John Lennon’s killer Mark Chapman denied parole for the ninth time

John Lennon’s killer will remain behind bars after being denied parole for the ninth time. The New York state Board of Parole on Monday announced that it has again denied parole to Mark David Chapman, who on December 8, 1980, shot and killed the former Beatle outside his luxury Manhattan apartment. The 61-year-old Chapman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and is serving a sentence of 20-years to life in Wende Correctional Facility in western New York. In a description of its decision, the parole board noted that Chapman has since described the murder as “selfish and evil.”

Your release would be incompatible with the welfare of society and would so deprecate that seriousness of the crime as to undermine respect for the law.

Parole board

But it concluded that his contrition and other factors supporting his release were outweighed by the premeditated and “celebrity-seeking” nature of the crime. Chapman will be eligible to seek parole again in 2018. He was last denied parole in 2014, when he said he still received letters about the pain he caused in his pursuit of notoriety. “I am sorry for causing that type of pain,” he said. “I am sorry for being such an idiot and choosing the wrong way for glory.” In a 1992 interview Chapman told of the moment when Lennon got out of a limousine and approached him after he asked for an autograph. Chapman said: “I heard this voice - not an audible voice, an inaudible voice - saying over and over, ‘Do it, do it, do it’. I thought that by killing him I would acquire his fame.”

I am sorry for being such an idiot and choosing the wrong way for glory.

Beatle outside his luxury Manhattan apartment.The

lennon killer