John Lennon's killer Mark David Chapman admits seeking fame with 'evil in my heart'

The man who killed John Lennon outside his New York City apartment block in 1980 has been denied parole for a 12th time.

Mark David Chapman told a parole board in August that he knew it was wrong to kill the former Beatle, but that he was seeking fame and had “evil in my heart".

In a transcript released under a freedom of information request on Monday, Chapman was recorded as saying the decision to kill Lennon was "my big answer to everything. I wasn’t going to be a nobody, anymore.”

“I am not going to blame anything else or anybody else for bringing me there,” Chapman told the board. “I knew what I was doing, and I knew it was evil, I knew it was wrong, but I wanted the fame so much that I was willing to give everything and take a human life,” he said.

Chapman killed Lennon as he and his partner Yoko Ono returned to their Upper West Side apartment on December 8 1980.

Earlier that day, Lennon had signed an autograph for Chapman on a copy of his recently released album, “Double Fantasy.”

Chapman, 67, told the board, “This was evil in my heart. I wanted to be somebody and nothing was going to stop that."

Chapman is serving a 20-years-to-life sentence at Green Haven Correctional Facility in New York’s Hudson Valley. He has repeatedly expressed remorse during his parole hearings over the years.

“I hurt a lot of people all over the place and if somebody wants to hate me, that’s OK, I get it,” he said at the hearing on August 31.

Denying his released, the board said Chapman's action has left "the world recovering from the void of which you created.”

Chapman's next parole board appearance is scheduled for February 2024.

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