Another parole hearing for Lennon's shooter

After 34 years and his eighth parole hearing, Mark David Chapman, the shooter of John Lennon was again denied parole by a three member panel of the New York State Parole Board on August 20, 2014. The following is an excerpt from my book “Geranium Justice” which details my meeting with Chapman. For the full chapter and his future transcripts, read my book. “A Monday in December at 10:40 in the night and I’m walking hand in hand with a date on Central Park West. We can’t help but notice blockades, people and police activity on the corner of W. 72nd Street where the Dakota apartment building sits. This is commonly home-base for celebrity watchers and autograph seekers, as many well-knowns live here. But this scene feels very different, somehow haunted and ominous. We’re told by onlookers that John Lennon has been shot. After taking in the scene, we believe that if the crowd’s report is true, the victim needs some privacy and the police need room to do their job. And so we move on. To bolster this decision, I confess that I’m not a huge Beatles fan, am no stranger to crime scenes and am not a voyeur. And so we head for one of the many cafes in the neighborhood. The next few days the media is spilling over with all angles of the murder. People have set up camp and cameras in Central Park, soon to be named ‘Strawberry Fields’. Memorials abound. The shooter surrendered at the scene so there’s no manhunt. The public is lusting after Chapman as he’s taken their hero from them. In another age, we might have seen a lynching. But I remind you that my agency, the New York City Board of Correction, is responsible for making certain that safety and security is in place for all prisoners and that the jail minimum standards dictated by the court are met. In the coming days I find out much more about Mark David Chapman and about how he’s living. I don’t have any inkling now that he’ll be a focus for me through two jobs. Now writing this, three. On Thursday morning, the 11th, a few days after the shooting, I report to my office across the street from City Hall. I’m told to check out Chapman’s lockup at Bellevue Hospital, The day is murky in every way possible. The sky is distinctly gray. There’s a muddle of sounds echoing angry screams, sad moans and excitement on the street. The vision of Bellevue Hospital alone emits fear wrapped in doom like fog. There’s a gauntlet of reporters and photogs that I have to cross through…from the bus to the hospital door. The police framing the entrance are keeping the screaming mob away from me. Am I the wife? “Just who are you?” News has carried about Chapman; that he’s from Hawaii, that he’s married, that he grew up with a childhood like Lennon’s. The reporters are clearly confused as to who I am and why I’m being admitted. “Are you Gloria?” they ask and I suddenly become the story. The monotone gray continues as I enter the door that opens only into an elevator which takes me up a few floors to the prison hospital ward. It’s manned by a corrections officer who matches the steely gray surroundings. It creeks to the jail hospital floor as my moment-in-the-sun swiftly pass. Without a word exchanged, the corrections officer brings the boxy elevator even with the floor where I will meet John Lennon’s killer. As the door slides open, there’s nothing to be heard at all. There’s no clanking din of gates, no undercurrent of men’s voices as is heard in ‘real’ jails. There is only a sense of tension in the void shared by officers flanking the hall to the left and to the right, book-ending the CO sitting behind a sign-in desk I’m instructed to begin my slow walk down the hall. My pace is timed with the opening and closing of the barred gates I pass through. We come from opposite ends of the cement glazed hall, going through four separate iron gates to meet in the middle. From each of our vantage points, we are both striped by light reflected through the barred windows from the individual cells lining both sides of the corridor. Two men walking together approach a card table set up for this meeting. The silhouettes show one tall and straight, and one short and rounder. Our gate keepers time our passage to arrive at the table simultaneously. The taller man is from Corrections, already a trusted confident of the prisoner and has told Mark that I am there to explain his rights to him. We introduce ourselves, shake hands, and sit down. We sit facing one another while he tells me in the friendliest of ways, how well he is being cared for and acknowledges that it’s probably more than deserved considering his crime. I liken the staff to being his canaries in this Bellevue mine. Even without formal psychiatric training, it’s no reach for me to conclude that he’s mentally ill and has been for a while. His manner is meek, respectful, and vulnerable. He tells me that his voices had been plotting this for a long time. He’s been fixated on Lennon’s celebrity and his own inadequacies, he’s had suicidal ideations and other classic symptoms of mental illness As he talks, he seems to fold into himself. He says with frustration that he and Lennon are so alike that he had to get one of them out of the way to exist and begins again to mention the ‘voices’. I interrupt and am careful not to discuss the reason he’s here and remind him why I’m here. My intention is not to become witness for the prosecution and I fear he’s telling me far more than I need to know. As a human being, I can’t help but feel pity for this so obviously disturbed man. Certainly he’ll be separated from the public for a long long time and due to the victim, perhaps forever. In this testosterone filled prison psyche ward of Bellevue Hospital, I don’t want to display publicly any compassionate attitude but Chapman could use a few kind words and remarkably he’s the one giving it out…to his jailers. I focus on discussing how he’s being treated and give him my card should he need to be in touch with my office. I’ve told him about his rights here and I’ve looked and listened for over an hour. I’ve done my job as required but wish I could also do what I did in my last job when I was a prison social worker. Then I would have done a full psycho-social intake so I could understand this guy better. It’s time to go.”