Chapman Recounts Lennon Murder

To hear his killer tell it, John Lennon didn't stand a chance.

NBC has obtained decade-old tapes of Mark David Chapman's chilling account of his plot to assassinate the ex-Beatle, which the network plans to air Friday on a two-hour Dateline NBC. (The episode is actually a licensed British documentary titled I Killed John Lennon.) The broadcast is the latest Lennon-related event coming between the 65th anniversary of his birth in October and the 25th anniversary of his death next month.

"The timing of this is macabre," says Yoko Ono's spokesman, Elliot Mintz. "She thinks it's outrageous."

Chapman, now 50, is serving 20 years to life in prison for the Dec. 8, 1980 shooting death of Lennon in front of Manhattan's Dakota apartment building.

In transcripts released by NBC, Chapman discusses the fateful evening. Hours earlier, Chapman had encountered Lennon and Ono on the sidewalk and got Lennon to autograph a copy of Double Fantasy; then he spotted them returning from a late-night recording session.

"It's kind of cold and there's a little wind and I somehow knew that this was it, that this was the day. And all of a sudden from way across on Central Park West I see a limo. And I know that, that it's him, I have this incredible feeling," Chapman says. "And John Lennon's car pulled up. I heard a voice in my head, saying 'do it, do it, do it.' And as he passed me I pulled out the gun, aimed at his back and pulled the trigger five times in succession.

"I was under total compulsion," Chapman continues. "It was like a train, a runaway train, there was no stopping it."

The interviews were recorded in 1991 and 1992 by author Jack Jones, who penned the Chapman biography Let Me Take You Down. But the majority of the sessions have never aired publicly save a brief excerpt that was featured in a Court TV special in 2000, in which Chapman said his troubled relationship with his father was partially to blame for the slaying.

In the NBC documentary, Chapman elaborates on his motives.

"There was a successful man who kind of had the world on a chain, so to speak, and there I was, not even a link of that chain, just a person who had no personality," he says. "And something in me just broke."

He goes on: "I was sitting cross-legged on the carpet of my apartment. And I remember opening up the Sgt. Pepper album. And The Catcher in the Rye was very prominent...And I remember saying in my mind 'what if I killed him.' And I remember thinking perhaps my identity would be found in the killing of John Lennon."

Chapman, who claims he has been reformed in prison, has repeatedly been denied a shot a parole.

His first chance for parole in 2000 was rejected by the parole board panel after Ono wrote a letter saying she believes Chapman is still a threat to herself and Lennon's two sons, Sean and Julian. A second bid for freedom was nixed in 2002, when the board deemed him "unpredictable." And despite his good behavior behind bars, the board shot down Chapman's third attempt in 2004 after Ono restated her fears.

Chapman's next opportunity for parole comes up again in October 2006.

In the meantime, his crime will be given the cinematic treatment in the film Chapter 27, starring Jared Leto as the killer and Lindsay Lohan as a Beatles fan who befriends Chapman days before the murder.

In recent weeks, Ono has released a book, Memories of John Lennon, and a new compilation album, Working Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon. She also plans to remaster Lennon's entire music library for release on CD and via download. Lennon's first wife, Cynthia, has also written a tell-all called John. And the 1988 documentary Imagine will be released as a deluxe DVD on Dec. 6.

There are also events scheduled to take place at Central Park's Strawberry Fields.