Murder of John Lennon

• 1. Introduction

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  The murder of John Lennon happened just before 11 o'clock on the night of the 8th of December 1980, in the archway of a building on West 72nd Street in Manhattan. Lennon had spent the day giving interviews, sitting for photographs, and recording with his wife Yoko Ono at the Record Plant. He arrived home to find the man who had asked for his autograph hours earlier still standing outside the Dakota. Mark David Chapman drew a revolver and fired five hollow-point bullets into Lennon's back. Four found their mark.

  Who was the man waiting in the cold for a musician he claimed to admire? What had turned a Beatles fan into an assassin? And what did the world do with a grief that had no clear outlet? Those questions drive this documentary.

• 2. A Fan Becomes a Killer

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  Mark David Chapman was a 25-year-old from Honolulu, Hawaii, who had no prior criminal convictions. He had been a Beatles fan for years, but a novel had come to dominate his inner life: J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, first published in 1951. Chapman wanted to model himself on the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, whose defining obsession is rage at adult hypocrisy and what Caulfield calls "phonies".

  Chapman applied that framework directly to Lennon. He told investigators he had been enraged by Lennon's remark in 1966 that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus". He was also troubled by the lyrics of "God", in which Lennon declares he does not believe in the Beatles, God, or Jesus, and by "Imagine", where Lennon sings about possessing nothing while living a wealthy life. The details of that lifestyle were laid out in Anthony Fawcett's 1976 book John Lennon: One Day at a Time. In Chapman's reading, the gap between Lennon's words and his wealth made Lennon a "phony" in exactly the Caulfield sense.

  On the 27th of October 1980, Chapman bought a five-shot revolver made by Charter Arms, chambered in .38 Special, in Honolulu. He flew to New York two days later, having first contacted the Federal Aviation Administration to learn the legal way to transport a firearm. He left the city in November, then returned on the 6th of December, checked into a YMCA on the Upper West Side for a single night, and moved to a Sheraton in Midtown.

• 3. The Last Day

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  On the morning of the 8th of December 1980, Chapman was already stationed outside the Dakota before Lennon had left for the day. He spent hours near the building's entrance, talking to other fans and the doorman. At one point that morning, he missed seeing Lennon arrive back by taxi. Later, he met Helen Seaman, the family's nanny, returning from a walk with Lennon's five-year-old son, Sean. Chapman reached past Seaman to shake the boy's hand, quoting the lyrics of Lennon's own song "Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)".

  Annie Leibovitz arrived at the Lennon apartment that afternoon for a photo shoot commissioned by Rolling Stone magazine. Lennon had insisted that both he and Ono appear on the cover, and Leibovitz left the building at 3:30 p.m. with the images that would later become one of the most recognized magazine photographs of the 20th century. After the shoot, Lennon sat for his final interview, given to San Francisco disc jockey Dave Sholin, writer Laurie Kaye, and producer Ron Hummel for a music program on the RKO Radio Network.

  At around 5:00 p.m., Lennon and Ono left the Dakota, sharing a limousine with the RKO Radio crew, heading to the Record Plant to mix "Walking on Thin Ice", an Ono song on which Lennon played lead guitar. As they stepped outside, Chapman was there. He asked Lennon to sign a copy of the album Double Fantasy, released in 1980. Lennon signed it. An amateur photographer named Paul Goresh captured the moment on film. Chapman later described the exchange: "He was very kind to me. Ironically, very kind and was very patient with me. The limousine was waiting... and he took his time with me and he got the pen going and he signed my album. He asked me if I needed anything else. I said, 'No. No sir.' And he walked away. Very cordial and decent man."

• 4. Shots at the Dakota

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  The Lennons returned to the Dakota at around 10:50 p.m. Lennon wanted to say goodnight to Sean before heading to the Stage Deli restaurant with Ono. Instead of driving into the more secure courtyard, they stepped out of their limousine on 72nd Street. They walked toward the archway. As Ono passed Chapman, he nodded at her. Lennon glanced briefly at Chapman as he passed, apparently recognizing him from earlier.

  Seconds later, Chapman drew his .38 Special from his coat pocket and, from a distance of approximately 9 to 10 feet, fired five hollow-point bullets at the center of Lennon's back. One bullet missed and struck a window of the Dakota. The other four hit Lennon: two entered the left side of his back, one exiting through his chest and lung, and the other lodging in his neck; two more struck his left shoulder. Bleeding from his wounds and from his mouth, Lennon staggered up five steps to the lobby, crying, "I'm shot! I'm shot!", then collapsed, scattering the cassettes he had been carrying.

  Doorman José Perdomo shook the revolver from Chapman's hand and kicked it away. Concierge worker Jay Hastings tried to apply a tourniquet, but once he tore open Lennon's shirt and saw the severity of the wounds, he covered Lennon's chest with his own uniform jacket and called for police. Chapman took off his coat and hat to show he was unarmed, then stood on 72nd Street waiting for officers to arrive. Under his coat he wore a promotional T-shirt for Todd Rundgren's album Hermit of Mink Hollow. When Perdomo demanded, "Do you know what you just did?", Chapman replied calmly, "I just shot John Lennon."

  Officers Steven Spiro and Peter Cullen arrived about two minutes after the shooting. They found Chapman standing quietly, reading a paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye. Officer Cullen later recalled that Chapman apologized to them for ruining their night. Officers Herb Frauenberger and Tony Palma arrived next. Finding Lennon face down in the lobby, Frauenberger judged his condition too grave to wait for an ambulance and placed Lennon in a squad car driven by Officers James Moran and Bill Gamble. On the way to Roosevelt Hospital, Moran asked Lennon, "Are you John Lennon?" Lennon could only nod; he lost consciousness shortly after.

• 5. Roosevelt Hospital

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  A few minutes before 11:00 p.m., Moran carried Lennon on his back into Roosevelt Hospital on West 59th Street and placed him on a gurney. Lennon was not breathing and had no pulse. Three doctors, a nurse, and two or three other medical attendants worked for 10 to 20 minutes trying to resuscitate him. As a last resort, the medical team cut open his chest and attempted a resuscitative thoracotomy to restart circulation.

  The damage proved unsurvivable. Three of the four bullets that hit Lennon's back had passed completely through his body; the fourth had lodged in his aorta beside his heart. One of the exiting bullets had also become lodged in his upper left arm. Several of the wounds could each have been fatal on their own, because every bullet had ruptured vital arteries around the heart. His left lung and the major blood vessels above his heart were, according to the medical report, virtually destroyed on impact.

  The accounts of who performed the surgery are disputed. Stephan Lynn, the head of the Emergency Department, is usually credited; he said in 2005 that he massaged Lennon's heart for 20 minutes before he and two other doctors declared death. Surgeon Richard Marks, speaking in 1990, stated that he operated, administered a massive blood transfusion, and performed heart massage, saying, "When I realized he wasn't going to make it, I just sewed him back up. I felt helpless." A third-year resident named David Halleran, writing in 2015, disputed both accounts, saying Lynn only came to assist when he heard the victim was Lennon.

  Lennon's death certificate lists the time of death as 11:15 p.m. Witnesses at the hospital noted that the Beatles song "All My Loving" was playing over the sound system at that moment. The cause of death was recorded as hypovolemic shock from the loss of more than 80% of his blood volume. Ono asked Roosevelt Hospital to withhold the news until she could tell Sean personally. News producer Alan J. Weiss of WABC-TV, who happened to be in the emergency room after a motorcycle crash, overheard officers discussing what had happened and called his station.

• 6. Telling the World

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  Word reached Roone Arledge, then president of both ABC News and ABC Sports, during a Monday Night Football broadcast between the New England Patriots and the Miami Dolphins. Arledge relayed the information to Frank Gifford and Howard Cosell, who had interviewed Lennon during a Monday Night Football broadcast in 1974. Arledge asked Cosell to deliver the news on air; Cosell initially declined, but Gifford persuaded him, saying, "You've got to. If you know it, we've got to do it. Don't hang on it. It's a tragic moment, and this is going to shake up the whole world."

  Cosell told viewers: "Remember, this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps, of all of the Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival."

  On Long Island, news director Steve North of radio station WLIR had been in the middle of a special comment on the recent murder of gun control advocate Michael J. Halberstam when an intern ran in with word about Lennon. North read the AP wire bulletin on air after confirming the death through a police contact. New York rock station WNEW suspended all programming and opened its phone lines. Stations across the country switched to special Lennon and Beatles programming.

  George Harrison issued a prepared statement: "After all we went through together, I had and still have great love and respect for him. I am shocked and stunned. To rob a life is the ultimate robbery in life." He later told friends privately, "I just wanted to be in a band. Here we are, twenty years later, and some whack job has shot my mate. I just wanted to play guitar in a band."

  Paul McCartney spoke to reporters outside his Sussex home and said, "John was a great man who'll be remembered for his unique contributions to art, music and peace." Later, leaving a recording studio on Oxford Street, he responded to reporters with the phrase "Drag, isn't it?" The remark drew widespread condemnation. Years later, McCartney reflected: "It was crazy. It was anger. It was fear. It was madness. It was the world coming to an end."

  Ringo Starr was in the Bahamas when his stepchildren phoned him with the news. He flew immediately to New York to be with Ono and Sean. Keith Richards, speaking to New Musical Express magazine in 1995, said he was on Fifth Avenue just a few miles south of the Dakota when he heard, and that he went out armed looking for the alleged killer.

• 7. Grief and Aftermath

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  On the 14th of December, 10 days after the murder, Ono's requested 10 minutes of global silence was observed around the world. In Central Park, near the Naumburg Bandshell, over 225,000 people gathered. In Liverpool, where Lennon was born, 30,000 people assembled. During those 10 minutes, every radio station in New York City went silent.

  At least three Beatles fans died by suicide following the murder. Ono publicly asked mourners not to give in to despair. On the 18th of January 1981, she published a full-page open letter in The New York Times and The Washington Post, titled "In Gratitude", thanking the millions who mourned and expressing a desire to commemorate Lennon's life.

  Double Fantasy, which had received mixed reviews and modest sales before the murder, became a worldwide commercial success and won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year at the 24th Annual Grammy Awards. Ono released a solo album, Season of Glass, in 1981; its cover showed the blood-splattered glasses Lennon had been wearing that night. That same year, she released "Walking on Thin Ice" as a single, the very song she and Lennon had been mixing at the Record Plant on the evening he was killed.

  Lennon was cremated the day after the murder at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. His ashes were scattered in Central Park, in sight of the Dakota. Chapman was taken to the NYPD's 20th Precinct on West 82nd Street and questioned for eight hours before being brought to New York County Criminal Court. A judge remanded him to Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric evaluation. Chapman pleaded guilty despite his lawyers' advice to claim insanity, saying his plea was the will of God. At sentencing, he read aloud a passage from The Catcher in the Rye. He received 20 years to life with parole eligibility from 2000. As of September 2025, he has been denied parole 14 times and remains at Green Haven Correctional Facility.

  Three months after the murder, John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. Police found a copy of The Catcher in the Rye among Hinckley's possessions, alongside a cassette recording in which he expressed grief over Lennon's death and said he wished to make "some kind of statement" after it.

  In June 2016, concierge Jay Hastings sold the shirt he had worn while trying to help Lennon at an auction for $42,500.

• 8. Memory and Memorials

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  Leibovitz's photograph of a naked Lennon curled around Ono, taken just hours before the shooting, ran on the cover of the 22nd of January 1981 issue of Rolling Stone. In 2005, the American Society of Magazine Editors ranked it as the top magazine cover of the previous forty years.

  In 1985, New York City set aside a section of Central Park directly across from the Dakota as Strawberry Fields. Countries from around the world donated trees; the city of Naples, Italy, donated the Imagine mosaic that serves as its centerpiece. Every year on the 8th of December, fans gather there for an all-day vigil, while Ono places a lit candle in the window of Lennon's room at the Dakota.

  On the 9th of October 2007, Lennon's birthday, Ono dedicated a memorial called the Imagine Peace Tower on the island of Viðey, off the coast of Reykjavík, Iceland. Every year from that date until the 8th of December, the memorial projects a vertical beam of light into the sky.

  The musical tributes began almost immediately. George Harrison released "All Those Years Ago" in the spring of 1981, with Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney listed as additional musicians. Roxy Music recorded a cover of Lennon's 1971 song "Jealous Guy" as a tribute single in February 1981; it reached number 1 on the UK singles charts for two weeks. Elton John, who had recorded the US number-one hit "Whatever Gets You thru the Night" with Lennon, wrote "Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)" with lyricist Bernie Taupin. It appeared on his 1982 album Jump Up! and peaked at number 13 on the US Singles Chart. When John performed it at Madison Square Garden in August 1982, Ono and Sean joined him on stage.

  David Bowie, who had co-written and performed on Lennon's US number-one "Fame" in 1975, paid tribute during the final show of his Serious Moonlight Tour at the Hong Kong Coliseum on the 8th of December 1983, the third anniversary of Lennon's death. Bowie said the last time he had seen Lennon had been in Hong Kong, and he performed Lennon's song "Imagine" that night.

  In 2018, Ono created an artwork titled "Sky" for MTA Arts and Design, installed during the renovation of the 72nd Street subway station outside the Dakota. That same year, Paul McCartney participated in the March for Our Lives demonstration against gun violence on the 24th of March 2018, citing Lennon's killing as his reason for taking part.