On this date, December
8, 1980, John
Lennon is murdered by Mark David Chapman
in front of The Dakota in New York City. I will post information
about this murder case from Wikipedia and other links.
Death
of John Lennon
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Location
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Date
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10:50 pm, 8 December 1980 (US Eastern time (UTC−05:00))
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Weapon
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Victim
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Perpetrator
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Mark David Chapman
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John
Lennon was an English music artist who gained worldwide fame as one of the
members of the Beatles, for his subsequent solo career, and for
his political activism and pacifism. On 8 December 1980, Lennon was shot by Mark David Chapman in the archway of the Dakota,
his residence in New York City. Lennon had just returned from Record Plant Studio with his wife, Yoko Ono.
After
sustaining four major gunshot wounds, Lennon was pronounced dead
on arrival at Roosevelt Hospital. At the hospital, it was
stated that nobody could have lived longer than a few minutes after sustaining
such injuries. Shortly after local news stations reported Lennon's death,
crowds gathered at Roosevelt Hospital and in front of the Dakota. Lennon was cremated at
the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York, two days after his death;
the ashes were given to Ono, who chose not to hold a funeral
for him. The first media report of Lennon's death to a US national audience was
announced by Howard Cosell, on ABC's Monday Night Football.
Events
preceding his death
8
December 1980
Photographer
Annie
Leibovitz went to the Lennons' apartment to do a photo
shoot for Rolling Stone magazine. Leibovitz
promised Lennon that a photo with Ono would make the front cover of the
magazine, even though she initially tried to get a picture with Lennon by
himself. Leibovitz said, "Nobody wanted [Ono] on the cover". Lennon
insisted that both he and his wife be on the cover, and after taking the pictures,
Leibovitz left their apartment at 3:30 p.m. After the photo shoot, Lennon
gave what would be his last interview, to San Francisco DJ Dave Sholin, for a
music show to be broadcast on the RKO
Radio Network. At 5:40 p.m., Lennon and Ono, delayed by a late
limousine, left their apartment to mix the song "Walking on Thin Ice" (an Ono song
featuring Lennon on lead guitar) at the Record Plant Studio.
Mark
David Chapman
As
Lennon and Ono walked to a limousine, shared with the RKO Radio crew, they were
approached by several people seeking autographs. Among them was Mark David
Chapman. It was common for fans to wait outside the Dakota to meet Lennon and
ask for his autograph. Chapman, a 25-year-old security guard from Honolulu,
Hawaii, had previously travelled to New York to murder Lennon in
October (before the release of Double
Fantasy), but had changed his mind and returned home. Chapman
silently handed Lennon a copy of Double Fantasy, and Lennon obliged with an
autograph. After signing the album, Lennon asked, "Is this all you
want?" Chapman smiled and nodded in agreement. Photographer and Lennon fan
Paul Goresh took a photo of the encounter. Chapman had been waiting for Lennon
outside the Dakota since mid-morning, and had even approached the Lennons'
five-year-old son, Sean, who was with the family nanny, Helen
Seaman, when they returned home in the afternoon. According to Chapman, he
briefly touched the boy's hand.
The
Lennons spent several hours at the Record Plant studio before returning to the
Dakota, at approximately 10:50 pm. Lennon had decided against dining out so he
could be home in time to say goodnight to his son, before going on to the Stage Deli
restaurant with Ono. Lennon liked to oblige any fans who had been waiting for
long periods of time to meet him with autographs or pictures, once saying
during an interview with BBC Radio's Andy Peebles
on 6 December 1980: "People come and ask for autographs, or say 'Hi', but
they don't bug you." The Lennons exited their limousine on 72nd Street instead of driving into the
more secure courtyard of the Dakota.
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Mark David Chapman mugshot
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Murder
The
Dakota's doorman, Jose Perdomo, and a nearby cab driver saw Chapman standing in
the shadows by the archway. As Lennon passed by, he glanced briefly at Chapman,
appearing to recognize him from earlier. Seconds later, Chapman took aim
directly at the center of Lennon's back and fired five hollow-point bullets at him from a Charter
Arms .38
Special revolver
in rapid succession from a range of about nine or ten feet (about 3 m) away.
Based on statements made that night by NYPD Chief of Detectives James Sullivan,
numerous radio, television, and newspaper reports claimed at the time that,
before firing, Chapman called out "Mr. Lennon" and dropped into a combat
stance. Later court hearings and witness interviews did not include either
"Mr. Lennon" or the "combat stance" description. Chapman
has said he does not remember calling out to Lennon before he fired, but he
claimed to have taken a "combat stance" in a 1992 interview with Barbara
Walters. The first bullet missed, passing over Lennon's head and hitting a
window of the Dakota building. Two of the next bullets struck Lennon in the
left side of his back, and the other two penetrated his left shoulder.
Lennon,
bleeding profusely from external wounds and also from his mouth, staggered up
five steps to the security/reception area, saying, "I'm
shot, I'm shot". He then fell to the floor, scattering cassettes
that he had been carrying. The concierge, Jay Hastings, first started to make a tourniquet,
but upon ripping open Lennon's blood-stained shirt and realizing the severity
of his multiple injuries, he covered Lennon's chest with his uniform jacket,
removed his blood-covered glasses, and summoned the police.
Outside,
doorman Perdomo shook the gun out of Chapman's hand then kicked it across the
sidewalk. Chapman then removed his coat and hat in preparation for the arrival
of police—to show he was not carrying any concealed weapons—and sat down on the
sidewalk. Perdomo shouted at Chapman, "Do you know what you've just
done?" to which Chapman calmly replied, "Yes, I just shot John
Lennon." The first policemen to arrive were Steven Spiro and Peter Cullen,
who were at 72nd Street and Broadway when they heard a report of shots
fired at the Dakota. The officers arrived around two minutes later and found
Chapman sitting "very calmly" on the sidewalk. They reported that
Chapman had dropped the revolver to the ground and was holding a paperback
book, J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. They immediately
put Chapman in handcuffs and placed him in the back seat of their squad car.
Chapman made no attempt to flee or resist arrest.
The
second team, officers Herb Frauenberger and his partner, Tony Palma, arrived a
few minutes later. They found Lennon lying face down on the floor of the
reception area with Hastings attending to him, blood pouring from his mouth and
his clothing already soaked with blood. Realizing the extent of his injuries,
the policemen decided not to wait for an ambulance and immediately carried
Lennon into their squad car and rushed him to St Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital
Center. Officer James Moran said they placed Lennon in the back seat.
Reportedly, Moran asked, "Are you John Lennon?" to which Lennon
nodded and replied "Yes." There are conflicting accounts of this, however.
According to another account by officer Bill Gamble, Lennon nodded slightly and
tried to speak, but could only manage to make a gurgling sound, and lost
consciousness shortly thereafter.
Dr.
Stephan Lynn, head of the Emergency Department, who had been called in again
after having just returned home after a 13-hour-long work shift, received
Lennon in the emergency room at Roosevelt Hospital a few minutes before 11:00
pm when Officers Frauenberger and Moran arrived, with Moran carrying Lennon on
his back from their squad car and onto a gurney, into the emergency room
demanding a doctor for a multiple gunshot wound victim. When Lennon arrived, he
had no pulse and was not breathing. Dr. Lynn, two other doctors, a nurse and
two or three other medical attendants worked on Lennon for ten to 15 minutes in
a desperate attempt to resuscitate him. As a last resort, Dr. Lynn cut open
Lennon's chest and attempted manual heart massage to restore circulation, but
he quickly discovered that the damage to the blood vessels above and around
Lennon's heart from the multiple bullet wounds was too great. Lennon was
pronounced dead on arrival in the emergency room at the
Roosevelt Hospital at 11:15 pm by Dr. Lynn, but the time of 11:07 pm has also
been reported. Lennon's body was then taken to the city morgue at 520 First
Avenue and autopsied. The cause of death was reported as "hypovolemic
shock, caused by the loss of more than 80% of blood
volume due to multiple through-and-through gunshot wounds to the chest and aortic
arch". The pathologist who performed the autopsy on Lennon also stated
in his report that even with prompt medical treatment, no person could have
lived for more than a few minutes with such multiple bullet injuries to all of
the major arteries and veins around the heart.
The
surgeon also noted—as did other witnesses—that, at the moment Lennon was
pronounced dead, a Beatles song ("All My
Loving") came over the hospital's sound system.
Three
of the four bullets that struck Lennon's back passed completely through his
body and out of his chest, one of which hit and became lodged in his upper left
arm, while the fourth lodged itself in his aorta beside his heart; nearly all
of them would have been fatal by themselves as each bullet hit vital arteries
around the heart. As Lennon had been shot four times at close range with
hollow-point bullets, Lennon's affected organs (particularly his left lung) and
major blood vessels above his heart were virtually destroyed upon impact. Lynn
later stated to reporters on the extent of Lennon's injuries: "If he
[Lennon] had been shot this way in the middle of the operating room with a
whole team of surgeons ready to work on him... he still wouldn't have survived
his injuries".
When
told by Dr. Lynn of her husband's death, Ono started sobbing and said, "Oh
no, no, no, no ... tell me it's not true!" Dr. Lynn remembers that
Ono lay down and began hitting her head against the floor, but calmed down when
a nurse gave Lennon's wedding ring to her. In a state of shock, she was led
away from Roosevelt Hospital by Geffen
Records' president, David Geffen.
The
above account of treatment is disputed by Dr. David Halleran in a 2005 New York
Time article and subsequent interviews. He was in the hospital as surgical
resident that night, and in charge of the ER. John Lennon was his patient and
it was he who performed the surgery. Two other doctors entered the treatment
room and assisted. This is what is depicted in the film 'The Lennon Report' in
2016 and the reason the film was made
″The reason we came forward with the story was because in order for the truth to have any weight or credibility, people really needed to understand what happened.” One of the biggest revelations of the film is that Dr. David Halleran ..., not Dr. Stephan Lynn ..., performed the surgery on Lennon that night. ... Dr. Marks, who worked alongside Halleran.″
The
credits at the end of the film contain eye witness accounts by those in
attendance in the ER.
The
account that Yoko Ono banged her head on the floor is also disputed, by two of
the nurses who attended
Announcements
Monday Night Football
Ono
asked the hospital not to report to the media that her husband was dead until
she had informed their five-year-old son Sean,
who was at home. Ono said he was probably watching television and did not want
him to learn of his father's death from a TV announcement.
Meanwhile,
news producer Alan J. Weiss from WABC-TV had been waiting to be treated in the emergency room
at Roosevelt Hospital due to having been involved in an accident earlier that
evening while riding his motorcycle. Weiss recalled in an interview for the CNN
series Crimes of the Century in 2013 that he had seen Lennon being
wheeled into the room surrounded by several police officers. After he learned
what happened, Weiss called back to the station to relay the information. Eventually,
word made its way through the chain of command to ABC News
president Roone Arledge, who was tasked with finding a way to
bring this major development to the viewing audience.
While
all of this was happening Arledge, who was also the president of the network's
sports division, was presiding over ABC's telecast of Monday Night Football in his capacity as
its executive producer. At the exact moment he received word of Lennon's death,
the game between the New England Patriots and the Miami
Dolphins was tied with less than a minute left in the fourth quarter and
the Patriots were driving toward the potential winning score.
As
the Patriots tried to put themselves in position for a field goal, Arledge
informed Frank Gifford and Howard
Cosell of the shooting and suggested that they be the ones to report on the
murder. Cosell, who had previously interviewed Lennon on a 1974 broadcast, was
chosen to do so but was apprehensive of it at first, as he felt the game should
take precedence and that it was not their place to break such a big story.
Gifford convinced Cosell otherwise, saying that he should not "hang on to
(the news)" as the significance of the event was much greater than the
finish of the game.
The
following exchange begins with thirty seconds left in the fourth quarter,
shortly after Gifford and Cosell were informed of what had transpired.
Cosell: ... but (the game)'s suddenly been placed in total perspective for us; I'll finish this, they're in the hurry-up offense.Gifford: Third down, four. (Chuck) Foreman ... it'll be fourth down. (Matt) Cavanaugh will let it run down for one final attempt, he'll let the seconds tick off to give Miami no opportunity whatsoever. (Whistle blows.) Timeout is called with three seconds remaining, John Smith is on the line. And I don't care what's on the line, Howard, you have got to say what we know in the booth.Cosell: Yes, we have to say it. Remember this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous perhaps, of all of the Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival. Hard to go back to the game after that news flash, which, in duty bound, we have to take. Frank?Gifford: (after a pause) Indeed, it is.
Other
announcements
It
has been claimed that the first nationally-telecast bulletin about the shooting
was made by Kathleen Sullivan as part of a
standard newscast on Cable News Network; Sullivan reported that
Lennon had been shot but his condition was not known at the time of the
bulletin. NBC-TV
momentarily broke into its East Coast feed of The Best of Carson for
its bulletin of Lennon's death before returning in the middle of a comedy piece
being performed by Johnny Carson.
New
York rock station WNEW-FM 102.7 immediately suspended all programming
and opened its lines to calls from listeners. Stations throughout the country
switched to special programming devoted to Lennon and/or Beatles music.
The
following day, Ono issued a statement: "There is
no funeral for John. John loved and prayed for the human race. Please do the
same for him. Love, Yoko and Sean."
Aftermath
Lennon's
murder triggered an outpouring of grief around the world on an unprecedented
scale. Lennon's remains were cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, Westchester County, N.Y.; no funeral
was held. Ono sent word to the chanting crowd outside the Dakota that their
singing had kept her awake; she asked that they re-convene at Central Park's Naumburg Bandshell the following Sunday for ten
minutes of silent prayer. On 14 December 1980, millions of people around the
world responded to Ono's request to pause for ten minutes of silence to
remember Lennon. Thirty thousand gathered in Liverpool, and the largest
group—over 225,000—converged on New York's Central Park, close to the scene of
the shooting. For those ten minutes, every radio
station in New York City went off the air.
At
least three Beatles fans committed suicide after
the murder, leading Ono to make a public appeal asking mourners not to give in
to despair. Ono released a solo album, Season
of Glass, in 1981. The cover of the album is a photograph of Lennon's
blood-spattered glasses. That same year she also released "Walking on Thin Ice", the song the Lennons
had mixed at the Record Plant less than an hour before he was murdered, as a
single. Chapman pleaded guilty in 1981 to murdering Lennon. Under the terms of
his guilty plea, Chapman was sentenced to 20-years-to-life and later
automatically became eligible for parole up until 2000. However, Chapman has
been denied parole nine times and remains incarcerated at the Wende Correctional Facility.
"The outpouring of grief, wonder and shared devastation that followed Lennon's death had the same breadth and intensity as the reaction to the killing of a world figure: some bold and popular politician, like John or Robert Kennedy, or a spiritual leader, like Martin Luther King Jr. But Lennon was a creature of poetic political metaphor, and his spiritual consciousness was directed inward, as a way of nurturing and widening his creative force. That was what made the impact, and the difference — the shock of his imagination, the penetrating and pervasive traces of his genius — and it was the loss of all that, in so abrupt and awful a way, that was mourned last week, all over the world."- Jay Cocks, TIME, 22 December 1980
Memorials
and tributes
Annie
Leibovitz's photo of a naked Lennon embracing his wife, taken on the day of the
murder, was the cover of Rolling
Stone's 22 January 1981 issue, most of which
was dedicated to articles, letters and photographs commemorating Lennon's life
and death. In 2005 the American Society of Magazine
Editors ranked it as the top magazine cover of the last 40 years.
George
Harrison released a tribute song, "All Those Years Ago", which featured Ringo
Starr and Paul McCartney, in 1981. McCartney released his
tribute, "Here Today", on his 1982
album, Tug of War. Elton John,
who had recorded the number-one hit "Whatever Gets You thru the Night"
with Lennon, teamed up with his lyricist Bernie
Taupin and recorded a tribute to Lennon, entitled "Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)."
It appeared on his 1982 album, Jump Up!, and peaked at #13 on the
US Singles Chart that year. When he performed the song at a sold-out concert in
Madison Square Garden in August 1982, he was
joined on stage by Ono and Sean. Queen,
during their Game Tour, performed a cover of Lennon's solo song
"Imagine" at concerts after Lennon's death. Queen also performed the
song "Life Is Real", from the album Hot Space
(1982), in his honour. It was written by singer Freddie
Mercury.
Roxy Music
added a cover version of the song "Jealous Guy" to their set while touring in
Germany, which they recorded and released in March 1981. The song was their
only UK #1 hit, topping the charts for two weeks. It features on many Bryan
Ferry/Roxy Music collections, though not always in its full-length version.
Paul Simon's
homage to Lennon, "The Late Great Johnny Ace",
initially sings of the rhythm and blues singer Johnny Ace,
who is said to have shot himself in 1954, then goes on to reference John
Lennon, as well as President John
F. Kennedy who was assassinated in 1963, the year Beatlemania started.
Simon had actually premiered the song during Simon & Garfunkel's reunion Concert in Central Park in 1981; near the
end of the song, a fan ran onto the stage, possibly in response to Simon
mentioning Lennon in the lyrics. The man was dragged offstage by Simon's
personnel, saying to Simon, "I have to talk to you"; all of which can
be seen in the DVD of the concert. The song also appears on Simon's 1983 Hearts
and Bones album.
David
Bowie, who befriended Lennon in the mid-1970s (Lennon co-wrote and
performed on Bowie's US #1 hit "Fame" in 1975), performed a tribute to
Lennon in the final show of his Serious Moonlight Tour at the Hong Kong Coliseum on 8 December 1983—the third
anniversary of Lennon's death. Bowie announced that the last time he saw Lennon
was in Hong Kong, and after announcing "On this day, December the 8th
1980, John Lennon was shot and killed outside of his New York apartment,"
he performed Lennon's "Imagine".
David
Gilmour of Pink Floyd wrote and recorded the song
"Murder" in response to Lennon's death; the song was released on
Gilmour's solo album, About Face (1984).
In
1985, New York City dedicated an area of Central
Park directly across from the Dakota as Strawberry Fields, where Lennon had
frequently walked. In a symbolic show of unity, countries from around the world
donated trees and the city of Naples, Italy, donated the Imagine mosaic
centerpiece. A symbolic grave for Lennon was erected in Prague's Mala
Strana square, which hosted demonstrations during the fall of the communist
regime in Czechoslovakia.
Lennon
was honoured with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
in 1991. In 1994, the breakaway autonomous republic of Georgia, Republic of Abkhazia, issued two postage
stamps featuring the faces of Lennon and Groucho
Marx, rather than portraits of Vladimir
Lenin and Karl Marx, spoofing Abkhazia's Communist
past. On 8 December 2000, Cuba's President Fidel
Castro unveiled a bronze statue of Lennon in a park in Havana. In 2000,
the John Lennon Museum was opened at the Saitama Super Arena in the
city of Saitama, Japan (but closed on 30 September 2010), and Liverpool
renamed its airport Liverpool John Lennon Airport,
adopting the motto, "Above us only sky", in 2002. The minor planet 4147
Lennon, discovered 12 January 1983 by B. A. Skiff at the Anderson Mesa
Station of the Lowell Observatory, was named in memory of Lennon. On 9 December
2006, in the city of Puebla, Mexico, a plaque was revealed, honouring Lennon's
contribution to music, culture and peace. On 9 October 2007, Ono dedicated a
new memorial called the Imagine Peace Tower, located on the island of Viðey, off the coast
of Reykjavík,
Iceland. Each year, between 9 October and 8 December, it projects a vertical
beam of light high into the sky in Lennon's memory. In 1990 a group of citizens
came forward with an initiative to rename one of the streets of Warsaw in
honour of John Lennon. The petition had approximately 5000 supporting signatures
and passed through city council unchallenged.
Every
8 December a memorial ceremony is held in front of the Capitol
Records building on Vine Street in Hollywood, California. People also light
candles in front of Lennon's Hollywood Walk of Fame star, outside the Capitol
Building. From 28 to 30 September 2007, Durness held the John Lennon Northern
Lights Festival which was attended by Julia
Baird (Lennon's half-sister), who read from Lennon's writings and her own
books, and Stanley Parkes, Lennon's Scottish cousin. Parkes said, "Me and
Julia [Baird] are going to be going to the old family croft to tell
stories". Musicians, painters and poets from across the UK performed at
the festival.
In
2009, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's New York
City annexe hosted a special John Lennon exhibit, which included many mementos
and personal effects from Lennon's life, as well as the clothes he was wearing
when he was murdered, still in the brown paper bag from Roosevelt Hospital. Ono
still places a lit candle in the window of Lennon's room in the Dakota on 8
December. In 2012, Bob Dylan released the Lennon tribute "Roll on
John" on his Tempest album.
On
film
Several
films focusing on the murder of Lennon have been released, all more than 25
years after the event. The Killing of John Lennon, was
released on 7 December 2007. Directed by Andrew Piddington, the movie had Jonas
Ball play Mark David Chapman. Chapter 27
was released on 28 March 2008. Directed by J.
P. Schaefer, Mark David Chapman was played by Jared Leto.
Lennon was portrayed by actor Mark Lindsay Chapman, who coincidentally has
the same first and last name as the person who killed Lennon. Lindsay Chapman
had previously been cast (and billed then as 'Mark Lindsay') in NBC
Television's John & Yoko: A Love Story in 1985, but the role of
Lennon was re-cast when it was revealed that the actor's real surname was
Chapman. The Lennon Report was filmed in 2016 and focuses
on attempts by doctors and nurses to save Lennon's life.
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