December 8: On This Day in World History … briefly
Forty-year old ex-Beatle John Lennon was murdered in New York while he and his wife Yoko Ono were walking into their apartment building. A man approached and shot Lennon five times.
1980: John Lennon shot dead
John Lennon was an English musician who gained worldwide fame as a member of the Beatles, for his subsequent solo career, and for his political activism and pacifism. On the evening of Monday, 8 December 1980, Lennon was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman in the archway of the Dakota, his residence in New York City. Lennon had just returned from Record Plant Studio with his wife Yoko Ono.
After sustaining four major gunshot wounds, Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival at Roosevelt Hospital. Shortly after local news stations reported Lennon’s death, crowds gathered at Roosevelt Hospital and in front of the Dakota. Lennon was cremated at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York on 10 December; the ashes were given to Ono, who chose not to hold a funeral for him. The first media report of Lennon’s death to a US national audience was announced by sportscaster Howard Cosell, on ABC’s Monday Night Football.
Mark David Chapman (born May 10, 1955), the American murderer who shot and killed John Lennon at the entrance to the Dakota apartment building in New York City on December 8, 1980. Chapman fired five times at Lennon, hitting him four times in the back and later sat down on a nearby pavement reading JD Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye until he was arrested by the police. He has repeatedly said that the novel was his statement.
Chapman’s legal team intended to mount an insanity defense that would be based on expert testimony he was in a delusional psychotic state at the time of the killing. As the trial approached, Chapman instructed his lawyers he wanted to plead guilty, based on his assertion of what he had decided was the will of God.
After Chapman denied hearing voices, the judge allowed the plea change without further psychiatric assessment and sentenced him to a prison term of 20-years-to life, with a stipulation mental health treatment would be provided. Chapman has been imprisoned ever since, having been denied parole ten times amidst campaigns against his release after he became eligible in 2000
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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