Thursday March 28th, 2024 9:56AM

Parole denied yet again for Lennon's killer

By The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) -- John Lennon's killer was denied release from prison in his eighth appearance before a parole board, New York corrections officials said Friday.<br /> <br /> The decision on Mark David Chapman by a three-member board came after a hearing Wednesday, the state Department of Corrections said.<br /> <br /> Chapman fired five shots on Dec. 8, 1980, outside the Dakota apartment house where Lennon lived on Manhattan's Upper West Side, hitting the ex-Beatle four times in front of his wife, Yoko Ono, and others. He was sentenced in 1981 to 20 years to life in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.<br /> <br /> An attorney for Ono said Friday that she had no immediate comment.<br /> <br /> The panel wrote to the 59-year-old Chapman that it concluded that if released, "you would not live and remain at liberty without again violating the law." It added: "This victim had displayed kindness to you earlier in the day, and your actions have devastated a family and those who lived the victim."<br /> <br /> At his previous hearing in 2012, Chapman described how Lennon had agreed to autograph an album cover for him earlier on the day of the killing.<br /> <br /> "He was very kind to me," he said.<br /> <br /> After that, "I did try to tell myself to leave. I've got the album, take it home, show my wife, everything will be fine," he said. "But I was so compelled to commit that murder that nothing would have dragged me away from the building."<br /> <br /> At a 2010 hearing, Chapman recalled that he had considered shooting Johnny Carson or Elizabeth Taylor instead, and said again that he chose Lennon because the ex-Beatle was more accessible, that his century-old apartment building by Central Park "wasn't quite as cloistered."<br /> <br /> The transcript of his latest hearing wasn't immediately released. Chapman can try again for parole in two years.
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