Edited for clarity 10/8/09

Most opinions concerning the shooting death of John Lennon agree on many key points. The killer, Mark David Chapman, flew to New York from Hawaii, with a gun he purchased there. After arriving in Manhattan, he realized that he could not buy ammunition without a NY state ID. He subsequently flew to Georgia, where a friend gave him bullets, and flew back to New York, but flew back to Hawaii after someone told him the Lennons were out of town. Weeks later, he came back to New York via Chicago. He stalked Lennon at the Dakota, going so far as to gaining an autograph from him only hours before the event. When Lennon and his wife returned from a music studio with mixes of various songs on tape, Chapman ambushed the former Beatle, shooting five times.

A bullet pierced Lennon’s aorta, and three more bullets entered into his body, yet he managed to run into the lobby of the Dakota. Because of massive bleeding, police decided to rush him to Roosevelt Hospital in a squad car instead of waiting for an ambulance. Despite desperate attempts to resuscitate him, Lennon died.

There were sufficient eyewitnesses to this crime to verify the official version of events—at least to a point. Yet, the real problem arises due to a lack of other forms of evidence.

Worse, no one has really sufficiently explained why Lennon died on that night. Chapman, the man almost universally stipulated as Lennon’s killer, didn’t really know his own motivation. Over the years, he has given a number of conflicting reasons for why he shot at Lennon. But many times he has told researchers that he just doesn’t know why.

Of course, the fact that Chapman had no idea why he went to New York to kill John Lennon has never stopped people from taking their best guess. Many popular accounts describe him as just plain crazy, with hallucinations of invisible little people and demons, along with delusions of embodying the soul of a fictional character. Evidence exists to back up this point of view.

Some have guessed that Chapman murdered Lennon to become famous. In fact, Chapman has stated this on television (although the segment was clearly edited—so we don’t really know the context of the statement). He’s also vehemently denied this on numerous occasions before and after, only to state it as fact again. It’s never been clear whether or not he believes this, even if intermittently. Yet, because he sometimes says this is so, it remains a possibility.

Many people think that Chapman became obsessed with Lennon, and came to believe that he was the rock star. He therefore had to eliminate this other self in order to become whole. This story gained legs early on, especially when Honolulu police produced a time sheet where Chapman allegedly signed off as “John Lennon,” crossed out the name, and wrote his own underneath. Because of the early credence given to it, one must consider this a possibility as well.

Many, many, many researchers have felt that Chapman saw himself as Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Like the protagonist, Chapman supposedly felt that he had a unique duty to rid the world of “phonies.” He saw Lennon as a hypocritically wealthy socialist, a vain man who would gladly proclaim himself bigger than Christ, and champion the plight of the poor and oppressed so long as he didn’t have to become one of them. So Chapman decided to off him first, and then work his way to Johnny Carson, Elizabeth Taylor and other celebrities later. There is evidence to back up this theory too.

And then there are those who believe that Mark David Chapman was a mind-controlled, CIA-trained assassin, a Manchurian Candidate. While that might seem far-fetched, note several things: (1) the ability to program an assassin isn’t a chimera, as many studies done by Drs. Martin Orne, Herbert Spiegel and George Estabrooks indicate that it had been quite possible for many years prior to 1980; (2) with the exception of one criterion (which we’ll look at later), Chapman’s psychology, movements and associations were consistent with someone who could be manipulated in this manner.

And then there’s the third thing: the detective officially assigned the case never personally dismissed the conspiracy scenario as a possibility. In fact, he would become a key witness to Chapman’s state of mind in the moments after the crime.

If you’re wondering why, if they suspected someone of hypnoprogramming Chapman, the police never followed through on the conspiracy angle, the truth is that there were many clues they didn’t pursue, for reasons that I will specify later. That's according to the chief investigator’s terse admission. Consequently, much of the forensic evidence that would put certain matters to rest is simply unavailable to us. What we’re left with are the witness statements of police, civilians and experts, along with the histories and plights of both shooter and victim.

Curiously, neither the shooter nor the victim are in a position to voice their opinion of this matter; the former because he doesn’t know what he thinks, the latter because he’s dead. And because of the lack of evidence, we can only review and critique these positions and how they developed. In doing so we can construct—borrowing from Dr. Fred Fogo—a social drama of Lennon’s death, examining what it meant at the time, and continues to mean today. In doing so we have to examine both the accurate data, and the inaccurate ones that seem true only because others have repeated them time and again.