Deranged killer Mark David Chapman gunned down John Lennon over a pathetic desire to “be a somebody,” he recently told a parole board, ahead of the shocking crime’s 45th anniversary.
“This was for me and me alone, unfortunately, and it had everything to do with his popularity,” Chapman, 70, said from the Green Haven Correctional Facility in Dutchess County in late August, according to an interview transcript obtained by The Post on Friday.
“My crime was completely selfish.”
Chapman, who assassinated the beloved 40-year-old Beatle outside the Dakota apartment building on Dec. 8, 1980, made his 14th unsuccessful attempt at getting sprung from prison. He apologized for causing “devastation” to fans and friends of the rock legend — but the board ultimately didn’t buy his sorrow, the records showed.
Asked by a commissioner why he wanted to murder Lennon, he said, “to be famous, to be something I wasn’t.”
“And then I just realized, hey, there is a goal here,” Chapman continued. “I don’t have to die and I can be a somebody. I had sunk that low.”
During previous parole hearings, Chapman made similar statements about glory, saying he was seeking fame “and had evil in my heart.”
He recounted the grisly slaying at the Aug. 27 hearing, telling the board he flew to the Big Apple from Hawaii months earlier, intent on killing the icon after Chapman identified with Holden Caulfield from “The Catcher in the Rye” and believed Lennon was a “phony.”
Chapman, then 25, lurked outside the building in October and waited for Lennon, but he never showed.
Two months later, he returned “after the compulsion started building again.”
“That morning of the 8th, I just knew. I don’t know how I knew but I just knew that was going to be the day that I was going to meet and kill him,” Chapman said.
When Lennon stepped out of a limo with wife Yoko Ono, Chapman blasted him four times in the back, hours after the guitarist signed an album for him.
He was slapped with a 20-years-to-life sentence.
In more recent years, Chapman spends his time at nightly Bible study, playing volleyball with other inmates and catching up with his wife, Gloria, to whom he’s been married for 46 years.
Chapman has expressed remorse for the murder in several parole hearings, including the latest one.
“This was a human being,” he said, referring to Lennon.
“Here I am living so much longer, and not just family but his friends and the fans, I apologize for the devastation that I caused you, the agony that they must have gone through. I had no thought about that at all at the time of the crime, I didn’t care.”
Despite his apology, the board found him to lack “genuine remorse or meaningful empathy” for the victims. He is next eligible for parole in 2027.
Chapman now says he’d rather avoid the spotlight.
“I don’t have any interest at all in being famous,” he said.
“Put me under the rug somewhere. I don’t want to be famous anymore, period.”
