3: John Lennon shot and killed by Mark David Chapman in New York City
John Lennon was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman on December 8, 1980. Lennon was shot as he entered the Dakota, his luxury apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, opposite Central Park, at approximately 11PM Eastern Time. He was rushed in a police car to St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital Center, where he died. Only hours before, Chapman asked Lennon for his autograph and waited for him to return to his apartment. Lennon was shot four times in the back.
Chapman pleaded guilty to gunning down Lennon and is currently serving life in Attica prison near New York. In October 2004 he failed for the third time to secure his release. Chapman claimed he had heard voices in his head telling him to kill the world-famous musician.
On the morning of December 8, photographer Annie Leibovitz went to the Dakota to do a photo shoot for Rolling Stone. She had promised Lennon it would make the cover, but she initially tried to get a picture with just Lennon alone. When Lennon insisted that both he and Yoko be on the cover, Leibovitz then tried to recreate the kissing scene from the Double Fantasy album cover, a picture that she loved.
In the early evening John and Yoko went to the Record Plant to supervise the transfer of songs from Double Fantasy to singles. They left at around 10:30, and instead of going out to get something to eat, John wanted to go home to say goodnight to his five year old son, Sean.
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Kathy O’Connell, Host of Kids Corner for WXPN, was working in New York when it happened
Tess Coffey, Assistant to the GM at XPN, remembers this day
Bob McMahon from Lansdowne, PA was in college in 1980
Mark from New Castle, DE heard the news during Monday Night Football
BBC – On This Day – John Lennon shot dead
The Day Lennon died
I was at the Bruce Springsteen concert in Philly that night. It was, as usual, a great show. Bruce came back out for an encore …but it was a sad slow song (forget the song). I remember thinking it was an odd choice for an arena that was on its feet. When we got out to the car we heard that John Lennon had been shot…
I wish I could remember the song Bruce did…I’m sure its what he felt like playing after he heard the news.
Assassinations…one of the events my generation got use to….
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:12 pmI was a freshman at Postdam College walking across campus when I heard the news. I just couldn’t believe it. How? Why? What a loss. I remember the nationwide moment of silence they had on radio and I still remember walking to my part time job a couple years later listening to Paul Simon’s “The Late Great Johnny Ace”, missing him even more.
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:45 amplease stop printing that name! ‘john lennon was murdered by some psycho’ would do. ‘john lennon was murdered by a disturbed fan’ is fine. i’ll even accept ‘john lennon was murdered by some guy who needed a hug’. but please stop printing that guy’s name. he shot lennon so he would be famous. don’t give him that!
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:44 pmwith regard to the insanity of Chapman, an 885 submission by Graham Brown that was played during the past couple of weeks - about sums up the outrageous Chapman. How, “Blind” does one need to be to erase one of the worlds greatest proponents of Love, Peace and Understanding.
I remember watching a special about the murder of John that included the deranged maniac making ludicris statements about how no one should have been so loved - and Graham Brown’s song really makes sense and poses an excellent observation - Just how “Blind” must one be, whether blinded by their own insanity, to take such an action.
Finally, they should never even consider releasing that lunitic back into our world
A Fan
October 25th, 2007 at 2:08 amI was sitting in our loft in NYC with my 4 year old daughter.. 7 monhts pregnant and heard the news.
Shocked, I remember thinking we should really go uptown.. but knew it was impossible… me, big and clumsy and my daughter too little to know why I would drag her out into such a crowd.
It was really strange. Complete strangers in my neighborhood would talk about it to anyone and everyone. It was as if a dear friend had just died.
Huge sense of a loss in the family .
October 26th, 2007 at 12:10 amI remember listening to the radio that night Micheal Tierson was on mmr. He was playing the entire beatles cataloge.When he got to Happiness is a warm gun I broke down.
November 18th, 2007 at 9:01 am