What the Apple TV+ documentary on John Lennon tells us about his death and his killer

“John Lennon: a homicide without trial”, traces the last moments of the ex-Beatle and the investigation into his nebulous assassin, Mark David Chapman.

On December 8, 1980, John Lennon was shot several times in front of the Dakota Building in New York. He died shortly after in hospital and the news of his sudden disappearance shocked the whole world. One of the ex-Beatles, murdered? Unthinkable scenario. Who could be crazy enough to do that? A documentary series in three episodes, John Lennon: a homicide without trial (broadcast on Apple TV+), looks back on the final day of the author of Give Peace a Chance through numerous unpublished testimonies, and attempts to paint a portrait of the man who shot him in cold blood, Mark David Chapman. Between real revelations and anecdotes best known to specialists in the case, this is what we can see there.

His final interview

A few hours before his death, John Lennon gave his final interview to journalist Laurie Kaye. Lennon had withdrawn from public life for five years to be able to care for his son, Sean. In this interview which can be listened to in full here, he seems delighted to finally return to music (he was then recording an album with producer Jack Douglas, who ensures that Lennon was at the peak of his abilities) and spoke of his political opinions: “ The 70s were boring, right? We’re going to try to make the 80s cooler. People have the power. The power to transform and create the society they want. And I believe the time for change has come. Imagine a world without countries, without religions. Imagine. Would it be so terrible? » Leaving the Dakota Building, Laurie Kaye remembers being addressed aggressively by Mark David Chapman: “ What did he tell you? What did he tell you? »

Lennon’s last moments

Just after the shooting of Mark David Chapman, Jay Hastings, receptionist at the Dakota Building who had until now never testified publicly, recounted John Lennon’s last moments of consciousness: “ He ran up to me and said, “I was shot.” Blood was coming out of his mouth. He collapsed on the ground. I turned him onto his back and took his glasses, which I placed on the desk. And Yoko was screaming: “Call an ambulance, call an ambulance, call an ambulance.” » The doctor and nurses at the hospital say they tried hard to resuscitate Lennon, obviously without success.

A calm and strange assassin

New York taxi driver Mark Snyder drove Chapman around the city shortly before the assassination. The latter behaved strangely, introducing himself as a producer from the Rolling Stones who was coming out of a recording session with the supposedly reformed Beatles. The man had a notebook whose pages he consulted frantically. “ I looked in the rearview mirror, and there was nothing written on it, just blank pages “, remembers the driver in the documentary. When getting out of the vehicle, this strange customer approached the driver’s window and blurted out this sentence: “ My name is Mark David Chapman. You will remember my name. »

Obviously enough to support the thesis of premeditation, especially since Chapman politely waited for the police to pick him up after shooting John Lennon, while he had plenty of time to flee through Central Park. “ He didn’t resist at all. He even apologized “, remembers the office Peter Cullen. When searching his hotel room, investigators discovered – carefully placed on a desk – his passport, a poster of the Wizard of Oz and especially the Bible open to the gospel of John (John, in English).

The possible motivations of Mark David Chapman

This is the big subject of the documentary and at the same time its weak point: why did Mark David Chapman kill John Lennon? Did he suffer from schizophrenia, as he assured in 1992 in an interview given to Larry King from prison? The three episodes never really answer it, but follow many leads. Including one, completely fantastical and ultimately quickly evacuated, where the CIA allegedly used an experimental brainwashing program, MKUltra, to have Lennon killed because of his activism (the ex-Beatles was actually monitored by the Nixon administration, but nothing more).

Chapman gives confused and contradictory explanations for his actions: we hear him, in unpublished recordings from 1980, saying that he thought “ become someone by killing someone “, or that he thought he was going to change into Holden Caulfield (the hero of The Catcher in the Heart by JD Salinger, a novel he had with him at the time of the murder) after shooting John Lennon. But he also drops this sentence: “ All You Need Is Love – and $250 million! (Lennon) was an asshole poseur (…) I wasn’t going to let the world endure another ten years of this bullshit. » Former fan of the Beatles, Mark David Chapman would have particularly disliked John Lennon at the time of his famous declaration about his group, “ more popular than Jesus » (the future killer had become obsessed with religion).

The documentary manages to shed some light on his personality by going back into the past, with testimonies from one of his childhood friends, a former girlfriend and his pastor. We learn in particular that Chapman was beaten and insulted by his father, which, coupled with a persistent feeling of being nobody, would have made him ultimately pushed to commit the irreparable. Ultimately, the judicial investigation was never able to delve into the subject, since Chapman pleaded guilty, ensuring that God had ordered him to murder Lennon. He was sentenced to life in prison and is serving his sentence in solitary confinement.

John Lennon: a homicide without trialthree episodes to watch on Apple TV+.