And he looked at me . . . he said, is that all? Do you want anything else? And I felt then and now that he knew subconsciously that he was looking into the eyes of the person that was gonna kill him.
PAUL L. MONTGOMERY: A newspaper reproduction of a picture [of the encounter] taken by a freelance photographer [Gores] shows Mr. Chapman with tousled hair and wire-rim glasses, wearing a dark raincoat and a scarf.
Mark David Chapman.
JAY MARTIN: Chapman urged the photographer to remain on the scene until Lennon returned. “You never know,” he said. “Something might happen.” The photographer left, but Chapman stayed.
PAUL ALEXANDER: At one point, Chapman returned to his hotel room, where he had left his autographed copy of Double Fantasy. He then returned to the Dakota.
JON WIENER: Eventually, Lennon’s car came back with John and Yoko in it. Chapman was waiting outside.
PAUL L. MONTGOMERY: The Lennons returned to the Dakota at about 10:50 p.m., alighting from their limousine on the 72nd Street curb although the car could have driven through the entrance and into the courtyard. . . . Three witnesses—a doorman at the entrance, an elevator operator and a cab driver who had just dropped off a passenger—saw Mr. Chapman standing in the shadows just inside the arch. . . .
MARK DAVID CHAPMAN: John came out, and he looked at me, and I think he recognized, here’s the fellow that I signed the album earlier, and he walked past me. I took five steps toward the street, turned, withdrew my Charter Arms .38, and fired five shots into his back. . . . Before, everything was like dead calm. And I was ready for this to happen. I even heard a voice, my own, inside me say, do it, do it, do it. You know, here we go.
PAUL L. MONTGOMERY: As the couple walked by, Chief Sullivan said Mr. Chapman called, “Mr. Lennon.” Then, he said, the assailant dropped into “a combat stance” and emptied his pistol at the singer.
Mr. Lennon staggered up six steps to the room at the end of the entrance used by the concierge, said “I’m shot,” then fell face down.
MARK DAVID CHAPMAN: Afterwards, it was like the film strip broke. I fell in upon myself. I like went into a state of shock. I stood there with the gun hanging limply down at my right side and José the doorman came over and he’s crying, and he’s grabbing and he’s shaking my arm and he shook the gun right out of my hand, which was a very brave thing to do to an armed person. And he kicked the gun across the pavement, had somebody take it away and I was just—I was stunned.
JAY MARTIN: Immediately following the shooting, Chapman calmly removed his coat and sweater—apparently so the police, when they arrived, would see that he was unarmed and intended no further harm—and took his copy of The Catcher in the Rye and read with intense concentration. . . . To have the book with him—he was right there with J. D. Salinger, right there with Holden.
—
STEPHEN SPIRO: I was a police officer in the Twentieth Precinct. I was in a radio car at approximately 10 minutes till 11 on the evening of December 8 when my partner, Peter Cullen, and I pulled up to the Dakota. There was a man standing out in the street, pointing into the archway, saying, “That’s the man doing the shooting!” I got out of the car, drew my gun, and proceeded to walk up against the side of the building until I saw a man standing there with his hands up. It was very dimly lit, but because he had his hands up and the shirt he was wearing was white, I saw right away he didn’t have a gun. I proceeded, trying to size up what was happening. I walked in, grabbed the man around the shoulders, and switched them around so his back was to me and I had my arm around his neck, because I thought maybe there were more shooters; maybe they were robbing somebody in the Dakota.
At that point I turned to my right and saw a gentleman who I knew as the doorman, José. José said, “He’s the only one.” I looked at the guy I had and threw him up against the wall. Just as I was doing this, José yelled out, “He shot John Lennon! He shot John Lennon!” I said, “Oh, my God.”
I said to the guy, “You did what?” He said, “I acted alone.” I thought, “That’s the strangest statement I’ve ever heard.” I pushed him against the wall and handcuffed him as my partner came in behind me.
There were other police officers responding to the scene and they had run into the vestibule, where they found John Lennon bleeding to death. They picked him up—two of them, Herbie Frownberger and Tony Palmer, who were both weightlifters. When I turned around, I saw them carrying John Lennon at shoulder height. His eyes were closed and blood trickled out of the side of his mouth. Right away, when somebody is face up and blood is coming out of his mouth, you know his lungs are filled up with blood. It was obviously a serious wound. I knew they must have decided they could get him to Roosevelt Hospital faster than an ambulance could. Maybe they could save his life that way.
DAVID SHIELDS: Lennon was carried into the squad car of officers Bill Gamble and James Moran and driven to Roosevelt Hospital about a mile away.
PAUL L. MONTGOMERY: Officer Moran said they stretched Mr. Lennon out on the back seat and that the singer was “moaning.” [Officer Moran] said he had asked, “Are you John Lennon?” and Mr. Lennon had moaned, “Yeah.”
STEPHEN SPIRO: I stood at the Dakota in amazement. I had the guy against the wall—later I’d find out his name was Mark David Chapman—and he was saying, “Don’t hurt me!”
I said, “Nobody’s going to hurt you. We’re going to take you down to the stationhouse.” I looked on the ground and said, “Are these your clothes?” He had taken off his outer garments to make sure it was noticeable he was wearing white. He was only 500 feet from a subway station. He could’ve run away and been gone in a matter of seconds. It was clear he wanted to stay there.
“Are these your clothes?” I said. He said, “Yes, and the book is mine, too.” The book was The Catcher in the Rye. I picked it up. I told him we would take it along with his clothes.
Mark David Chapman being arrested; on his right, NYPD officer Stephen Spiro.
When we got him to the stationhouse, we took him to a detention cell, where we did a strip search to make sure he had no more weapons on him. At that time, we found out he was from Hawaii and he was wearing thermal underwear when it was 50 degrees outside. When I looked inside the book, he had written, “This is my statement.” I didn’t understand what that meant at the time.
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STEPHAN LYNN: I arrived at the emergency room before the patient. The chief surgical resident was standing there when the patient rolled in. He didn’t come in by ambulance; the police actually carried the patient into the room.
We rushed into the trauma room. We took off his clothes. There were three wounds in the left upper chest and one through the left arm. There was no blood pressure, no pulse, no vital signs, no response. We knew exactly what we had to do: IVs, blood transfusions, surgical procedure in the emergency department. We opened the chest to look for the source of the bleeding. In the process, the nurses took the wallet out of the pocket of the patient. They said, “This can’t be John Lennon.” We realized it was when Yoko Ono came into the emergency room.
When we opened the chest, we saw there was a tremendous amount of blood. Those three bullets destroyed the vessels leading out of the heart, cut them to bits. We tried. We gave him blood. We pushed on the vessels that were broken. I literally held his heart in my hand. We massaged his heart, but it was empty. There was no blood in it. We tried to get the heart started again. There was nothing we could do. After about 20 minutes, we declared John Lennon dead. When we were done, the nurses, I, everybody in the emergency room, stopped for a second to realize what had happened and where we had been.
My next task was to speak to Yoko Ono. David Geffen was with her. I said, “I have bad news for you. He’s dead, in spite of all of our efforts.” Yoko refused to believe it. She said, “No! It’s a lie! It can’t be. You’re lying to me. It can’t be true. Tell me he’s not dead.” But after about five minutes, she understood. The first thing she said after that was, “Doctor, please don’t m
ake the announcement for 20 minutes so I can go home and see Sean and tell him what’s going on.”
—
Yoko Ono escorted by police to John Lennon’s memorial.
RICHARD STAYTON: I was in a restaurant, having a steak, watching Monday Night Football. I remember Howard Cosell interrupting the game by saying, “Sometimes events change the way you see your life, and why are we watching this game? The game doesn’t matter. John Lennon has been murdered.” Frank Gifford said, “John Lennon?” Everybody where I was sitting said, “John Lennon? You got to be kidding.” It was the blow I felt when I heard Robert Kennedy was shot and murdered, but I felt closer to John Lennon than I felt when RFK or JFK was killed.
MARK DAVID CHAPMAN: I never wanted to hurt anybody, my friends will tell you that. I have two parts in me. The big part is very kind. The children I work with will tell you that. I have the small part in me that cannot be understood. . . . I did not want to kill anybody and I really don’t know why I did. I fought against the small part for a long time. But for a few seconds the small part won. I asked God to help me but we are responsible for our own actions. I have nothing against John Lennon or anything he has done in the way of music or personal beliefs. I came to New York about five weeks ago from Hawaii and the big part of me did not want to shoot John. I went back to Hawaii and tried to get rid of my small part but I couldn’t. I then returned to New York [on December 6, 1980, after leaving Honolulu] on Friday, December 5, 1980. I checked into the YMCA on 62nd Street. I stayed one night. Then I went to the Sheraton Centre 7th Ave. Then this morning I went to the bookstore and bought The Catcher in the Rye.
I’m sure the large part of me is Holden Caulfield who is the main person in the book. The small part of me must be the Devil. I went to the building; it’s called the Dakota. I stayed there until he came out and asked him to sign my album.
At that point my big part won and I wanted to get back to the hotel, but I couldn’t. I waited until he came back. He came in a car. Yoko walked past me first and I said hello. I didn’t want to hurt her. Then John came, looked at me and printed me. I took the gun from my coat pocket and fired at him. I can’t believe I could do that. I just stood there clutching the book. I didn’t want to run away. I don’t know what happened to the gun, I just remember José kicking it away. José was crying and telling me to please leave. I felt so sorry for José. Then the police came and told me to put my hands on the wall and cuffed me.
STEPHEN SPIRO: What confuses me is these people follow this book like it’s the bible for achieving something in life, when this kid was a mixed-up adolescent visiting New York City and fantasizing about certain things. I don’t think J. D. Salinger ever meant for anybody to hurt somebody with his thoughts. Mark David Chapman portrays himself as the catcher in the rye to stop children from jumping over the cliff after they run through the field of rye and he’s going to stop them and be their savior. Well, I don’t see how that equates to him killing people.
DAVID SHIELDS: After being charged with second-degree murder, Chapman decided in January 1981 to use his trial to broadcast his interpretation of The Catcher in the Rye. Chapman told his attorney, Jonathan Marks, that God told him to plead guilty. Two weeks later, on June 22, Judge Dennis Edwards questioned Chapman at the start of the trial and found him to be of sound mind. Edwards accepted the guilty plea and sentenced Chapman to twenty years to life on August 24.
Courtroom sketch of Mark David Chapman, who stated that his defense can be found in The Catcher in the Rye.
STEPHEN SPIRO: Mark David Chapman wrote me a letter that I should read Catcher in the Rye to understand why he committed this murder.
MARK DAVID CHAPMAN, excerpt from letter to Stephen Spiro, January 28, 1983:
The reason I wanted to write you was that from the time of my arrest I have felt close to you. It is something that would happen to Holden Caulfield. If you are familiar with him and The Catcher in the Rye, please reread the book. It will explain a lot of what happened on the night of December 8th. To answer your question of what was meant by “This is my statement,” the only way I can explain it is this way. Do you remember the young woman in Saigon during the Vietnam War who immolated herself? I believe her name was Nhat Chi Mai. She believed so strongly in the purpose that she chose to end her life rather than continue living in the phony world. The damn war did this to her. What a noble lady. Poems were found on her and around her concerning her beliefs. This was her statement to leave to the world. Catcher in the Rye is my statement. The book is incredible.
JAY MARTIN: A dramatic moment occurred in the court when the judge, before sentencing, asked Chapman if he had anything of his own he wanted to tell the court that might influence the sentencing. Perhaps it would explain why he did what he did. Chapman said, “Yes.” He was going to have a vow of silence, but first he would speak and speak from his heart. God allowed him to become Holden Caulfield and to speak Holden’s words. He had killed phoniness. He had murdered evil. He had rid the world of death. He was the catcher in the rye.
So when Chapman spoke, his words came directly from The Catcher in the Rye, only he recited them as if they were his own words and as if they expressed the precise position at which he personally had arrived. “I kept picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids. And nobody’s around, nobody big, I mean, except me. And I’m standing at the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff. I mean, if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going, I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to do.” That’s the only thing Chapman wanted to do—to become Holden Caulfield. He acted the passage out as if he were Holden Caulfield because he believed he was. Those were his last words in the court.
Chapman’s final testimony amounted to this: He himself had ceased to exist. In a letter to his wife, he stated that this was so. He no longer existed in his own being. He had found his true being in Salinger’s novel.
Chapman took from Holden the opposite of freedom. He identified so extremely that the identification became self-sustaining, because it gave him a self that he didn’t possess before. He had to do what Salinger didn’t do and what Holden himself didn’t do: go with it fully. Catcher in the Rye is not meant to be a dangerous book. It’s meant to be a curative book.
MARK DAVID CHAPMAN, excerpt from letter to Stephen Spiro, January 15, 1983:
Have you read The Catcher in the Rye? I know this will help you to further understand, to answer your questions. The Catcher in the Rye is the statement. I probably forgot to tell you that I underlined the word “This,” so it read “This is my statement,” meaning the book itself. Did you ever see what I sent to the New York Times on February 9, 1981? [The newspaper published a letter written by Chapman.] This further explains what happened on the night of December 8, 1980. I will let you decide whether Mr. Lennon was a phony or not. His own words shot his life purpose full of holes. If you dig deep and not idolize, it is all there. Yes, Lennon was a phony to the highest degree and there were others who could and would have served the same purpose.
J. REID MELOY: Holden Caulfield was not an assassin. Yet with his psychopathology, Mark David Chapman was able to twist that book and extract from it a narrative he could identify with that led him somehow to assassinate John Lennon. Chapman came to believe that he was the Holden Caulfield of his generation and that he could save his generation. That is pure grandiosity—what is referred to as pathological narcissism, where you become a legend in your own mind. There was an aggression tied to that narcissism that gave him the drive and the means and the motivation to kill.
JAY MARTIN: Salinger certainly had no intention with Catcher of anything other than writing a good book—a book that, he said, needed to be written. The effect of what Salinger did in placing his ow
n distress into a character was to make that character available to millions of people. Of those many millions, maybe a few will take it more seriously, more dramatically, than a normal reader, who will simply say, “That’s an interesting book.”
—
MARK DAVID CHAPMAN: So it didn’t end with the death of John Lennon and that’s, you know—you keep paying for this over and over when you hear of the death of a celebrity and maybe they’ve got The Catcher in the Rye, as John Hinckley did.
John Hinckley, who, under the influence of The Catcher in the Rye, attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan.
JOHN GUARE: Yes, The Catcher in the Rye is a wonderful book for adults to read about a certain time of life. But it also gives validity to fifteen-year-olds to say, “I am the only thing on this planet and you are all worthy of annihilation because you’re all phony.” I use it in Six Degrees of Separation because the play asks the question: Is this young man [Paul] authentic or false? And Catcher in the Rye embodies the conflict between what is true and what is false.
DINTY MOORE: Across from the Dakota that evening [of Lennon’s murder], thousands of mourners began immediately to congregate. Among them was John Hinckley Jr. Hinckley had seen the movie Taxi Driver—fifteen times—and had begun to imitate Travis Bickle’s preference for fatigue jackets, army boots, and peach brandy. He also developed an obsession with Jodie Foster, the child-prostitute in the film, and began to stalk her.
JACK JONES: The list of ingredients on Hinckley’s murder recipe, like Chapman’s and [Robert] Bardo’s [who later killed the actress Rebecca Schaeffer], included a .38 caliber Charter Arms Special and a copy of The Catcher in the Rye.
JAY MARTIN: Chapman’s in the papers. He’s being shown on TV. He’s a character as much as Holden. And so you copycat him. So you go ahead and look at Catcher in the Rye and you say, “That’s how I’ll become John Hinckley, by becoming Mark David Chapman and by becoming Holden Caulfield, and eventually it might be by reading J. D. Salinger.”
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