Lennon killer 'ashamed'

2008-08-20 10:15

Los Angeles - The killer of former Beatle legend John Lennon has admitted for the first time his shame for the 1980 murder of the singer.

Mark David Chapman made the comments earlier this month to a parole board, which subsequently denied his request for release, 28 years after he was sentenced to 20 years to life.

"I recognised that that 25-year-old man, I don't think he really appreciated the life that he was taking, that this was a human being," he said in comments released on Tuesday. "I feel now at 53 I have grown into a deeper understanding of what a human life is. I have changed a lot.

"I am ashamed. That is my first thought. I am sorry for what I did," Chapman said, according to the transcript.

Obsessed and disturbed fan

Described as an obsessed and disturbed fan, Chapman gunned down Lennon outside the victim's Manhattan apartment building in December 1980 in front of Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono, and other witnesses.

In the transcript, Chapman said that he initially got the urge to kill Lennon after looking at the Beatles' classic album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

"I perceived him at that time, and wrongly judged him, to be a phoney," Chapman told the board. "Here he is at this ritzy building, and he had been singing of love and other things, at that time, it angered me."

"It was more about me and not him. I was probably mad at myself for my failures," Chapman said. "I would become famous, I would be something other than a nobody, and that was my reasoning at the time."

Chapman's next appearance before the board is scheduled for August 2010. - dpa

- SAPA