John Lennon

On the morning of 8 December 1980, photographer Annie Leibovitz went to Ono and Lennon’s apartment to do a photo shoot for Rolling Stone. She had promised Lennon a photo with Ono would make the cover, but initially tried to get a picture with just Lennon alone. Leibovitz recalled that “nobody wanted [Ono] on the cover”. Lennon insisted that both he and his wife be on the cover, and after taking the pictures, Leibovitz left their apartment. After the photo shoot, Lennon gave what would be his last interview to San Francisco DJ Dave Sholin for a music show on the RKO Radio Network. At 5:00 pm, Lennon and Ono left their apartment to mix the track “Walking on Thin Ice”, an Ono song featuring Lennon on lead guitar, at Record Plant Studio.
As Lennon and Ono walked to their limousine, they were approached by several people seeking autographs, among them, Mark David Chapman. It was common for fans to wait outside the Dakota to meet Lennon and get his autograph. Chapman, a 25-year-old security guard from Honolulu, Hawaii, had first come to New York to murder Lennon in October (before the release of Double Fantasy) but changed his mind and returned home.
Chapman silently handed Lennon a copy of Double Fantasy, and Lennon obliged with an autograph. After signing the album, Lennon politely asked him, “Is this all you want?” Chapman smiled and nodded in agreement. Photographer and Lennon fan Paul Goresh snapped a photo of the encounter.
The Lennons spent several hours at Record Plant before returning to the Dakota at approximately 10:50 pm. Lennon decided against dining out so he could be home in time to say goodnight to five-year-old son Sean before he went to sleep. In addition, Lennon liked to oblige any fans who had been waiting for long periods of time to meet him with autographs or pictures. The Lennons exited their limousine on 72nd Street instead of driving into the more secure courtyard of the Dakota, where they would have avoided Chapman.
Jose Perdomo, the Dakota’s doorman, and a nearby cab driver saw Chapman standing in the shadows by the archway. Ono walked ahead of Lennon and into the reception area. As Lennon passed by, he looked at Chapman briefly and continued on his way. Within seconds, Chapman took aim directly at the center of Lennon’s back and fired five hollow-point bullets at him from a Charter Arms .38 Special revolver.
The first bullet missed, passing over Lennon’s head and hitting a window of the Dakota building. However, two of the bullets struck Lennon in the left side of his back, and two penetrated his left shoulder. Three of the four bullets passed completely through and exited the front of Lennon’s body, resulting in a total of seven gunshot wounds. While all four shots inflicted severe gunshot wounds, the two fatal wounds were to his left lung and the left subclavian artery, near where it branches off of the aorta. Lennon, bleeding profusely from his external wounds and also from the mouth, staggered up five steps to the security/reception area and fell to the floor, scattering the arm-full of cassettes he had been carrying.
Doorman Perdomo shouted at Chapman, “Do you know what you’ve done?”, to which Chapman calmly replied, “Yes, I just shot John Lennon.” The first policemen to arrive were Steve Spiro and Peter Cullen, who were at 72nd Street and Broadway when they heard a report of shots fired at the Dakota. The officers found Chapman sitting “very calmly” on the sidewalk. They reported that Chapman had dropped the revolver to the ground, and was holding a paperback book, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Chapman had scribbled a message on the book’s inside front cover: “To Holden Caulfield. From Holden Caulfield. This is my statement.” He would later claim that his life mirrored that of Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of the book.
Dr. Stephan Lynn received Lennon in the emergency room at Roosevelt Hospital. When Lennon arrived, he had no pulse and was not breathing. Dr Lynn and two other doctors worked for 20 minutes, opening Lennon’s chest and attempting manual heart massage to restore circulation, but the damage to the blood vessels around the heart was too great. Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival in the emergency room at the Roosevelt Hospital at 11:15 pm by Dr Lynn, but the time of 11:07 pm has also been reported. The cause of death was reported as hypovolemic shock, caused by the loss of more than 80% of blood volume. Dr Elliott M. Gross, the Chief Medical Examiner, said that no one could have lived more than a few minutes with such multiple bullet injuries. As Lennon was shot four times with hollow-point bullets, which expand upon entering the target and severely disrupt more tissue as they travel through the target, Lennon’s affected organs were virtually destroyed upon impact.
The following day, Ono issued a statement: “There is no funeral for John. John loved and prayed for the human race. Please do the same for him. Love, Yoko and Sean.”