"The phony must die, says the Catcher in the Rye.
Don't believe in John Lennon.
Imagine John Lennon is dead, oh yeah, yeah, yeah!”
--Mark David Chapman’s chant, overheard by his wife, days before the murder.
In his Sheraton Hotel suite, he stands at the bureau, carefully arranging an altar. To the left he places a snapshot of himself, smiling broadly, arms around Vietnamese refugee children at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Next to it, he lays down his YMCA supervisor’s hand-printed letter of praise for exemplary service. Behind these, he tapes to the mirror the "Wizard of Oz" poster he picked up downtown yesterday, the one of Dorothy wiping away the Cowardly Lion's tears before she taps her ruby slippers and flies back to Kansas from Emerald City.
Now the former Christian camp counselor picks up the Gideon Bible, opens it to the Gospel of John title page and, in bold letters, carefully prints LENNON after it.
He steps back and beholds his display proudly, imagining all the reporters crowding the room, snapping pictures. Finally he reaches into his suitcase, withdraws the .38 Charter Arms revolver and slips it into the inside pocket of his overcoat.
Dec. 8, 1980, is an unusually warm, spring-like day in New York as the bespectacled Mark David Chapman sets out from the Sheraton on foot.
Across town, John Lennon is enjoying his after-breakfast Gitane and cappuccino at La Fortuna, his favorite neighborhood cafe. His wife, Yoko Ono, is reviewing with him her arrangements for yet another busy day of interviews and photo sessions for their album "Double Fantasy." She tells him they need to step up the publicity blitz and give Rolling Stone a good cover later this morning.
John groans. This is not his favorite part of the business. The fans in front of the Dakota Hotel are growing. Only yesterday, Sunday, he’d chased after some bespectacled nerd who wouldn’t stop shooting pictures of him. Yoko managed to call him off. “If anyone gets me, it’s going to be a fan!” he told her, letting the kid go.
As Chapman makes his way beneath the canopy of the sunlit skyscrapers, he hears the weeping of his own dear wife, Gloria. He’d left her in tears at the Honolulu airport gate. He’d had an appointment with a psychiatrist only days before, but failed to show up. He assured Gloria that he was flying to New York to find a job and make a new life for them both. But he keeps hearing her crying, which again gives way to the voices of his Little People, who have been with him since childhood. "Please, think of your wife,” they plead. “Please, Mr. President. Think of your mother. Think of yourself!"
It’s 11:30 a.m. now and John Lennon is lying naked on the floor of the White Room, curled in a fetal position around a fully clothed Yoko Ono. At the periphery of the umbrellaed spots, Rolling Stone’s Annie Leibovitz circles the couple with her camera exclaiming “Yes!" "Hold that!" "Great!”
Six stories below, Mark Chapman, standing at the front of a small crowd of fans now, is peering up at the Gothic, high-gabled edifice of the Dakota.
