The mystery of John Lennon’s last words

“ John Lennon one of the four Beatles he was murdered filmed last night when he entered the building where he lived, the Dakota, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. A suspect was arrested at the scene,” was the headline of the article published in the New York Times on December 9, 1980, which reported on the crime committed by Mark David Chapman.

Lennon’s shooting death is one of the most memorable crimes in popular culture. In the following years, what happened was reconstructed quite precisely, for example by investigating the operation carried out by the murderer.

As we know, Chapman, a crazy Beatles fan, had waited for John Lennon all day in front of the Dakota building. He even asked the musician to autograph a copy of his album. Double Fantasy. But it wasn’t enough. He attacked the musician as he was returning from the Record Plant studio, where he was working on a Yoko Ono song, titled Walking on thin ice, which was in principle going to be considered for Double Fantasy.

“(Chapman) called out in a soft voice, ‘Mr. Lennon,’ and then he pulled out a .38 revolver, He brandished it with both hands in the fighting stance so familiar in countless crime films and fired five shots. John continued walking, climbed the steps to the goal room and there he collapsed on the ground, scattering the cassettes he was carrying around him,” details biographer Phillip Norman in his book on the former Beatle.

That’s where Jay Hastings saw him. He was a young man who worked as a doorman at the Dakota. His testimony can be seen in the documentary Lennon: Murder without trial, created on Apple TV. There he remembers what he saw and heard. “(John) walks past me. He said, “I was shot.” Blood was coming out of his mouth. “He just collapsed to the ground.”

According to Hastings’ testimony, these would have been Lennon’s last words, although strictly speaking, at the time, the only thing that mattered was getting him to hospital. “I rolled him onto his back, took off his glasses and placed them on the desk. And Yoko was screaming, ‘Bring an ambulance, bring an ambulance, bring an ambulance.’

That’s when the police arrived. . The first were Steve Spire and Peter Cullen, who took care of arresting and disarming Chapman, who waited for them without resistance while reading a copy of The catcher in the rye, by J.D. Salinger. Once in the patrol car, Cullen turned to Chapman and said, “Are you crazy?” You just ruined your whole life! But Chapman’s response left him cold: “He said there was a little person in him, a big person, and that night the little person won,” the police officer recalled years later. late.

Meanwhile, a radio operator told police that an ambulance was on the way, but would not be there for 10 minutes. That’s when a second police patrol arrives, the duo Bill Gamble and James Moran. In time, it was decided to lift Lennon, place him in the vehicle and simply take him to the hospital.

As Moran told the New York Daily News, the officers placed Lennon in the backseat while he was still exhaling. On the way to the hospital, they tried to keep him conscious by asking him a few questions, like “Are you John Lennon?” There, the musician would have moaned a dying “yeah” as an answer. These words could also be considered his last words. A few minutes later, he no longer responded. Lennon pulseless in hospital, bleeding from his wounds. A Beatles was dead.