'Nothing could stop' Lennon killer

[pies4ever]

'Nothing could stop' Lennon killer
From correspondents in New York
16nov05

MARK Chapman, the man who shot dead John Lennon 25 years ago, will be heard for the first time on US television on Friday describing his unstoppable mission to find his own personality by murdering the former Beatle.

In a documentary to be aired on the NBC network, Chapman describes how he went through with the killing and shot Lennon five times in the back outside the Dakota apartment complex in New York on December 8, 1980.
"I was under total compulsion," Chapman says.

"I'm thoroughly convinced in my conscience and in my heart that there was nothing I could do beyond that point to help myself, totally convinced of that.

"It was like a train, a runaway train, there was no stopping it. No matter - nothing could have stopped me," he says.

The remarks are contained on audiotapes recorded in 1991 and 1992 by Jack Jones, a newspaper reporter who interviewed Chapman in prison and then wrote a book, Take Me Down about his life and crime.

Never before played for the general public, the tapes will also form part of a Channel 4 documentary, I Killed John Lennon, to be broadcast next month in Britain on the anniversary of his death.

Chapman, who was arrested at the scene of the murder, is serving a 20-years-to-life prison sentence.

Now 50, he was denied parole for a third time last year after the parole board cited the "extreme malicious intent" of his crime and said releasing him would undermine respect for the law.

On the tapes, Chapman offers a bitter rationale for his decision to kill Lennon, who was 40 when he died.

"There was a successful man who kind of had the world on a chain, so to speak, and there I was, not even a link of that chain, just a person who had no personality. And something in me just broke," he says.

"And I remember thinking perhaps my identity would be found in the killing of John Lennon."

He also recounts the actual murder on a cold, windy day in Manhattan when he saw Lennon's limousine pull up outside the Dakota building.

"And I know that, that it's him, I have this incredible feeling," he says.

"I heard a voice in my head, saying 'do it, do it, do it'. And as he passed me I pulled out the gun, aimed at his back and pulled the trigger five times in succession."

Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, has repeatedly lobbied to keep Chapman behind bars, saying he posed a continued threat to her family, while Lennon fans organised an online petition calling for him to remain in prison for the rest of his life.

Chapman may seek a new parole review in October 2006.

The 25th anniversary year of Lennon's death has been marked by events worldwide, including a major exhibition on the British musician and his work in Paris.

Last month, an image taken by photographer Annie Liebowitz for Rolling Stone of a naked John Lennon curled in a foetal position around a clothed Ono was voted the best US magazine cover of the past 40 years.

The magazine ran the cover in January 1981 in a special homage following Lennon's murder.

Hollywood is also getting in on the act, with movie stars Lindsay Lohan and Jared Leto signing on to star in an independent film about the killing, with Lohan playing a devoted Lennon fan who befriends Chapman.

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,17264463%255E1702,00.html