Nation

COVER STORY The Last Day in the Life John is shot to death at 40, and a bright dream fades

ust a voice out of the American night. "Mr. Lennon." He awful a way, that was mourned last week, all over the world. started to turn around. There is no knowing whether John The last Day in the Life, "I read the news today, oh boy ..." Lennon saw, for what would have been the second time Sorrow was expressed, sympathies extended by everyone J that day, the young man in the black raincoat stepping out from Presidents and Presidents-elect, Prime Ministers and of . The first shot hit him that fast, through the Governors and mayors to hundreds of fans who gathered at chest. There were at least three others. the arched entryway to the Lennons' Manhattan apartment Not that night, or the next day, but a little later, after the ter­ building, , crying and praying, singing and dec­ ror ebbed and the grief could be managed, Lennon's wife, Yoko orating the tall iron gates with wreaths and single flowers and Ono, took their five-year-old son Sean to the spot in the apart­ memorial banners. CHRISTMAS IN HEAVEN, read one. Another ment courtyard where she had seen his father murdered. She recalled the magical invocation of a childhood memory that had already shown Sean a newspaper with his father's picture became one of his finest songs: Strawberry Fields Forever. on the front page. She tried to do what everyone else has done flew to New York to see Yoko. George Har­ since that Monday night. She tried to explain. rison, "shattered and stunned," went into retreat at his home in Like everyone else, too, the boy Oxfordshire, England. Paul Mc­ asked simple questions to which Cartney, whom Lennon plainly there would never be simple or sat­ loved and just as plainly hated like isfactory answers. If, as was being the brother he never had, said, "I said, the man liked his father so can't tell you how much it hurts to much, why did he shoot him? His lose him. His death is a bitter, cru­ mother explained: "He was prob­ el blow-I really loved the guy." ably a confused person." Not good Having no wish to contribute to enough. Better to know, Sean Len­ the hysteria that always follows the non said, ifhe was confused or real­ grief at such public mournings, ly meant to kill. His mother said McCartney, who has hired two that was up to the courts to de­ bodyguards to protect himself and cide, and Sean wanted to know his family, said he would stay home which courts she was talking in Sussex, England, even if there about: tennis or basketball? Then was a funeral. There was not. Len­ Sean cried, and he also said, "Now non's body was cremated in a sub­ Daddy is part of God. I guess when urban New York cemetery, and you die you become much more Ono issued a statement inviting ev­ bigger because you're part of eryone "to participate from wher­ everything." ever you are" in a ten-minute si­ Sean did not really know or un­ lent vigil on Sunday afternoon. derstand about , or what Before that, it had been a week his father was to the world. But of tributes. Radio stations from Sean will surely know, soon New Orleans to Boston cleared the enough, that his father did not air waves for Lennon and Beatles have to die to become part of ev­ retrospectives. In Los Angeles, erything. Given the special burden more than 2,000 people joined in and grace of his great gift, he al­ a candlelight vigil at Century City; ready was. Not just for his wife in Washington, D.C., several hun­ or son but for more people than dred crowded the steps of the Lin­ anyone could ever begin to num­ coln Memorial in a "silent tribute" ber, the killing of was a death in the family. that recalled the sit-ins of the '60s. Record stores all over the For all the official records, the death would be called mur­ country reported sellouts on the new Lennon-Ono album, Dou­ der. For everyone who cherished the sustaining myth of the ble Fantasy, their first record in five years, as well as the back Beatles-which is to say, for much of an entire generation stock of Lennon's previous records. that is passing, as Lennon was, at age 40, into middle age, Some reaction was tragic. A teen-age girl in Florida and a and coming suddenly up against its own mortality-the mur­ man of 30 in Utah killed themselves, leaving notes that spoke der was something else. It was an assassination, a ritual slay­ of depression over Lennon's death. On Thursday, Ono said, ing of something that could hardly be named. Hope, perhaps; "This is not the end of an era. The '80s are still going to be a beau­ or idealism. Or time. Not only lost, but suddenly dislocated, tiful time, and John believed in it." fractured. All the brutal and finally confounding facts of the killing The outpouring of grief, wonder and shared devastation that were examined like runes and held up to the light like tal­ followed Lennon's death had the same breadth and intensity as ismans, small shards of some awful psychic puzzle. A pudgy the reaction to the killing of a world figure: some bold and pop­ Georgia-born ex-security guard from named Mark Da­ ular politician, like John or Robert Kennedy, or a spiritual lead­ vid Chapman fired his shots at Lennon from what the police er, like Martin Luther King Jr. But Lennon was a creature of call "combat stance": in a stiff crouch, one hand wrapped around poetic political metaphor, and his spiritual consciousness was di­ the butt of his newly purchased revolver, the other around his rected inward, as a way of nurturing and widening his creative wrist to steady it. As Lennon took six staggering steps, Chap­ force. That was what made the impact, and the difference-the man, 25, simply stood still, and then went with the arresting of­ shock of his imagination, the penetrating and pervasive traces ficers like a model citizen who had been unfairly rousted on a of his genius-and it was the loss of all that, in so abrupt and traffic bust. Chapman's personal history showed, in retrospect,

18 TIME, DECEMBER 22, 1980 John Lennon, signing his life away, stops to give an autograph to Accused Killer Mark David Chapman

many ominous byways (see following story), but immediately On Monday afternoon Chapman spotted Lennon and asked after the shooting, he offered no explanations. And no regrets. him to autograph an album. Lennon hastily scribbled his name Chapman arrived in New York three days before the kill- and climbed into a waiting car to take him to a recording stu­ ing, checked into a Y.M.C.A. nine blocks from Lennon's apart- dio. Did Chapman feel slighted by Lennon? Possibly. But the ment, and started hanging out in front of the building, waiting night before he had suddenly checked out of the Y and moved for Lennon like any other fan. There were usually fans at the into the cushier Sheraton Center hotel and bought himself a big gates of the Dakota, a grand, gloomy, high-maintenance Goth- meal. It was as if he were rewarding himself in advance for ic fortress overlooking the west side of Central Park, because some proud accomplishment. Now on Monday, only hours af­ the building houses several celebrities: Lauren Bacall, Roberta ter getting Lennon's autograph, Chapman was waiting again, Flack, Leonard Bernstein. Fans of the this time in the shadows of the entry­ Beatles and Lennon lovers accounted for Mourning outside the Lennons' New York apartment way, wilh a gun. When the police the largest portion of the curious. Two ~ grabbed him after the shooting, they unidentified women told an ABC tele- ~found he still had the autographed al- vision reporter that they had fallen into ~ bum with him. He also had a paper- conversation with Chapman outside the ~ back copy of J.D. Salinger's The Catch- Dakota. Said one. "He just seemed like er in the Rye. a really nice, genuine, honest person , Lennon was n stranger to threats who was there because he admired on his life. As early as 1964, at the first John." Others, like WPLJ Disc Jockey Beatles concert in France, Lennon got Carol Miller, who lives near the Dako- a note backstage that read, "I am going ta, had aoticed Chapman and thought to shoot you at 9 tonight." He had only .. he looked strange. He was older than lately become accustomed to the free- the kids who hung around there." When wheeling anarchy of New York street Miller first heard that Lennon had been life: "I can go out this door now and go I I shot. Chapman's face flashed in her int a restaurant ... Do you want to mind. know how great that is?" he told the On Saturday night, Chapman hailed BBC. But friends remember him as be- ~ cab and told Driver Mark Snyder to ing guarded both in public and around take him to Greenwich Village. On the the few people he and Ono met during way he boasted that he had just dropped the long years of self-willed isolation off the tapes of an album John Lennon that were only ending with the comple- and Paul McCartney made that day. He tion of the new album. "John was al- said that he was the recording engineer ways wary," says his friend, Actor Peter and that they had played for three hours. Boyle. "Maybe partly because he was ex-

TIME. DECEMBER 22. 1980 19 while were still gigging around. ''I knew John ly, and so seismically, that their chronology can be given like a would always be a bohemian," Aunt Mimi recalled. "But I code, or an association game in which words, phrases, snatches wanted him to have some sort of job. Here he was nearly 21 of lyrics, names, can stand for whole years. Even the skeptical years old, touting round stupid halls for £ 3 a night. Where on either side of the Beatles generation will be startled to see was the point in that?" how easily they can play along. Start off with an easy one. Well, the point was the music, a peak-velocity transplant of Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now you're off . . . Ed Sullivan. Jelly babies. American rock, with its original blistering spirit not only re­ Plaza Hotel. Moptops. Arthur and A Hard Day's Night. The Ma­ stored but exalted. There was some concern for the future, how­ harishi and M.B.E.s. Sergeant Pepper. LSD. Apple. "More pop­ ever. A record-store owner named Brian Epstein ular than Jesus." . White Album. Yesterday. "I'd thought he might be able to lend a hand there. He signed on as to turn you on." Jane, Patti, Cynthia. Linda. Yoko. "Paul the group's manager in 1961. By is dead." Abbey Road. . the end of the following year, the A vigil at the Dakota entrance where Lennon was shot The history and the resonance boys got their first record contract of those fragments are so strong and their first producer, George that even out of chronological se­ Martin, who remained aboard for quence they form their own as­ the crazy cruise that came to be sociations, like a Joseph Cornell called . There was collage. Some of the colors may one final change of personnel: be psychedelic, but the shadings Drummer was replaced are the pastel of memory, the pa­ by a gentleman named Richard tina madeofremembered melody. Starkey, who favored quantities of Lennon, the only wedded Beatie heavy jewelry, most of it worn on -he had married Cynthia in 1962 the digits, and who went by the and had a son, Julian-had early name of Ringo Starr. been typed as the most restless, It took just a month for the outspoken and creative of the second Beatles single, Please group, even though he led, out­ Please Me, to reach the top of the wardly, the most settled life. English charts. That was in Jan­ There was paradox in this pop­ uary of 1963. By the end of that ular portrait, just as there was con­ year, they had released She Loves siderable tension in Lennon's be­ You and appeared live on a BBC lief that the well-noted contradic­ variety show in front of thousands tions were true. There were both of screaming fans in the audience beauty and ambition in his mu­ and unverifiable millions of new sic, and a full measure of turmoil converts and dazed parents sitting too. He was experimenting with at home in front of the telly. I drugs and working up some of the Want to Hold Your Hand came material that would eventually out in the U.S. in the first week find its way into Sergeant Pepper's of 1964, and it seemed then for a Lonely Hearts Club Band, when while that both sides of the At­ he walked into a London gallery lantic were up for grabs. Beatles in 1966 and there, among ladders, forever. spyglasses, nail boards, banners Some history becomes myth, and other props of her art, met some myth goes down in history, . some statistics boggle the mind: The daughter of a well-to-do the Beatles have sold, all over the Japanese banker, Ono, now 47, world, upwards of 200 million rec­ was born in Tokyo. She had lived ords. They made history so quick- in San Francisco before World 22 TIME, DECE MBER 22, 1980 War II, foraged for food back home during it, and afterward re­ flies crawling. of dozens of bare bums. They made records. rn­ turned to the States, where she attended Sarah Lawrence Col­ cluding the notorious Two Virgins, for which they posed lege and became interested in the far-flung reaches of the avant­ naked, front and back. Shock! Scandal! Grim predictions for garde. Her first husband was a Japanese musician. The marriage the future! so offended Ono's mother that she never reconciled with her In fact, there was already a fair amount of dissension among daughter. She worked on concerts for John Cage, became as­ the members of the band: McCartney wanted to get out more sociated with other artists such as La Monte Young and Char­ and play for the folks, Lennon wanted to work in the recording lotte Moorman, the topless cellist whose staging of and partic­ studio, like an artist with a canvas. The ideological pressures ipation in art "events" came a little later to be called happenings. and upheavals of the decade made the four Beatles stand out in Ono married again, a conceptual artist named Tony Cox, and even sharper contrast to each other. John became much more po­ they had a daughter, Kyoko. Ono once brought the baby on­ litical, George more spiritual, Paul seemingly more larky, and stage during a concert as "an uncontrollable instrument." Even­ Ringo more social. In the more than two years between Ser­ tually, Cox and Kyoko went to Japan, and Ono to England. geant Pepper and Abbey Road, Lennon and McCartney wrote, Her artworks, or happenings, began to show a sense of separately and still (but more tenuously) together, some of their humor that was both self-mocking and affirmative, and when greatest songs (, , and Straw­ John Lennon climbed a ladder to look through a telescope at berry Fields Forever). But if the turmoil had an immediate, pro­ that London gallery, what he saw was no distant landscape but ductive side, it also took an inevitable toll. In 1969, after the a simple YES.

he other Beatles were not delighted to have Ono around. Besides whatever personal antagonisms or random jeal­ ousies might have existed, one suspects now, Paul, T George and Ringo may have considered her dedicated avant-gardism somewhat inimical to the best popular instincts of their music. For her part, she felt she was under heavy sur­ veillance. "I sort of went to bed with this guy that I liked and sud­ denly the next morning I see these three in-laws standing there," she recalled recently. John, separated from Cynthia, fell in love with Yoko and her ideas. Some of her conceptual art had the same intellectual playfulness as his lyrics, and Lennon became a collaborator in many of her projects. They made films-of

Always a Pun up His Sleeve ennon loved language, the sounds it takes to fill the Albert Hall. And you think you 're so clever L and rhymes and elastic elusiveness I'd love to turn you on. and classless and free. of words, and, like a dandy with a lace - But you 're stillf-ing peasants handkerchief, he liked to keep a pun up as far as I can see. his sleeve. The early songs, all written Nothing is real A working-class hero is in collaboration with Paul McCartney, And nothing to get hungabout. something to be. were playful, ebullient, rich in imagina­ Strawberry Fields forever. -Working-Class Hero tion. On his own, Lennon planed down -Strawberry Fields Forever the richness of the words into a sparse­ God is a concept ness that matched the immediacy of the Elementary penguin singing By which we measure music. Hare Our pain ... Krishna man you should have You just have to carry on Since you left me, I'm so alone. seen them The dream is over. Now you 're coming, you 're Kicking Edgar Allan Poe. -God coming home .. . I am the eggman, oh, they are Itwoncbelong,yeh,yeh. theeggmen- Imagine there's 110 heaven. -It Won't Be Long Oh, GOO GOO It's easy ifyou try. GOOJOOB. No hell below us There are places J'll remember -I Am the Walrus And above us only sky. All my life, though some have -Imagine changed, Picture yourselfon a train in a Some forever, not for better, station, All we are saying is give peace a Some have gone and some With plasticine porters wirh chance. remain. looking-glass Ties, - -In My Life Suddenly someone is rhere al the turnsrile, People asking questions lost in He's a real Nowhere Man, The girl with kaleidoscope eyes. confusion Sitting in his Nowhere Land, -Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds Well I tell them there's no Making all his Nowhere plans for problem, only solutions . .. nobody. Ha/fofwhar I say is meaningless, /'mjust sitting here watching the -Nowhere Man Bur I say il just to reach you, wheels go round and round. Julia. I really love to watch them roll, And though the holes were rather -Julia No longer riding on the merry-go­ small, round. They had to count them all. Keep you doped with religion and I just had to let it go. Now they know how many holes sex and TV -Watching the Wheels

TIME, DECEMBER 22. 1980 23 completion of Abbey Road, John told the boys he was leaving. yield nourishment, not be slaughtered for it. Ono took care of Next year, McCartney went his own way and that, one all the details, and Lennon did not know about the sale of one would have thought, was that. End of Beatles, end of era. But of the cows until he read an item in the paper. He was even the Beatles would never go away because their music endured; more pleased than surprised. "Only Yoko," he said admiringly, it became part of a common heritage, a shared gift. No matter "could sell a cow for $250,000." how many times they were played in elevators or gas stations, Ono could do a lot more than that. The banker's daughter Beatles songs were too vibrant ever to qualify as "standards." set herself to mastering the mysteries of commercial law and That these were Beatles songs, not the single expression of an in­ deal making just as, earlier, she had wrestled with the exotic ex­ dividual, needs to be remembered amid all the Lennon eulo­ igencies of John Cage. She met the attorneys and the accoun­ gies, which call him the strong creative force of the group. tants; she supervised the buying up of property in Palm Beach, In the process of riding out all the massive changes of the Fla., Cold Spring Harbor, an exclusive enclave on Long Island, '60s and bringing about a few on their own, the Beatles also and in upstate New York. When the Lennons decided to make trashed an elementary law of geometry: this was one whole another album earlier this year, it was Ono who called Record that was greater than the sum of its parts. Lennon was unfairly Executive David Geffen and worked out the deal. used as a means to put McCartney in his place, although Len­ non had taken pains lately to redefine details of his collabo­ he Lennons may have been taking a step or two aside ration with Paul, and to make sure credit was distributed ac­ from art, living quietly, but they were not hermits. They curately. The melodic range of the music ran from marching were collecting themselves, looking for a center, a core. band to rhythm and blues, from tonal stunt flying to atonal ac­ T It seemed hard to understand, but shouldn't have been. robatics, once in a while all in the same song. The Beatles sang Ono sat behind the desk and John stayed home with the little ballads that could almost be Elizabethan, rockers that still sound boy. Julian, Lennon's other, older son, was now a teen-ager as if they come from the distant future, and it was hard to peg who lived in Britain with his mother, but wore leather jackets all that invention to any single source. Lennonjoked about walk­ and jeans, like his Dad back in the days of the Quarrymen, and ing into a restaurant and being saluted by the band with a ren­ talked of becoming a rocker. John did not see Julian often, and dition of Yesterday, a pure McCartney effort. Many radio and said recently, "I don't remember seeing him as a child." But Len­ video memorials to Lennon included Let It non suggested that he had lately wanted to Be, another Beatles tune that was all know Julian better, and one of the most McCartney. haunted faces in last week's gallery of grief If it was hard to keep the credits straight was Julian's, enduring the same pain that with all the Beatles, it was harder still for had afflicted his father at almost the same them to keep their friendly equilibrium. Mc­ age some 25 years before. He, like John, Cartney, married to Linda Eastman and had lost a parent twice. staying close to the hearthside, released a se­ John gloried in playing parent to Sean, ries of albums that were roundly drubbed and liked to call himself a househusband. as corny, until he broke through splendidly What upset traditionalists was the fact that in 1973 with Band on the Run. Lennon, mar­ he obviously reveled in his domestic role. ried to Ono and living in New York, re­ This role reversal was seen by the man leased a great solo record, Plastic Ono Band, raised by an aunt and three of her sisters as then threw himself headlong into uncertain­ no threat at all. He insisted-indeed, proved ty. He and Ono lived in a series of elab­ -that he was putting nothing at risk, not orate post-hippie crash pads, became ob­ his manhood and not his artistry. sessed not only with artistic experimenta­ , the new record, dem­ tion but with radical political flamboyance. onstrated that. Ono's contributions are es­ Lennon's subsequent albums remained ach­ pecially accessible and congenial after years ingly personal, but turned increasingly ran­ of punk and New Wave conditioning. John's dom, unfocused. They were indignant and songs, simple, direct and melodic, were cel­ assaultive, adrift. ebrations of love and domesticity that asked When he and Ono separated for a time for, and required, no apology. It was not a in the early '70s, Lennon went on an 18- great record, like Plastic Ono Band, but it month bender of drink, drugs and general might have been the start of another time looniness. "We were all drinking too much of greatness. and tearing up houses," recalls one of his cronies at the time, The subjects of Double Fantasy, released last month, were Drummer Jim Keltner. "No one drank like he did. He had bro­ supposedly not the stuff of rock, but John Lennon never bound ken up with Ono and was with another woman at the time. Sud­ himself to tradition. "My life revolves around Sean," he told denly, he just started screaming out Ono's name. That sepa­ some radio interviewers from San Francisco on the afternoon ration from her almost killed him." Being treated as some sort of the day he was killed. "Now I have more reason to stay ofwitchy parasite was no treat for the estranged Mrs. Lennon ei­ healthy and bright ... And I want to be with my best friend. ther, and when they both finally reconciled, they changed their My best friend's me wife. If I couldn't have worked with her, I lives in unexpected ways. wouldn't have bothered . .. I consider that my work won't be fin­ ished until I'm dead and buried, and I hope that's a long, long ennon released one more record-a collection ofrock old­ time." As he spoke those words, Mark David Chapman waited ies-then settled back with Ono in the Dakota to raise for him out on the street. their son Sean, who was born on Oct. 9, 1975, the day of Lennon's death was not like 's. Presley seemed, Lhis father's birthday. Said Lennon: "We're like twins." Oc­ at the end, trapped, defeated and hopeless. Lennon could casionally, John and Ono would go public, often to fight the ul­ have gone that way too, could have destroyed himself. But he timately unsuccessful attempts of the Nixon Justice Depart­ did something harder. He lived. And, for all the fame and ment to deport Lennon on an old marijuana conviction in finance, that seemed to be what he took the most pride in. England. Mostly, however, they stayed at home, rearing Sean, re­ "He beat the rock-'n'-roll life," Steve Van Zandt said the decorating the 25 rooms in their four Dakota apartments (art day after Lennon died. "Beat the drugs, beat the fame, beat deco and artifacts of ancient Egypt, including a sarcophagus in the damage. He was the only guy who beat it all." That was the living room; blue clouds painted on the ceiling of a down­ the victory Mark Chapman took from John Lennon, who had stairs office), expanding their financial holdings (Lennon left an abundance of what everyone wants and wanted only an estate estimated at $235 million), buying property and Hol­ what so many others have, and take for granted. A home a.nd stein COWS. family. Some still center of love. A life. One minute The Holsteins were selected because they were meant to more. -By Jay Cocks 24 TIME, DECEMBER 22, 1980 Nation For a time he seemed more stable. His father, a loan col­ lector in an bank, gave him money for a round-the­ A Lethal Delusion world trip. In June 1979, the stocky (5 ft. 11 in., 195 lbs.) Chap­ man married Gloria Abe, the attractive Japanese American The twisted man who wanted to be Lennon who planned the itinerary. Though Chapman earned only $4 an hour as a security guard, money seems not to have been a "The presidential assassin establishes with his problem: the couple lived in a $400-a-month apartment in a victim a deadly intimacy. follows his movements, downtown Honolulu high-rise, and Chapman was able to in­ attaches himself to his rising star.. , Historian dulge his newest passion, art. He bought expensive works and Christopher Lasch was writing about political as­ last year purchased a $7,500 lithograph by Norman Rockwell. sassins, but he might have been describing Mark Like his earlier love of music, art became an obsession, and he • David Chapman, 25, the accused murderer of would spend hours in Honolulu galleries and contact dealers all John Lennon. Since he was a child, Chapman had attached him­ over the country for information on works in which he was self to his hero's star, first as fan, then as imitator, finally as kill­ interested. er. Indeed, it is possible that in some distorted, Dostoyevskian Some time in October, Chapman's bad side took over com­ mirror within his mind, he saw himself as Lennon-and the pletely. On Oct. 23 he quit his job, signing out in the logbook, real Lennon as a threatening impostor. John Lennon. Four days later he walked into J and S Sales, a In Atlanta, where Chapman spent most of his childhood, gun shop just a block from the main Honolulu police station. Be­ he joined a high school rock band and, like millions of oth­ cause he had no arrest record, a salesman sold him a Charter ers, worshiped the Beatles. He wore his hair long, in the dis­ Arms .38-cal. revolver (price: $169). "It's the type used by tinctive Beatles cut, with strands flopping like a sheepdog's over detectives and plainclothes police because it is easy to his forehead. He experimented with drugs, which his idols con­ conceal," explains Steve Grahovac, the store's owner. doned, and dropped acid when he was only ., It is also the type Arthur Bremer used 15. His parents strongly disapproved of the to gun down George Wallace in 1972-a drugs, as well as of the Beatles, and would grotesque coincidence that prompted Chi­ not let him play their records in the house. cago Sun-Times Columnist Mike Royko to They searched his room, and once. when write, with biting effect: "Now that Char-

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Invoice for the Charter Arms .38-cal. gun Logbook with his victim's faked signature

his mother warned him not to lock his bed­ ter Arms Corp. has the unique distinction room door, he pried it off its hinges, took it of having two famous people shot by one downstairs and leaned it against the kitchen of their products, I wonder if they have con­ wall. He resisted authority, fought with his Chapman in his Fort Chaffee days (1975) sidered using it in their advertising. Some­ younger sister, and ran away from home sev- "I've got a good side and a bad side. " thing simple and tasteful like: 'The .38 that eral times. All the while he identified got George Wallace and John Lennon. See closely with Lennon, the most rebellious of the Beatles. it at your gun dealer now.' " Still, he was not a delinquent. Most people appeared to like Chapman flew to the mainland in November and spent him, and he became a counselor at an Atlanta Y.M.C.A. "He two days in Atlanta before returning to Honolulu. Earlier this seemed to really want to find a way to serve," says Tony Ad­ month he came back to Manhattan with at least 2,000 bor­ ams, who was the Y's executive director. "If ever there was a per­ rowed dollars for his fateful rendezvous outside the Dakota. son who had the potential for doing good, it was Mark." After he shot Lennon, Chapman said, "I've got a good side sychiatrists believe that the best clue to what went wrong and a bad side. The bad side is very small, but sometimes it P in Chapman's head is his signing of Lennon's name in the takes over the good side and I do bad things." For most of the logbook last October. That act, they say, may indicate that he '70s, the good side seemed to be in control. After graduating was losing what little remained of an obviously fragile sense of from high school in 1973, he got a full-time job at the Y, going identity. "He had a superidentification with Lennon, but he so far as to sign up in 1975 as a missionary in Lebanon. The was also in competition with him," says Manhattan Psychi­ trip was his dream, but civil war broke out shortly after he ar­ atrist David Abrahamsen, who examined David Berkowitz, the rived in Beirut, and he was forced to return home. Aware of his "Son of Sam" killer. "His murder of Lennon was a substitution dedication as well as his disappointment, the organization sent for his own suicide." him to help Vietnamese refugees who were awaiting resettle­ To be sure, the parallels that Chapman established between ment at Fort Chaffee, Ark. "He was especially drawn to small his own life and Lennon's were startling: both loved music as ad­ children," says Gregg Lyman, one of his co-workers Adds olescents, both were in rock groups, both loved children, both Y.M.C.A. Executive David Moore: "The problems of the people were devoted to helping others, and both married Asian wom­ really got into his gut. He cared." en who were older than themselves (Lennon's wife by seven Chapman's other side appears to have begun its ascendan­ years, Chapman's by four) . "There's very strong evidence that cy a year later, after a college romance fizzled. He dropped out Chapman very much wanted to be Lennon," says Stuart Ber­ of , a small Presbyterian school in Tennessee, ger, a New York forensic psychiatrist. "He slowly became de­ after one semester, worked as a security guard in Atlanta, then lusional and incorporated Lennon into his sense of self. The moved to Hawaii. Depressed. however, by the unhappy love af­ only obstacle that stood in the way of his becoming Lennon fair and the impending divorce of his parents, he tried to kill him­ was Lennon." Now, as he sits in detention at Rikers Island pris­ self with a car exhaust. Treated at Castle Memorial Hospital on complex in the East River, he must face the awful reality of outside Honolulu, he stayed on to do odd jobs. being Mark David Chapman. -By Gerald Clarke

TIME. DECEMBER 22, 1980 29