
What do J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and the Holy Bible have in common? They both contain explicit instructions to kill John Lennon—or at least, according to Mark David Chapman, they do. And guess what? Chapman’s been up to some stuff since that fateful day in 1980 when he snuffed out the life of the quote-unquote “Smart” Beatle. In this episode, the boys find out exactly what the fame-hungry murderer has been up to since our original coverage of him in Episode 315 on the Last Podcast on the Left—which includes being denied parole a grand total of THIRTEEN TIMES. Maybe he should’ve given peace a chance, huh?
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Henry Zabrowski
That's when the cannibalism started. Last update on the left. Speaking of my mother, we can start like that. Speaking of my mother, my mom always says she remembers the day that with John Lennon got murdered.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Yes.
Henry Zabrowski
But she said she didn't want to go on the train to go down there to Dakota, to Strawberry Fields. Yeah. Because she said if she went to the Dakota, that's where she went to go get stabbed by a hooker. So she didn't want to go to the absolutely incredible moment in history.
Ben Kissel
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
To be a part of the group of people singing Imagine in front of the Dakota.
Ben Kissel
Yeah. Because Give peace a chance.
Henry Zabrowski
No, no, no, no. She wouldn't give peace a chance. She decided that it was too difficult. She decided she was going to be physically assaulted outside of Central Park. Because it used to be violent.
Marcus Parks
Well, yeah, of course it used to be violent, but at that moment, I mean, I've seen the pictures of the assassination of John Lennon, like, right afterwards. Like, there were so many people there. And, you know, it was like, you know, people were sad.
Henry Zabrowski
All they do is grab at me. Henry Thomas, everywhere I go. There's no way I could go all.
Ben Kissel
The way to the city.
Henry Zabrowski
I'm not going to the city.
Marcus Parks
From Queens. Forest Hills.
Henry Zabrowski
From the Queen. From Queen.
Ben Kissel
I'm not gonna go to the city.
Henry Zabrowski
She might have been in the city by that point. I actually don't know either way, John Lennon's fucking dead.
Marcus Parks
Yep. Welcome to last update on the left, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Marcus Parks, here with Henry Zabrowski going deep into the Queen's lore.
Henry Zabrowski
Wait a second. Let me practice my Yoko.
Ben Kissel
It's more of a.
Marcus Parks
Nah, you're both. It's more like a. See, I've actually listened to the music.
Ben Kissel
I listened to the season of Class.
Henry Zabrowski
I listened to the Leno, man. I listened to all that. But guess what, man? Either way, she also. She didn't stop, Jack. She should have been there, because guess what? She was obviously told by the CIA that Mark David Chapman was an assassin that was also being protected by the.
Marcus Parks
Doorman, who is also who apparently shot John Lennon in the front. That's what we've been told. We're here on our Mark David Chapman update. Now, our Mark David Chapman series. This is one of those that me and Henry both feel is a. It's an underappreciated series.
Henry Zabrowski
I will never, not die on that line in the sand because our. I love those episodes. I thought that the Mark David Chapman's inner is truly, truly mysterious. So obviously, most of this episode is just straight up a commercial for old episode that you should go listen to because we are definitely going to go.
Ben Kissel
Into what the whole show is waiting sort of J.
Henry Zabrowski
There are updates because like, we really are for a lot of our like topics in the series, we are fully updating them. And in this one, like, we did a pretty thorough job in our original series going deep into the life of Mark David Chapman. But the one thing that we don't do a lot on last podcast on the left as much anymore as give like a lot of credence to the various conspiracy theories that are wrapped up. We believe kind of in the Occam's Razor of most situations, especially when it comes to humans killing humans.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
And this we at the time, I think we did we even really cover the MK Ultra angle because we were Mark David Chapman.
Marcus Parks
I don't think we. We did not mention it at all.
Henry Zabrowski
Because we were more so interested in his inner life, which was so fascinating.
Marcus Parks
Far more fascinating because do you know, I.
Henry Zabrowski
Did you know that you can be sad in Hawaii?
Ben Kissel
Lots of people are. There's a whole movie called Descendants about it.
Henry Zabrowski
I did not know. I literally didn't know until we did that series. I was like, it's Hawaii.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Ben Kissel
They have a very intense depression rate and suicide rate.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
Well, Mark David Chapman's inner world, it was one of those things that started when he was a small, small child that he imagined that he was surrounded and commanded. Like these little people.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes.
Marcus Parks
He called them and he would play Beatles songs for them and he would crush them and kill them when they displeased him. And when he did things good for them, they would say all hell, Mark.
Henry Zabrowski
King of music, we love you. Which is fun. You know, I honestly, I wish I had the same. A lot of my little guys argue.
Ben Kissel
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
And most of them honestly are pretty anti the content.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Ben Kissel
Just keep talking about it when we get ready for your insanity plea.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah. That's how you build up. It didn't work for Mark David Chapman, but so do we have to tell people that Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon on December 8, 1980? For those of you that don't remember. And the reason why he's fascinating and the reason why we all, the whole world became interested in Mark David Chapman was because, number one, he let himself very easily be arrested by the police. He did not try to escape. There was the weird stuff that was found in his hotel room. The picture of the wizard of Oz cast.
Marcus Parks
It was a picture of Dorothy and the cowardly Lion.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah. Which I guess. I know it was all four of them.
Marcus Parks
I thought it was just a Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion.
Henry Zabrowski
There's a picture in that new documentary series that we're. We're not necessarily.
Marcus Parks
If it was. If it was all four of them, then the book that we used. Get it wrong.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, it's very, very possible. But this. We watched the new documentary on Apple plus that's called John Lennon Murder Without a Trial, which is kind of trying to wrap up where. This is kind of where the update idea even came from. And so also, Mark David Chapman, he shot John Lennon from the back. Three different shots. Tight grouping, which is a big people. There's one of those weird red flags for some people about the type. Tight grouping. And then also he stood with the book Catcher in the Rye in his hands and he was reading chapter seven, which is then becoming like. I guess that his. His important one. I believe that is the chapter where Catcher in the Rye. Where he said it. No, he said it like in the book.
Marcus Parks
Said what?
Henry Zabrowski
Like, catches with the one thing where it's like. And then they caught the kids. Like a Catcher in the Rye. Like, I want to say it's in that.
Marcus Parks
The title line.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. The titular line.
Ben Kissel
Oh. You know, I for one, think, you know, it's not all bad that this happened, because that was the day I was conceived.
Marcus Parks
No shit.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, do you think that loosened your mother up? Do you think that when John Lennon was shot, it made her wet enough to have sex with your father?
Marcus Parks
Did they embrace each other? Try to while away?
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, is your dad Morty?
Ben Kissel
Morty.
Henry Zabrowski
What's your dad's name? Jerome. Oh, Jerry. Make a big one.
Marcus Parks
Do you think that you have the soul of John Lennon within you?
Ben Kissel
C. Oh, Spanish.
Marcus Parks
So really with the update. I mean, my biggest update is I know a lot more about Todd Rundgren now than I did then.
Henry Zabrowski
We all do.
Marcus Parks
Because Todd Rundgren, that was actually like. That was. The big misconception was that the Beatles were Mark David Chapman's favorite band. His favorite artist was Todd Rundgren. He was a massive Todd Rundgren fan.
Ben Kissel
He left an eight track next to the wizard of Oz picture that was.
Marcus Parks
Part of his shrine. I mean, Ed, are you a Todd Rungren fan?
Ben Kissel
He's great.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, I like Todd Rundgren.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, I saw that. But I mean, do you know some of the albums that he's produced? It's fucking.
Ben Kissel
I don't know his product. I know he's like a big producer, and I haven't gone down that rabbit hole yet.
Marcus Parks
He was the sound engineer for Stage Fright.
Ben Kissel
Fuck. That's one of my favorite songs.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. No, the whole album. Oh, wow. The entire. Yeah, that was one of his, like first gigs in 1970.
Ben Kissel
That must have been hard because they were all up barely showing up to work.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, man. No, he spent like a whole. He had like, they call it his Bearsville period where he was just up there producing songs.
Henry Zabrowski
He looks like an. He looks like if Brian Warner grew up and never became Marilyn Manson. I didn't realize that's what Todd Rundgren looks like.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. He did two Butterfield Blues Band albums.
Henry Zabrowski
He the longest head. Look at his head. He looks like Burt.
Marcus Parks
It's an extraordinarily long head.
Henry Zabrowski
Whoa.
Ben Kissel
Joe Walsh a run for his money.
Henry Zabrowski
Joe Walsh in unexpectedly wise.
Marcus Parks
But Joe Walsh's face, it's starting to get much more squat. He's. He's starting to get that face where his chin and his nose are trying to say hello.
Henry Zabrowski
His face is getting longer. Do you remember in Drop Dead Fred when the guy gets squashed, which is able. Because in his head's real long and flat. That's what Joe Walsh is beginning to look like.
Marcus Parks
Todd Rungers. Like one of his biggest ones is New York. He did the New York Dolls, like debut album.
Ben Kissel
Oh my God.
Marcus Parks
He did we're an American Band by Grand Funk.
Henry Zabrowski
He did a lot of stuff.
Ben Kissel
All the best shit.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes. This is not a fully Todd Rundgren based episode.
Marcus Parks
But the last thing.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
What else are we going to talk about?
Henry Zabrowski
There's a lot of stuff here.
Ben Kissel
John Lennon's still dead.
Marcus Parks
But what. But the last thing, though, but the reason why Todd Rundgren is now he actually does own a massive estate in Hawaii. Todd Rundgren is incredibly, incredibly wealthy because he was the guy who produced Bat out of Hell and he got points on Bat out of Hell, which is one of the best selling albums of all time. So. Yeah. So Todd Rundgren is like incredibly, incredibly wealthy.
Henry Zabrowski
Still alive. Not assassinated by a psychotic assassin.
Marcus Parks
No. In fact, in a weird little coincidence, he is part of Ringo's band.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, whoa. Weird.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
And Ringo was John Lennon's favorite Beatle.
Ben Kissel
And the first Beetle to show up.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah. Well, it's because he was the only one that liked him because he just. He was just happy being there. He was just happy having a bit for good old toy.
Ben Kissel
Yeah. What did, what did McCartney say? He was like, ah, bit of a bummer.
Henry Zabrowski
He was very upset. Yeah. They were just got. They had gotten into A fight. It was a long thing. But some more with Mark David Chapman was that after the trial? So like let's cut after he's. He's shot John Lennon. Everybody is torn asunder. Obviously the whole. Everybody's gone, everybody's freaking out. They figured that Mark David Chapman was going to immediately get assassinated in New York. That's like one of the weird things that adds to the conspiracy theory fuel one was that there were a double. A double was set up that would walk in and out of the hospital. That wasn't Mark David Chapman that they did to protect Mark David Chapman so they could get him to trial. So there was weird double and there was a lot of being like there's multiple Mark David Chapman's. That's like one fun theory.
Marcus Parks
Well, I mean, there's also. I mean it could have been very likely that someone could have killed Mark David Chapman, like Jack Ruby stuff.
Henry Zabrowski
Very much so.
Marcus Parks
At the time, like John Lennon was like a. He was a love. He was a very loved New York character at that point. Like everyone, like, they'd say like, yo, John, hey.
Henry Zabrowski
Like hello.
Ben Kissel
People are just always waiting for him outside of his apartment.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, they be waiting. And I know he's the W notes down there. Hey, there's John Lennon as the deep one.
Marcus Parks
No, he's down here.
Henry Zabrowski
He's down there, down there and that. But McCartney's up here.
Marcus Parks
Down there and where's Ringo?
Henry Zabrowski
All right, it's me. Octopus's garden. Yeah.
Marcus Parks
And finally, give me your best. Harrison.
Henry Zabrowski
George Harrison. Well, he had the thin receiver towels, gently wipes.
Marcus Parks
That's not bad.
Ben Kissel
Yeah, that's actually the whole thing was very impressive.
Henry Zabrowski
Hey, thank you. Back to the non information.
Marcus Parks
But yeah, John. John Lennon was very well loved because that's why he loved New York City. Because he could just kind of hang out and no one would really fuck with him. And what I actually learned recently is that John Lennon was at this time really starting to turn around because he very much had the reputation and I kind of bought into this as well. Like as he was a bad dud a long time.
Henry Zabrowski
He was an.
Marcus Parks
He was a huge. But at this time he was starting to make amends for a lot of the bad behavior.
Henry Zabrowski
He was starting to become unasshol.
Marcus Parks
Yes.
Henry Zabrowski
During this time period, son Sean helped a lot. Yeah, according to him. But also he didn't get to the end of the process. So we did, which is sad because we didn't get to fully absolve himself and change. He had walked away from show business for like Five years.
Ben Kissel
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
So he was. He was basically in total isolation. The story was that John Lennon was trying to sort of become a person again, which it sounds like he was getting towards. He had this beautiful relationship with his new producer. Him and Yoko were banging on pots and pans together. You've got his new son, who he was desperately in love with, even though he kind of, like, left the other one. The other one's fine.
Marcus Parks
The other one's starting to bring. He was starting to bring it back in.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, yeah. He was trying to work it out. He was trying to say, I'm sorry. And then when he got shot. So obviously he died very quickly. But this is also where it gets weird. Is that. So Mark David Chapman allowed himself to be immediately arrested. The whole city's in. Is. Is torn apart. The thing is that the first words out of Mark David Chapman was, I can't believe that it wasn't real because he had this concept in his head, according to the first people speaking to him. Mark David Chapman said that I was convinced that when I shot John Lennon, I would magically transform into Colton. Holden Caulfield, who is the lead. He's the protagonist of Catcher in the Rye, who's the child who says that everybody's phonies. And it's also. It's the book, too, that was also cool because it changes as you get older. The more you read that book, the more it goes from when you're a kid you read it, you think that Holden Caulfield's a hero. And then when you read it later on, you kind of realize Holden Caulfield's a young.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah. But that's what's your. You're supposed to start a young. That's where you're supposed to. That's where you're supposed to come from.
Marcus Parks
I missed the window. Like, I. I didn't. I didn't read Catcher in the Rye when I was in high school. I missed the window to read it back then.
Henry Zabrowski
I read it in college. By then, I was already. Was all Huntress Thompson. Yeah.
Ben Kissel
I read in college as well, and I was like, I hate this kid.
Henry Zabrowski
The rest of the books, the rest of the family, that is. That's not in the like, so J.D.
Ben Kissel
And all that.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah. I loved Franny and Zoe. That is one of my favorite books ever. The odd. The other series about the family is good. Like, they're all great, but, you know, and the. J.D. salinger is a weird guy.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. And also, I think, like, a year later, maybe, I think it was Less than a year later, Catcher in the Rye was also found with John Hinckley Jr.
Ben Kissel
Yes. Who was at the. The visual for John Lennon.
Henry Zabrowski
And he is still obviously one of the more famous victims of cancel culture because they won't allow him to do shows. I don't know why.
Marcus Parks
Everlasting Quest, I think is a good song.
Henry Zabrowski
And John Hinckley got. He got the full. They allowed him out, which is part of the reason why they think that Mark David Chapman's shit is a little fishy. So they were trying to make him be crazy. Everyone was trying to say Mark David Chapman is crazy. Why?
Ben Kissel
Because he's crazy?
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, very, very much so. Completely batch it and say.
Ben Kissel
He also said he thought he was going to turn into John Lennon after he killed yourself.
Henry Zabrowski
That was the second round. I said I went to go kill myself. I'm going to go kill this version of John Len, this thing that is me, right? He was projecting himself onto John Lennon.
Marcus Parks
And then he also said that he expected himself to disappear into the ink of the book. He said he changed his story so many times.
Henry Zabrowski
Well, he was it. Well, no. And so for a while he was trying to. I think they were. And his defense were like, this guy's crazy. So they're trying to get a lot of people coming in, one of them again. Now this is the next thing that brings in the conspiracy theory edge that we didn't talk about in the first series was during this time period when they were trying to figure out whether or not he was insane or trying to basically prove that he was insane. There was a man by the name of Dr. Milton Klein that got involved during this process.
Ben Kissel
This shit's bizarre as hell.
Henry Zabrowski
Dr. Milton Klein, which there is almost no Internet footprint for because he's not. He doesn't have a Wikipedia page, he doesn't have any stuff. He is not famous. But he is this considered to be this hypnosis expert. For a long time he was arguing against hypnosis for about how powerful it was. He said that he worked as a consultant with which was, we now know, the real program, MK Ultra. He also believed that. He said that. He said he hypnotized Sirhan Sirhan, that he would climb around the room like a monkey. That's what he said. And he went in to go talk to Mark David Chapman. Now all this happens. They're prepping for this big trial. Dr. Fucking Milton Klein comes in some yada, yada, yada. They show up expecting for this trial to fucking be the trial of the century. Mark David Chapman pleads guilty. We hear nothing. We hear nothing ever again to a closed courtroom. Yes.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Well, he was originally going to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, but had said that God told him in his jail cell to plead guilty, which means he's crazy. Yeah, well. Or that's the actual catch 22.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes, yes. Because also what we find, I hear a lot is that, yeah, sure, you might not go to prison, but you'll then will go to a mental institution for the like on the other end. Like a. A jail mental institution. Which is apparently not cool. Yeah, apparently it's not nice in there.
Ben Kissel
Where would you rather be?
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, definitely mental asylum. Yeah. Only just because then I could get. But you could. Do you think you get more stuff at a mental asylum or in prison? You think in prison you get stuff to write with and stuff, like more.
Marcus Parks
You mean something like a prison for the criminally insane? Yeah, I think you get far, far less.
Henry Zabrowski
Right.
Marcus Parks
Like, I think you get a lot of, like everything is a blunted object.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
You're not going to be interacting. The people you're going to be interacting with are going to be very dangerous and very unpredictable.
Henry Zabrowski
Unpredictable all the time. It's gonna be hard to make friends in that environment.
Ben Kissel
The cartoons are better.
Henry Zabrowski
The cartoons, yeah.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Plenty of Bullwinkle. Criminally insane, but no football. Football, but sometimes basketball.
Henry Zabrowski
But Mark David. I was trying to think what else is really points towards it. So that was like. That was like one of the big things where they were like, so this is where we're bringing some of the conspiracy and stuff. Because I received back in the day, I have a fun wall PR all of the various things, talking about why Mark David Chapman was a remote controlled assassin trained by MK Ultra. But he wasn't trained to be the.
Marcus Parks
Assassin, he was trained to be the patsy.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Like that's, that's the idea is that somehow, somewhere, Mark David Chapman ran afoul of the CIA and that the CIA had programmed him to just go to this. He had to go to this spot and to pull the trigger or to. I get a little fuzzy on the details because he had the gun and he pulled the trigger.
Henry Zabrowski
A lot of it's made up. A lot of it's made up. They say that apparently it was. That he never fired the gun at all.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
So the, the full conspiracy theory view is that John Lennon, which is the fun little thing that makes conspiracy theories hold together, was that John Lennon did have a file on him.
Ben Kissel
No, he had not a big one.
Marcus Parks
You're not just a file. I mean people followed him and Yoko constantly.
Henry Zabrowski
Was it cointelpro? Is that what that was?
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
And so like again, another real thing or another real thing that was. They, they. During this time period, Nixon was extremely paranoid about the cultural quote unquote war that was going on. He felt that John Lennon was destabilizing the United States of America. They went and looked at. They basically just tracked him. They would just like. And so there's a big thick fucking file on him. So there was like. Much like with jfk, people point towards. Well that's like the first step that shows they had a motive.
Ben Kissel
They got a file on anyone who makes statements that we should have peace.
Henry Zabrowski
They were afraid exactly like it. They were afraid that John Lennon that was coming back after a five year absence was about to change everything. Because Ronald Reagan was running for president is another thing that kind of chimes all this stuff together.
Ben Kissel
Well, he had already won by this point.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, didn't he already? Because it's.
Marcus Parks
He'd won. It's 1981, he'd won two years before.
Henry Zabrowski
No, this is 80.
Marcus Parks
80 but one the year before.
Henry Zabrowski
But yes, he's the income. He just won. Yeah, but still he's the guy that would be the most quote unquote detrimental to a Reagan presidency. That's like what the theory was that they were using.
Ben Kissel
I can agree with that.
Henry Zabrowski
He was going to fuck the presidency. And so what they did was they had a trained assassin that was more likely than not. And this is proof. And that's just because it comes through wikispooks.com he's is that it is a man by the name of Jose Padermo. Now Jose Perdomo, he was one of the doormen at the Dakota who was in front of John Lennon snared him. Why? He was one of the big eyewitnesses of the murder. And he. And this is not just people saying this on the Internet because we can't know for certain, but we know for certain because it said on the Internet that he was a member of operation 40, which was the secret CIA Cuban assassination team that was going to be used to kill Fidel Castro. And so this is a trained not fake. This is a trained MK Ultra assassin that is now a doorman at a very fancy New York apartment complex. So Mark David Chapman is the hypnotized patsy. He has received all of these various things. He's been hypnotized to leave these super suspicious these things behind. I guess there are some people also within the MK Ultra, I guess, did not like Todd Rundgren.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, well, I mean, Todd Rundgren, that's the weird thing about it is that there's so many of these weird things that don't make any sense. Like how he went to New York once, but then, like, it's proven that.
Henry Zabrowski
He went scouting trip sent by MK Ultra.
Marcus Parks
But why does he need to scout.
Henry Zabrowski
If he's programmed scouting for. To see if the thoughts in his brain work that were made up. So you got to go and put him in the New York one time. Be like, well, let's just see if he runs into traffic. And then if he does it, like, you know, because you train him. And then we're like, oh, this will be Mark David's day out. He'll go and have fun in New York in the big city and will lightly see what he does. And so, yeah, he does a bunch of weird stuff in New York for a while.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, he's. He goes and sees, like, he has a fucking fantastic weekend. He goes and sees David Bowie perform the Elephant Man.
Henry Zabrowski
That's incredible.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, he goes and sees. He goes and sees another show the next night. He goes and sees, like, George C. Scott perform.
Henry Zabrowski
If none of this, like, makes you understand that New York's beautiful and you shouldn't just. You shouldn't kill. You should act. Nothing. Well, or just.
Marcus Parks
You should just go.
Henry Zabrowski
It's a lot.
Marcus Parks
It's a. Just go play.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
You know, maybe not anymore, but back then, absolute fucking stardust everywhere.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Ben Kissel
You know, they're barely murdering people like they were back then.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah. You just don't do it quite as much.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, it's. I mean, it's definitely down from, you know, the 2000, that it was around this time. 2000 per year.
Ben Kissel
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
I think they're back down to like one a day, maybe two a day.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
I don't know. I mean, it's. It's a different city. Definitely. Yeah. Back then. Yeah. Mark David Chapman went a couple times, like, and then he decided, I think it was after he went, have you ever seen Ordinary People?
Ben Kissel
Yes.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, he went and saw Ordinary People.
Henry Zabrowski
Think is that whole line of like, I looked into the abyss and I saw it staring back with it. No, that's Nietzsche.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, it's Nietzsche.
Henry Zabrowski
What did Guy say?
Marcus Parks
You said, what did Timothy Hutton say? Because he was so moved by Timothy Hutton's performance that he decided I shouldn't kill John Lennon.
Henry Zabrowski
Really?
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Ben Kissel
But he still did it.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, that was the first trip. Is that he went for the first trip and, yeah, he went and saw Bowie and he said, that's the fucking thing, is he's sitting there watching Bowie play the Elephant man, and all he can think is, like, man, I could really pull out my gun and kill David Bowie right now to do anything about it, because he had a fucking.38 special on him. And so he goes and see that, sees this, and then he goes to a screening of Ordinary People, and he comes out and he decides, like, I. I love my wife. I don't want to kill John Lennon. I shouldn't kill John Lennon. I should go home to my wife. So he calls up his wife and says, hey, honey, I was going to kill John Lennon.
Ben Kissel
I'm not.
Marcus Parks
You know, I decided I'm coming home crazy.
Ben Kissel
Because the woman is like. The mom is like. The villain of that movie.
Marcus Parks
Calls. Yeah, he calls up his wife, like, I'm going to go. And then he goes. But he says that there was a. A voice that he called the child that told him that he had to go do it, because it's not uncommon for killers to blame their crimes on some other worldly presence.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes.
Marcus Parks
Ted Bunny had the same thing. He called it the entity. The entity made him do it. Is it wasn't him that actually killed and raped and murdered these. You know, it was the entity. And Mark David Chapman said the same thing. The child told me to do it. That John Lennon was a toy that he once had that was broken, and now he was angry and he needed to destroy his toy because John Lennon had become a phony. Because he read this book. It's. It was all sorts of, like, convoluted mess. But then, you know, long story short, he goes back and do you know the fucking Rosemary's Baby story?
Ben Kissel
No.
Marcus Parks
This one's incredible.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
Like, this is the most incredible coincidence, I think, in all of true crime. This is fucking nuts. So it's the day before the assassination, and, you know the Dakota is where they film Rosemary's.
Ben Kissel
Yes, very much.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. So Mark David Chapman is sitting, like, across the street from Dakota, you know, one of those benches bordering Central park. And he's looking at it, and he's thinking about, you know, Roman Polanski directed Rosemary's Baby. And, you know, Roman Polanski is married to Sharon Tate, and Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson family. And as far as Mark David Chapman knew, the Manson family murdered Sharon Tate because of Helter Skelter, which is, of course, done by the Beatles. And as he's thinking about all this and thinking about all the Connections. Fucking Mia Farrow walks right on by.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah. It doesn't help. And you're in where all the stars are. Yeah.
Marcus Parks
Mia Farrow walks by and he says at that moment he saw it. He said it was a sign. He said that was the sign that I was doing the right thing, that I was on the right track.
Ben Kissel
She probably lived two doors down.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, that's a problem.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Or it was just a woman with a pixie cut.
Ben Kissel
Yes.
Marcus Parks
You know, like, it really very, very well could have been a woman with just a short haircut.
Ben Kissel
I saw Yoko Onu in the street before and she was very unmistakably Yoko.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, yes. Yes. You know, it's. It's interesting because now. So after all of these years, because, like, they're really been trying to figure out, like, why. Everyone wants to know why.
Marcus Parks
Well, he changes the story over and over and over and over again.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes.
Marcus Parks
Like, it's. I think he's. He's almost to the point where he's saying, like, I did it for attention.
Henry Zabrowski
He finally. That was the big breakthrough, apparently, is that. That was in 2022.
Marcus Parks
Yes.
Henry Zabrowski
Which is apparently when he got his. That was like the last time. So I guess. Yeah, he wouldn't. He was in 2024 of this year. He was already. He had one last parole with a denied. But the closest he got to being let go was in 2022, where they basically said, I wanted the fame, I wanted fame, I wanted somebody and I want. And he wanted to be as somebody and nothing was going to stop that. I actually also wonder if he just is trying to tell them whatever the it is they want to hear at any point. Yeah.
Ben Kissel
Try a new tactic at some point with the Lord.
Henry Zabrowski
And then it turned into. Then he tried to admit that it was premeditated. And then it's like each time it's getting a little bit more detailed. And Yoko goes each time to make sure that he doesn't. He doesn't have an opportunity to be paroled. But it's weird because in the patsy idea is that. Yes, he goes. He does like, he goes and changes all this other stuff. I'll never quite understand the idea of a patsy, only just because the idea of like. Like, I feel like a patsy is like easy versus an assassin.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Patsy is easy.
Henry Zabrowski
What's like finding a patsy? I feel like he doesn't need to be hypnotized to be a patsy.
Ben Kissel
Well, I think, exactly. Ask around. We're looking for someone to take the rap for John Lennon's murder.
Henry Zabrowski
What do you think you start with interns, you call it interns. You gave. But, but I wonder like, you know, I feel like you could kind of, if you wanted to actually put, like if you were shooting from the government, you want to kill somebody and you want to then frame it at somebody else, you could elaborately set up their home.
Marcus Parks
Sure.
Henry Zabrowski
You literally could take the gun that the eye, the guy you trained to kill the guy, he could take that gun and just you, you, he hands it to his connect who gives it to the guy who breaks into the patsy's apartment who puts all the weapons there. You know, like you, you put the guy there where he needs to be and then you basically blame it all on it. Yeah, I don't think it's that difficult. But the idea that Mark David Chapman was hypnotized to be arrested, that's the idea, is that he was to take it and then go and act super crazy. Crazy essentially. And that he was. His brain was specifically scrambled by MK Ultra training, which is what made him crazy. But now as we're seeing, I feel like as the years go by, my contingents, my feelings will always be. These guys all talk on their deathbed. Why in the living will we not have the guy that trained Mark David Chapman come forward?
Marcus Parks
Well, why wouldn't Mark David Chapman at this point just say, just come out, blame the government.
Henry Zabrowski
Here's all of this stuff to blame the government that this happened to me.
Ben Kissel
Blah, blah, blah.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, well, unless he's, you know, being threatened like, we'll kill your wife. Because his wife is still with him.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh really?
Marcus Parks
After he was, after he was sentenced, like she moved from Hawaii to upstate New York. He's in Attica. Oh my God. And so she like lives there. They actually get to spend 44 hours a year together.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh yeah.
Ben Kissel
They've been an hour in a week.
Marcus Parks
I know.
Henry Zabrowski
No, it's not.
Ben Kissel
It's not a lot of just fly in for that. Live in Hawaii. It's upstate New York. It's freezing.
Henry Zabrowski
I guess the problem is, is there ain't no dick like that Mark David Chapman dick. And she's straight up addicted to it. She missed getting full on gaped by that guy.
Marcus Parks
Now you remember he doesn't like having sex because he says vaginas scare him. Because he says that he's scared that he will be enveloped by their warm wetness, then he's just gonna fall into it.
Henry Zabrowski
You don't think that that don't make Gloria happy?
Ben Kissel
Warm wetness is like why I do it.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah. Yeah.
Marcus Parks
Why Most people do it.
Henry Zabrowski
And I think he's afraid it's gonna go. And then you go. And then all of a sudden, you're in Barbie. You're like, in that world and you don't know how you got there. I feel like. Or does. If you get sucked through the portal inside of a vagina, do you think it's more. You go to, like, a Ruth Bader Ginsburg world where it's just like, women voting and writing books?
Marcus Parks
I don't think every vagina go. I don't know. I think there are many portals through many vaginas to many places.
Henry Zabrowski
Where do you think Carolina's vagina portal takes you?
Marcus Parks
Oh, wow. Sleeter Kinney concert. It's really fun. Or maybe a Bikini Kill concert. A concert of some sort involving women. Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
Okay. Yeah, that's awesome.
Marcus Parks
Probably bikini Kel.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Ben Kissel
Bratwurst festival for me.
Henry Zabrowski
Julie's gonna be mad. Julie's gonna be extremely mad, saying, like, oh, my vagina portal brings you to a sausage festival.
Ben Kissel
We are not getting serious.
Marcus Parks
I don't have to worry about it.
Ben Kissel
This is the show. I get to say all the things.
Henry Zabrowski
This is dead serious. This is dead fucking serious. Mine is a twisted carnival, and Kiss is there.
Marcus Parks
Well, him and his wife, Mark David Chapman, they like making homemade pizzas together. They watch Wheel of Fortune made pizza.
Henry Zabrowski
And they're watching Prison Wheel of Fortune.
Marcus Parks
Prison Wheel of Fortune.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, man. It just. It's always like, don't buy a vowel because it's always an A.
Marcus Parks
You don't want to know what you owe when you buy that vowel.
Ben Kissel
Know is the weirdest thing about Gloria is, like, when she was interviewed, which I still have no idea why she did this, but when she was interviewed, she's like, I'm sad that he had to die.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Ben Kissel
And it was just like.
Henry Zabrowski
Well, that's. People point that towards being super mysterious, too. She.
Ben Kissel
I just think she just didn't understand how to talk properly.
Henry Zabrowski
No, I don't think that she was used to television. They. Her lawyer was a moron. That whole concept of, like, we'll get all the press in one room, and then they can ask every question, every thought of you. And then just like, this woman who's never had any sort of media trading, whose husband's a total psychopath who killed one of the most famous people on the face of the planet. She wasn't ready.
Marcus Parks
No, no, no. She. They said that they speak about John Lennon together. They pray for Yoko, that Yoko finds Jesus.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, whatever. Also, I find It. There was one other weird connection that I could not find any actual exact information on.
Ben Kissel
Okay.
Henry Zabrowski
Because no one would tell me. And I looked it up on the Internet. I couldn't find the exact thing. Talking about connecting Mark David Chapman back to MK ultra, which is this idea that he had a pastor. I want someone to reach out to me. Side stories lpotlmail.com I tried to look for the name of this pastor that said that he worked. He was. When he was in Georgia, that Mark David Chapman was in this with a pastor that was connected to Nixon. And all of this puts him back into why he was even chosen, that he was groomed as a little boy that they saw that he had because one of the big indicators that they use for MK Ultra, apparently, which again is all, I don't know what's real and what's the conspiracy end, which is the idea of using kids with schizophrenia as a great way to train them. Yeah, that's a good one to train to be an assassin.
Marcus Parks
Well, Mark David Chapman, if you follow the MK ULTRA storyline, I mean, he would have actually been a very good agent because Mark David Chapman, when he was a kid, he was what they called a garbage head back then, where he loved doing like, he would sniff glue and then he would do a bunch of acid, like 8 hits acid at a time, at a time, you know? And then eventually, like after he had, like after a guy like a hippie stole his wallet at the beach, he became disillusioned in the hippie movement and so he turned into like a Jesus freak, as they called it back then. And so if that pastor did find him, I mean, Mark David Chapman showed signs of schizophrenia. If he's. That's the thing. But you're also, you're always going back towards like, what is Mark David Chapman telling me? Me, you know, what is Mark David Chapman saying? At what point in his life is he saying all this shit and what does he want out of it? Because it very well could be that Mark David Chapman is just a murderous, narcissistic shithead. He Very well, I mean, at the end of the day, it could just be a narcissist with a fantastic imagination.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah. And trying to desperately get off on what he thought was going to be easier. I think at some point he thought that the going to jail, going to the mental asylum and being guilty by reason of insanity was going to be easier. So he thought, oh, okay, I'll just act crazy. I'll build a case for acting crazy after just really just wanting to Be famous for killing John Lennon. And then essentially you. You hear, like, what we were talking about, where it's like, no, you're going to go into a mental asylum for the criminally insane in which you are going to be slobbering on Thorazine.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
For the rest of your life.
Ben Kissel
You're tied to a bed forever.
Henry Zabrowski
You're not going anywhere. And so even I think prison got to look good. I think he was like, all right. Yeah, all right. Get my dick sucked or something. Like, I can get in there and do a lot of stuff. I can make wine.
Marcus Parks
And then he continued the act for many years. Like, you remember the episode where he was acting up and the. What is it? The orderly came in the room with the needle. He's like, yeah, break the needle off in my ass.
Henry Zabrowski
Break the needle. Yeah, yeah.
Marcus Parks
Love.
Henry Zabrowski
I love that guy. Let him out.
Marcus Parks
But he kept it up for years and years, and then he just. Eventually, I think it's usefulness. I think it kind of got old. And I think he just.
Henry Zabrowski
I think he might have done it.
Marcus Parks
Just to amuse himself.
Henry Zabrowski
He very much.
Marcus Parks
To kind of keep the story going and to keep, like, the. Mark David Chapman like, to keep himself relevant because he just goes into prison and it's just quiet then. You know, nobody's talking about Mark David Chapman anymore. But if he's crazy and he acts crazy, then much easier people will, you know, keep the legend of Mark David Chapman going.
Ben Kissel
I'm surprised he didn't try to put out an album like. Like Manson did.
Marcus Parks
Well, he wasn't a musician.
Ben Kissel
His first girlfriend said he was a very talented guitar player.
Marcus Parks
Well, he never wrote songs of his own, as far as I know.
Ben Kissel
Yeah, he played Beatles songs.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. He would charge little kids in his neighborhood, like, money to watch him lip sync to Beatles songs.
Henry Zabrowski
Whoa. Like Jinx Malone. That would be incredible. But this is.
Marcus Parks
I would love to see Mark David Chapman lip sync for his life. He can imagine. Can you imagine a lip sync battle between Mark David Chapman and John Hinckley?
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, come. Oh, God, let's do it. Oh. But they have to do Imagine, which is gonna be very, very difficult for people watching. I also, you know, he could also. I. You look at all of it, and then the. The simplest explanation, too, is that he was just absolutely batshit insane.
Marcus Parks
That could be.
Henry Zabrowski
He could very well be entirely insane. And then just.
Ben Kissel
Don't you have to be a little bit insane to do it?
Henry Zabrowski
You know, I don't know.
Marcus Parks
Now, that's the old. I mean, that's the old argument. You gotta be kind of crazy to do it. But really it's the. The whole thing is whether you know the difference between right and wrong. And. And he knew that killing John Lennon was wrong.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Ben Kissel
And it was definitely premeditated.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh God.
Ben Kissel
He had to go down to Georgia to get the bullets. He had the whole shrine. And.
Marcus Parks
He did. Made two trips to do it. You know, he. You're like, yeah. He had the whole thing of like, wouldn't it be something if I killed John Lennon?
Henry Zabrowski
Think about crazy is that a lot of times it becomes criminality comes around when it's also paired with being kind of stupid unfortunately is that I feel like crime is more. More about impulse control and how you react to your own emotions. And a lot of times, unfortunately in people that kind of. In lower intellectual abilities, they have less impulse control most of the time. I think that the intelligence is what kind of what like. Yeah, obviously there's both. Was more like understanding what you're doing when you're doing it.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. It's the. The theory going around that, you know, the reason why the world has gotten like just progressively weirder and worse since 2020 is because so many people came out of COVID with permanent brain fog. And since they have permanent brain fog, people have a lot less impulse control. So it's just people are just generally like worse.
Henry Zabrowski
I also think that there they were a little bit in the. This. Obviously it's completely off the topic of the episode, but I think we're a little bit in a. Caught in a fake virtual matrix.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
Where people also sort of believe that the Internet is real. And so they are driven insane by that. Yeah.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. They're not. We. It's a.
Henry Zabrowski
Can you imagine if he had an. I feel like we're lucky that this is back in the day when he had to go shoot a sad. Sadly, he had to go shoot an icon to get famous. Where like I feel like in this modern time period Mark David Chapman would have just shot up a squad a public space that's.
Ben Kissel
You know, that shows the difference. Back then you had to read a full book to get crazy. Now it's just a meme.
Henry Zabrowski
And that's another thing that makes the Zoomers fucking lazy is that they're not putting the work into their assassinations. I want to see a reading list. I want to see actions taken. Oh, you're going to kill me over zoom? I don't think so. You're going to want to get out there and put your feet to the Goddamn cement. All right, paper resumes.
Marcus Parks
Here's an interesting new wrinkle to the story. It's like, new. It's not new, but it's something that, you know, I discovered since we recorded the episode is apparently. I don't know if James Taylor's just trying to get in on the story, but in 2015, he went on Stern and said that he encountered Mark David Chapman the day before the murder. Yeah, he said, chapman pinned me to the wall, glistening with maniacal stone sweat, and tried to talk in some freak speech about what he was going to do and stuff about how John was interested in how he was going to get in touch with John Lennon. It was surreal to have contact with the guy 24 hours before he shot John. But this.
Henry Zabrowski
Why didn't he do anything?
Marcus Parks
Because he was on a lot of methadone at this point in the early 80s. Yeah, he's trying. He's trying to get off heroin.
Ben Kissel
He was a big motherfucker, though, James Taylor. He's like. He seems like he's kind of jacked.
Henry Zabrowski
I always find it strange when those guys that play, like, light acoustic guitar are, like, super deep into heroin.
Ben Kissel
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah. You know, because it's always like, I seen parallel scenery. But I know that song's about, like, finding a man, a woman with, like, a blood coming out of her nose and, like, her. And she was dead and. But it's like this, like, night. It's like a song. You hear it like, Joanne's.
Ben Kissel
Yeah, it's that what it's about.
Henry Zabrowski
It's. So. Yeah, I thought it was about his.
Ben Kissel
Like, girlfriend that died in a plane crash.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, it was about his girlfriend died in a plane crash. It's not about a woman being found with feces in her and she's dead.
Ben Kissel
Yeah. Flying machines and pieces on the ground.
Henry Zabrowski
That's what that song's about. Fire and rain.
Ben Kissel
Oh, what are you thinking of?
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, I was thinking of the other movie. Oh, he's like a great song called oh, that's what it Is. I mix it up with she, Her Pussy. I Found Her There. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one of my favorite James Taylor songs. Yeah, she, Her. I Found Her There.
Ben Kissel
King actually wrote it.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, that makes sense. That makes sense because of its understanding of women. Yes. I love that song. But why did he do anything to stop him, dog.
Marcus Parks
Well, this is one last interesting factoid about Mark David Chapman is that when he returned to New York for the second time, he got into a cab with this guy named Mark Snyder, and he Told Snyder, quote, I'm a producer from the Rolling Stones. I just got back from a recording session with the Beatles. They just got back together. And then when Snyder asked, like, hey, do you remember any of the new songs? Just Mark David Chapman just got angry and said, forget it.
Henry Zabrowski
Skew to that.
Marcus Parks
And I saw her standing with.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, Shane Taylor. Pull over, Pull over. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. You want a hair on you holding.
Marcus Parks
Really funny. When the cab driver dropped him off, he said, my name is Mark David Chapman. You will remember my name.
Henry Zabrowski
Hey, that sounds like most of the people I imagine who have to drive Uber in LA and have to deal with just Los Angeles in general.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, yeah. You will remember mine.
Henry Zabrowski
My name's Treyton Montgomery the seventh. You will remember my name.
Ben Kissel
Now, I'm sure you guys have covered this on the show in the past, but I just got to know for my own personal knowledge, why do we always get the middle name of the assassin?
Marcus Parks
You know what? No one's ever been able to figure that one out.
Henry Zabrowski
It's one of those.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. I mean, you don't get. Well, they say it's always the. The assassins.
Ben Kissel
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
Hinckley didn't finish the job.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
But you get John Wilkes Both. You know what I found out? A really interesting factoid about John Wilkes Booth the other day is that John Wilkes Booth and his brother, you know, they were both like really famous actors. Yeah. And they raised money for a statue of Shakespeare that is still in Central park to this day. You know what play they performed? Julius Caesar.
Ben Kissel
Whoa. Wild stuff.
Henry Zabrowski
Lincoln's secretary. His name is Kennedy. Did you see this? Have you heard of Kennedy secretary was named Lincoln.
Marcus Parks
And do you know that Kennedy was killed from a warehouse? And. And the man went to the theater and Lincoln was killed in the theater and the man went to a hidden. A warehouse.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, I'm gonna come just thinking about it. So in the end, we were going to update Mark David Chapman. And we went. We had our intrepid researchers research and we went and we researched and we found out a lot of the stuff that we were going to update you on is fake.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
And so.
Marcus Parks
But we're just sort of on a track right now.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, yeah.
Marcus Parks
And we just kind of have to keep going on this train, no matter what towns it stops in.
Henry Zabrowski
I know. For I knew that we weren't going to find definitive. Have evidence.
Ben Kissel
What is some of the fake.
Henry Zabrowski
All of the thing. Most of the things that we've said.
Marcus Parks
Except.
Henry Zabrowski
Except for the facts.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. And the Todd Rundgren stuff. That's all. Yeah, he definitely was a sound engineer for Stage Fright.
Henry Zabrowski
He knows that. For certain. Stuff about operation 40, I don't know. And the stuff about the, the, the hypnotist, we don't know. We. Stuff about the, the patsy stuff we don't know. We don't know if the doorman was trained by CIA. I'm not sure.
Ben Kissel
From the, from the documentary, first of all, it said murder without a trial. The third episode's called the Trial. So I don't know what the they're doing.
Henry Zabrowski
I'm gonna just say again, we're not paid by these people. It was a lot of padding. Yeah, right.
Ben Kissel
I got a little upset for a second.
Henry Zabrowski
Am I not right? Am I not correct?
Marcus Parks
A lot of these documentaries, like, it.
Henry Zabrowski
Was a lot of padding.
Marcus Parks
These. I mean, maybe we'll talk about this further in another episode. But a lot of these true crime documentaries these days, the three, four part motherfuckers cut it down to two. Because it cut it down to two.
Henry Zabrowski
There's most of us now in the year 2024. Just imagine Netflix when you're making a documentary, imagine 75% of your audience has a podcast that has done an episode on this serial killer. So just know that before you make another documentary. Because we know the story. Like, we didn't need an hour. Like, maybe this is just straight bitching, but I don't know if we needed the hour explaining who John Lennon was, who Mark David Chapman was. What was that? Because it's like, would I be here, would I be at this juncture watching a new show about Mark David Chapman, trying to learn new information about Mark David Chapman if I didn't know who the fucking Beatles were? Because that would be really fucking stupid. What am I doing? I mean, just living my life going on Wikipedia on the letter M, just seeing what comes up.
Marcus Parks
So, yeah, so check us out patreon.com lastpodcast on the left.
Henry Zabrowski
That's where you see us do fucking shit.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, check us out on Instagram and TikTok.
Henry Zabrowski
Go to Twitch tv, LPNTV to see our Twitch content.
Marcus Parks
Check us out last podcast on the left.com to go see us live all over North America. And I believe by this point we'll have announced our UK and Iceland shows.
Henry Zabrowski
We better have.
Marcus Parks
And all of our shows in Australia in August.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes, go to last podcast on the.
Marcus Parks
Left.Com if you live in any of those places. Go check it out.
Henry Zabrowski
I love that about us.
Marcus Parks
I love that about all of us. And every single one. Are we. And that.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Ben Kissel
Hail Rundgren.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
Hail Rung. Hail Todd. Go home and listen to Fearless. That'll be great.
Henry Zabrowski
Don't go to Central Park. You'll get stabbed by a hooker.
Ben Kissel
It's a lot nicer these days.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, I know.
Marcus Parks
Know the li.
Henry Zabrowski
Actually, it's going back. It's kind of nice. We've been alive so long, we're watching New York get bad again and. Nice.
Ben Kissel
God is a concept in which we measure our pain.
Henry Zabrowski
Whoa.
Ben Kissel
John Lennon.
Marcus Parks
Nice.
Henry Zabrowski
Wow. Yoko Ono. Thank you for enjoying the last update on the left. You can find other shows that you'll enjoy from the last Podcast network on lastpodcast on the left dot com. See you there.
Last Update on the Left - Episode 5: Mark David Chapman Returns
Release Date: June 23, 2025
Introduction
In this gripping episode of Last Update on the Left, hosts Henry Zabrowski, Marcus Parks, and Ben Kissel delve deep into the enigmatic life of Mark David Chapman, the man who forever altered music history by assassinating John Lennon. Exploring both well-known facts and obscure conspiracy theories, the trio seeks to unravel the complexities behind Chapman’s motives, mental state, and the lingering questions that still surround this infamous act.
Mark David Chapman: The Assassin’s Background
The episode kicks off with Henry Zabrowski reminiscing about his mother's memories of John Lennon's assassination. Zabrowski shares an anecdote about his mother's reluctance to attend the tragic event at The Dakota, fearing personal harm:
“She didn’t want to go on the train to go down there to Dakota... She decided she was going to be physically assaulted outside of Central Park.” (00:26)
Marcus Parks provides context about the public’s reaction post-assassination, noting the overwhelming sadness and disbelief that engulfed New York City immediately after Lennon’s death.
Chapman’s Inner World and Obsessions
A significant portion of the discussion centers on Chapman’s troubled psyche. Parks highlights Chapman’s childhood imagination where he believed he could control tiny people, playing Beatles songs for them and punishing them when displeased:
“He called them and he would play Beatles songs for them and he would crush them and kill them when they displeased him.” (04:08)
Henry Zabrowski reflects on juxtaposing his own benign "little guys" with Chapman's sinister inner voices, adding depth to Chapman's disturbed mental landscape.
Conspiracy Theories: MK Ultra and Operation 40
The conversation takes a speculative turn as the hosts explore conspiracy theories linking Chapman to MK Ultra, the CIA’s infamous mind control program. Zabrowski mentions a supposed connection involving a doorman named Jose Perdomo:
“Jose Perdomo... was a member of Operation 40, the secret CIA Cuban assassination team... Chapman is the hypnotized patsy.” (20:07)
They discuss the notion that Chapman was a double agent or a controlled assassin, raising questions about the authenticity of these claims. However, as the episode progresses, the hosts express skepticism regarding the validity of many of these theories.
Chapman’s Trial and Mental State
The trio examines Chapman’s legal battles, focusing on his plea of insanity and the intricacies surrounding his trial. They discuss how Chapman’s fluctuating narratives and claimed divine commands complicated his defense:
“Mark David Chapman said that I was convinced that when I shot John Lennon, I would magically transform into Holden Caulfield... it was not him that actually killed.” (15:12)
They also touch upon Dr. Milton Klein’s involvement, a controversial hypnosis expert whose credentials and influence remain questionable.
Behavior in Prison and Public Perception
Hosts analyze Chapman's behavior post-assassination, including his manipulative actions to maintain notoriety and the impacts on his parole attempts:
“He kept up the act for years and years, and then he just... keep himself relevant because he just goes into prison and it's just quiet.” (36:48)
Ben Kissel comments on the limited interaction Chapman has with his wife due to prison regulations, adding a personal dimension to Chapman’s isolated existence.
The Todd Rundgren Interlude
Throughout the episode, the conversation frequently segues into a tangential yet passionate discussion about musician Todd Rundgren. The hosts explore Rundgren’s influence and speculate on his possible connections to Chapman:
“Todd Rundgren... was the sound engineer for Stage Fright... one of his biggest ones is New York.” (07:32)
They humorously intertwine Rundgren’s musical legacy with the dark narrative of Chapman, though it's clear this segment serves as comic relief amidst the heavy subject matter.
Unveiling Fakery and Reality
As the episode nears its conclusion, the hosts acknowledge the challenges in separating fact from fiction in Chapman’s story. They admit that much of the conspiracy-laden information lacks credible evidence:
“Most of the things that we were going to update you on is fake... Except for the facts.” (45:46)
This candid admission underscores the difficulties in discerning truth within the labyrinth of theories surrounding Chapman.
Conclusion and Final Reflections
Wrapping up the episode, the hosts reflect on Chapman's enduring legacy and the unanswered questions that persist decades later. They ponder whether Chapman’s actions were solely a result of insanity or if deeper, more sinister manipulations were at play. The episode ends on a contemplative note, leaving listeners to grapple with the enigmatic figure of Mark David Chapman and the shadows that still linger around his infamous act.
Notable Quotes with Timestamps
Final Thoughts
Last Update on the Left delivers a compelling exploration of Mark David Chapman, balancing factual recounting with investigative curiosity. While the episode entertains with its humorous interludes, it remains anchored in the unsettling reality of Chapman’s actions and the pervasive myths that continue to surround them. For those intrigued by true crime and the complexities of the human psyche, this episode offers a thought-provoking listen.
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