Viola Vain

On December 8, 1980, John Lennon signed an album for a fan outside his New York apartment. Then he asked him, "Is that all? Do you want anything else?" Six hours later, the same fan shot him five times in the back. Mark David Chapman was 25, a former security guard from Hawaii. That morning he bought a copy of The Catcher in the Rye and wrote inside it, "This is my statement." In the video below, 12 years later, he tells Larry King everything from Attica prison. He speaks slowly and politely, like a man describing a long day at work. He says that when Lennon looked at him that afternoon, "he knew something subconsciously that he was looking into the eyes of the person that was going to kill him." King asks if he already knew he was going to shoot him. "Absolutely." At 2:10 he describes the shots. "All in his back." His first thought was that the bullets worked. He had been worried the humidity on the plane had ruined them. Then the doorman shook the gun out of his hand. Chapman took out the book and stood on the sidewalk trying to read it until the police came. At the end, he explains what Lennon was to him that night: "a two-dimensional celebrity with no real feelings." Today he is 71. He has been in prison for more than 45 years and has been denied parole 14 times. His next hearing is in February 2027. Some people say a man who killed for fame should never walk free. Others say 45 years is enough for anyone. Should Mark David Chapman ever be released?