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John Lennon's Killer, Mark David Chapman, Denied Parole for the 10th Time
John Lennon‘s killer will remain behind bars.
According to NBC News, Mark David Chapman was denied parole for the 10th time this week after meeting with New York’s parole board on Wednesday. In a denial obtained by The Associated Press, per NBC News, the board stated Chapman’s release “would be incompatible with the welfare and safety of society and would so deprecate the serious nature of the crime as to undermine respect for the law.”
As a result of this decision, Chapman will spend at least two more years in prison. Per NBC News, he is serving his 20-years-to-life sentence at the Wende Correctional Facility in New York.
“You admittedly carefully planned and executed the murder of a world-famous person for no reason other than to gain notoriety,” the parole panel wrote in the denial, per NBC News. “While no one person’s life is any more valuable than another’s life, the fact that you chose someone who was not only a world renown person and beloved by millions, regardless of the pain and suffering you would cause to his family, friends and so many others, you demonstrated a callous disregard for the sanctity of human life and the pain and suffering of others.”
Ron Howard/Redferns
According to the statement obtained by The AP, per NBC News, the board expressed concern that releasing Chapman would not only “tend to mitigate the seriousness” of his crime but also endanger public safety in the sense that someone may attempt to injure him in an act of anger or revenge or to obtain notoriety.
The decision came two years after Chapman’s last parole denial. He will have to wait until August 2020 before being up for parole again.
Chapman shot and killed the former Beatles band member outside of Lennon’s New York apartment on Dec. 8, 1980. Chapman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 1981.
During his 2016 attempt for release, Chapman reportedly described his younger self as a sociopath.
“I was obsessed on one thing and that was shooting him so that I could be somebody,” Chapman said at the time, per The New York Times. He later reportedly added, “And 35 years later I see what a horrible decision that was and how selfish it was,”