John Lennon's Killer: 'This Was Evil In My Heart'

The Beatles

Mark Chapman, the man who shot and killed John Lennon, has been denied parole for the 12th time.

In a transcript released by New York officials this week under a freedom of information request and revealed by Sky News in the UK (which bears zero resemblance to our national version), Chapman admitted that his reason for killing Lennon was "my big answer to everything. I wasn't going to be a nobody anymore."

Chapman shared with the parole board: "I am not going to blame anything else or anybody else for bringing me there. 

"I knew what I was doing, and I knew it was evil. I knew it was wrong, but I wanted the fame so much that I was willing to give everything and take a human life.

"This was evil in my heart. I wanted to be somebody, and nothing was going to stop that."

In an August hearing, Chapman said, "I hurt a lot of people all over the place, and if somebody wants to hate me, that's OK; I get it." Chapman has expressed remorse for his actions over the years, but by denying him release, the parole board argued that his actions left "the world recovering from the void of which you created."

Chapman's next parole board meeting will take place in February 2024. He is serving a prison sentence of 20 years to life at Green Haven Correctional Facility in the Hudson Valley in New York state.

John Lennon died on 8 December 1980 as he and his wife, Yoko Ono, returned to their Upper West Side apartment.

He signed an autograph for Chapman earlier that day on his recently purchased album, Double Fantasy.

In September, photographer and lawyer Alper Yesiltas used AI technology to create portraits of famous dead musicians that show what they would look like if they were still alive today, including a portrait image of John Lennon.

Alper Yesiltas

Discussing the project, Yesiltas offered, "With the development of AI technology, I've been excited for a while, thinking that 'anything imaginable can be shown in reality, when I started tinkering with technology, I saw what I could do and thought about what would make me the happiest. I wanted to see some of the people I missed again in front of me, and that's how this project emerged. The hardest part of the creative process for me is making the image feel 'real' to me. The moment I like the most is when I think the image in front of me looks very realistic as if it was taken by a photographer."  

Under his image of John Lennon, Yesiltas wrote the caption, "I wish he hadn't been in New York that day."