dec 8, 1980 - Murder of John Lennon

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On the evening of December 8th, 1980, English musician John Lennon, formerly of the Beatles, was shot and fatally wounded in the archway of The Dakota, his residence in Manhattan, New York City. The perpetrator, Mark David Chapman, was an American Beatles fan who was envious and enraged by Lennon's lifestyle, alongside his 1966 comment that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus". Chapman said that he was inspired by the fictional character Holden Caulfield from J. D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye, a "phony-killer" who loathes hypocrisy.

Chapman planned the killing over several months and waited for Lennon at the Dakota on the morning of December 8th. Early in the evening, Chapman met Lennon, who signed his copy of the album Double Fantasy and subsequently left for a recording session at the Record Plant. Later that night, Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, returned to the Dakota around 10:50 p.m. to say goodnight to their son, Sean, before an impromptu date at the Stage Deli restaurant. The Lennon's exited their limousine on 72nd Street instead of driving into the more secure courtyard of the Dakota. They passed Chapman and walked toward the archway entrance of the building. As Ono walked by, Chapman nodded at her. As Lennon walked by, he glanced briefly at Chapman, appearing to recognize him from their earlier encounter. Seconds later, Chapman drew his revolver from his coat pocket, aimed it at the center of Lennon's back, and fired five hollow-point bullets from a distance of approximately nine to ten feet (2.7–3.0 m).

Based on statements made that night by New York City Police Department (NYPD) Chief of Detectives James Sullivan, numerous reports at the time stated that Chapman called out "Mr. Lennon" and dropped into a combat stance before firing. Later court hearings and witness interviews did not include either of these details. Chapman said that he does not remember calling out to Lennon before he fired, and that Lennon did not turn around. He claimed to have taken a combat stance in a 1992 interview with Barbara Walters.

One bullet missed Lennon and struck a window of the Dakota. Lennon, bleeding profusely from his external wounds and from his mouth, staggered up five steps to the lobby, crying, "I'm shot! I'm shot!" He then fell to the floor, scattering the cassettes he had been carrying.

José Sanjenís Perdomo, the doorman, shook the revolver out of Chapman's hand and kicked it across the pavement. Concierge worker Jay Hastings first started to make a tourniquet, but upon ripping open Lennon's blood-stained shirt and realizing the severity of his injuries, he covered Lennon's chest with his uniform jacket, removed his blood-covered glasses, and summoned the police. Chapman removed his coat and hat to show that he was not carrying any concealed weapons and remained standing on 72nd Street, waiting for police to arrive. Underneath his coat, he wore a promotional T-shirt for Todd Rundgren's album Hermit of Mink Hollow. Perdomo shouted at Chapman, "Do you know what you just did?", to which Chapman calmly replied, "I just shot John Lennon."

Officers Steven Spiro and Peter Cullen were the first policemen to arrive at the scene; they were at 72nd Street and Broadway when they heard a report of shots fired at the Dakota. The officers arrived about two minutes after the shooting and found Chapman standing very calmly on 72nd Street reading a paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye. They immediately put Chapman in handcuffs and placed him in the back seat of their squad car. Chapman made no attempt to flee or resist arrest. Cullen said of Chapman:

"He apologized to us for ruining our night. I turned around and said to him, 'You've got to be fucking kidding me. You're worried about our night? Do you know what you just did to your life?' We read him his rights more than once."

Officers Herb Frauenberger and Tony Palma were the second team to arrive on the scene. They found Lennon lying face down on the floor of the lobby, blood pouring from his mouth and his clothing already soaked with it, with Hastings attending to him. Officers James Moran and Bill Gamble soon arrived as well. Frauenberger put Lennon in Moran and Gamble's car, concluding his condition was too serious to wait for an ambulance to arrive. Moran and Gamble then drove Lennon to Roosevelt Hospital on West 59th Street, followed by Frauenberger and Palma, who drove Ono to that location. According to Gamble, in the car, Moran asked,

"Are you John Lennon?" or, "Do you know who you are?"

Lennon nodded, but could only manage to make a moaning and gurgling sound when he tried to speak, and lost consciousness shortly thereafter.

A few minutes before 11:00 p.m., Moran arrived at Roosevelt Hospital with Lennon in his squad car. Moran carried Lennon on his back and placed him onto a gurney, demanding a doctor for a multiple gunshot wound victim. When Lennon was brought in, he was not breathing and had no pulse. Three doctors, a nurse, and two or three other medical attendants worked on Lennon for 10 to 20 minutes in an attempt to resuscitate him. As a last resort, the doctors cut open his chest and attempted a resuscitative thoracotomy to restore circulation, but they quickly discovered that the damage to the blood vessels above and around Lennon's heart from the bullet wounds was too great.

Three of the four bullets that struck Lennon's back passed completely through his body and out of his chest, while the fourth lodged itself in his aorta beside his heart. One of the exiting bullets from Lennon's chest hit and became lodged in his upper left arm. Several of the wounds could have been fatal by themselves because each bullet had ruptured vital arteries around the heart. Lennon was shot four times at close range with hollow-point bullets and his affected organs—particularly his left lung and major blood vessels above his heart—were virtually destroyed upon impact.

According to his death certificate, Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:15 p.m., but the time of 11:07 p.m. has also been reported. Witnesses noted that the Beatles song "All My Loving" came over the hospital's sound system at the moment Lennon was pronounced dead. Lennon's body was then taken to the city morgue at 520 First Avenue for an autopsy. The cause of death was reported on his death certificate as "hypovolemic shock, caused by the loss of more than 80% of blood volume due to multiple through-and-through gunshot wounds to the left shoulder and left chest resulting in damage to the left lung, the left subclavian artery, and both the aorta and aortic arch". According to the report, even with prompt medical treatment, no person could have lived for more than a few minutes with many bullet wounds affecting all of the major arteries and veins around the heart. Stephan Lynn, head of the Emergency Department at Roosevelt Hospital, was quoted:

"If [Lennon] had been shot this way in the middle of the operating room with a whole team of surgeons ready to work on him ... he still wouldn't have survived his injuries."

The murder triggered a global outpouring of grief, with crowds gathering at Roosevelt Hospital and outside the Dakota, and tributes held worldwide. The day after the murder, Lennon was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. In lieu of a funeral, Per Ono's wishes, on December 14th, millions of people around the world paused for 10 minutes of silence to remember Lennon, including 30,000 people gathered in Lennon's birthplace of Liverpool and over 225,000 people at the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park, near the scene of the shooting. During this period, all radio stations in New York City ceased broadcasting. Chapman pleaded guilty to murdering Lennon and was given a sentence of 20 years to life imprisonment; he has been denied parole multiple times after becoming eligible in 2000.

Ono places a lit candle in the window of Lennon's room in the Dakota every year on December 8th, while fans gather at the nearby Strawberry Fields memorial in Central Park for an all-day vigil.

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