Mark David Chapman

Mark David Chapman is an American criminal who murdered John Lennon, formerly of the Beatles, on December 8, 1980. Chapman fired five shots at Lennon from several meters away with a Charter Arms Undercover. 38 Special revolver. Chapman remained at the scene reading J. D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye until he was arrested by police. He planned to cite the novel as his manifesto. Chapman also contemplated killing other public figures, including Johnny Carson, Paul McCartney, and Ronald Reagan. He was sentenced to 20 years to life with a stipulation that mental health treatment would be provided.

About Mark David Chapman in brief

Summary Mark David ChapmanMark David Chapman is an American criminal who murdered John Lennon, formerly of the Beatles, on December 8, 1980. Chapman fired five shots at Lennon from several meters away with a Charter Arms Undercover. 38 Special revolver. Chapman remained at the scene reading J. D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye until he was arrested by police. He planned to cite the novel as his manifesto. Chapman also contemplated killing other public figures, including Johnny Carson, Paul McCartney, and Ronald Reagan. He was sentenced to 20 years to life with a stipulation that mental health treatment would be provided. In 2000, Chapman became eligible for parole, which has since been denied eleven times. He later said that he regretted the murder and did not want to give the impression that he killed Lennon for fame and notoriety. He ultimately supplied audiotaped interviews to journalist Jack Jones, who used them to write the investigative book Let Me Take You Down: Inside the Mind of Mark David Chapman in 1992. His father, David Chapman, was a staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force and his mother, Diane, was a nurse. His younger sister, Susan, was born seven years later. As a boy, Chapman stated he lived in fear of his father, who he said was physically abusive towards his mother and unloving towards him. By the time he was 14, Chapman was using drugs and skipping classes. He once ran away from home to live on the streets of Atlanta for two weeks. He said he was bullied at school because he was not a good athlete.

Chapman became a born-again Presbyterian and distributed Biblical tracts. In 1971, Chapman met his first girlfriend, Jessica Blankenship, and began work as a summer camp counselor at the South De Kalb County, Georgia YMCA. He worked successfully for Vietnamese refugees at a resettlement camp at Fort in Arkansas, after a brief visit to an area area coordinator and aide to Chaffee Chaffee. He dropped out of Covenant College just one semester after one semester to feel like a failure and began to feel suicidal over having an affair. After graduating from Columbia High School, Chapman for a time played guitar and played guitar in churches and Christian night spots while his friend did impersonations. The novel eventually took on great personal significance for him, to the extent he reportedly wished to model his life after its protagonist, Holden Caulfield. He eventually moved to Chicago, where he worked as a counselor at a World Vision with Vietnamese refugees in Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, and later worked for the children at a refugee resettlement camp in Lebanon, Lebanon. He had no prior criminal convictions and had just resigned from a job as a security guard in Hawaii. In the years leading up to the murder, Chapman developed a series of obsessions, including artwork and the music of Todd Rundgren. He began to fantasize about having king-like power over a group of imaginary \”little people\” who lived in the walls of his bedroom.