Word: lennons
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...presidential assassin establishes with his victim a deadly intimacy, follows his movements, attaches himself to his rising star." Historian Christopher Lasch was writing about political assassins, but he might have been describing Mark David Chapman, 25, the accused murderer of John Lennon. Since he was a child, Chapman had attached himself to his hero's star, first as fan, then as imitator, finally as killer. Indeed, it is possible that in some distorted, Dostoyevskian mirror within his mind, he saw himself as Lennon-and the real Lennon as a threatening impostor...
...when his mother warned him not to lock his bedroom door, he pried it off its hinges, took it downstairs and leaned it against the kitchen wall. He resisted authority, fought with his younger sister, and ran away from home several times. All the while he identified closely with Lennon, the most rebellious of the Beatles...
After he shot Lennon, Chapman said, "I've got a good side and a bad side. The bad side is very small, but sometimes it takes over the good side and I do bad things." For most of the '70s, the good side seemed to be in control. After graduating from high school in 1973, he got a full-time job at the Y, going so far as to sign up in 1975 as a missionary in Lebanon. The trip was his dream, but civil war broke out shortly after he arrived in Beirut, and he was forced...
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...
...write, with biting effect: "Now that Charter Arms Corp. has the unique distinction of having two famous people shot by one of their products, I wonder if they have considered using it in their advertising. Something simple and tasteful like: 'The .38 that got George Wallace and John Lennon. See it at your gun dealer...