For the sake of argument, let’s assume that Dr. Veteran’s observations and recollections are accurate as stated. Let’s also assume that Yoko Ono, Mark Chapman, and Maury Solomon’s observations are correct. If so, the New York Times’ depiction of the crime scene, cannot be true. We have to alter some things

Figure 1. New York Times sketch of the Lennon murder with some additions by X. Dell

Let’s suppose that after giving Chapman a quizzical look John Lennon crossed the entryway to Mark’s left, and then drifted towards the lobby steps. John’s path might then resemble the one laid out in the original Times diagram. Chapman would have had a much better angle in which to hit Lennon with four shots from the left at Point 5. We can improve the angle a bit if we imagine Chapman moving over a couple of feet before he shot. We might then have an angle to put bullet holes in the door without serious ricocheting from “secondary missiles” as explained in the previous post.

If we place Chapman too far to the left (point 6), next to Jose Perdomo, then we would have to wonder why the doorman/security guard didn’t try to take the gun away from him. After all, how could he know that Chapman wouldn’t just turn the gun on him and blow him away for being a witness? Simply out of self-preservation, you think the man would either try to gain control of the weapon, or run. But Perdomo did neither. He stood by passively, walked up to Chapman (still armed) and asked if he knew what he had done. It’s only at that point that Chapman throws, or lays down the gun.

We also have two additional problems: (1) the bullets are not behaving like hollow-points, (2) there would be no GSR or anything at all to suggest to a doctor a point-blank gunshot wound, and (3) we have to account for the holes in the glass. In fact, try as I might, I can’t find a scenario in which you could really keep all of those factors consistent. I can, however, think of a scenario that would explain everything with a minimum tweaking of details.

Add a second gunman.

As I stated earlier, I first came across this hypothesis through the work of Salvador Astucia‘s Rethinking John Lennon‘s Assassination, a source I consider highly dubious. I have to admit it would probably taken me awhile to consider the possibility all by myself. But I do have the means to test and consider it. As bizarre as this hypothesis sounds, it’s not really all that farfetched.

Unseen in the Times diagram is a door that leads to the service elevator (point 7). Astucia has posted a photograph of the door on his website, and I have seen it myself when physically at the Dakota, so I can vouch for its existence.

Let’s speculate that Lennon got out of the car (point 1) after Ono. They passed by Chapman (point 2), Ono some twenty to twenty-five feet ahead of her husband. Lennon gave Chapman a funny look before marching ahead, more or less in a straight line. Chapman fired shots when Lennon was approximately twenty feet away. Lennon, perhaps thinking to himself, perhaps interpreting the sound as a car backfiring, continues to walk until he’s parallel to the door of the lobby, and very close to the door that leads to the service elevator. Chapman either hit Lennon only once (the hollow-point bullet that, by design, stayed in Lennon’s body), or missed him altogether. Another shooter (a real pro), from the service elevator door, perhaps using a silenced pistol (or perhaps using Chapman's own gun), fired three or four full metal jacketed bullets directly at the point where he knew Lennon could not possibly survive. It might have taken Lennon a couple of moments to realize he had been hit. But when he did, he ran into the lobby to tell Ono and Jay Hastings he’d been shot.

This what-if scenario fits better with the information above. The shooter is close enough so that gunshot residue would give an attending physician the impression of a point-blank shooting. Full metal jacket bullets would have stood a much better chance of passing through Lennon, and hitting the glass door than Chapman‘s .38 hollow-points. The bullet could have easily hit Lennon in the upper-left arm, gone through the left subclavian artery, and gone right through the aorta, and out the chest with no ricocheting to account for. And for all we know, the shooter could have used a .357 magnum. While this would have conflicted with the ammo used by Chapman, the shooter might have been more concerned with getting the job done, and more comfortable with that particular gun and ammo. Plus, if the shooter knew there would be a patsy, who would present himself to police, then he might have counted on a limited, “grounded” investigation that wouldn’t examine such things in detail.

As Yoko Ono told Detective Peter Mangicavallo, “Got out walked past gate. John was walking past the door, he was walking fast. I heard shots. I heard shots. He walked to door upstairs. Said, ‘I’m shot.’” Ono placed herself in close proximity to Lennon, but everyone else (including Chapman) puts her much farther ahead. So if she were at some distance from Lennon, she would most likely have had her back to both him and Chapman. That means before she saw anything, she would have heard something. And this she emphasizes through repetition. Granted it might have taken Lennon a couple of moments to realize that someone had hit him. But it could have been the case that John kept walking at that point because Chapman’s bullets missed him. Another shooter could have hit him for the first time moments later, as he approached the lobby stairs.

There’s something else. Dakota employee Joseph Many came up because he, along with coworkers Victor Cruz and Joe Grezik, heard three shots from downstairs. Granted, acoustics are a tricky thing, but if Chapman’s standing in the same position at the same place, the other two shots should have been audible. Okay, maybe they were chatting at the time, and missed a bullet or two. One could still hypothesize that the only shots they heard came from the shooter at the service elevator door, which would have been much closer to their position. If the shooter there got off three rounds, which passed through Lennon and entered the lobby door, and if Chapman hit Lennon with one round with a hollow-point that did what it‘s supposed to, that would account for John’s four injuries.

When Perdomo instructed fellow Dakota employee Joseph Many to take the gun away, he went downstairs via elevator to the basement. I tried to find which elevator he used. If he used the elevators in the lobby, we have the problem of verifying the custody of that evidence. Some have speculated that Chapman might have exchanged guns on one of his stops during the cab ride with Mark Snyder, two days earlier. If the shooter used Mark’s original gun to kill Lennon, and then went into that drawer to switch weapons, ballistics would prove it to be the murder weapon, thus giving further evidence of Mark as the lone shooter, especially if that gun were the same Charter Arms Undercover .38 Special Chapman registered in Hawaii.

Of course, if Many was referring to the service elevator, then a whole lot of problems arise, since the gun would have been stashed close to where the killer had shot.

Fenton Bresler specifically asked Daniel Sheehan, who’s Christic Institute had looked into such things as Manchurian Candidate scenarios, for his take on the MC hypothesis. Sheehan opined that Chapman’s actions were inconsistent with those of a programmed assassin. Instead of exploring that angle, or considering Sheehan’s advice, Bresler simply dismissed, and in the process might have missed the most plausible conspiracy scenario.

Sure, it looks easy in TV and the movies. A person who’s never fired a sidearm before at a living target points the gun, pulls the trigger, and BANG! The bad guy falls over dead. And it’s true amateurs kill people every day with handguns, too many of them by accident. On the other hand, a lot of people survive gunshot wounds. People are more vulnerable in some spots than they are in others, and the amateur might have not have the facility with the weapon to use it accurately or efficiently.

If you really need someone dead, as opposed to shot and wounded, and you had to make sure the job’s done right, you'd have to know what you’re doing. Were you part of any organization that had contracted a hit, would you entrust the job to an amateur? Someone who’s never killed before (as far as we know)? Even if he’s had some type of weapon’s training? If so, then you’d be taking a crap shot. That’s why crime syndicates the world over use professionals.

Now if you hired a pro, it might help distance you from the crime if your hired gun has a patsy to take the blame. And if you have a patsy on tap, who you could use whenever you want, all the better.

Bresler really missed this possibility in his examination of Lennon’s murder, and thus never explored it--which is a shame, for the man really knew how to dig up information, despite minor factual errors here and there. Perhaps he could have presented a stronger case.

Chapman might not have been a programmed assassin so much as a programmed patsy. His actions are somewhat akin to suspected programmed patsy Sirhan Sirhan, who like Chapman, shot at his victim in front of witnesses during a dissociative state. In Sirhan’s case, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the pathologist who conducted the autopsy, could not reconcile Senator Robert Kennedy’s fatal wound with Sirhan’s position. Maybe a more detailed investigation and trial--which would force such information out into the open--might have introduced more similarities.

The existence of a second gunman would go a long way to proving Chapman’s innocence, and give us the best evidence of (1) a conspiracy to murder John Lennon, and (2) Chapman’s programming as a patsy.

As it is we can’t really can’t prove any of this. After all, it’s highly speculative, and depends on (1) an interpretation of the death certificate, (2) Dr. Frank Veteran’s initial observations and subsequent recollection almost twenty years after the fact, and (3) numerous witness statements. All of these have varying degrees of unreliability. For all we know, Dana Reeves could have given Chapman a box of wacky hollow-points, only one of which disintegrated, with two of its pieces exiting Lennon’s left arm. Maybe the bullet holes in the glass door were put there another night. Maybe the lobby door holes were made by something else, despite Officer Steve’s Spiro’s concern that they were bullet holes, and possibly indicated a second gunman running around loose in the building. Maybe Chapman actually stood next to Perdomo, and maybe Perdomo let him because the doorman simply didn’t like John, or his politics.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

We're coming into the homestretch of this series. But for now, I'm going to interrupt it with a brief unreleated series before coming back with a summary and epilogue. I thank you for your patience in reading along this far.