A Small Fragment on Mark Chapman (Assassin of John Lennon)

 

Former Beatle John Lennon was shot down outside his home in the Dakota Apartment Building, New York on December 8th 1980.

 His killer was twenty-five-year-old Mark Chapman, who called out "Mr Lennon" as the singer walked past him before firing five shots at him at point-blank range. 

 Chapman's life has veered between rebellion and drug abuse in his early adolescence, and born again Christian work for the YMCA. After failing college in Arkansas, he went to Hawaii and attempted suicide. A period in a mental hospital appeared to effect complete recovery and he worked successfully with geriatric patients for some time afterwards. 

 He came to New York with the deliberate intention of killing John Lennon, believing this would fulfil something of J.D. Slinger's fictional "Catcher in the Rye's" crusade against "phoneys"

 Mark David Chapman has the paranoid's crazy conviction that he is far more important than the facts warrant. He desperately believes that he has gained some immortality by murdering a creative person.