John Lennon’s killer wants to live with NY minister if released from jail

New York - John Lennon’s killer said a minister in upstate New York offered him a place to live and work if he had been granted parole.

Mark Chapman, 57, made a seventh failed bid to become a free man earlier this month where he spoke about his love for God, his regrets over the ex-Beatle’s murder and his hopes for the future, the New York Daily News reported.
 
Chapman, who fatally shot Lennon multiple times as he walked into his Dakota apartment building with wife Yoko Ono, can still describe the incident in chilling detail.
 
In a transcript of the Aug. 22 parole board hearing, the murderer remembers Lennon as a “very cordial and very decent man” who stopped to sign his album cover earlier the same day.
 
“He was very kind to me,” Chapman said. “Ironically, very kind and was very patient with me. The limousine was waiting, his wife was waiting in the limousine, and he took his time with me and he got the pen going and he signed my album. He asked me if I needed anything else. I said, no. No, sir and he walked way.”
 
Chapman, 25 at the time, laid in wait outside the upper West Side building for 11 hours until the musician returned, and shot him from behind.
 
He was sentenced in 1981 to 20 years to life in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.
 
“I was so compelled to commit that murder that nothing would have dragged me away from that building,” he said.
 
Chapman says God found him during his time behind bars and claims he carried out the cold-blooded killing for attention and notoriety, something he now deeply regrets.
 
“It had nothing to do with being a Beatle’s fan when I was very, very young or anything like that at all,” Chapman said.
 
“Absolutely not worth it. Absolutely ridiculously selfish act to take another human life so that I could be pumped up into, you know, something that I wasn’t to begin with,” he added.