Word: chapmans
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...time he seemed more stable. His father, a loan collector in an Atlanta bank, gave him money for a round-the-world trip. In June 1979, the stocky (5 ft. 11 in., 195 Ibs.) Chapman married Gloria Abe, the attractive Japanese American who planned the itinerary. Though Chapman earned only $4 an hour as a security guard, money seems not to have been a problem: the couple lived in a $400-a-month apartment in a downtown Honolulu highrise, and Chapman was able to indulge his newest passion, art. He bought expensive works and last year purchased...
Some time in October, Chapman's bad side took over completely. On Oct. 23 he quit his job, signing out in the logbook, John Lennon. Four days later he walked into J and S Sales, a gun shop just a block from the main Honolulu police station. Because he had no arrest record, a salesman sold him a Charter Arms .38-cal. revolver (price: $169). "It's the type used by detectives and plainclothes police because it is easy to conceal," explains Steve Grahovac, the store's owner...
...Chapman flew to the mainland in November and spent two days in Atlanta before returning to Honolulu. Earlier this month he came back to Manhattan with at least 2,000 borrowed dollars for his fateful rendezvous outside the Dakota...
Psychiatrists believe that the best clue to what went wrong in Chapman's head is his signing of Lennon's name in the logbook last October. That act, they say, may indicate that he was losing what little remained of an obviously fragile sense of identity. "He had a superidentification with Lennon, but he was also in competition with him," says Manhattan Psychiatrist David Abrahamsen, who examined David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam" killer. "His murder of Lennon was a substitution for his own suicide...
...sure, the parallels that Chapman established between his own life and Lennon's were startling: both loved music as adolescents, both were in rock groups, both loved children, both were devoted to helping others, and both married Asian women who were older than themselves (Lennon's wife by seven years, Chapman's by four). "There's very strong evidence that Chapman very much wanted to be Lennon," says Stuart Berger, a New York forensic psychiatrist. "He slowly became delusional and incorporated Lennon into his sense of self. The only obstacle that stood...