On this day 45 years ago, John Lennon був killed

The briefest account of this, one of the most high-profile murders of the late 20th century, goes like this: On December 8, 1980, Mark Chapman, armed with a pre-purchased pistol, waited for the musician in the archway of the prestigious Dakota skyscraper in New York City, where he lived. This was hardly surprising—Lennon had plenty of admirers. Around 4:00 PM, when Lennon went to the recording studio, Chapman asked him to autograph Lennon's album, Double Fantasy. The photograph of this moment became the last one of Lennon. At 10:50 PM, as the musician was returning home with Yoko Ono and, recognizing Chapman, nodded to him, Chapman fired five bullets into the musician and sat down on the pavement to read Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye. Chapman's biographers write that the psychiatrists who examined him concluded that he combined an inner sense of superiority with extremely low self-esteem, calling this a "paradox." In fact, there are plenty of such people in the world—it's just that not all of them take revenge on the world for this, targeting its most famous representatives.

Salinger admirers are unsurprisingly surprised that Chapman's favorite book was his novel The Catcher in the Rye. After all, its protagonist, Caulfield, is a kindred spirit, unwilling to grow up because he considers the adult world to be utterly false. So Chapman, a Beatlemaniac in his youth, discovered in Caulfield a kindred spirit when he learned that Lennon, who writes songs about a world without property, doesn't give his millions to the poor, but buys luxury apartments and country houses. What can be called paradoxical is the conclusion of forensic psychiatrists that Chapman suffered from delusional disorder, but was sane at the time of the murder.

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Chapman was sentenced to life in prison with the right to petition for clemency every two years after 20 years, which he has regularly done since 2000 – and has been regularly denied.

Photo: John Lennon signing his album for Mark Chapman Pinterest