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 A parole board denied a request
for release from Mark David Chapman, who must
wait two more years before he becomes eligible
again, the state Department of Corrections and
Community Supervision spokesperson said.
The rationale behind the decision of the Board
of Parole panel members who interviewed Chapman
on Aug. 19 at the Wende Correctional Facility
near Buffalo, was not immediately disclosed.
Chapman, 65, who has previously said that he
long ago stopped being the troubled young man
who shot one of the most famous people in the
world to gain notoriety, is serving 20 years to
life after pleading guilty to second-degree
murder.
The assassination-style murder of Lennon, a
founder of the Beatles who also had solo hits
such as "Imagine" and "(Just Like) Starting
Over", stunned the music world, the British-born
musician's adopted home of New York City and a
generation that grew up with "Beatlemania."
At 40, Lennon had just emerged from a musical
hiatus with the release of his "Double Fantasy"
album when he went to a nighttime recording
session on Dec. 8, 1980. When he returned to his
home on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Chapman was
waiting for him and shot him four times in front
of his wife Yoko Ono.
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 Since 2000, the first year
Chapman was eligible for parole, Ono, 87, has
steadfastly opposed his release. Her attorney,
Jonas Herbsman, said she submitted comments to
the parole board, which he would only say are
"consistent with the prior letters."
At his previous parole interview in August 2018
Chapman said he was a changed man and a
religious Christian who would welcome freedom
even though he said he did not deserve it.
A remorseful Chapman, whose 2018 prison photo
shows a leaner man than the pudgy 25-year-old
who pulled the trigger, remembered being in a
“tug of war” with himself over what he was about
to do before yielding to the idea of killing for
fame.
“I was too far in,” he said in a transcript of
the hearing.
Chapman has worked as a porter and wheelchair
repairman at the prison hospital and has
occasionally been visited by his wife whom he
married about 18 months before the murder.
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