John Lennon killer says he agonised over plan to shoot musician

John Lennon killer says he agonised over plan to shoot musician

NEW YORK - Before he pulled the trigger that ended the life of rock icon John Lennon nearly 38 years ago, his killer remembers being in a "tug of war" with himself over what he was about to do, and even praying for a way out of carrying out his plan.

In the end, the compulsion to gain notoriety by killing one of the most famous people in the world proved too powerful, Mark David Chapman told parole officials at an Aug 22 hearing that ended in a decision not to release him.

"I was too far in," Chapman, 63, said in a transcript of the hearing released by the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.

On the afternoon of Dec 8, 1980, the former member of the Beatles left his New York apartment building on his way to a recording session when he stopped to autograph an album that Chapman, then a pudgy, bespectacled 25-year-old, was holding.

It is a moment captured in a now-eerie photograph.

"I do remember having the thought of, hey, you have got the album now, look at this, he signed it, just go home, but there was no way I was going to go home," Chapman, now leaner and greyer, told the parole board.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkgkThdzX-8[/embed]

But when Lennon returned to his home on Manhattan's Upper West Side later that evening, Chapman was waiting for him, and fired a revolver at him, hitting him four times in front of his wife Yoko Ono.

From his confinement at the Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, New York, Chapman told the two parole board members his sense of shame grows constantly over the murder, the impact of which he realises will outlive him.

"A hundred years from now, they're going to remember him and they're going to remember him as someone who's been murdered and it's going to be negative," he said.

Chapman was sentenced to 20 years to life after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in 1981. He has been denied parole 10 times since 2000 and will not have another opportunity for release until August 2020.

At the hearing, Chapman said he was a changed man who would welcome being released but said he did not deserve it.

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