With a Little Help from My Friends: Did demons force Mark David Chapman to murder John Lennon?
With a Little Help from My Friends: Did demons force Mark David Chapman to murder John Lennon?
“I remember I was praying to God [to keep me from killing Lennon] and I was also praying to the devil to give me the opportunity. ‘Cause I knew I would not have the strength on my own.” – Mark David Chapman
On December 8, 1980 at 10:50 PM, John Lennon was brutally gunned down in New York City as he was returning home from a recording session. Twenty-five year old Mark David Chapman fired five hollow-point rounds from a .38 revolver at Lennon. Four of the bullets hit their target. The fatal shot pierced the former Beatle’s aorta. Lennon was declared dead at 11:15 PM after losing more than eighty percent of his blood.
As the news of Lennon’s death quickly spread, millions of people were stunned and grief stricken. Memorial vigils were held in cities around the world. Even though the legend and the music of John Lennon would live on, his life had come to a tragic end.
Much has been written about Mark David Chapman’s troubled life prior to that fateful day in December of 1980, but few people know that supernatural events that occurred several years earlier in DeKalb County, Georgia may have played a major role in the murder of John Lennon.
Maria Simpson* first met Mark David Chapman in 1972 when he was working as a volunteer youth counselor at the YMCA in Decatur, a suburb of Atlanta. According to Maria, everyone adored Mark. The children that he worked with nicknamed him “Nemo,” referring to the character in the Jules Verne novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
Maria’s daughter, Cathy, was a quiet, shy seven-year-old child who had difficulties with eye/hand coordination. “Mark took her ‘under his wing’ and taught her how to swim and to shoot a bow and arrow,” Maria remembers.
Maria; her husband, Harold; and their two children resided in a four bedroom, two story house in Decatur. The Simpsons moved there in 1971 and within two weeks, strange things started to happen.
Maria vividly remembers the first occurrence. “One afternoon, I was lying on the couch in the living room, taking a nap. I was exhausted from all the unpacking and needed to take a break. Suddenly, I felt something hit me and I awoke to discover that Cathy had dropped the bathroom scales on me. She was standing over me, smiling, as if [she was] very pleased by what she had done. My nose was bleeding and I asked her ‘Why on earth did you do that to me?’ She did not respond. Later in the day, Cathy snapped out of her trance-like state, with absolutely no recollection of what she had done.”
Soon, Cathy began waking up every night at 11 o’clock, screaming and crying. She would stand on her bed, yelling and sweating profusely, her eyes wide open, with a wild look on her face. One night, when Maria came in to comfort her daughter, Cathy screamed, “There’s an old man standing behind you!” When Maria turned to look, she found no one there. At least no one that she could see.
Cathy’s behavior grew even more bizarre. She began cursing, which she had never done before, and even began to violently attack others. Fearful for her daughter’s physical and mental health, Maria took Cathy to a pediatrician, who found nothing wrong with the child’s general state of health. The pediatrician referred them to a neurologist, who suspected that Cathy might be suffering from psychomotor epilepsy and prescribed Phenobarbital and Dilantin for the child to take.
The nightly episodes subsided a bit, but did not stop entirely. One night, Cathy told her mother that she saw the old man standing outside her bedroom window, which was physically impossible, given the fact that the child’s bedroom was located on the second story of the house. Another night, Maria awoke when she heard an unusual noise; she found Cathy sitting on top of her sleeping younger brother, holding a pillow over his face.
A friend of Maria’s son, Matthew, came for a visit to the Simpsons’ home. When the young boy left, he refused to ever go there again. From that day forward he always referred to the Simpsons’ home as “the black house,” which was odd because the exterior of the house was painted white. Years later, as a teenager, the boy suddenly began having nightmares about the Simpsons’ house and sought help from a therapist.
While playing outside one day, Maria’s children and their friends found some bones in the crawlspace under the house. “They brought them in to show them to me,” Maria remembers. “Of course, I told the children that they were the bones of an animal, but I wasn’t sure.”
In 1976, the Simpson family relocated to Upstate New York for a year because of Harold Simpson’s job, but they did not sell the house in Decatur. During the year that they were away from Georgia, Cathy was completely free from her bizarre behavior.
When they returned home to the house in Decatur, all hell broke loose! Toilets began flushing, faucets would turn on and lights would switch on-and-off, all without the aid of human hand. Maria recalls hearing strange whisperings and music inside the house and smelling cologne, an old fashioned scent that no one living in the house wore.
One night, while her husband was out of town on a business trip, Maria returned home after having dinner with a female friend. As they got out of the car, both women saw the image of a man standing in the window of the bathroom. Panicked and afraid that someone was burglarizing the house, they telephoned the friend’s husband, who arrived soon thereafter, searched the entire dwelling, and found no one.
Maria had never before believed in the supernatural or paranormal, but now she was starting to suspect that something “unseen and unknown” had invaded her home. Her husband, a logical and pragmatic man, tried to reassure Maria that there had to be rational explanations for everything that had happened. She was not convinced.
Whatever had taken up residence in the Simpsons’ home angrily refused to be discounted or discredited. Late one evening, Maria heard a loud noise outside that sounded like someone repeatedly hitting the house with a sledgehammer. Books began flying off the shelves and a candlestick slid across the buffet.
Desperate for answers and assistance, Maria called a Catholic priest, who came out to bless the house. “There is definitely an evil presence here,” the priest told her. She sought help from a paranormal investigator and a psychic, who both agreed that there was “something very negative” in the Simpsons’ home.
Maria Simpson and her family finally moved from the house in Decatur to a new home in Gwinnett County in 1979. Thankfully, whatever haunted their former residence did not follow them to their new home. Cathy Simpson never again suffered from bizarre or violent behavior.
Mark David Chapman was born in Fort Worth, Texas on May 10, 1955. When he was a small child, the Chapman family moved to Indiana, then to Georgia. Mark told psychiatrists who examined him, years later, that his childhood was “unhappy.” He disclosed to them that his father never showed him any love or emotional support. He also claimed that his father had been physically abusive to his mother.
Mark was an intelligent boy, with an above average IQ of 121. Despite the fact that adults considered him a “normal” child, other children frequently picked on Mark and called him ugly names.
Slowly, Mark began to retreat into a world of fantasy where he was completely in control. In his biography, written by Jack Jones, Mark says, “I used to fantasize that I was a king, and I had all these Little People around me and that they lived in the walls. And that I was their hero and was in the paper every day and I was on TV every day, their TV, and that I was important. They all kind of worshipped me, you know. It was like I could do no wrong.”
Mark often held concerts for his loyal and faithful subjects. He would play music for them; his favorite recordings – and theirs –- were songs by The Beatles.
But Mark was not always a benevolent ruler. “Sometimes, when I’d get mad, I’d blow some of them up. I’d have this push-button thing, part of the [sofa], and I’d, like, get mad and blow out part of the wall and a lot of them would die. But the people would still forgive me for that, and, you know, everything got back to normal. That’s a fantasy I had for many years,” he told his biographer.
At the age of 14, Mark began experimenting with illegal drugs and exhibiting antisocial behavior. Then, two years later, this period of rebellion abruptly ended when Mark attended an evangelical church service and became a born again Christian.
While in high school, Mark began volunteering at the local YMCA. He was well liked by his supervisors, co-workers and especially the children that he worked with, including Cathy and Matthew Simpson. Mark dated and eventually became engaged to a young woman named Jessica Blankenship. His life seemed to be progressing nicely and he was happy. Unfortunately, that happiness would be short-lived.
Around this same time, a friend suggested to Mark that he should read the book, The Catcher in the Rye. The novel, written by J.D. Salinger, recounts the story of Holden Caulfield, a troubled youth who is rather aimlessly trying to find his way in a world filled with insurmountable obstacles and countless “phonies.” Mark immediately saw the similarities between his own life and the life of Holden Caulfield. He became completely obsessed with the book.
Mark enrolled as a student at Covenant College, a strict Presbyterian school in Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, but when he began falling behind in his studies, he finally gave up and dropped out. His relationship with Jessica began to disintegrate and she broke off their engagement. Depression, along with chronic thoughts of suicide, took hold of him. In his opinion, he was a complete failure. A nobody.
In the years between 1977 and 1980, Mark David Chapman moved from Georgia to Hawaii, where he attempted suicide and was hospitalized. Following his stay at the hospital, he was hired to work there as a maintenance man. When Mark discovered that he could borrow money from the hospital’s credit union, he took out a loan and requested a six weeks leave of absence. He began planning a trip to the Far East with the assistance of a travel agent named Gloria Abe. While they were working together to plan the trip, a personal relationship developed between Mark and Gloria, as their feeling for each other grew.
Mark traveled around the world, visiting such places as Switzerland, Israel, Japan, Korea, China and Iran. His final stop on the trip was Atlanta, where he visited with family and friends, including the Simpsons.
Maria Simpson remembers very well Mark’s visit. “We drove up to the house and found Mark sitting in the back yard. I was so happy to see him. I hugged him and told him, ‘Oh, it’s so good to see you, Nemo!’ Mark pulled away from me and said, ‘Don’t call me that! Don’t ever call me Nemo again!’ I was surprised by his reaction and said, ‘Okay … why don’t you want to be called Nemo anymore?’ Mark replied, ‘Because Nemo means nothing. It means zero.’”
“My daughter, Cathy, had always idolized Mark, but this time, she wanted nothing to do with him,” Maria continues. “She hid behind me the entire time that Mark was there. I thought, perhaps, that she was just being a typical adolescent girl and acting shy. I asked her, ‘Don’t you want to give Mark a hug?’ She shook her head and whispered to me, ‘He’s different. I’m afraid of him!’” Maria did not disagree with her daughter’s assessment of Mark.
When Mark returned to Hawaii, Gloria was there waiting for him. He asked her to marry him and they were wed in June of 1979. It has been speculated that Mark’s decision to marry Gloria may have been made due to a twisted sense of reverence to John Lennon. Both Gloria and John’s wife, Yoko Ono, are of Japanese decent.
Sadly, Mark’s life once again began to unravel. He was fired from his job at the hospital, was subsequently rehired, then quit after having a shouting match with a nurse. Following a heated argument with Gloria’s boss at the travel agency, he made his wife quit her job.
Mark’s descent into darkness escalated. He both idolized and loathed John Lennon, often listening to music performed by The Beatles, yet furious that Lennon preached love and peace, while earning millions of dollars. He decided that Lennon must die and that he should be the one to kill him.
In 1987, James R. Gaines wrote an 18,000 word article about Mark David Chapman that was published in People magazine. During the interview for the article, Mark told the writer that he began to pray to Satan. “There were no candles, no incantations,” Gaines wrote. “Just Mark, sitting naked, rocking back and forth at the controls of his stereo and tape recorder, splicing together his reasons for killing John Lennon from the lyrics of Beatles songs, the soundtrack of The Wizard of Oz, and quotations from The Catcher in the Rye.”
Mark told his Little People he intended to go to New York and kill John Lennon. They begged him fervently not to do so. “Please, think of your wife. Please, Mr. President. Think of your mother. Think of yourself.” He told them that his mind was made up. Their reaction was silence.
Mark knew that John Lennon; his wife, Yoko; and their son, Sean, lived in The Dakota, a tony apartment building, located on New York City’s Upper West Side. Methodically, he began to formulate his plan.
The Long and Winding Road
On Oct. 27, 1980, Mark went to a gun shop in Honolulu and bought a five-shot, short-barrel .38-caliber handgun for $169. Ironically, the man who sold him the gun was named Ono.
On Oct. 30, wearing a new suit and topcoat, with the revolver in his suitcase, he boarded a plane for New York.
When he arrived, Mark spent most of the day walking around The Dakota, studying its entrances and exits. He asked the doorman if John and Yoko were in town and received the standard reply of “I don’t know.”
Mark had forgotten to buy bullets for his gun before leaving Hawaii and was distressed to find out that New York State laws prohibited him from buying them there. He called Dana Reeves, an old friend in Atlanta, who worked as a sheriff’s deputy, and told Reeves that he was coming to Atlanta for a visit. Dana invited Mark to stay at his apartment and Mark boarded a plane bound for Atlanta.
While in Atlanta, Mark told Dana that he had purchased a handgun for his own protection and needed some bullets “with real stopping power.” Dana provided Mark with five hollow-point cartridges, the kind that expand as they pass through their target.
Sometime in the late fall of 1980, Maria Simpson remembers receiving a telephone call from a former neighbor who told her that she had seen Mark Chapman “sitting in a swing in the yard of our old house. I had no idea why he had gone there. He knew that we had moved,” Maria said.
Is it possible that the demons that dwelled in the house summoned Mark, taunting him and commanding him to carry out a deadly deed in New York City?
Once he had secured the bullets he needed and had paid a visit to the Simpsons’ former home, Mark returned to New York, with evil intentions swirling inside his head.
He arrived back in New York on November 10. The following night, Mark had an epiphany while watching the movie, Ordinary People, at a local theater. In the film, a teenage character named Conrad Jarrett, portrayed by actor Timothy Hutton, is plagued with problems and attempts suicide. Mark felt that watching the movie somehow changed him. He left the theater and called his wife, Gloria, in Hawaii. During the conversation, he whispered to her that he had planned to kill John Lennon. Gloria begged Mark to come home. And he did.
Mark returned to Hawaii, but his reprieve was short-lived. The demons returned in full force and Mark soon began making threatening phone calls, bomb threats and harassing a group of Hari Krishnas who gathered regularly in downtown Honolulu. After spending less than a month in Hawaii, Mark told Gloria that he was returning to New York. She begged him not to leave, but to no avail. On December 6, 1980, he was back in The Big Apple.
He spent the better part of the next two days outside The Dakota, watching and waiting. On the morning of December 8, he returned to The Dakota and was awestruck when, at around 4:00 PM, John Lennon and Yoko Ono emerged from the building.
As they walked toward their limousine at the curb, Mark shook hands with John, then handed him a copy of John’s new album, Double Fantasy, for him to sign. John Lennon graciously autographed the album cover for Mark, then, ironically, asked him twice, “Is that all you want?” Did John Lennon somehow sense that there was something more to this encounter than simply a fan seeking an autograph?
Reportedly, the paranormal and the occult fascinated John and Yoko. They frequently consulted with psychics, but it is not known if any of their psychic advisers made predictions regarding the tragic fate of John Lennon.
After the Lennons left, Mark continued to wait near The Dakota. The part of Mark David Chapman that remained good and sane begged him to take his autographed album and leave, but the demons commanded him to stay and carry out his task. The demons were victorious.
Around 10:50 PM, John and Yoko returned. They got out of their limousine and walked toward their apartment building. The demons inside Mark’s head began screaming, over and over again, “Do it! Do it! Do it!”
Just as the Lennons approached the archway entrance, Mark dropped into a military firing stance and called out, “Mr. Lennon?” When John turned to see who had called his name, Mark fired his gun five times. John Lennon turned to escape, but four of the five bullets ripped into him. To Mark’s amazement, he did not collapse, but managed to run up six steps and into the concierge’s station. He yelled “I’m shot,” then fell, face down. Less than 25 minutes later, John Lennon was pronounced dead.
Members of the New York City Police Department quickly apprehended Mark, without incident. He was charged with second degree murder in the killing of John Lennon and taken to Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric examination. The windows in his room were painted black because authorities feared snipers would try to assassinate him.
Within days, he was transferred to Riker’s Island, New York City’s largest jail facility. While at Riker’s, Mark underwent examination by a number of psychiatrists, who concluded that although he was clearly delusional, he was competent to stand trial.
The diagnoses provided by the psychiatrists, however, differed. Some stated that Mark was decidedly psychotic, while others said that his delusions were not severe enough to categorize him as suffering from psychoses.
Originally, as advised by his defense attorney, Mark entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Then, on June 8, 1981, just two weeks before his trial was scheduled to begin, he informed his lawyer that he wanted to change his plea to guilty. There are conflicting reports as to why Mark made this decision. One version states that Mark decided to plead guilty because “God wants me to do so.” Another version says that Mark claimed “the little voices inside my head told me to plead guilty.”
Maria Simpson was stunned when she heard the news that Mark had murdered John Lennon. “My reaction was one of shock and disbelief. I thought, ‘There must be some mistake. Nemo wouldn’t do such a thing!’”
Soon after the killing, Maria received a call from the police in New York City. Mark had told them to contact her because “she knows me better than anyone else.” The police informed Maria that Mark stated he had committed the murder because two demons he encountered in the Simpsons’ home ordered him to do it. He called the demons by the names of Lila and Dobar.
“I begged the police not to share that part of the story with the media,” Maria said. “I was afraid that some angry or grieving fan might try to harm me or my family because of our association with Mark.”
On Aug. 24, in a packed New York City courtroom, Judge Dennis Edwards sentenced Mark David Chapman to a term of 20 years to life for the murder of John Lennon. He would not be eligible for parole until the turn of the millennium.
During his interview for the 1987 People magazine article, Mark told about an incident that happened shortly after he was imprisoned at Attica Correctional Institution near Buffalo, New York. He said he felt the Holy Spirit come down and say that there were demons inside him. “And I asked in Jesus’ name [for them to come out],” Mark said.
“My face was snarling and it came out my mouth, this thing, and it was gone. And I said, ‘I’m ready, God, let’s get ‘em all out, let’s go.’ During that hour, six came out. [They were] the most fierce and incredible things you ever saw or heard in your life. Hissing, gurgling noises and different voices right out of my mouth. The way I was acting, cursing and things like this, weren’t me, and when they came out, I could sense these things coming out of my mouth, hissing and awful gurgling and grinding and I could feel that part of my personality was gone.”
Maria Simpson was mentioned in the People magazine article and she also appeared in a BBC documentary about the infamous case. Since then, she has rarely spoken of her connection to Mark David Chapman. She was, in fact, very reluctant to allow this article be written. “It all happened so long ago,” Maria said, with a troubled sigh. “We [her family and friends] don’t talk about it much anymore.” Maria does admit, however, that, through the years, she has thought about calling Mark, but finally decided that “it’s best to just let it be.”
Almost three decades after he killed John Lennon, Mark David Chapman remains imprisoned at Attica, completely separated from other inmates due to concerns for his safety. He is a model prisoner, who reads and watches television in his tiny six-by-ten-foot cell. Mark has been denied parole three times and it is almost certain that he will remain in prison until his own death.
He claims that he is free from the demons who ordered him to kill his onetime hero.
The family that purchased the house in Decatur from the Simpsons in 1979 still resides there. They refuse to discuss any unusual experiences they may have had within the dwelling. Maria did have an opportunity, many years ago, to speak with one of the twin daughters of the couple who purchased the house. “I asked [the child] if anything strange had ever happened in the house. She told me that, once, she saw an old man standing on the stairs. Maria shuddered when she realized that the demons might still be infesting the house!
Do You Want to Know a Secret?
Undeniably, the most frightening and compelling facet of this story is something that Maria Simpson has thought about many times since Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon. “Even though Mark was very close to me and my family, no one ever spoke to him about the strange incidents that took place at the house in Decatur. There was absolutely no way he could’ve known about the demons that invaded our home … unless he had encountered them himself.”
(*At the “Simpson” family’s request, names have been changed to protect their privacy. All other details are accurate and factual.)
Bibliography and acknowledgments:
Wikipedia articles on Mark David Chapman and John Lennon
People magazine article; February/March, 1987; written by James R. Gaines
Let Me Take You Down: Inside the Mind of Mark David Chapman by Jack Jones; 1992; Virgin.
Court TV’s Crime Library website; article by Fred McGunagle.
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