New details about John Lennon shooting

John Lennon’s killer, Mark David Chapman, has provided new details of the murder of the former Beatle in his latest unsuccessful bid for parole. In a transcript of his parole interview, Chapman, 53, disputed media accounts that he called out to Lennon before shooting him in New York on December 8, 1980. "I don’t recall saying, 'Mr. Lennon'. I think that was something the press elaborated on. That didn't happen. He didn't turn. I shot him in the back."

Chapman fired five shots at Lennon, hitting him four times as he and his wife, Yoko Ono, returned to their home in the Dakota apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He said he was now "ashamed" of killing Lennon, and that that he had begun planning the shooting three months earlier, after seeing the Beatle on the cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album.

"I just saw his face and it seemed like it all came together, the solution to my problem of being confused and feeling like a nobody. And I said, 'Wouldn't it be something if I killed this individual? I would become famous, I would be something other than a nobody'. And that was my reasoning at the time. I perceived him at the time, and wrongly judged him to be a phony. Here he is at this ritzy building and he had been singing of love and other things at that time; it angered me."

Yoko Ono, who has previously written to the parole board opposing Chapman’s release, did not offer any testimony at his latest — and fifth — parole hearing, which took place on August 12. However, she told the New York Daily News: "There are so many people out there who dislike him. It's safer for him to stay in jail."