Chapman shot Lennon to ‘steal his fame’

JOHN LENNON’s murderer Mark Chapman told a parole board that he killed the legendary Beatle to “steal” his fame.

Chapman, who was denied parole earlier this month, told the hearing that due to his crime he was “a bigger nobody than I was before”.

According to a transcript of the hearing, released last night by the New York Division of Parole, Chapman never apologised to the panel for gunning Lennon down but said he deserved to be in jail because of the “pain and suffering” he had caused.

During the hearing, Chapman recounted the moment he fired five bullets at Lennon outside his New York home, striking him four times and he recalled how a doorman ran over and disarmed him.

“I committed this act for attention. To, in a sense, steal John Lennon’s fame and put it on myself, thinking I was a nobody at the time. In some ways I’m a bigger nobody than I was before because, you know, people hate me now instead of, you know, for something positive.”

Chapman told the parole board that he had planned the killing for three months.

The hearing was held at the jail in Attica, New York State, where Chapman is housed in a separate wing for his own protection. There he works as a law clerk and a porter, and spends an hour each evening watching television.

Following the hearing, the parole board decided not to free Chapman because of the “extreme malicious intent of his crime”.

He told the hearing that if freed he would “like to tell people about what happened to me. About Christ, about what he’s done for me”. He added: “I deserve nothing. Because of the pain and suffering I caused, I deserve exactly what I’ve gotten right now.”