gripping documentary miniseries from Apple TV takes the story of his assassination from scratch

Forty-three years after the murder of former Beatles John Lennon outside his apartment building in New York, an Apple TV documentary mini-series looks back on the musician’s final hours and the motivations of his assassin, with very numerous testimonies, some of which have been previously unpublished. Because in the absence of a trial, the facts had never been publicly established.

On December 8, 1980, musician and peace activist John Lennon was murdered outside his home in New York by 25-year-old Mark David Chapman. “Incredibly for such a crime, the case never went to trial“, thereby, “what happened has never been publicly established“, immediately states the voice-over of Kiefer Sutherland, who acts as narrator here. Forty-three years after the fact, this three-part documentary mini-series, to be seen on Apple Music, takes the story from scratch, and it’s exciting.

The last hours of John Lennon

The first part is frankly breathtaking. It recounts John Lennon’s last day, established minute by minute thanks to the testimonies of dozens of people who met him that day, some of whom are testifying publicly for the first time. The journalist who interviewed him earlier today after five years of relative silence. The producer of the album that the former Beatles was then finishing in the studio, and from which he was returning with his partner Yoko Ono at the time of the murder, which occurred shortly before 11 p.m. The concierge and doorman of the Dakota building, the building where the couple lived with their little boy Sean Lennon, and who came to his aid when he collapsed, hit by several bullets. A taxi who witnessed the murder live, then the police officers who were the first to arrive at the scene of the crime. And finally the nurses and the doctor who took care of John Lennon in the emergency room of Roosevelt Hospital and had to face the facts after more than forty minutes of vain cardiac massages.

Described by the doorman of the Dakota building, the image of Yoko Ono, holding the head of her dying loved one on her knees, is moving. Those, however seen and seen again, of the hundreds, then soon thousands, of people who came spontaneously after the announcement of Lennon’s death at the bottom of his New York building, to meditate, pray and sing, are just as much.

The Mark David Chapman Mystery

The second and third parts focus mainly on the murderer and attempt to unravel the mystery of the motive for his crime, over which psychiatrists and investigators have always struggled. Was Mark David Chapman in his right mind at the time? Why didn’t he flee after committing his crime, and instead remained calmly there waiting for his arrest? The documentary does not rule out any hypothesis to explain his action. Not even the conspiracy theory that Chapman was manipulated by US intelligence to eliminate the “political threat” that Lennon, a famous peace activist, represented.

A dubious theory facilitated by the contradictions of the accused. One day he said: “I killed myself, I’m John Lennon“. Another time, he said he wanted to become Holden Caulfield, the teenage character in the novel The Heart Catcher of JD Salinger, which he had with him at the time of the murder. Another time he calls John Lennon “biggest hypocrite“. A former girlfriend and a childhood friend reiterate on camera that Chapman had an abusive father, that he was depressed and tried to end his life, but that he also took a lot of drugs, and in particular eight acids during the same weekend, an experience during which he said he had “met Jesus Christ“.

A sidestepped trial

The third part of the documentary shows the battle leading up to the trial: on one side Chapman’s defenders, who intended to plead irresponsibility for their client’s psychiatric disorders, on the other those who accused him of having had all his discernment during the crime and of having sought only, by taking the life of a celebrity, to attract attention to himself. But there was no battle. To everyone’s surprise, Chapman pleaded guilty at the opening of his closed-door trial on June 22, 1981. According to him, it was God himself who dictated his conduct. Chapman received a life sentence of 20 years and is still behind bars.

This meticulous documentary, peppered with sometimes surprising video archives, also draws a parallel with the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan by a lunatic that occurred three months later, in March 1981. In doing so, it raises questions that remain relevant today. today: those of mental health, justice in the face of psychiatric disorders and gun control.

And how can you not shudder when hearing Lennon speak in the last interview conducted on the very day of his death? After repeating that “people have the power, the power to create the society they want“, he hopes that “the 80s will be better” that “terrible“70s, and concludes: “My work will not stop until I am dead and buried. In a very long time I hope.”

“John Lennon: A Homicide Without Trial”, a documentary series by Nick Holt and Rob Coldstream in three parts of approximately 40 minutes each, with the voice of Kiefer Sutherland (United Kingdom, 2023) to watch on Apple TV.