Man who killed John Lennon denied parole for 14th time
Mark David Chapman, 70, appeared before a parole board in August
The man who murdered John Lennon was denied parole for the 14th time, according to the decision posted online by the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
Mark David Chapman, 70, first became eligible for parole in 2000, 20 years after fatally shooting the former Beatle outside of his Upper West Side apartment. He appeared before a parole board on. Aug 27, according to the Associated Press.
Chapman pleaded guilty to killing Lennon outside of the Dakota apartment complex on Dec. 8, 1980, shortly after Lennon had autographed an album for him. Lennon died at the age of 40. Chapman was found waiting for authorities outside the building with a copy of J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye, and was sentenced to 20 years to life in 1981.
In 2022, Chapman said in unsealed transcripts from a 12th parole hearing that there was “evil in my heart.”
“I am not going to blame anything else or anybody else for bringing me there,” Chapman told the board during the previous hearing. “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.”
At the time, when denying his parole, the board cited Chapman’s “selfish disregard for human life of global consequence,” which had lasting consequences that left “the world recovering from the void of which you created.”
The latest parole board hearing transcript was not immediately released.
Chapman is serving a 20-years-to-life sentence at Green Haven Correctional Facility in New York’s Hudson Valley. His next parole hearing is set for February 2027.