Mark David Chapman begged the devil to help him slay Beatles legend
John Lennon! Decades later, the killer’s words — caught forever on stunning secret tapes obtained by
The National ENQUIRER — can make any reader's blood run cold. “I had sessions trying to invoke the devil’s assistance probably three or four times, calling out to the devil,” Chapman confessed in an interview from deep within a New York prison — revealing his sick pleadings for power at the cost of a Beatles' life!
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"'Give me the opportunity,'" recalled Chapman. "I remember those exact words. ‘Give me the opportunity to kill John Lennon.’” Now 61, the notorious maniac still rots behind bars under a suicide watch, while his famed victim’s legacy continues to grow. But in the 1990s, Chapman reached out to journalist Jack Jones from his prison cell. With their taped interviews, The ENQUIRER can now reveal the state of Chapman’s tortured mind! [WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES...]
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In the interview, Chapman spoke of pleading to Satan: “Help me, devil. Help me! Give me the power and strength to do this. I want to be important. I want to be somebody … I’ve failed at everything. I want this so bad!” Chapman also provided his own shocking account of Dec. 8, 1980 — the night he shot John four times outside his Manhattan home while his wife,
Yoko Ono, watched.
“It’s kind of cold and there’s a little wind, and somehow I knew this was it,” Chapman recalled. “And all of a sudden I see a limo, and I knew that it’s him. I heard a voice in my head saying, ‘Do it! Do it!’ John’s car pulled up, and, as he passed me, I pulled out the gun, aimed at his back and pulled the trigger five times.” Chapman used the Charter Arms .38 seen here — and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
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The bombshell tapes also expose Chapman’s sick motives, beginning with his obsession over the classic novel “The Catcher in the Rye” and Holden Caulfield — the book's troubled young hero who rants against phonies and fakes. “I believe I found in a reading of ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ a small anchor,” Chapman said. “The paragraphs and the sentences of that book were flowing through my veins — my very soul was breathing through the pages of ‘The Catcher in the Rye.’”
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Chapman also described how he came to see John Lennon as a phony for abandoning the ideals of the 1960s. “There was a successful man who kind of had the world on a chain, so to speak, and there I was — not even a link of that chain. Something in me just broke,” Chapman said. “Seeing these terrible inconsistencies, I remember saying in my mind: ‘What if I killed him?’”
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Since going to jail, Chapman has been repeatedly denied parole. He’s given up on ever being released from the Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, N.Y., sources said, and is prepared to die behind bars — while blaming John’s supporters for his incarceration. “Mark’s given up on ever being a free man,” spilled a source. “He prays more than a dozen times a day, but despite his faith he’s lost all hope of getting out."
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“He refuses to eat processed foods," said the insider, "and blames it for causing his psychotic behavior. He’ll pace back and forth in his cell until he collapses. He’s losing weight at a scary rate. Prison guards are essentially waiting for the day they find him dead.” Chapman is “remorseful,” added the source, but blames the public backlash over John’s murder for his repeated parole rejections: “In his eyes, he’s served his time.”