Beatles killer Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon ‘to be somebody’ but officials don’t buy his message to fans: documents

Deranged killer Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon because of his pathetic desire to “be somebody”, he recently told a parole board, before the shocking crime began. 45th anniversary.

“This was just for me, unfortunately, and it had to do with his popularity,” Chapman, 70, said from Green Haven Correctional Facility in late August, according to a transcript of an interview obtained by The Washington Post on Friday.

“My crime was completely selfish.”

Chapman, who murdered the beloved 40-year-old Beatles singer outside her Dakota apartment building on December 8, 1980, made his 14th failed attempt to get out of prison. He apologized for causing “devastation” to fans and friends of the rock legend, but the board ultimately didn’t buy his grief, records show.

When a commissioner asked him why he wanted to kill Lennon, he said: “To be famous, to be something I wasn’t.”

“Then I just realized there’s a purpose here,” Chapman continued. “I don’t have to die and I can be someone. I’ve stooped this low.”

During his previous parole hearings, Chapman made similar statements about Glory, saying: He was looking for fame, “but there was evil in my heart.”

He recounted the horrific killing at the Aug. 27 hearing, telling the board that he had flown to the Big Apple from Hawaii months earlier, intending to kill the icon after Chapman recognized Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye and thought Lennon was a “fake.”

Chapman, then 25, lurked outside the building in October and waited for Lennon, but he never showed up.

Two months later, he returned “after the coercion began to build again.”

“On the morning of the eighth of the same month, I knew it,” Chapman said. “I don’t know how I knew it, but I knew that would be the day I would meet him and kill him.”

As Lennon exited a limousine with his wife, Yoko Ono, Chapman punched him four times in the back, hours after the guitarist signed an album for him.

He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

In recent years, Chapman spends his time studying the Bible at night, playing volleyball with other teammates and joining his wife, Gloria, to whom he has been married for 46 years.

Chapman has expressed remorse for the murder Several parole hearingsincluding the latest.

“This was a human being,” he said, referring to Lennon.

“Here I live for a much longer time, and not only the family but also his friends and fans, I apologize for the devastation I caused you, and the suffering they must have gone through. I did not think about it at all at the time of the crime, and I did not care.”

Despite his apology, the board found that he lacked “genuine remorse or genuine empathy” for the victims. He will then be eligible for parole in 2027.

Chapman now says he prefers to avoid the spotlight.

“I have absolutely no interest in being famous,” he said.

“Put me under the rug somewhere. I don’t want to be famous anymore, period.”