The man who shot and killed John Lennon in 1980 was denied parole for the 12th time
Mark David Chapman, the man who shot and killed John Lennon in New York's Upper West Side over 40 years ago, was denied parole for the 12th time.
The 67-year-old prisoner, serving a 20-years-to-life sentence at Green Haven Correctional Facility in New York, was once again denied parole in August. The parole board has decided to keep Chapman behind bars every two years since he was first eligible for parole in 2000.
Additional details about Chapman's parole case, including the transcript, have yet to be made available through the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
When Chapman was denied in 2018, his 10th time seeking parole, the panel told NPR that releasing him would be "incompatible with the welfare and safety of society." Chapman had shown "a callous disregard" of human pain and suffering, the panel said.
Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, has historically sent a letter to the parole board every two years to request her husband's murderer remain in prison, CNN reported.
Chapman traveled from Hawaii to New York to assassinate Lennon on Dec. 8, 1980, and had even met the Beatles star earlier that same day, according to the 2012 parole hearing transcript. During that parole hearing, Chapman told the panel that he had briefly struggled internally on whether to carry out the murder.
"It wasn't all totally cold-blooded, but most of it was. I did try to tell myself to leave. I've got the album, take it home, show my wife, everything will be fine," Chapman said in 2012. "But I was so compelled to commit that murder that nothing would have dragged me away from that building."
His next opportunity for parole is scheduled for February 2024, the Associated Press reported. [Copyright 2022 NPR]
