John Lennon Killer Mark Chapman Denied Parole for 12th Time

Mark David Chapman, the man who shot and killed John Lennon in 1980, he was denied parole for the 12th time, officials in the New York prison system told CNN .

Chapman, who is serving a 20-year life sentence at the Green Haven Correctional Facility in New York, appeared before the parole board on Aug. 31, the New York Department of Corrections and Community Oversight told CNN . Chapman has applied for parole every two years since 2000, when he first became eligible. He will remain in prison for at least two more years, at which time he will be able to apply for parole again.

The department has yet to release the transcript of Chapman’s most recent parole hearing.

On December 8, 1980, Chapman shot Lennon with a .38 caliber pistol, firing five shots and hitting Lennon in the back four times. Hours earlier, he had asked the former Beatle to autograph a copy of the album “Double Fantasy”, recorded with wife Yoko Ono. Lennon was returning from his last recording session with Ono when he was gunned down.

Chapman, who said he struggled with depression and other mental health issues throughout his life leading to Lennon’s murder, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in June 1981. He was sentenced two months later.

Ono has long opposed Chapman’s release, sending letters to the parole board asking to deny his requests, the Guardian reported in 2020, when he was denied parole for the 11th time.

In recent years, Chapman has expressed some remorse for killing Lennon. In 2018, when he was denied parole for the 10th time, he told the board that “with each passing year, I feel more and more shame.”

“What matters is that I’m sorry for my actions,” he told the board in 2018. “I’m sorry for my crime.”

At the time, prison officials said they denied the request because release would be incompatible with public safety. In a partially redacted statement, they wrote that Chapman killed Lennon “for no reason other than to gain notoriety.”