Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 316: The Assassination of John Lennon Part II

Episode Date: May 12, 2018

On the conclusion to our series, we cover Mark David Chapman's slow descent into madness and the day that changed the world of music forever. Samba Isobel Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Niles Blues Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Feelin Good Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed und

There's no place to escape to. This is the last stop. On the left. Why? That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? When I do Paul accent, I talk like this. I'm off-tap like this.

It's a bippity-boop. They wrote a song. It's bippity-dub. I take little noises. They put it in the song. But the John Lennon is down like this. John Lennon's like, hey, look, Yoko, I bought a new shirt today. It's from Target.

And she's like, ah! So it is a funny joke. Beautiful impressions. Welcome to the last podcast. On the left, everyone. I am Ben Kissel with Marcus Parks. Hello. All right.

We got, I guess, British. Is that right? Henry Zabrowski over there? I'm from Liverpool. I try to keep it down low like this. It's a sing-songy voice and you write like this and a little bit of a dip and a little bit of a dope. Oh my gosh.

Try not to move your head with that. That's amazing. I'm trying to grasp how to be a better performer. Your gosh. And I sat and I listened to John Lennon speak a little bit just to try to get it. And I know that if I just actually tried, maybe I could do it. Yeah. Let me tell you.

Well, the thing about the Beatles is that nobody ever thought that they'd really get this big. I don't know what the hell's going on, but I like it. I think that's close. That was good. That was good. All right. We're on to part two of this maniac, this Mark David Chapman character.

We had a lot more to discuss here and the little folks, I guess, are coming back up. Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. So when we last left Mark David Chapman, he had developed a drinking habit, was deeply in debt, and his mental health was rapidly deteriorating. I do like the idea of developing a drinking habit like you're the scientist inventing flubber in the basement. Not now, honey, I'm inventing, I'm developing a drinking habit like you're just slamming

beers. Yes, that is correct. With Mark David Chapman, too, what I like is when people write about him in general, they always do the zip-zap-zap of like, he started to work as a security guard, and then he found Catcher in the Rye, and then he read a book about John Lennon and Yippity-Dip, he went and he murdered John Lennon. But they negate the fact that he became a shuffling, muttering, crazy person. Like he became a street person, like in a second.

I mean, he still had a house and a wife and shit, but at the time it was like he was going on autopilot into Cuckoo Bananas Town, and everyone was watching him descend. Alright, well not all the time though, because he could compartmentalize it. Like he would, he kept going back and forth between being that straight, shambling street person and then snapping back into it, and he was like, alright, time to go to work. Best of both worlds. Yeah, but the part of that was helping him tighten his bootlaces was the two buds he was having in a brown bag before going to work.

You gotta stop the shaking somehow. Well, about the time that his mental health started going downhill, that's when Mark David Chapman's childhood imaginary friends, the Little People, returned. Not good news. I love the Little People. The last time he made them up, these time, this time, they just like showed up. Oh, I see they came back to haunt him. Yeah, the last time it was like, okay, I'm going to create these little people this monarchy

so I can feel better about myself, but this time it's just like, hey Mark, describe this Marcus. It's kind of, it's weird, obviously, well, obviously it's very fucking, he's a sick man, he's very, he's demented, he'll be, the little folks are back. Well the arrangement between Mark and the Little People, it was no longer a monarchy. The Little People had grown up, put on three pieces, and had evolved into a democracy complete with cabinet positions. Oh my God.

Well, it's all very similar to what happened with fucking, with our last trip with Nicholas and with the creation of the Duma. Basically what happens is he was an autocrat, total control, and he had a lot of fun, but all of a sudden these very serious Little People show up in suits, and he has to negotiate with them in order to get shit done, which you find out is very difficult, especially when you're used to being an autocrat. Yeah, absolutely. Was there a little person president?

Well, there was one specifically loyal little person named Robert who used to take Mark David Chapman aside and kind of do one-on-one diplomacy with him. Okay. All the sense in the world, no way is this guy off his rocker. But no, well seriously, he sat down with his wife, Gloria, and she came in and she's like, Mark, we're spending a lot of money, you're buying first class tickets to these weird little vacations, you're just blowing money on all of these horseshit, you're weird art collections, because that was the thing during this time period, he became an art collector

and he started buying boring money from his family in order to buy pieces of art that he thought he could flip for more money, and he's like, I know I got the touch, I've seen an Antiques Roadshow and they all talk like me, but it turns out he's not a good business man and did not know how to flip art. I mean, to be fair though, that's a crucial part of investing for the 70s, 80s, 90s and up to the early 2000s, Beanie Babies, Hummels, my mom went Hummel crazy, she's like, I'm going to flip this for $10,000, no one wants them. Never did it, no one can flip a Hummel, Hummels only are passed down by death, they only move

from one curio cabinet to the next because grandma died. That was the only thing I could never touch in the house was the little people Hummels and it's like, what's at the point of these things? Yeah, I can't imagine you next to all those fragile little boys and little girls with their overalls and their fishing poles, they're so delicate but Gloria walks in the kitchen and he's like, don't worry, I got everything figured out, the little people are back and they're going to help us figure out everything and she's just like, okay. Every wife's dream.

I will say Gloria Chapman has to, I mean she's up there with Jerry Brutus' wife as far as being understanding. I think that's a term. I mean, sure. She was also sort of kept as a vaguely like a hostage. She was both scared and adoring of Mark. So Chapman, I mean he is drowning in debt because he's buying dollies, he's buying Picasso's well quote unquote dollies and quote unquote Picasso's.

So Chapman. He bought a dolly, a dolly used to have these little like signs on his desk that said Salvador Dali and he bought one of those for $5,000. Authentic, authentic. Who doesn't like a placard? So Chapman put the little people in charge of operation freedom from debt. Oh, now what is this operation all about? Freedom from debt.

That makes sense. But amazingly, through a series of subcommittees, cabinet reviews and congressional hearings, all done by the little people in his brain, it fucking worked. Wow. Okay. This is my problem though. I love it. The only reason why we think that his budgeting quote unquote budgeting system worked is because

he said it worked. I think that if you cut to him just being like going up to glory, being like don't worry Gloria, I got it. I'll figure it out and shows the budget and it's just a picture of Bugs Bunny sucking his own dick and then she's just like, well I sure hope so, mom, I sure hope so. Now that's a piece of art a lot of folks would buy. Well, I do think it actually did work out because I think Gloria did say that it did work out and as we'll see later, he had a lot of money to take care of certain missions

that he had in mind. Okay, thank you little people. Well the thing was about all of this is that the little people didn't actually seem to be the problem. So Mark David Chapman's depression had returned and with it came an obsessive nature that only grew as time went on. Chapman also decided to start becoming what we would call a professional pain in the ass to the people in Hawaii.

Yeah, he became a real George Costanz, uh oh, like immediately. He called it bomb threats. Like he was doing, every time he saw something he didn't like, he'd call it a bomb threat. He was just making late night phone calls, doing the thing, call him being like your refrigerator's running, you better go catch it, and then like again and again, yeah. He'd send pizzas to his former landlord because he didn't like his former landlord, so he'd send him like five, 10, 20 pizzas every single night. And then theoretically the landlord has to pay for it, because otherwise it's just a

gift. But also, this is all, this is like two landlords ago, the man he didn't like, he is very sick. And if the little people aren't the problem, that's a problem. Like if that's really not the main source of, hey, let's talk to a doctor, I am talking to men in suits, like it's a scene from Dr. Strangelove, and then I, but you know, that's only my secondary problem. And how old are we talking here? 25.

25, okay. Yeah, he's 25, but I mean the phone calls he made, like they weren't just like little innocent, you know, annoying type things, like he started making death threats to a TV repairman who once treated him rudely. That is the last thing a TV repairman needs. It's already a tough enough life, everyone's breaking their TVs. Yeah, he'd even like stand at his apartment window and call the pay phone across the street, and when the stranger would answer, he'd say, I'm watching you, I'm gonna get you, I'm

gonna follow you home and kill you. Never answer a pay phone. Who answers a pay phone? Oh, random ringing phone, better pick it up, might be for me. Who are you? Why would it be for you? The problem is at the time, people were hitching all the time. Everybody was a bus.

You could grab on, you could grab on a bike when someone goes past and you could sit on the back of the seat and it was totally normal, it was fine. And the matrix, the matrix didn't happen yet, it didn't exist yet, so they didn't know that sometimes the pay phone just randomly ringing, if you pick it up and answer it, you get zapped into the fucking matrix. Oh, I see, yeah, just a bunch of Marty McFly's there hitching their ride to other cars. And then there was the doctor at Chapman's old mental hospital. The doctor hadn't done anything wrong to Chapman, but Chapman still called him to tell him

he was gonna die while playing a laughing box, which is an old 70s gag, and laughing boxes sound like this. I don't like it. Man, as a matter of fact, that wasn't a laughing box, that was actual audio of Marcus getting a colonoscopy. And the doctors, they were horrified, terrified, but it has come back and you're healthy. And everything's okay. All right.

Everything's okay. I got the first course. She's back and everything's okay. Are we gonna get the footage of your swollen asshole or not? I have a picture, but it's in black and white, so it doesn't pop, you know. Yeah, right, right, right. I can colorize it. We can send it over to Turner Classic Movies.

Right, with any luck, you'll think it's the original moon landing. Those weren't the only people that Mark David Chapman got into fused with. He got into a three week long encounter with the local hairy christmas. Oh man, they have nothing but time. They will always win. And that only ended when a neighbor told him that the last guy to mess with the christmas got a syringe full of acid in the face. Now that's also conjecture, and it seems to be a woman who was watching him harass the

hairy christmas, and you know, when crazy attracts crazy, right? So he's out there yelling at a hairy christmas, being like, y'all always dancing, there ain't no music playing, what's so good to feel about y'all dancing. You want to dance like nobody's watching, well I'm watching, I'm watching, and then all of a sudden a woman comes out of a store and's just like, don't talk to these hairy christmas, they're bad news, because when you talk to the hairy christmas, they disfigure you. They work as a pack, they're like wolves, they smell weakness, and she's being like, oh

sir, you're crazy too. Any connection there with the George Harrison and becoming a hairy christmas a little bit late? George Harrison wasn't a hairy christmas. No, never? No, no, no. Who was a hairy christmas? None of them.

George Harrison just, he went to India and he hooked up with the Maharishi. And those are not hairy christmas? Absolutely not. Different people. Alright. I do like the idea of a dangerous rogue gang of hairy christmas though, just pulling off acid attacks. For a hot second, for a hot second George Harrison became an Indian Rachel Dolezal, for like,

for like, I'd say two or three years. Okay, alright. He became that. I was confused. And then he came back and put out All Things Must Pass, which is fantastic. Alright. It was great. It was worth it.

It was worth it. All the work that he did was worth it. Because he came back, he reversed his Rachel Dolezal, which is very difficult to do. So Mark David Chapman, he did all of this shit in a specially made t-shirt that said, I'm unique, I think for myself. Nothing says unique and thinking for yourself, like a shirt that says that exact thing. He actually went to a printmaker and had them, he came up with the idea for the shirt, thought this is the greatest thing anyone has ever come up with.

This is going to tell everybody in the world, all they need to know about me, he got it made and wore it almost every day. Wow, cool man. He wore it to the point where it was tattered and brown. He wore it like everywhere he goes and he made it angrily. Like when he made it, I want everybody to know, I dare them, I dare them to laugh at me. And when they did, he'd start screaming at him, calling him a phony.

Oh, I see. So he's just searching for any kind of identity, he's always searching for identity. He's got that persecution complex is really ramping up and he's searching for identity but he's also poking at people. Like he's just poking at people, it's like make me angry, make me, I need it, I need to be angry, I need, because that happens with people a lot, is with people like this, is they need attention and it doesn't matter whether it's good attention or it's bad attention. If they feel like a nobody, if they feel like nobody's paying attention, then they'll just

start being a pain in the ass so somebody will feel some emotion towards them. Like what toddlers do basically. Pretty much. Pretty much. And what's interesting is that Gloria was there giving him attention but for some reason he always viewed her as lesser than, he always viewed her as lesser than his first love, the girl that broke his heart when he was like fucking 12 years old, Lynn. And so he constantly fantasized about this little girl that was supposed to be his one

true love and Gloria was just kind of followed him around out of fear and weird respect and he ignored her entirely. I gotta say it's one of those things where you gotta age them as you age, you know, like Britney Spears. I really like Britney Spears when I was 15, she was 15. Yes. But you can't think about her, because I'm 36, so I gotta think about her, 21. So you can't, yeah, that's it.

But now we have Instagram so at least we can see them now. Yes. And then we can actually see that they blossomed and that their breasts are filled, you know what I mean? And then it's legal to be with it, with the thought of it. That's always a tricky ground there. Now Phonies was a fairly new word in Chapman's vocabulary, but it would eventually be the most important word in Chapman's life.

He'd been reintroduced to it during his quest to read the whole Honolulu library. Wow. So he's just in there, is he getting hammered again? Yes. Oh yes. I mean, it's almost like, you know, some people are like, you know, like, I only smoke when I drink. Right.

It's like, he's like, I only walk around when I drink. So he got up every day, because now he's working for the security guard agency. He can do it half lit. So he would just go AWOL from his job and wander over to the Honolulu library with his, he had his fucking butt in his back when she got every single morning at his big tall boy. He'd walk in there and then he'd walk down the aisles and just pick books. And then his idea was to just read every single wall of book and he made it through all of the mystery section.

He did. He read every single one of them. Yeah. And then no one ever really asked why is the man security guard uniform, who's obviously not at work, who's just, who's visibly hammered. Right. Just reading alone. No one questioned.

I guess it's easy going in Hawaii. I guess so. It's just, that is one of the strangest parts of this whole thing. He had a thirst for read it, but then he also had a thirst for booze and he was able to really combo those things in a relatively productive way. Yeah. I know what you're saying, but it's like, you know, literature and booze like never go well together.

They never mix. No, you just start like eating the book at some point. No, I know what you're saying you're like, but those are the writers like, oh, my imagination, my depression. But like very, very rarely is the reader, the alcohol. Oh, no, I don't know, man. I drink a lot and read. I read hammered all the time.

Yeah. Do you remember what you read if you're hammered? I can't even remember a movie when I'm hammered. Sometimes. But that's the fun of reading. Can you imagine if LeVar Burton turned into a mass killer because of reading? I could see it. Reading is too intense.

I was playing my video game last night and I turn around and Brooke is just balling and I'm like, what have I done? And then she said, I'm just reading this book and it's a sad part. I said, the words are making you cry. Well, we got to do something about them words. You never had any. You've never had words like bring emotion to your soul. Hey, man, you know what?

As soon as the book is trying to do pry that out of me, who the hell are you? What are you book? You're a book. I'll shut you. I know how to beat your ass with Kissel's reading every word like it's like when you throw a rock down a cave to see where the bottom of the cave is when you're spelunking. It's just like that. So by the time the word gets down to the cerebral cortex, it's their emotion is gone.

Yeah. Get out of here. I'll shut you. I'll shut you right up. Necronomicon. You ain't going to get me, man. So in early 1980, Chapman came across a collection of academic studies about catcher and the rye.

And Chapman had remembered reading the novel about eight or nine years earlier and remembered liking it. So he figured he'd give it another go. Now, while Chapman wasn't quite ready for it the first time around, during his second reading, something clicked in his brain concerning the main character and narrator Holden Caulfield. But isn't the irony here that actually the first time he read it, that was the age group that's supposed to enjoy it? And the second time he's kind of too old for it?

Yes, absolutely. Yes. Yeah. At that age, he found a kindred spirit in the shitty 16-year-old boy wandering the streets of New York City. Like, Henry, could you give us like a quick rundown of catcher and the rye? Because you're the only one of us who's read it. I went back through it again a little bit.

I only made it about halfway through again because I didn't want to read it anymore. Yeah. For some reason, halfway through, he's like, I've got to kill Justin Bieber. I don't know why, but I just feel like he's not authentic. He's a phony. No, my problem is that it would be like Ed Sheeran, as I could see myself in a psychotic break like watching my face mold with Ed Sheeran's face and just being like, God, I killed the problem.

God, I killed the problem. But I do not mean Ed Sheeran harm. No. He's allowed to walk free. But no, Holden Caulfield basically is kicked out of his fancy private school. His fourth is he's kicked out and the book follows a lost weekend in New York of Holden Caulfield wandering around with his thoughts about how everybody's a phony and how he wants to protect the innocence of all children.

And so he's him walking around. It's like he sees a sex worker. He asks a cop in Central Park where he can find the ducks because he wants to go walk with the ducks because the ducks are the only thing that are fucking free. He sees another guy who yells at him and he yells at him and calls him a phony. He goes, oh, this guy's a phony. But the problem is there's a really good at the end of Let Me Take You Down that's a good breakdown of Holden Caulfield.

What are part of it is that when you do reread it, it's it's interesting for someone who like Chapman who viewed him as this like powerful hero, like viewed him as this sort of like like a saint slash warrior for truth. Or then when you reread it again, it's about a kid that is very deeply depressed and largely suicidal. Right. You read it in the words where it's like someone is a the his pain is very obvious. And when you look at it, you just see, well, this is someone who if they live past this

point could become a very like effective cool adult because they had this questioning period. But you're not supposed to identify with it now. Right. Of course, you know, I just hate the idea of someone named Holden Caulfield being my protector because I just feel like he would show up and be like, I'm going to say I have a bone spur. I cannot.

I cannot. Also, we know Holden McNeely. Yeah. I know the name. Holden is why they're not done. It does not done. It's not synonymous with extrose. This is the most I've thought about it in years.

Yeah. Yeah. I just think of skin diseases and someone who's slimy to the touch and a guy who just tries to fit his whole fiance's breast in his mouth and she and she's got to get all a spit off. Well, we never know what that's about, but Holden McNeely Wizard and the Bruiser. Check that show out. Great show.

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fault. Okay cool, it makes a lot of sense. Now Mark David Chapman was so obsessed with this book that he actually started to think of himself as Holden Caulfield. He even tried changing his name to Holden Caulfield, then he made his wife read a copy of the book in which he inscribed to Gloria from Holden Caulfield. Maybe honestly, maybe a Comic Con could have saved it, maybe he could just go role play it out for a weekend, come back, just be his douchey self, once every six months he can

actually be Holden Caulfield. How obnoxious would a salinger con be? Wow, wow, I just want to be in like the isolation house, VIP status, there's only one VIP ticket. But Gloria just took the book because at this point she's watching him deteriorate so fast because also one thing about Chapman 2 is that he's been gaining a fuck ton of weight by only drinking beer and milk and eating cookies, like he's on a Santa diet, he's getting all swollen up. Santa on December 26th diet where he lets himself just get hammered.

The diet begins today, I'm going on Atkins immediately, but oh no croissants for breakfast. Gloria read it just to feel like she could try to understand him again, like so she started to read through it furiously, trying to catch up with him and then she's still like, he's 16, you're not Holden Caulfield. Right, and even further than that, like he had a backup copy of Catcher and the Rye and even in that he wrote from Holden Caulfield to Holden Caulfield, and he said, like he made sure he's like he said, I did not believe that I was Holden Caulfield, but more than anything he wanted to be Holden Caulfield.

Isn't that the definition of what a phony is, is someone who wants to be somebody else? No, no, no, not at all, it's not that you want to be somebody else is that you present yourself as somebody that you actually aren't, but isn't that what he's doing with Holden Caulfield? He's calling himself Holden Caulfield. He's calling himself Holden Caulfield. Well, he's calling himself Holden Caulfield. I think this is a slipway flop, like is he where to top at and get into a monocle?

It is. That's how I picture Holden Caulfield. I have no idea what he looks like. He's a little boy. He's a 16-year-old boy with a t-shirt on, James. Okay. Yeah, I always pictured him glasses. He's got to have glasses.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I see chucks for some reason. Were those even around then? I guess. Yeah, of course. I think, I don't know. I'm a shoe historian.

You know what I mean? I don't know. I don't work for Zappos in their About section. Well, what he wanted to do is he wanted to bleed into the pages of Catcher and the Rye. He wanted to bleed himself with the ink, like he wanted to be the titular catcher that saves children from falling off the cliff, therefore saving their innocence, as told in a story in the book. Okay.

I'm a real titular catcher, whenever my fiance lets me. Yeah. I thought we were almost mature enough to let that word go, but then I actually put it in there as a trap to see which one of you were going to... You know I thought it, because that is a humorous word, because it has, you know what, word is in there. That's kind of fun. But yeah.

Yes. He said there was a story where it's about children playing in the fields of Rye, and he made up this kind of allegory about kids falling off the cliff, and then he wanted his life to be, he would be at the edge of the cliff catching the kids. But a part of it's also, I think we talked about a little bit last episode, it's an authoritarian point of view. It's this idea of I'm the only person who can help everyone, and that the way to help people is to freeze them in the past, that they're not allowed to grow older, you're

supposed to make sure that they never change, because change is bad. Change means you turn into a phony, the only people that are real are children, even though you eventually will grow up. Right. No matter what. Kind of horrifying there. Yeah. Kind of horrifying.

Yeah, it's a lot, like a lot of people have that authoritarian streak, especially when they're younger. Sure. You know where it's like, how men, how is that person going to tell me what to do? I'll tell them what to do. That's going to work out. You know, but meanwhile there's people waiting in the drive through a Burger King just being like, it's Whopper Wednesday, we need to get these Whoppers out, come on, let's go.

Well, Mark David Chapman, he wanted to blend himself with the ink, he wanted to become Holden Caulfield. He just had to figure out how, and all this time, something very dark and very troubling was brewing inside Mark David Chapman, because it wasn't like this new obsession like made him happy. It's not like when you find like a new video game that you really love and just want to play all the time, like this, it made him miserable. So instead of making him happy, the obsession just seemed to give a focus to all the free

floating hatred that Chapman had been storing up for the world, not bestowing greatness upon him. So that hatred, now laser focused, was going to have to go somewhere eventually. It just so happened that the thing that gave that hatred a destination was a book that Chapman stumbled upon in the same library where he rediscovered Catcher in the Rye. The book that Mark David Chapman found was John Lennon, One Day at a Time. It's actually a great book for an alcoholic to read, One Day at a Time. So when Chapman opened that book, he found dozens of photographs of John Lennon's new

opulent lifestyle paid for by his near-billion-dollar share of the Beatles goldmine. So rich. John Lennon, at night in 1980, he was worth $800 million. Oh God, how did you just have a bed filled with Coke? I mean, that's what he did for a while. And then he chased every lifestyle in the world, right, where he went and him and Yoko made a bunch of records together and then they bought the apartment and he'd travel the world and then eventually he lived into this weird reductive lifestyle by 1980 where

it was all about, like, I just want to lay in bed with my child and my wife, all nude, and all we do is read the paper and eat little breads, tiny little breads. Oh, it's like all of a sudden being like, you're lying yourself. Yeah, yeah, he said he became a house husband for five years. Yeah, they went out sailing, they bought a yacht, he had this huge country estate, like John Lennon was definitely spending that $800 million that he had. Okay. And as Chapman said, the catcher in the ride was the stove and the Lennon book was the

fire. These drove him insane. These pictures. When he saw this book, yes, because it was the picture of John Lennon on the roof of the Dakota building over, like looking over West 72nd Street and Central Park West. It's one of the swankiest, craziest buildings in New York. Have you ever been past it? What's the last time you've been past the Dakota?

I went actually right before we recorded the last episode. I went, yeah, it's great. I went down to there. It's amazing. It's surrounded by these like ancient stone gargoyles. It's got two doorman on staff at all times. There you go. It's beautiful and it's right across the street from Central Park.

Yep. It is amazingly nice. One of the nicest buildings in all of Manhattan, which makes it one of the nicest buildings in the fucking world. There it is. Did you look like a crazed stalker when you did it? That's the, well, that's what surprised me is still to this day, there were probably six people up and down West 72nd taking pictures.

They were posing in front of it. Why is no? Well, to this day, people make, and this was like two o'clock PM on a Monday. Like this wasn't a Saturday or this wasn't a weekend. Like people are just going there. Dude, I'm telling you, you're an actor. You're in New York. You're skinny.

You're lanky. You want to make some money. Go put on some John Lennon gear, go dead and just have a tip bucket there. Yes. People will take pictures. Yes. Give them a buck. You will make thousands of dollars a year.

You won't have 800 million bucks. You are the person pretending to be dead John Lennon, but you'll make a couple thousand bucks. And then a couple of guys showed up as Ringo and we just stand next to him in the picture as well. I love Ringo so much. So Chapman, he sat there and he flipped through the pages of the book and he thought about all those years he'd spent listening to the Beatles, all that talk, a piece in love, and

he started getting angry. He then took the book home and showed it to his wife, ranting about how hypocritical it was that this man who showed off his yachts and fancy apartments in country estates had sung about imagining no possessions. Then Chapman read an article in which Lennon admitted that all the super obnoxious stunts that he and Yoko had pulled throughout the years had all been for publicity. All cynical promotional events just to sell more records. Well, I mean, imagine John Lennon is saying, imagine you have no possessions because you

gave him all to me. This is not about me, this is about you, like you don't have a God, you have nothing, but like I have a bunch of stuff. Then Chapman got a copy of Lennon's first solo record and heard Lennon sing that he didn't believe in God or heaven or even in the Beatles. It's a provocative song, it's a fine song, but you could see that he wrote it to be specifically upsetting. Yes, right.

Yes, which is part of the infuriating nature of John Lennon. Okay. Oh yeah, he was a real jerk-off, but very talented jerk-off. Technically the victim in this story. He is absolutely the victim, but also does not make him a saint. No. You know, that does not make him a martyr or a God or anything like that. We are still allowed to say that John Lennon was an infuriating human being.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, he said that the only things that he believed in were himself and Yoko. Sure. But even. Great. Sure, okay. He's been a double-fantasy while researching this episode and I'm a fan.

A couple of good songs on there. There are two good songs. I'm Losing You is a fantastic song and Watching the Wheels is a pretty good song. That's something fun to do too. But even after all this, the thought of killing John Lennon hadn't entered into Mark David Chapman's mind. He was angry and betrayed by what he thought John Lennon owed him specifically, but he wasn't going to kill him.

Okay. Well, if he does plan to kill him, he's going to have to go through the little people. He has to go through little people, Congress. He better get approval from Congress. Honestly, talk about the red tape. Yeah. You already got to do it. It's not easy to do.

We're talking war here. And talk about the lobbyists from the balls saying we need to be jerking off more. Oh, man. What finally did it, though, was Sergeant Peppers. I bet. Isn't that what you call your shits, Sergeant Peppers, after? Oh, man. All right, let's not, but they didn't go to 15 years of shit school to be called Sergeant

Peppers. Very good. Keep him honest. Keep him honest. That's good. So one night, Chapman was thumbing through his wife's Beatles LPs and happened to pull out her copy of Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club band by the Beatles. He said he was staring at John Lennon's face on the cover of that album, just like he used

to stare at his copy of Meet the Beatles when he was a kid and suddenly a thought popped into his head. Wouldn't it be something if I killed John Lennon? Huh. Wouldn't it be something like he came up with the crow nut? Yeah. Wouldn't it be something if I killed John Lennon? That's a funny, that's a funny, fun idea.

Wild. Yeah, that's one of those thoughts that should come in and bump right out. But I guess for him, it just kind of bounced around. We all have dark thoughts. Of course. We all have very dark thoughts. Like, what if? What if I did that?

Yeah. But you don't do it. Every day. Technically, the therapist that I have is called Intrusive Thoughts. You know, and I have them all the time. Yeah, of course, I'm always driving down this street being like, if I just fucking jerk the wheel and I stop all this whole highway traffic, it's, you know, it's fun almost to think about.

To dab all in. Oh yeah. But you just let it go. Yeah. My most intrusive thought is when I'm in the exit row on a plane. What would happen if I just pulled that lever? Okay. Well, that's good to know.

Thank you. Well, the horrible thing was it was pretty easy to kill John Lennon because everyone knew he lived at the Dakota and they knew exactly where to find him coming in and out of his home almost every day because people would camp out in front of his building waiting for an autograph or just to meet him. And to his credit, he was actually very gracious to his fans who did that. Sort of like an occupied John Lennon situation that's actually very nice so that he would sign autographs.

That is, let's say that's very sweet. He was really close with his fans by the end because in the end, he kind of came back around. As he was coming back down to earth, a part of it was his like trying to accept everyone. Like he was trying, like he would make like friends with some of the super fans that would hang out like sort of like they would sit and they would chat. So maybe he could have turned out okay. You know, he went through a Shia LaBeouf phase where he says, I'm disconnected, but then Shia LaBeouf hanging out with everyone watching his own movies, being around people.

I'm actually a huge Shia LaBeouf fan. I'll defend him. I like him. He's fine. He's just fine. But yeah, he was. I mean, and also to John Lennon's credit. Yeah.

Like Kendrick said, he was pulling back from all of those kind of shitty, obnoxious things that he'd done and said over the years because that little hiatus that he took was about a five year hiatus between albums. Everything slowed down for him because the thing I understand about John Lennon is that he'd been famous since he was 16 years old. Oh wow. You know, decades. For decades, this guy had been mobbed everywhere he went.

Everywhere that is, except New York City. New York does not care. No. People were cool here. You know? Like, I mean, they cared that he was John Lennon, of course, but if they stopped him, it would mostly be just be like, hey man, love the Beatles. Right.

Hey, oh Johnny, love the Beatles, huh? Hey, question. Why are you fucking Yoko? All right. I'll see you soon. Bye. Bye. Bye.

All right, buddy. You owe. Yeah. Or like ribbon. Hey, I like that walrus song at John. You looking skinny. Get yourself supplied some pizza. All right.

Get that. I love New York. Yeah. If they'd like for it was like, hey John, when the Beatles getting back together, you'd be like, oh yes, very funny. Very funny. Yes, that's fine. I mean, like stop and like shake their hand.

They'd just be like, hey man, got to say like revolver changed my life and he'd be totally cool with it. He'd love it. Okay. And plus New York City, it was still in its hellhole phase in 1980. So it was kind of like insulated from the rest of the world. People were terrified of New York City. Right.

So he pretty much, it's not like now, you know, where a fucking anybody can come and it's totally safe. It's one of the safest cities on the planet. Honestly, the most dangerous thing in New York City, Times Square, Mickey Mouse, Spider Man, the Incredible Hulk, people who are dressed up as the Statue of Liberty, they are not your friends. No. Don't take pictures with you.

Do not. Because they will demand money from you. Absolutely. And never take a mixtape. Because it is not free. Never. No, never, ever, ever, ever, ever take a mixtape. You know.

Real fast. Yep. So for John Lennon, this was the best he could hope for. He loved it here. However, he was also obsessed with assassination. He'd have recurring dreams of getting shot and killed specifically. And you'd say he'd sit at his kitchen table and get stoned and you'd just go on and on about it for hours at a time.

And also, it wasn't the term murdered. It was the term assassination that shows you where his head was at, where he viewed himself as an important enough figure that when someone would murder him, it would. And I mean, and technically in many ways he was correct. I think so, yeah. I mean, he's an egomaniac, but he was also like, look what happened in the aftermath of his murder. Yeah.

But he viewed himself as like, I mean, I'm an obvious target. Right. Like, if someone kills me, it will mean it will be a poetic death to many people. You can't blame the guy. People are following him around like he's a Pied Piper since he's 16 years old. Of course, that's going to go to your head and think, well, I'm a little bit more special than the average Joe. Well, it's not just that.

But he also knew that the FBI had a file on him. He knew that J. Edgar Hoover had been following him for years, because like he knew that. Who is that? Who is that really weird bumpy guy in the dress behind me? Is that J. Edgar Hoover? Name's J. Edgar Hoover. You like my heels? You know, I can jump in them.

I am incredible calf strength. Anyways, got an eye on you, mister. So really, I mean, back then J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, like they were putting John Lennon on the same level as Martin Luther King or like other people that, you know, were agitating against the establishment. Like John Lennon was, as far as the US government went, right there up with them. It's just so funny. The FBI had a list and be like, what's their crime?

They'd be like, they want peace. They've been talking about like this peaceful resolution of race wars and things like that. Yeah, because peace is for commies, Ben. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that. Yeah, and communists, they're loosening the glue of this country. That's all they're doing. Yeah, that's exactly what it was.

It wasn't peace, man. It was about the communists coming in, getting the agitators all going because if the agitators were going, that meant that we were going to start fighting each other, fighting against the status quo, and that was going to rip the country apart. John Lennon and that communist with $800 million. Yes. And the amazing thing is, is that the Russians actually listened to all the stuff that they were talking about way back then, kind of put a spin on it, and then today actually

put it into practice, but they do it through Facebook ads. Oh. And it ripped the country apart that way. Fun. So yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's incredibly easy actually. That's awesome.

We knew. It's incredibly easy. Yeah, and it wasn't through like good music. It was through social media. Stupid. And dumb memes. Yeah. It was through memes.

Literally a cartoon frog. Treating us like a bunch of fucking rats in a maze. Yeah, that's kind of fun. Yeah, a bunch of programmable drones that are attached to our phones like it's crack okay. If it didn't work, then I would blame them. Well, the most ironic thing about all this is that John Lennon, he always thought he was going to get assassinated for his political beliefs, you know, because he was up there with Martin Luther King Jr.

He was up there with, or he believed he was up there with like people like Gandhi. Bobby Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy. All that. He thought that that's what he was going to get assassinated for. He definitely thought that. But in the end, he was killed because someone believed he'd abandoned his ideology. Crazy.

Now, the exact opposite. Interesting. And that person, Mark David Chapman, saw Lennon as no more than a stand-in for the pimp in Catcher and the Rye that Holden Caulfield had fantasized about killing. But the difference here was that Chapman was actually going to do it. Yeah. Chapman was going to enact what he came to think of as Chapter 27 of Catcher and the Rye, going one better than J.D.

Salinger. But it's, the fantasy is what's truly frightening. Right. He believed that when he shot John Lennon, he would curl up into a ball next to Lennon's body and disappear into the ink of Catcher and the Rye. That was his, that was, no, Chet, that was his plan. Just cut to him getting hit with Billy Clubs by the NYPD and just be like, I am not melting away.

Yeah. That's, that's what, that is what happened. And a part of it, it's weird over the course of reading, let me take you down and researching into his book. At first, you know, like you laugh about the fantasy and stuff and all stuff, but it's actually starting to become very frightening for me, like that Mark David Chapman did this because then it's also the thing where it's like, I'm going to say maybe like, there's a solid 15% of people that are walking around just thinking the same shit.

Oh yeah, of course. But they just don't kill you. Yeah. I mean, they just don't kill you because they're just not going to because they're, they're specific fantasies like, I'm going to take a shit over here at the salad bar in the dessert, like I'm going to do a ride on the cob salad and then I become one with the corn fritters. Like I'm going to dissolve into a corn fritter and the family of eight comes in and be like,

oh man, these corn fritters today are tasty and salty and unusual, but also like a corny taste. Well, before Mark David Chapman could actually take care of the phony, he had to prepare himself. So on October 23rd, 1980, Chapman quit the maintenance job he'd been working and signed out with the name John Lennon, officially beginning his quest to assassinate the former beetle. Okay.

Amazingly, unbeknownst to Chapman, as this is pointed out in Let Me Take You Down, John Lennon was starting something new as well. And that day, John Lennon released the single Just Like Starting Over ahead of the release of Double Fantasy, his first album in five years. Just Like Starting Over was the song. And so maybe that goes to what you were talking about earlier, a rebirth of who he was as a person. Connect again.

Yeah. Oh yeah. It was like purposely put together. It was a whole thing. It was his return. And then Chapman, it kind of got folded in too. It's another synchronicity that he viewed as like, oh, I'm going to serve my purpose here.

Well, that's the thing, though, is I don't think Chapman ever knew about that. It's so weird, though, then if he did, he didn't. It shows just so much how it's such a fucked up coincidence. It's such a like, their lives are melding together, not on purpose. No, right. Yeah. Because Chapman was in Hawaii, you know, and it wasn't like it is today where, you know, something is released worldwide at all at the same time where, you know, we're here

on the same shit that they're here in Korea. Yeah. Like things had to travel. Yeah. I think in Hawaii, the 1980 Hawaii, I think the best music was coconuts and it was just people slamming them together. Exactly. Oh, they had ukuleles.

Oh, yeah. That's right. They were in Zoe Destinels in Hawaii since the beginning, but they weren't Zoe Destinels. They were traditional Hawaiian musicians. Yes. No one should play the ukulele unless they're over 350 pounds because that is adorable. Yeah. Well, back in Hawaii, Chapman was calling on Satan to give him strength to carry out

his plan. I wish it was more metal than this, but it's not. It's not. I mean, like, it's sad when you're asking Satan for help because he's like, what? Like, stop it. Stop asking me for help. Do you know anything about Satanism? You're not supposed to ask me for help.

I mean, I don't know. Was he going through like, was he like painting himself all up? Was he naked or anything like that? He was naked. He was always naked. Did he have like an apocalypse now moment where he just like flipped immediately? Well, he did destroy his wife's record player once when he wasn't working properly. He was trying to put together and he destroyed it.

At this point, he's become a terror in the house, muttering to himself, sitting in the kitchen screaming at his little people, like doing like his pitches at the little people. Good God. Yeah, Chapman, he'd get naked. He'd put on Beatles records and beg Satan to help him. All, and that's the thing, all while he's doing this, he's doing this in the middle of the night. All while his, while his wife is trying to sleep in the next room, just cowering under

the covers. Oh my God. Horrible. And to the best of Chapman's memory, this was one of his chants to Satan. Hear me, Satan, accept these pearls of my evil and my rage. Accept these things from deep within me. In return, I ask only that you give me the power to kill John Lennon. Give me the power of darkness.

Give me the power of death. Let me be a somebody for once in my life. Give me the life of John Lennon. I can't give you the power, but there's a thing called a firearm. And you wouldn't believe how easy it is to use. So fast. He got it so fast. Yeah, he did.

Now later Chapman would say that it was silly to think that Satan or demons had possessed him. That's the silly part. Yeah, it is silly. It's silly. I laughed when I first thought about it. Yeah, you know why it's silly? Why?

Because demons can't possess Christians, Ben. Naturally. Naturally. That's why it's silly. This is what he said about it. I didn't believe those things were inside of me at the time. Not really. Like, not really.

Not deep in my heart. I could summon them and use them, but they had to stay outside. Okay. Still to this day. He holds on to that bullshit. Okay. Because it's just another, it's because Mark David Chapman, he throughout his entire life always take, like he acts like he's taken responsibility, but there's always that one

little thing that he can put in front, like that he can put in front and say like, yeah, it's my fault. I take total responsibility, except for this one little thing. Right. If this one little thing was near. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, but at the same time, it's not my fault, but, you know, but it's also whatever's the newest story that will get him attention. Right. What we'll learn too, like especially post-murder Chapman, is that he's such a fucking little piss-fuckin' baby about everything, everybody's just me, me, me, me, me, everybody needs to pay attention. So he's constantly changing his narrative to get people to talk to him. So this whole thing started with him nude, as Dick is banging around on the record machine.

I don't know about banging. Well, who knows what he did with that. He probably put it on there a couple of times, but that flip around a little bit. And it was all these chants to Satan, huh? And that's what he said. He said that he needed the power of Satan to pull the trigger, but that's who actually did it. It was the power of Satan.

Oh, he did do it. I see. If you really want to figure out how he killed John Lennon, you've got to follow the money. And you know who are the people that were in charge of the money was the little people. Oh, yeah, because there's a shit ton of logistics to figure out here. Okay. You know, you can't just call on Satan and Satan's going to transport you to New York City and get you a gun and all that shit.

There's planning that goes in all this. Yes. Yeah. Satan's not a fucking travel agent. He's not here doing all your shit. Satan's not your Quicken account. No. That's what you have the little people for.

Yep. So the little finance minister helped him work out all the monetary problems of getting the means to kill and the places to stay plus a little walking around money without asking any questions. But after he got all that worked out, Mark decided he had to come clean. Because he couldn't tell them directly that he was going to kill John Lennon. When he had the meeting with them, he had to start with, I'm thinking about taking a little vacation to New York.

And I mean, when he started, he first said that to his wife and she was like, why? And he's like, fuck you. Like I go where I got to go. And then he has to go crawl into the little people to be like, I need XYZ money for a hotel. And the whole time the little people were like, but why? Why? Like why?

Like they're giving him like the hard turn. And then he's like, I guess I should maybe tell them what I'm trying to do. Yeah. He called together his entire cabinet and told him that he'd finally decided to be someone. Oh, cabinet that can fit in the cabinet. Yeah. It's like the Indian in the cupboard, but it's Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell. Yeah.

Turtley. You know what I'd like to do with that cabinet? He's just fucking throw it out a window out onto the street from a five floor building. It's been really fun since he got into politics. Oh yeah. Yeah, it's fun. So Mark David Chapman in his meeting with a little people and how he would meet with the little people is he had said he had this huge television screen that he would appear

on while all the little people would sit like it was like the United Nations. Oh, okay. He said that someone from his childhood, the man whose songs he'd sung to them, his subjects had hurt him greatly. He told them about the John Lennon book and the betrayal and his astonishment that Lennon lived in New York and not a big castle in England with all of the other Beatles, which would have somehow been better in Chapman's mind. Okay.

British people are supposed to live in castles. I guess so. I understand that. Yeah, some British bands are all supposed to live in castles together. Ah, that makes sense. So Chapman told the little people that all this put together had ruined his life. John Lennon had ruined his life. He told them that because of all this, he had decided to kill John Lennon and he wanted

their help. But the thing about this, Kissel, we've all, I mean, Marcus, you were there too, and Kissel and I also previously, we've been a part of pitches that are going south. Oh, it's your first poop of the day. Oh, yes. You remember? Yep. And you know what happens is that they start looking at their phone.

Right. They start leaning back. They start like, you want a cup of water? Like they start disengaging. The little people are starting to give them the stiff arm. He's trailing and he's weirding out the fantasy people that he created to do his budget. Right. He's weirding them out.

They're like, huh, I don't know, Mark, that sounds kind of crazy. What do you think, Lord of the Feet, what do you think, dude, how's those new balances doing? And he's just like, new balances are fine, but I'm going to have to give a knee to killing John Lennon. Yeah, tough crowd, tough crowd. Yeah, after a quick... He got beat out of it.

They had a quick little bowl session and they came back and say like, Mark, listen, we have to respectfully decline. Wow. This program, this plot seems to be all about destruction. It's only going to destroy your life and we as people who have sworn to protect you cannot take a part in this. We cannot stop you, but we cannot help you. All right, there it is.

And so they left. They left the boardroom, the boardroom disappeared. Meanwhile, he's in the kitchen doing all this to himself and Gloria's kind of hearing it on the other side. It's just still going, well, my swiffering has never been more complete. Jesus, swiffering and swiffering, everything is gleaming clean. What a nightmare for her. So Chapman accepted their decision, wished them the best and in yet another coincidence.

He bought a 38 special from a guy whose name just happened to be Robin Ono. Oh, my God. And on the next day, Mark David Chapman was on a plane to New York City, but this first attempt didn't work out. He wandered around New York and actually saw David Bowie star in a production of The Elephant Man, which was probably fucking so awesome. And then he went to see George C. Scott in a play. You can just do that back then.

Oh, yeah. It's like, yeah. Oh, I'm going to go see the guy who was in Patton and Dr. Strangelove. I'm just going to go see him in a play. Just going to do that. And I'm just going to go see David Bowie, be the elephant, man. Now it's like Jim Parsons playing Dr. Seuss and Dr. Seuss revisionist musical where it's all fucking dark and you're like, I don't give a shit about this.

Yeah. Or like Anastasia on Broadway where they cut out Rasputin completely, apparently. They did. What? Yeah. No, that's what I hear. That's what I hear. Because I was thinking about going.

You just lost yourself a customer, Broadway. You just lost yourself a customer. That's very good. Well, I don't know. They just lost your $13 back, back, back, back, back seat to Anastasia. Well, Mark David Chapman, instead of enjoying what had to have been these amazing performances, he said all he could think of as he was watching these legends was how easy it would be to pull out his gun and shoot any of them.

That's all I could think about. Oh my God. That's so fucking scary, man. That's so scary. No, he didn't think about the little people Vito though, huh? Well, after the little people left, he's like, all right, fuck you. I'll do it on my own. I'll take care of it.

Look at that Saturday Night Massacre, huh? Yeah. Yeah. I'll do it. But the problem was at that time, and probably not now either, you couldn't buy bullets for a 38 special here in New York City. Really? No, absolutely.

Oh yeah. No. I was like, oh, you trying to buy bullets for a 38 special? Go fuck yourself. You're not buying them from me. Like, people were like very intense about it. While he was able to bring his gun, he didn't have anything to shoot these people with. He should have gotten the bullets in Hawaii.

That's why instead of having gun control, we should have bullet control. And we should make the plane out of the black box, and one day they're just going to bake our head in the cheese. Yeah, come on now, come on now. So to solve this problem, Mark David Chapman took a flight down to Atlanta, and under the guise of just a nice little visit to an old friend, he picked up five hollow point bullets. Okay. Not only he'd say give me five hollow points, which he gave it to him, he then trained him

how to use the fucking gun. Perfect. They went shooting immediately. Because it's Atlanta, so it's fun and games, and then he's just like, don't you do anything nefarious with them bullets now? Right. And he's never, never in a thousand years. Because I just collect them, I draw little faces on them.

You know, I speak to little people in my brain. Can I get the bullets back? All the targets looked like John Lennon, you know? Yeah. Kind of wild. And he told his friend like, hey, yeah, I'm going to New York City, I've been in New York City, coming down for this visit, now I'm going back to New York City, I've got to have something to protect myself with.

Right. And the guy's like, oh yeah, of course, man has a right to bear arms. Here's a handful of hollow point bullets. Okay. And the Chapman returned to New York, fully loaded, and as a further coincidence, just another one. Yeah. He read an Esquire article on the plane criticizing John Lennon for his hypocritical upscale lifestyle.

Oh, nothing like Esquire to bring people down to earth. Yes. Yes. And of course, like, you know, John Lennon took this as a sign. What he was doing was right. He even went to the Dakota where Lennon lived and made friends with the doorman scout, not the scene. But one night, Chapman went and saw the Mary Tyler Moore Timothy Hutton movie, Ordinary

People. Oh. Very sad. Very, very sad movie. Isn't that one of the saddest movies of all time? It's like, I'd say. When I looked it up on IMDB, when checked it out, it said, you may also like terms of endearment.

Okay, good. Great. Yep. Who likes that? I don't know. Jackie. Jackie. It's so sad.

But for some reason, Timothy Hutton's character in Ordinary People touched Mark David Chapman in such a way that he called his wife and told her he was coming home. This motherfucker identified with everything. If he saw, I bet you he'd see a commercial for the, for bananas and be like that banana woman with all the fruit in her head. That's me. I get her. I get where she's coming from.

I too have a burden on my mind, but it was when it cuts to Timothy Hutton, like he identified with Timothy Hutton, who's a suicidal character in that movie, and it's just like, okay, sure, it's another, another one that's you. Everybody's you. Yeah. He looks for identity and everything because he has none himself and because he's a narcissist, he sees everything as for him. And that's why he bought hollow point bullets because he himself was hollow.

Psychological coincidence, but also a theory that is working. Why not? So Mark David Chapman spent two more days in New York, still going to the Dakota and staring at the building while listening to Todd Rundgren on his Walkman. Then poor Rundgren, he did not want to be a part of this. Of course not. Now Rundgren's actually a good dude. Like yeah, he produced the New York Dolls first album.

He produced Bad Outta Hell. Oh cool. Yeah. This guy, he knew, he knows what he's doing. Todd Rundgren did not deserve any of this. No. So, and neither did John Lennon, by the way. Of course.

Yeah. So on November 11th, almost two weeks after Mark David Chapman had left Hawaii, he called his wife and confessed like he told her, I came to New York to kill John Lennon, but Oh. Put like one story spot like, oh, okay, oh, good, good, good, and he said, but he said, but your love has saved me. So I'm coming home. Great.

Okay. So I got up on the next day through his copy of Catcher and the Rye and the Garbage Shoot and decided it was time to put the whole I'm gonna kill John Lennon thing in the past. That's the put that in the past. Thank you so much for listening to the last podcast and laugh. This has been a great episode. Thank you so much for giving to the Patreon, right? What do we do here?

That's the story. And that does, that did make me think actually like that. Like when I find found that out, how many fucking people come this close? Oh my God. I don't want to think about it. It's horrifying. Yeah. It is deeply horrifying.

I think it happens. I would say it happens quite a bit. I'd say that there are a lot of people you develop an obsession. And then normally what you hope is that there's some kind of safety net, right? Or that some loved one can reach out that you have enough connections to the real world that someone can come and save you, right? Which is a thing that we're kind of having a problem with mental health in this country to begin with.

Man, watch the HBO documentary, The Dangerous Song. No, don't. Don't watch it. Don't. We have a recommendation, anti-recommendation. I'm stuck in the middle here. You didn't like it? No, man.

Oh. Is it bad? It was horrifying. Yeah. I mean, it's obviously very, it's very horrifying, but I'm saying like, but it's important to realize to me like the gap in mental health care in this country is really going to result in a lot of dangerous people. And well, thank God it hasn't yet, you know, that's what's so good is that it's so far

it's been peaceful. No, it is a very good documentary. It's a very well put together documentary. I really like it. It links some of these guys that are like, you know, have horrible mental health problems that, you know, where it's like most of these people are fine. Most of them don't do anything, but some of them are Adam Lanza. Some of them are James Holmes.

Some of them are Mark David Chapman. Yes. It's the same shit. Yeah. Where and we need to get these people help and if we don't, then bad shit is going to happen. All right. So Mark David Chapman came back through his copy of Catcher and the Rye and the Trash.

Figured I'm going to put it all behind me, but over the next month, an itch showed up in the back of Chapman's mind. He called this itch the child. Yes. So gross. Never let a child itch you as an adult if you're over the age of 18, never let a child do that. That's not good.

Chapman said that the child was the driving force behind this entire plot. It doesn't really make sense because it's just an excuse. I mean, this is the same type of shit that Ted Bundy used to say with the entity. He said it wasn't Ted Bundy who did all this. It was the entity who did all this. That's what I do when I eat a full pizza. I say that's the blob. That is not me.

That is great movie by the way. That's compromise. In Chapman's mind, the child was the one who saw John Lennon as a toy that had changed over the years, and the child had thrown a tantrum because of it, but it was the adult that had to do all the practical work. If you have a young Sheldon up here before you and call a other grown man a broken toy that you need to fix with the gun, don't listen. Do not listen.

Yes. Full stop. The child was the one who had asked for Satan to pull the trigger. The child who brought the demons to hell. It's like the baby from fucking Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Got the Who Framed Roger Rabbit reference in. That's good. Contract complete.

Yes. He said, but it was the adult that gave the child the gun. It's the same shit as Ted Bundy because Ted Bundy used to say that it was the entity that made him kidnap and rape these women, but he was the one who killed them to cover up the crime. And Gacy used to say the same type of shit. What was it that Gacy got? Didn't he just call it that other guy?

That is so Chicago. That other guy made me do it. Yeah, you know the other guy. But Chapman said that on the first trip to New York City, the child stayed in Hawaii and just didn't show up to play the game. That's good. Cheap tickets. Never take a child and also never take a child on vacation in two New York City, even

an Indian trip, a physical child will not enjoy New York City. No, no. Disney World when their kids, when their teens maybe lug them around New York City. Maybe. I got to say, I was on the plane back from Los Angeles. Thank you for coming out to the Echoplex. Great shows. And there was a dog and it was a problem because it was wearing a diaper and I was like, that's

a pee dog. That dog is going to dump over and sure enough, the entire flight had just smelled kind of like a mild amount of dog crap. I love dogs, but you know, if it can't handle it, also maybe take that into account. And so since the child didn't come along on the trip to New York, the adult went home. But a couple of weeks later, the child came back while Chapman was driving his car and the child promised that this time on this trip, they would actually do what they had gone there to do the first time.

So he's been there twice now. He's only been there once. Only been there once. Okay. And so Chapman told his wife that he was going to go back to New York because he had an idea for a children's book or something. Yeah. He just gave a bullshit excuse.

He was like, I'm just going back to New York. Even though you just went to New York to try to kill John Lennon and you didn't go. Right. And you didn't do it. So you came back. So now she's just like, okay, and totally bought it again. She's like, yeah, I just go. See you soon.

Also, an idea for a children's book, that comes from Hawaii. You don't have ideas for children's books in New York. You have ideas for much more, much darker crime dramas. Yeah. Yeah. Hawaii's got great, I mean, like you go, you write, it's like Hakanaka, the mischievous koi. That's a great children's book centered in Hawaii.

Well, Mark David Chapman arrived back in the city on December 6th, 1980. That day, he arrived outside of the Dakota and made friends with two big Lennon fans who become like kind of fixtures outside of John Lennon's house. And they, I mean, they were there so much that like actually some people in the Dakota, they'd send them on errands. Hmm. Okay. So look.

Yeah. It was like two sweet ladies and they would sit and they'd hang out there all the time and obviously they probably got a little bit wrong with the old bing bong up top. The fact that they'd just sit out there all the time, but they were sweet enough. Right. And it was also like 1980. I mean, these are people that aren't quite done with the sixties yet. They're holding on to them as hard as they possibly can and the best they could do is

hanging outside of John Lennon's house. Okay. But that's another interesting thing about Mark David Chapman. Even though that he'd been spending his nights naked shouting about Satan while playing Beatles LPs at 45 RPM, he was not a shambling mess all the time and he was not a shambling mess when he arrived in New York. Okay. Like he was dressed nice.

Button up. Button up. All right. Oh yeah. He bought a really nice sable jacket. He looked really good because he had a concrete understanding is that if he looked crazy, no one would let him near the Dakota. That makes sense.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And most people that talked to him, they actually said he was likable. They didn't mind having him around. So we didn't have his I'm unique shirt on or whatever like that, just started screaming to people. He had it on underneath his clothes. Okay.

I think it's so much it became like his mantra. He said he would turn up the Southern is that when you're in New York City is that because he was from Atlanta, as that when he would go, which is kind of where the voices even comes from is that his friendly little Southern persona would be like, well, y'all, this is the biggest city I've ever been in shows how sneaky a Southerner can be. Oh my goodness. Absolutely. The sneaky Southerner.

Yeah. If you want people to underestimate you, just turn on your Southern accent. Absolutely. I mean, how are y'all doing over here? Like you think maybe you can give me directions over to Port Authority? Well, let me just look at your sessions. You'll just see the most atrocious things we got to one car straight half the country. I'm like, well, look at that little Charmin guy.

Isn't that fun? Well, there were no linen sightings that first day. So Chapman checked into room 2730 at the Sheridan and went to sleep the next day. He woke up, went out and bought a copy of double fantasy. That's Lenin's new album. He then walked through Central Park and New York City subconsciously following in the footsteps of holding call fields. Okay.

But he realized he didn't have a copy of catch on the rise. So he went into a bookstore to pick one up. This is his like fourth copy of this damn book. Yes. Maybe fifth. Okay. So he's like J.D. Salinger like loves him as a client, as a as a reader, but not as a person.

But perhaps tellingly, Chapman forgot about all that when he spotted a postcard featuring a scene from his favorite movie. Try to guess what it has been. Favorite movie? Amy Hall. Yeah. Weird. Interesting choice, though.

Give him one more shot. It's older. It's older. I'm going to say a singing in the rain. Actually, not far off. Wizard of Oz. No kidding. Well, he also identified with Dorothy before he, he went through a whole Wizard of Oz

phase where he said he was Dorothy and then eventually he said that his persona was a mix of all four of them. So this is another one of the, but this is me. It's like when my mom moved from, my mom went from collecting things shaped like hearts, the things shaped like pelicans to snowmen. And now my mom connects, collects witch figurines and that's what she does. But that is the whole point of that movie is you're supposed to relate to every one of those characters.

It's a little piece of you. It's the whole point. But he saw it as they're an amalgamation of me. Yeah, buddy. He, he was, he's the only one who existed, Kissel. I see. You're not important. It's just him.

No, I know. He exists for him. And that's the, uh, that's kind of the, the conflict is the whole world exists for him. And yet the world isn't doing what he believes it should be doing. Well, you know what? Talk to the little people, get things done, pass some legislation. He fucked up the pitch and they all left. Oh man.

Well, besides just buying the Wizard of Oz postcard, he also bought the January 1981 issue of Playboy, which featured an interview with none other than John Lennon. Okay. Who's on the cover there? Uh, it was Murtha, Murtha Runterson. Runterson. Oh, they did the Nebraska Housewives edition with the, it was the gross women of NSU. They were doing it was a Nebraska State University.

Looks like it's Barbara Bach. Barbara Bach. What a weird coincidence. Barbara Bach from Daisy Duke. Daisy Duke, who was on, uh, uh, what's the spots? Dukes of hazard. Dukes of hazard. Barbara Bach is currently on the new season of works cooks in America that I'm locked

in for watching for some reason. That's a synchronicity. Really? Who knew? Worst cook, huh? So Chapman bought both the Playboy and the Wizard of Oz postcard, but the Playboy had the added bonus of putting him in the mind for a little hired company. Oh my goodness.

He called an escort, but didn't have any sex because, you know, the whole warm, wetness thing. Yeah, I made him scared. So he just gave her a massage and the thing that was really fucked up is that he called this escort and she walks in and she's wearing a green dress, which is the same exact color of the dress that the escort wore that Holden Caulfield met while in Catcher and the Rye. And so it's, it's another one. It's another one where it's just like, what the fuck?

Because she walks in and a green dress, it's the same story. He gave her the massage. Yeah. He's the escort. Like, why didn't he just put an ad out being like, I'll massage you for 50 bucks. He could make some money. Yeah. I'd actually like to ask the sex workers to listen to our show if that would upset you

or not. Cause I feel like it's kind of nice, but in the end you're paying to be able to touch a woman without her yelling. I think that's a part of what it is. I don't think, I think they're experienced. They've seen it all. Yeah. Holden said like, Hey, do you think you can send someone who like doesn't speak English

very well? Like someone who doesn't talk. He's like, yeah, I don't want to talk to him at all. Like I just wanted to come cause he told them she came in and he said, I don't want you to talk. I just want you to be here because tomorrow is going to be a very difficult day. Oh my gosh. Okay.

So that next day on December 8th, Mark David Chapman woke up and knew that that was the day. But before he left the room, he had to prepare. First he practiced his quick draw in the mirror for a couple of hours. You know what the problem is that it's funny for a while, but it's also Travis Bickel. It's Travis Bickel did the same thing. So it's like, it's funny to watch his fat dude do it, but then knowing that he's going to go right, kill somebody afterwards is immediately becomes terrifying.

Yeah. I know. It's just another, they're all just like, they're just so pathetic, you know, it's like, okay, so he's practicing his quick draw practice, quick draw and every time he pulled the gun out, he clicked the trigger five times, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, and after he was satisfied with gunplay preparation, feel like he just also wants like a red rider BB gun for Christmas. He does.

Yeah. He's got to kill Black Bart like, so after he was satisfied with his gunplay preparation, he looked at himself in the mirror and said, quote, the catcher in the ride, my generation, chapter 27, then he laid out a Mark David Chapman shrine on top of the hotel dresser dedicated to himself and the things he loved. Oh, good. He included a passport, a picture of him working with Vietnamese refugees and a letter to one of his supervisors at the YMCA and a really small, small, strangled little person from

his Congress who defied him multiple years ago and put him down. Along with all that was a Todd Rungren eight track, a Bible open to the gospel according to John with linen written in next to John. Oh, I see. Yeah, you see what he did? Great. Yeah, I got it. Yeah.

And in the middle of it all, he laid the Wizard of Oz postcard he'd bought the day before and it was a nice little scene showing Dorothy and the cowardly lion. And I also put a plate of eggs and bacon because breakfast is the most important meal of the day and I want anybody to see this to be reminded by it. That is a good reminder. He then walked in and out of the room a few times to make sure it was going to look right when the cops came in, rearranging it just a little bit each time for a maximum Mark David Chapman effect.

Well, because it's all about him, right? It's all about because he knows they're going to come and search the hotel room looking for stuff and he wants to make sure he can set the proper story. Right. So after he was satisfied, he left the room to meet his destiny. First he stopped at a bookstore and picked up a copy of Catcher and a pen. He opened the cover and wrote on the first page, this is my statement underlying the word this and then signed it, Holden Caulfield, the catcher on the right.

He then went to the Dakota and started his day long stakeout armed with a copy of Catcher, a copy of Double Fantasy and his 38 special loaded with five hollow point bullets. And it's sitting in the pocket of his jacket the entire day. Right. So after he had dressed himself in many, many layers, I mean, obviously it was still cold out, so it worked, but he was trying to hide the gun. But his hand was on the gun all day waiting to go. And no one thought this was suspicious, even like pacing around or was he like dressed

like a bush? Like with a bunch of people, there was a bunch of people staying in there too. I see. Okay. Yeah. And there were other got like, there was a guy there that was a photographer that pretty much made his living harassing John Lennon. And so like Mark David Chapman made friends with him.

Okay. Well, that sounds like a good acquaintance for him to make. Yeah. And he got annoying. And the other thing that he did is he put a piece of cardboard in his pocket so it would hide the outline of the gun and his hand. So no one actually knew that he had a gun. So after that, after he got there, you know, after all these coincidences, there was one

more coincidence to go. And if this one is true, it might be the most amazing one of all. So the Dakota where John Lennon lived was the setting of Rosemary's baby. And Rosemary's baby was directed by Roman Polanski, who was married to Sharon Tate, who we all know was murdered by the Manson family. And the Manson family, as far as Chapman knew, were supposedly inspired by the Beatles song Helter Skelter, written by John Lennon. I think you mispronounced Helter Skelter.

Helter Skelter. I think it was Helter Skelter. Yeah, Helter Skelter, something like that. So on December 8th, 1980, as Chapman was outside the Dakota thinking about Rosemary's baby, who should walk by but fucking Mia Farrow? No kidding. Who starred in Rosemary's baby. It's like every star was just right there.

I mean, yeah, it's New York City. Yeah. Yeah, it's a city, it's a city that never sleeps. I heard that. I've heard that. John Lennon said he saw this as the final confirmation that he was making the right decision. Oh my gosh.

So at 11 a.m., the Lennon fan that Chapman had made friends with on Saturday showed up. And as Chapman and the fan were talking, a car pulled up in front of the Dakota and a small child got out. That child was John Lennon's son, Sean. Yeah, the one that he actually chose to pay attention to. Yes, the one he chose to love, yes. We don't have to malign John Lennon right now. This is like the one where we're like, you know, it's not right.

You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. And then you're right. You're right. Now the fan was familiar enough with the kid and the nanny to say hello. She actually introduced Mark David Chapman to Sean Lennon.

Mark David Chapman smiled at the kid, said he was honored to meet him and told him, hey kid, I've come all the way from Hawaii just to meet your dad. Oh my God. Oh my God. It was kind of like the time I saw Vince Vaughn walking down the street with his kids and I was fucking stoned out of my mind. It was like maybe 12 years ago. I was like on the street.

He was walking down the street with the kids and I looked up and I recognized Vince and D'Onofrio with his children and I looked at the kids and he like regarded me. And in a moment of like awkward silence, I turned to his children and I said, your father's a very talented man. You have to pull them away from him. Which Vince was? Yeah, which Vince was? Vince and D'Onofrio.

I was Vince and D'Onofrio. He was too, I would not approach him, but don't talk to the kids. Yes. I learned. I learned to not do that. Do the face. Yeah. And you know, after this encounter, like Chapman said that if that moment when he met John

Lennon's like toddler son, he said if that moment didn't change his mind, nothing would. Oh my God. So a few hours later, John Lennon finally appeared outside the Dakota and stood on the sidewalk waiting for a limousine. Now Chapman's cover story this entire time, all weekend, was that he'd been waiting for John Lennon to come out so he could get him to sign his copy of Double Fantasy. And the plan was John Lennon comes out, pull out the gun, shoot him. But when Lennon appeared, Chapman froze.

And the photographer that Chapman had made friends with that day, he actually like nudged Chapman forward. He's like, Oh, you've been waiting all day. Go talk to him. Thank you, photographer. Yeah. Thank you. Pain in the ass photographer that ended up like was the main reason why John Lennon's

entire team was like, you need fucking security because this guy was there. He had worked his way into the Dakota several times, took photos of the inside of the apartment, got led in like this guy. We was very, very invasive paparazzi. Leave him alone. Yeah. And people a bit like John Lennon's management had been saying for weeks like you got to get security.

You have to. And John Lennon was like, I'll, I'll get to it later. Like it'll be fine. Like, well, let me, he's like, let me worry about the album right now. And they're like, no, you need, you need this because of the album. Like you have your face all over the fucking world. Your people are going to come to see you. You need security now.

And he's like, nah, I'll do it later. But the thing was at this point when the photographer shoved him forward, all Chapman could do was just thrust the album in John Lennon's face with the pen and John Lennon took it, signed it, John Lennon, December 1980 and looked at Mark David Chapman and just said, is that all? Is that all you want? Wow. And Chapman just took it and said, thank you.

Yep. It was very scary. And they, cause they walked out when he's like, he heard the voice cause it's like, it's John Lennon. And when the guy faced him, it was like, it's as the face I've always want. And then for, instead of murdering him for a second, he, I mean, he became the fan again. He was like, this was somebody I've always loved. I've always loved John Lennon and I'm one of your, I am one of your biggest fans.

And they still, that record actually, weird synchronicity went for sale two days ago. The record that John Lennon signed for Mark David Chapman, it was up for auction, I think on Monday. Yeah. It's I think a little over a million dollar starting bed, right? Something like that. And when Chapman said, after that moment, he wanted to go home. He said he wanted to have a, the doorman Hale a cab, which would take him to the airport.

And then he'd hang the signed album on the wall and the whole thing was just going to be a kooky adventure. Okay. But he said the child inside of him, wasn't going to have any of that. The child was still too hurt to let it go. The child wanted to make the phonies pay. And so Mark David Chapman waited for John Lennon to return. This is why we have to cancel young Sheldon.

I think that young Sheldon is going to make more of these children apparition show up in people because everyone trusts Sheldon. Yeah, they do. And they think that he's, he's a good nerd. And I don't think so. I think it's a bad influence. It would be. And at about 11 o'clock that night, John Lennon did show back up.

John Lennon's white limo pulled up in front of the Dakota and stopped. Yoko got out first, Chapman smiled and nodded at her. Then Lennon appeared and Chapman and Lennon shared a look. He's certain that Lennon recognized him from that earlier that afternoon. Well, he might have. They saw him. He's like, here's that fucking weird guy again. Why is he outside?

Right. And so John Lennon, like he looked at the guy and it was obvious, he knew something was wrong. Okay. And Chapman said there was dead silence in his head as Lennon walked towards the arch of the building. And John Lennon, I mean, every footstep was faster than the one before. And then when Lennon's back was to Chapman, Chapman said the silence ended and he heard

the voice of the child, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it. Cause that's how Mark David Chapman said it in the interviews that it was this incessant whisper. Yeah. Just over and over again, riling him up. So Chapman pulled out his revolver, aimed and pulled the trigger five times, four shots hit John Lennon, who took off in a sprint, despite the bullet wounds, he crashed through

a glass door and he collapsed. And at that moment, the child disappeared and the weight of what he'd done finally hit Mark David Chapman. Well, because as soon as he shot him, he thought that the body would disappear. Like he thought he shot him, the body would disappear and then he would disintegrate and float into the book. And then that didn't happen. No.

He also thought that he would just drop. He thought that he would just drop right in front of him and he would be able to have a moment with the body. And that's also not how killing somebody works. No, it's not how it works. Ed Kemper, Ed Kemper said the same thing where he thought you'd stab him once and they're dead where it's just like, no, because you don't, you've never, you don't know what it's like.

It's not a video game. It's not a comic book. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, immediately things didn't go how Mark David Chapman thought they would because he thought that the reason why he got hollow point bullets was he thought that that would just shatter John Lennon's body. Like, if you get hollow points, he knew how they worked that they would just absolutely

destroy whatever, like his internal organs and he just go to the floor. He would curl up into a fetal position beside John Lennon and they would disappear into the ink of the catcher in the ride. So in his mind, John Lennon's last words would be like, I respect what you've done or something like that. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

But Lennon was nowhere to be seen. So Chapman dropped his gun, took out his copy of catcher on the ride and he tried reading it, like to calm himself down. Oh my God. But he said the words didn't make any sense and he said he started pacing back and forth and he'd look back to the spot where he'd hit Lennon because he said he kept hoping that John Lennon was fine. He said he kept hoping like, oh, maybe I missed him.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, because as soon as he fired the gun, like the thought in his head was, oh, fuck. Yeah, dude. Your life is over. Yeah. I mean, it's what they talk about every time. When someone said the survivors of suicide, it kind of happens quite a bit where it's like when you jump and then the first thought is like, oh my God, I'm stu- oh man, I should

have done that. Yeah. He knew. I mean, he was very sick. I mean, just like people who, because I mean, this is almost like, I mean, killing someone like this. I mean, you're essentially committing a kind of suicide, you know, freedom. I mean, it is a suicide of freedom because you know you're not getting away.

Yeah. He also, there's a lot of psychological gobbledygook because of his narcissism and because of the fact that when he signed out his last time as a security guard, he signed the name John Lennon, that there's a weird sort of theoretical idea that he had become John Lennon. And then when he shot him, it was almost an extended acts of suicide, but when he didn't die too, it's like, oh shit. Yeah. Now there's consequences.

Did he have that John Wilkes booth thing where he's like, I'm going to be a hero. Once I get back to the South, they're going to love me. Well, yeah, kind of, because he thought that by killing John Lennon, he was the catcher, you know, because John Lennon was going to be the person. John Lennon was the man that was leading all the innocence to their doom. But he was also punishing and saving John Lennon. Cause that's the other thing too. It's saving him from his own reputation by assassinating him and making him a martyr

and doing the whole thing. So it's very, obviously it's very complicated and fucked. Yeah. I mean, none of it makes any sense because he was a very mentally ill man. Right. There's not going to be a lot. Like the logic is going to fall apart very quickly. Well, naturally he had a little person counsel that was, well, I understand.

Well, you know, anybody who suffers from mental illness, like you know that the thoughts in your head, like you know, deep, you know, they're not logical. Like you know that the things that you're thinking and you know the fears that you have, you know it's not logical. You know it doesn't make any sense, but you can't stop them at the same time, you know, unless you get help. And Mark David Chapman never got help Mark David Chapman. It wasn't until he was sitting in the back of the police car, watching cops actually

carry John Lennon's body out of the Dakota, did he know that he was truly and completely fucked. And it wasn't just that he knew his life was over. He was afraid that they were going to kill him in prison. He was afraid that the cops are going to kill him because he immediately was like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please don't hurt me. Please don't hurt me. Oh my God.

Well, immediately, well, they took him aside. They had to throw, they had to throw two bulletproof vests on him. And so he's sitting in this answer, they're running him back and forth trying to get him to the police station. Cause as word went out that John Lennon was killed, people mobbed the area and I mean, he was the most hated man in the world. And so there was a moment when he said that he was with a cop alone, they had been ushering him back and forth and then trying to get him back to the jail.

And this cop is sitting there in a moment of silence and he finally looks at him, he's like, why the fuck did you do this? Like God and just like, like all of these Beatles fans that were cops, they were also like surrounding him and jailers that were cops and other criminals. I mean, jailers that were Beatles fans and other criminals who were Beatles fans. Yeah. Yeah. And Mark David Chapman kept like casually mentioning to people like, you know, I actually like

the Beatles. Thank you. You know, that means a lot that you know, that goes a long way. He's like, I'm a Beatles fan really. That's not what this is. That's not what this is about. It's like, it's like when people post horrible things on Reddit and then like the eighth line in, by the way, thanks for all the defenders on Reddit.

So many people are very nice. But then like eight things in the back, I am a fan. It's like, well, you don't sound like a fan. Yeah. It's like a jacket. No, the thing was, is that when Mark David Chapman was getting processed and all this, like his lawyers were like, so you're going to do an insanity defense, right? Yeah.

That's what we're doing. I have to, I have to refer back to my legal counsel. Little people, please come in. They have told me no. They told me no. The funny thing was, is that one of the little people did actually show up a lawyer in his pocket, a particularly loyal minister named Robert. Robert came back and Robert was literally just said, you know, you're fucked, right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, his fantasy didn't even help him. Like, you don't understand, right? How is this like no one's, no one's going to help you here. You're going to get the chair. His fantasy is more rational than he is. Yes. It's such a straight.

That is so weird to me, which makes you wonder if the fantasy is even that real. This is my problem. I think that it's a constant divide. I think there is a really hard time to get to the truth here because I don't know what is fake and what is not because a part of it was there was a big lead up to get him an insanity plea and then somewhere in the middle of it. And he used to tell him about the little people because every cycle because all of this comes from every psychologist in the world asking him, why did you shoot John Lennon?

And he's telling him all these stories and shit. And then finally, though, the very end, during a sentencing, he jumps his own lawyers and pleads guilty because what he said, I was going to use the pulpit or whatever it is. I'm going to use the stand to tell everyone to read Catcher and the Rye. And so he pleaded guilty and then read a passage from Catcher and the Rye, which is the passage of catching the children as they fall over the cliff. And they're all like, technically, this makes you crazy. If this was just a large marketing ploy for the 20th anniversary of Catcher and the Rye,

John Lennon storms back into the courtroom and says, you got to buy the book. That would be awesome. What? Yeah, because he said he was going to plead not guilty and use that and just to constantly talk about Catcher and the Rye and then Catcher and the Rye would be in the news constantly. But he said, God himself got ahold of him and said, you need to plead guilty. You know, hey, don't mean to bother. You just want to know, I think there's a really good time to plug the book.

Taylor, wait a second. Do you work for Penguin? Yeah, God works for Penguin. You know, the craziest thing is he might have gotten off. Hinckley got off the guy who shot Reagan. You know, he just went to a home. He went to a hospital. And then, you know what, Hinckley was inspired by Catcher and the Rye.

And Mark Davidch happened specifically. He was the reason why he shot Reagan to avenge John Lennon's death. That's what he was. It's a whole other side plot where he was inspired to be a good guy and murder the problem who was Reagan and then to also to try to get Jody Foster to fall in love with him. Right, right. I kind of get why J.D. was sort of just like slunk into the trees like that Homer Simpson gift after like two

people are shot based on your book, I get just like, I'm going to the woods. You know what, guys? It was a fucking book. Yeah. That must have been very scary. That must have been horrifying for him. I can't imagine just being an author and have that happen to you. And then all of a sudden you are.

I mean, he obviously, he was also a weird, terrible man, but that's just your your artist making people pop off. Yeah, it's crazy. That's kind of insane. Yeah, totally. Mark David Chapman put in the guilty plea that gave him 20 years to life up for parole in 2000. But shit did not go easy for Mark David Chapman after a sentence.

No, because think about it too, the last time if he had just been crazy and put into a mental institution, remember the last time he was at a mental institution? He what about Bob himself up to working for the fucking place? It's like he could have done it. Yeah, he could have done it, but he was too crazy to plead to do the insanity play. Right. Yeah, but the thing was that for years after that, the only person who made life hard for Mark David Chapman was Mark David Chapman.

Over the next five years, Chapman would claim quote unquote demon possession. And of course he acted accordingly while awaiting transfer to Attica, Chapman took off all his clothes and destroyed his cell while spouting gibberish to try to call down the demons. He made a real production of it. He was obviously now again, he's just immediately back to searching for attention. Right. Yeah. And he even tried like sickened demons on his neighbor.

His neighbor was this guy, he was the, they called him the Phantom of the Opera Killer. His name was Craig Cremens. They called him the Phantom of the Opera Killer because he was a stagehand who had murdered a young violinist at the Metropolitan Opera. Oh, okay. Very interesting. I want to cover that story. That's a good little mini story.

Yeah. It's a small one because I mean, the whole story, I mean, he's a, he was a stagehand fell in love with this girl. He tried asking her out on a date. She said no. So he fucking pushed her out of the Raptors. Not quite as romantic as the Phantom of the Opera, I have to say. No, no, no, no soundtrack.

It is very scary to be a woman. Yes. Yes it is. Yeah. But Cremens and all he did was just light cigarettes and flicked him at his naked body, just burning him. And then eventually he got sick of that and just like, get me out of here, please can I get a transfer?

Hmm. And then he started being like, you're gonna murder me again, kid, you're gonna murder me again. Like acting like he's the lady and shit. And finally I was like, get the fuck out of here. And so he's going apeshit. Mark is saying he's like, like fake season out and like doing all the stuff. So they did a fun little thing with a pump them full of a drug called Stelazine.

Stelazine. Yeah. Stelazine. It was a powerful anti-psychotic and it causes, in a weird reaction, it caused him paralysis of his head, throat and voice to the point where every single time he fucked up and he was acting like a crazy person, they were like, do you want to get some Stelazine again? He's like, well, you know, I'll feel so much better. Better, just better.

I'll feel better. Unbelievable. Wow. But still, for the next few years, Mark went back and forth between being normal and suddenly being possessed by demons. And sometimes he would act so erratically that they would have to hospitalize him. Yeah, dude. They dropped the hammer on him quite a bit.

And he put on a good show too, like once in 1982, when he was being put into a van for transport to the mental hospital, he started yelling, just so you know, this is the new mark, I'm rated X, watch out, I'm very, very bad. I want to steal that, like this is the new Marcus, I'm rated X. Oh, wow. Very bad. Yeah. Very bad indeed.

Then when he got to the hospital, he was so violent, they put him in a straight jacket. And of course, he was fucking, he was trying to get out of it, so they just grabbed him by his hair and pulled him down the hallway by his hair. Okay. And in response to that, he yelled, pull it all out, I love it, yank it, I love this, yank it out. Hmm. Doesn't seem enjoyable though.

And pretty soon after that, Chapman was acting up, so they pulled down his pants as a nurse brought out a needle to inject him with some medication or another. And to this, Chapman yelled, you break that needle off of my ass. You break it off in there, just stick it up there and you break it off. I know that's what you want to do. You break it off my snap an ass pussy. I got a snap an ass pussy. Oh my goodness.

But in 1985, Chapman says he finally got rid of the quote unquote demons after a series of prison exorcisms. Oh. But. Yes. I don't even want to know what a prison exorcism is and nor should we discuss it. Well, here's what a prison exorcism is, it's a solo venture. Oh, okay.

Good. I thought it might happen to the showers. All right. Well, how he did in, how he did his prison exorcism is that none of the priests were allowed to come in. So he set up a prearranged date and time with the minister who was on the outside. And so the minister would pray for Mark David Chapman while Mark David Chapman was doing his own exorcism on himself.

Just cut to the minister, just eating the new McDonald's like chicken sandwich. Just be like, this is really good, what time is it, ah, that's right, the exorcism, well, doesn't really matter to us. Yeah, but he said it was easier because they didn't actually possess him. They were just kind of latching onto him. Oh, I see. Yeah, and let him go. It was catch and release.

Okay, all right. Yes, he said the final expectoration of the demons came when he vomited seven evil spirits out of his mouth and they evaporated into the walls of the prison, never to be seen again. All right. Now, he's great. Now, he's healthy. Now, one thing we've heard over the years and one thing that we've actually talked about

in the last couple of episodes a lot is that nobody's really been able to diagnose just what illness Mark David Chapman suffered from, but Henry has a theory. In the documentary The Dangerous Son, there was one kid in there that had a, he was very sweet boy, but he was, he had a form of autism and also a form of a thing that they called a schizoid personality disorder, which something I've never really heard of, but obviously sounds very vague because it is purposefully vague. It's kind of made to be someone who is a dissociative personality. And it was a, this kid was, he suffered from autism.

And when he'd reach emotional peaks, the schizoid personality disorder would cause him to break from reality. He had visual and audio hallucinations and he would become homicidal slash suicidal. I think that there's something in there because I don't know whether or not, because I try to really look up if Mark David Chapman had autism or if they discovered it after the fact. I know that there are, well, Mark has to break down, but I think I'm somewhere with it. But I don't know.

And obviously I am not a psychologist, but it just sounded right. Yeah. It's, I mean, I mean, we can look at some of the signs like as far as the autism goes, like Chapman checks a couple of boxes here, you know, he gets upset over minor changes. Yeah, when he was a kid, he would rock his body back and forth constantly. He'd have trouble understanding other people's feelings, not to mention the whole obsessive interest thing. Yes.

And then there's the schizoid personality disorder, which like Henry says, it's very vague. And there are some parts of schizoid personality disorder that are the complete opposite of what Mark David Chapman had in his life because it's not a narcissist. It's not necessarily like a narcissist thing, but you know, it's vague and there's actually a lot of people, a lot of psychiatrists say like, nah, actually that doesn't exist at all. It shouldn't even be in the DSM. It's just them trying to figure out what to say to somebody who pops out, like, like,

what do you say to someone who does, has these things? Yeah. It's like, it's one of those things where it's like, well, we don't really know how to fix it. So it's schizoid personality disorder is kind of like, it's like, you're fucked. Yeah. It's actually, you know, what psychiatrist I've been paying you a lot of money. You could have gotten to that a little earlier.

Thank you. So I'm fucked. That's it. Official diagnosis. Well, some of the signs of that is like he choose solitary activities. Like remember when he was in the mental hospital the first time, they said that he would sit there and he would fantasize about going to prison. He's like, I could just go to prison.

I could be alone and that would be fine. That would be great. He also had little or no interest in sexual experiences. You know, he was afraid of the warm wetness. He showed emotional detachment and he had an elaborate, exclusively internal fantasy world. So there are some boxes on here. Yeah, absolutely.

He checks on both of these. So it's, you know, like Mark David Chabin. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. Who knows? I think it's very interesting. I think Henry really hit something cool on this one. Yep.

I'm gonna say something ain't right. Something ain't right. Something ain't right. Something ain't right. That is for sure. All this shit still didn't stop his wife from loving him. As soon as Chapman was transferred to Attica, Gloria moved there and still lives there to this day where they are allowed one conjugal visit per year.

She is still with him. Wow. And so far, Chapman has rightly been denied parole nine times, mostly due to the efforts of Yoko Ono. And he has given multiple explanations for his crimes over the years, but one tends to stand out. Chapman said at one point that he had an epiphany, that he killed John Lennon so people would read Catcher in the Rye, which is just about the only way he could give his crime even

a little bit of purpose. But really, Mark David Chapman was just one more asshole who couldn't make anything. And he had to destroy someone who did all to make himself feel better about his place in the world. All right. Mark David Chapman, interesting stuff. It's horrifying. In his last parole hearing in 2016, he finally admitted that he did it all for attention.

Yeah. Wow. Which is they took till now. It took the 2016 for him to say something like that. They haven't even made sense. Yeah. This one, that makes all the sense. Like he, yeah.

That makes a lot of sense. But there's a lot of other things too. It's a huge action just to get fucking, just to get attention. Like, I mean, obviously you have to be very ill to think that's what you have to do to get attention. Yeah, you could also do like a mystery pooper type. And then you're like, I hope they bust me soon like that vice principal. Oh my God.

And you also got to ask yourself, it's like, but is he just saying that as something else to try? Because he's tried something else. He tried other explanations eight other times and he's like, I want to get out of prison. Maybe if I just say I did it for the reason why they think I did it. So maybe if I try that, then maybe that'll work with people like this, you just don't fucking know. And we're never going to know.

Nope. And I would assume he's just going to die in prison. The only thing maybe he gets very sick and they let him out, do one of those type things if it matches up with a parole, but Yoko would have to die for him to get out of jail. Yeah. All right. Fast. This one is really scary.

Yeah. I mean, it's really scary. I mean, the only thing like we're never really going to know. But like the point of telling this story is that, you know, there were signs that things were wrong with Mark David Chatman. Yeah. Quite a few. There were signs to, you know, his coworkers, signs to his wife, signs everywhere that something

was wrong with this guy. And so if someone's showing these sorts of signs, reach out, call somebody. But how do you do that with, it's really hard with family. How do you say the hard words to somebody of like, you're scaring me, that there's something about there, your activity is scaring me. You have to be able to have make those calls and say to someone, be able to be honest enough with somebody being like, I really want you to get help and it's not because I hate you or because I'm judging you, it's because you're going to become a danger to yourself or to

other people. Yeah. That's what this, the dangerous son is all about that, about how like, what do you do when you have to like give your kid up to the fucking state where you look at this kid and be like, you are dangerous, you're my, you're my child, but you are very scary. Yeah. We've had to deal with that a lot with foster care. You got to make hard choices once they get big enough and mature.

It's very dangerous. Yes, it is. Yeah. But then again, then they just become a recluse like JD Challenger and then they just end up, it's almost impossible. That's mental health as a solution is such a broad vague idea that it's just, it's thrown around so willy-nilly, but it's really almost impossible in a lot of ways. But there isn't.

You can do it. Yeah. You can do it. Yeah. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. And Marcus hasn't freaked out at all.

At all. Hey, man, you have no idea what I would be like or what I used to be like. I'm just glad I'm solid as a rock. Yeah. All of us completely. Yeah. Cause you both, you guys, you really are such great examples to me. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm stalwart. I'm stalwart. People say I'm, well, I'm the rock of this group as we know. Yeah. Yeah. All right, everyone. Well, thank you so much for listening.

Fascinating. Great research guys. Great story. Really a lot more to that than, than I expected. That's for sure. Yeah. Let's see. I want to number one.

Thank you everyone who came out on Tuesday night to the Echoplex. Yeah. We did two sold out shows. It was the first time running them. And unlike, we are not extremely depressed, which is good. It worked out. It was the first time ever saying those words on the stage and we didn't know what those words were even going to be.

And it was, we're really getting there. So I think we had a fun new live show. And hopefully we can see you folks at Clusterfest here coming up in the next couple of weeks. And, and we're going to be announcing, we are very close to booking a big show in July. We hope to be announcing that next week. And we also hope to have a few more dates for everyone coming up here very soon. But there will be another show announced next month. Sorry we can't, sorry we're not able to come out and do as many live shows as we were able

to last year. But you know, the book is really, it's taken up a ton of time, but it's going to be worth it. But also, no, when that book is done, we're going to be going on a very extensive tour. Yes. And then we'll be going on a very extensive tour taken in everywhere, all different sorts of spots. I'm really excited.

Also, if you get a chance this weekend to check out the John Wayne Gacy art exhibit at lethal amounts, it was pretty incredible. I think it's sold out because somebody sent a link. I think all the tickets are gone there, but I don't know, maybe not. Who knows? All right, everyone. Let's see. Thank you all so, so much for giving to our Patreon.

We really appreciate it. Without you, none of this is possible. And is there anything else we want to talk about? No, no, no. Follow us on all our bullshit at Twitter at Henry loves you at Marcus Parks have been kissle. Follow us on Instagram at Dr. Fantasi and Marcus Parks have been kissle the number one. And follow us on the infiltrated social medias that control your thoughts.

Yeah. Get an LP on the left. Yeah. Break those sometimes. You got to break the stream there sometimes because folks are drowning. As a matter of fact, Henry made a great point how the internet is our subconscious and naturally there are just so many depressed people and the internet is basically just a reflection of that.

Mm-hmm. That that's why every time you go on it, you're happy and then every time you leave, you're depressed. Yep. It's every fucking time. Every time. And I just constantly, we all just fall into the same fucking trap constantly. I get the fuck off that bullshit.

I never come away from the internet feeling good. Isn't that crazy? So you know, you're not alone in that three men, three men that have made their living on the internet. Yeah. You're never hurt by it. But you know what I constantly, but you know what I come back feeling good from? Podcast apps.

Yeah. There it is. Yeah. There it is. Come back learning something. Absolutely. All right, everyone. Hail yourselves.

Hail Satan. Helgeen. Magustalations. Hail me. Don't bother Satan.