I mean, it's not my favorite
37:27
Speaker 2: from that record, But that that interview that always has
37:30
Speaker 2: bothered me. If you see the interview, it's just like
37:34
Speaker 2: he's jammed in the middle of throngs of people on
37:37
Speaker 2: a sidewalk and someone you know, sticks a camera and
37:39
Speaker 2: microphone in his face, and when you watch it, it's
37:42
Speaker 2: clear he's not being flip.
37:44
Speaker 3: He's he's a guy who's who.
37:46
Speaker 2: Probably doesn't want a camera and microphone shoved in his
37:48
Speaker 2: face at that very moment and is just trying to
37:51
Speaker 2: get out of there. Paul McCartney was obviously crushed, as
37:55
Speaker 2: were all the Beatles. Ringo Star was in the Bahamas,
37:58
Speaker 2: immediately came to New York and acted as you know,
38:02
Speaker 2: sort of temporary dad to Sean, because Yoka was like,
38:05
Speaker 2: I need I need help with my son. You know,
38:07
Speaker 2: you don't think about like the nuts and bolts of
38:10
Speaker 2: going through something like that, one of which is I
38:13
Speaker 2: have a five year old that needs to be looked after.
38:17
Speaker 2: And Ringo stepped in there, which is amazing that it.
38:19
Speaker 1: Seems like a pretty Ringo Star thing to do too.
38:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
38:24
Speaker 1: George Harrison, he was off on his kind of like
38:27
Speaker 1: Eastern philosophy trip and had been devoting his life to
38:31
Speaker 1: preparing for a peaceful death. So when he got the news,
38:37
Speaker 1: he apparently thought he got the call in the middle
38:39
Speaker 1: of the night and his wife Olivia took the call,
38:41
Speaker 1: and he thought he just guessed at first that Ringo
38:43
Speaker 1: Starr was dead for some reason. I never saw what
38:45
Speaker 1: his reasoning was. He just said that he thought that
38:49
Speaker 1: in an interview. But then when he found out what
38:51
Speaker 1: had happened, he apparently was really angry that that John
38:55
Speaker 1: had been like robbed of a chance of having like
38:57
Speaker 1: a peaceful, like calm death, that he died in such
39:00
Speaker 1: a violent manner, and it took him a while to
39:03
Speaker 1: get over that and just kind of accept that that happened.
39:07
Speaker 1: But on that note too, about the fact that John
39:10
Speaker 1: Lennon died in a violent manner, he supposedly had kind
39:15
Speaker 1: of postulated that something like that might happen to him someday,
39:21
Speaker 1: and he chalked it up to his violent pass that
39:24
Speaker 1: he was a violent person and that he expected he
39:26
Speaker 1: might die violently when he went. I thought was very bizarre.
39:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, very much. Julian was seventeen. He was in North Wales,
39:37
Speaker 2: and he said he woke up with a gut feeling
39:39
Speaker 2: that something terrible had happened, and he, as the story goes,
39:43
Speaker 2: went downstairs and opened the curtains of his mother and
39:47
Speaker 2: stepfather's house and it was just mobbed with press. So
39:51
Speaker 2: that's how he finds out terrible. Lenin was cremated at
39:55
Speaker 2: Ferncliff Cemetery outside New York City, in Hartsdale. But there
40:00
Speaker 2: was somebody who took another photograph, an unfortunate one of
40:04
Speaker 2: his body in the morgue, and the New York Posts
40:07
Speaker 2: published it, which is terrible.
40:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, on the front page, I think. And if it
40:11
Speaker 1: wasn't the New York Post that put it on the
40:13
Speaker 1: front page, the Inquirer definitely did. So, Yeah, there's some
40:18
Speaker 1: really significant photographs just that circle this event. So Mark
40:23
Speaker 1: David Chapman shows up in court two days later, he's
40:27
Speaker 1: taken to jail of obviously by the police, placed under
40:30
Speaker 1: suicide watch. And also I think he was wearing a
40:34
Speaker 1: bulletproof vest in court because there was just such a
40:37
Speaker 1: chance that somebody would kill him for killing John Lennon.
40:41
Speaker 1: Still today, I think if he left prison, somebody might
40:45
Speaker 1: kill him for killing John Lennon forty three years later,
40:47
Speaker 1: you know. And I suspect he might be aware of that.
40:51
Speaker 1: But he underwent a battery of psychiatric tests with I
40:56
Speaker 1: believe a dozen psychiatrists over two hundred hours between over
41:02
Speaker 1: about the six months between the first time he was
41:04
Speaker 1: arraigned and when he ended up pleading guilty in court,
41:07
Speaker 1: and every single one of these psychiatrists, prosecution and defense
41:12
Speaker 1: said this guy has some sort of mental illness. The
41:15
Speaker 1: degree of it was disagreed upon by the prosecution and
41:19
Speaker 1: the defense. The defense a psychiatrist real like he has schizophrenia,
41:24
Speaker 1: he has psychosis. He's not aware of what he did.
41:29
Speaker 1: The prosecution said, he's very aware of what he did.
41:32
Speaker 1: He has mental illness, probably some sort of personality disorder,
41:35
Speaker 1: but definitely not anything that's made him so detached from reality.
41:39
Speaker 1: He's not culpable for this crime.
41:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Finally, on June twenty second, he changed
41:46
Speaker 2: his plea himself. His attorney. It was actually a second
41:50
Speaker 2: attorney because the first one withdrew very quickly because there
41:54
Speaker 2: were death threats, like you're, you know, defending Mark David Chapman.
41:58
Speaker 2: But Jonathan Marx was the second US attorney appointed, and
42:02
Speaker 2: he was like, don't change your plea to guilty, because
42:06
Speaker 2: you know, we could probably get you, you know, at
42:09
Speaker 2: least insane at the time of the shooting, like temporary insanity.
42:15
Speaker 3: Which did they still even use that as a plea?
42:18
Speaker 1: I don't know, man. I know we've done an episode
42:21
Speaker 1: on it, but I don't remember where it landed these days.
42:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure. But he changes guilty plea to
42:27
Speaker 2: guilty of second degree murder. On August twenty fourth, the
42:30
Speaker 2: judge sentence send to twenty years to life at green
42:33
Speaker 2: Haven Correctional Facility and said you should get psychiatric treatment
42:39
Speaker 2: and Mark David Chapman read from The Catcher in the
42:42
Speaker 2: Rye the part where I was just going to read
42:45
Speaker 2: it but it's a little long, but the part where
42:47
Speaker 2: holding call Field is basically talking about saving the kids, yeah,
42:51
Speaker 2: that are in danger of wandering off the cliff. And
42:56
Speaker 2: you know that's when he calls himself the Catcher and
42:58
Speaker 2: the Rye and that's you know, he was still so
43:01
Speaker 2: attached to that book at that point that that was
43:05
Speaker 2: sort of his final statement. And I think he even
43:07
Speaker 2: had a copy of the book that he had inscribed
43:10
Speaker 2: and said this is my statement.
43:12
Speaker 1: Yeah. Apparently the book, the copy that he was reading
43:14
Speaker 1: after he shot John Lennon had that written in it.
43:17
Speaker 1: And if you read that James R. Gaines interview with
43:20
Speaker 1: him and people from nineteen eighty seven, this period of time,
43:23
Speaker 1: that six months are when he really seems the most
43:26
Speaker 1: mentally ill, when it really shines through, because he's vacillating
43:30
Speaker 1: between a complete and total immersion in The Catcher in
43:33
Speaker 1: the Rye and rejecting the Catcher in the Rye and
43:36
Speaker 1: going to the Bible and then vice versa. And there's
43:39
Speaker 1: a point where he has this awareness that the whole
43:44
Speaker 1: reason he shot John Lennon is to let everyone know
43:46
Speaker 1: that he's this generation's catcher in the rye, and every
43:49
Speaker 1: generation has a catcher in the rye, and he's the
43:51
Speaker 1: one now. And it's really unsettling and disturbing. And it
43:55
Speaker 1: would be really difficult to say the things that are
43:58
Speaker 1: coming out of this guy's mouth documented and be just
44:03
Speaker 1: making it up to make yourself seem mentally ill. It's
44:06
Speaker 1: just it's too off, unhinged essentially.
44:11
Speaker 2: Well, and there was a history of this in his life,
44:14
Speaker 2: you know. It wasn't like all of a sudden after
44:15
Speaker 2: the murder he just started saying these things.
44:17
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah. And also, I mean, even if if
44:20
Speaker 1: you exclude all that, don't you have to be mentally
44:22
Speaker 1: ill to kill somebody to become famous. Doesn't that require
44:25
Speaker 1: a certain level of at least like a fundamental personality
44:28
Speaker 1: disorder that would qualify as a genuine mental illness?
44:32
Speaker 3: I think so I do too.
44:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm no psychiatrist, but if you believe that you
44:37
Speaker 2: can acquire someone's fame by murdering it, then essentially, yeah,
44:42
Speaker 2: there were a couple of the other motives. I mean,
44:46
Speaker 2: you know, the motive is what it is, which is
44:49
Speaker 2: a disturbed person wanting to kill a famous person to
44:52
Speaker 2: gain fame. But he also was a very devout Christian
44:57
Speaker 2: after this, and at one point, you know, the Beatles
45:00
Speaker 2: talked about being more popular than Jesus. He offended his
45:03
Speaker 2: Christianity with stuff like that and the song Imagine. But
45:08
Speaker 2: you know, I don't think those were like the big reasons.
45:12
Speaker 2: He has expressed more and more remorse and shame over
45:15
Speaker 2: the years as time went by, because in twenty I'm sorry.
45:19
Speaker 2: In two thousand he became eligible for parole, and every
45:23
Speaker 2: two years he goes up before the board and he
45:26
Speaker 2: expresses shame. Now, he said in twenty twenty, what I
45:31
Speaker 2: did was despicable. I assassinated him because he was very,
45:35
Speaker 2: very very famous, and that's the only reason. And I
45:39
Speaker 2: was very very much seeking self glory, very selfish. For
45:43
Speaker 2: her part, Yoko Ono always writes a letter saying, please
45:47
Speaker 2: don't let him out. I don't feel like it's a
45:51
Speaker 2: punitive plea. From hearing interviews, she genuinely thinks that herself
45:57
Speaker 2: or Sean or Julian would be in danger if he
46:00
Speaker 2: was let out, And who can blame her?
46:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't know what else to
46:08
Speaker 1: say after that.
46:10
Speaker 2: And one more thing I want to mention is, of
46:11
Speaker 2: course Strawberry Fields, the place in October of nineteen eighty five,
46:16
Speaker 2: on what would have been Lennon's forty fifth birthday, Central
46:19
Speaker 2: Park dedicated dedicated an area near the Dakota where he
46:24
Speaker 2: used to go and walks with Sean as Strawberry Fields.
46:26
Speaker 2: And it's a wonderful place to visit. It's got this
46:29
Speaker 2: beautiful mosaic on a walking path and if you go
46:34
Speaker 2: there are always you can't go there without seeing still
46:37
Speaker 2: just scores of Beatles fans paying their respects. Nice. Yeah,
46:43
Speaker 2: and Yoko ninety years old, still going strong and lived
46:49
Speaker 2: in that same apartment until just a few years ago.
46:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. And there's a lot of people who
46:54
Speaker 1: love to hate on Yoko. If you want to get
46:56
Speaker 1: into John Lennon conspiracy theories, she's frequently the person who's
46:59
Speaker 1: blamed as like hiring in it indirectly mark David Chapman
47:03
Speaker 1: as the hit man to kill her, right exactly at
47:07
Speaker 1: the same time. That kind of that, that's the kind
47:10
Speaker 1: of thing that gives people who despise her fodder for
47:14
Speaker 1: being like sea. She just she'd walk past the place
47:16
Speaker 1: where her husband died every day and it didn't you know,
47:19
Speaker 1: she didn't move or something like that. So she's a
47:22
Speaker 1: very misunderstood person. I think in a lot of ways.
47:25
Speaker 1: She finally did move during the COVID pandemic up to
47:28
Speaker 1: upstate New York.
47:29
Speaker 2: I think with Sean, yeah, people need to stop all
47:34
Speaker 2: the Yoko stuff for God's sake.
47:35
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean it's still going strong if you read
47:38
Speaker 1: the Internet, but it does feel like it's gone. There's
47:41
Speaker 1: been a sea change. I think it used to be
47:42
Speaker 1: way more acceptable to just hate on her, and just
47:47
Speaker 1: in general, I think it's gotten a little more conspiracy
47:50
Speaker 1: oriented rather than just mainstream these days.
47:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yoko Ono did not break up the Beatles full
47:56
Speaker 2: stop stop saying that. If you watch that the great
48:02
Speaker 2: Peter Jackson documentary that was out recently, it was it
48:08
Speaker 2: was definitely an odd thing for all of a sudden
48:11
Speaker 2: to have her in the recording studio with them. It's different.
48:15
Speaker 2: But Paul was like, it was an adjustment, and Paul
48:20
Speaker 2: was like, hey, listen, I it's a little weird, but
48:23
Speaker 2: like he needs her, he loves her. She's great for him,
48:27
Speaker 2: and she's not It's not like she's much of a
48:29
Speaker 2: disruption or anything like even when you watch the footage,
48:32
Speaker 2: she's she's just there and other family members are popping
48:36
Speaker 2: in here, here and there all the time. She was
48:38
Speaker 2: there the whole time, and he really needed her at
48:41
Speaker 2: that point, like she was his life. And Paul McCartney
48:43
Speaker 2: understood that, and he knew that like that was going
48:47
Speaker 2: to be part of the working arrangement moving forward, and
48:49
Speaker 2: they were getting okay with that, you know.
48:51
Speaker 1: Nice. Well, I'm glad you finally settled it once and
48:55
Speaker 1: for all.
48:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure not everyone will be like well Chuck said,
49:00
Speaker 2: it goes great.
49:00
Speaker 1: So if you got anything else.
49:03
Speaker 2: No, I don't love her singing, but that's a different
49:06
Speaker 2: story we've talked about.
49:07
Speaker 1: I think we have. But I'm sure I've mentioned before.
49:09
Speaker 1: I have you ever seen her cover of Fireworks?
49:12
Speaker 3: Uh huh? I love that, man.
49:14
Speaker 2: I just think she's a true original artist. So even
49:17
Speaker 2: if I don't love the singing, like, she's always done
49:20
Speaker 2: interesting things.
49:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Well, if you want to know more about
49:24
Speaker 1: the death of John Lennon, there is no shortage of
49:27
Speaker 1: articles and documents and stuff that you can read on
49:30
Speaker 1: the Internet. And since I said that, of course it's
49:32
Speaker 1: time for listener mail, I'm.
49:36
Speaker 2: Gonna call us just a recent email from a young listener. Hey,
49:41
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, not even hey, Yo, Josh and Chuck. My
49:44
Speaker 2: name is Ben S and I'm a thirteen year old
49:47
Speaker 2: from Eagle Mountain, Utah. Love your podcast. I have been
49:50
Speaker 2: listening to it for years and it makes me feel
49:52
Speaker 2: very smart around my friends. My dad introduced us to
49:55
Speaker 2: it by having us listen to it on all of
49:57
Speaker 2: our road trips because we really like to go camp.
50:00
Speaker 2: I come from a family of six kids, and four
50:03
Speaker 2: of us have a rare skin condition called epidermalysis epidermalysis
50:09
Speaker 2: belosa Simplex'd be super cool if you guys did a
50:12
Speaker 2: podcast about our skin condition and also this. We have
50:15
Speaker 2: a contest in our family to see who can get
50:18
Speaker 2: on listener mail first, and I'm really hoping it can
50:20
Speaker 2: be me. So if you do read this on the podcast,
50:23
Speaker 2: can you shout out my family, Mom, Dad, Ricky, Lily, Me, Olivia,
50:27
Speaker 2: Sam and Grace.
50:28
Speaker 3: Thanks again for the show.
50:29
Speaker 2: Hopefully I can listen to it all through high school
50:32
Speaker 2: and college and Ben, sometimes we like to make dreams
50:36
Speaker 2: come true, so that's why I picked this one. So
50:40
Speaker 2: take that to Mom, Dad, Ricky, Lily, Olivia, Sam and Grace.
50:43
Speaker 1: Ben one everybody contest is over.
50:46
Speaker 2: First one to email as far as I know, but
50:48
Speaker 2: that's all goes well.
50:51
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Thanks a lot, Ben. We appreciate him. We're
50:53
Speaker 1: glad we could help you out a little bit. Thank
50:54
Speaker 1: you very much for listening, and we hope you do
50:57
Speaker 1: continue to listen throughout the rest of your life and
51:00
Speaker 1: to be like Ben and send an email and let
51:02
Speaker 1: us know you're super cool. We love that kind of thing.
51:04
Speaker 1: You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom,
51:06
Speaker 1: and send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
51:13
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
51:16
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