Mark David Chapman

On the recommendation of a friend, Chapman read J. D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951).

The novel eventually took on great personal significance for him, to the extent he reportedly wished to model his life after its main character, Holden Caulfield.

After graduating from high school, Chapman moved for a time to Chicago and played guitar in churches and Christian night spots while his friend did impersonations.

He worked successfully for World Vision with Vietnamese refugees at a resettlement camp at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas, after a brief visit to Lebanon for the same work.

He was named an area coordinator and a key aide to program director David Moore, who later said Chapman cared deeply for children and worked hard.

Chapman accompanied Moore to meetings with government officials, and U.S. President Gerald Ford shook his hand.

Chapman joined Blankenship as a student at Covenant College, a Presbyterian liberal arts college in Lookout Mountain, Georgia.

However, he fell behind in his studies and became racked with guilt over having a previous affair.

He started having suicidal thoughts and began to feel like a failure.

Mark David Chapman (born May 10, 1955) is an American man who murdered English musician John Lennon in New York City on December 8, 1980.

As Lennon walked into the archway of The Dakota, his apartment building on the Upper West Side, Chapman fired five shots at the musician from a few yards away with a Charter Arms Undercover .38 Special revolver.

Lennon was hit four times from the back.

He was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital and pronounced dead on arrival.

Chapman remained at the scene following the shooting and made no attempt to flee or resist arrest.

Raised in Decatur, Georgia, Chapman had been a fan of the Beatles, but was incensed by Lennon's lavish lifestyle and public statements, such as his remark about the band being "more popular than Jesus" and the lyrics of two of his later songs "God" and "Imagine".

In the years leading up to the murder, the J. D. Salinger novel The Catcher in the Rye took on great personal significance for Chapman, to the extent that he wished to model his life after the novel's protagonist, Holden Caulfield.

Chapman also contemplated killing other public figures, including David Bowie, Johnny Carson, Paul McCartney, Ronald Reagan, and Elizabeth Taylor.

He had no prior criminal convictions and had recently resigned from a job as a security guard in Hawaii.

Following the murder, Chapman's legal team intended to mount an insanity defense based on the testimony of mental health experts who said that he was in a delusional psychotic state at the time of the shooting.

However, he was more cooperative with the prosecutor, who argued that his symptoms fell short of a schizophrenia diagnosis.

As the trial approached, Chapman instructed his lawyers that he wanted to plead guilty based on what he had decided was the will of God.

The judge granted Chapman's request and deemed him competent to stand trial.

He was sentenced to a prison term of twenty years to life with a stipulation that mental health treatment would be provided.

Chapman refused requests for press interviews during his first six years in prison; he later said that he regretted the murder and that he did not want to give the impression that he killed Lennon for fame and notoriety.

Mark David Chapman was born on May 10, 1955, in Fort Worth, Texas.

His father, David Chapman, was a staff sergeant in the United States Air Force and his mother, Diane (née Pease), was a nurse.

His younger sister, Susan, was born seven years later.

As a boy, Chapman stated he lived in fear of his father, who he claimed was physically abusive towards his mother and unloving towards him.

These assertions, however, were never substantiated.

Chapman began to fantasize about having God-like power over a group of imaginary "little people" who lived in the walls of his bedroom.

Chapman moved to Decatur, Georgia, at an early age and attended Columbia High School.

He later recalled being targeted by bullies due to his lack of athleticism.

By the time he was 14, Chapman was using drugs and skipping classes, and at one point ran away from home to live on the streets of Atlanta for two weeks.

In 1971, Chapman became a born-again Presbyterian and distributed Biblical tracts.

He met his first girlfriend, Jessica Blankenship, and began work as a summer camp counselor at the YMCA in DeKalb County, Georgia.

He was very popular with the children at the camp, who nicknamed him "Nemo" (after the protagonist of the Jules Verne novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas), and he was promoted to assistant director after winning an award for Outstanding Counselor.

Those who knew him in the caretaking professions unanimously called him an outstanding worker.

He ultimately supplied audiotaped interviews to journalist Jack Jones, who used them to write the investigative book Let Me Take You Down: Inside the Mind of Mark David Chapman in 1992.

In 2000, Chapman became eligible for parole, which has since been denied twelve times.

His life was dramatized in the films The Killing of John Lennon (2006) and Chapter 27 (2007).