The Autograph and the Shooting: John Lennon at the Dakota

The man who killed John Lennon got his autograph first. Outside the Dakota, the apartment building ahead, a fan named Mark David Chapman spent part of December eighth, nineteen eighty, waiting near the entrance. Around five that evening, as Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, left for a recording session, Chapman approached with a copy of Lennon's new album, Double Fantasy, and asked him to sign it. Lennon obliged. Chapman later recalled that the former Beatle was kind and patient with him, taking the time to sign the album before getting into his car.

Chapman did not leave. He stayed near the Dakota's entrance for hours, and when Lennon and Ono returned home around ten fifty that night, Chapman drew a thirty eight caliber revolver and fired five hollow point bullets into Lennon's back from only a few feet away. Four of the bullets struck him. Lennon was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital but was pronounced dead at eleven fifteen that night. Chapman did not run. Witnesses found him still standing at the scene, calmly reading a paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye, until police arrived and arrested him.

He later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to twenty years to life. He has since been denied parole more than a dozen times and remains in prison. The Dakota's entrance became an impromptu memorial in the days after the shooting, and the building's residents, who had long valued their privacy behind its iron gates, pushed afterward for tighter security that remains in place today. Lennon was cremated the next day, and his ashes were scattered not far from here, across the street in Central Park.