The Man Who Shot John Lennon

Recently, I made my third visit to a very high profile prison inmate. Why do I have an interest in this prisoner? Several years ago, we received a letter in response to our broadcast, “The Word And The World”, which aired at the time over WWOG in Rochester, NY. The postmark was from Attica, NY. Examination of the signature brought the surprise that the letter came from Mark David Chapman, who was in Attica Correctional Facility for the murder of rock icon John Lennon in New York City in 1980.

We answered Chapman’s letter, and a correspondence friendship developed that resulted in several visits to Attica by me and Bill Breckenridge, who is our ministry’s Media Manager and who also contributes to this blog.

I was the speaker last week at Odosagih Bible Conference, which is only about 45 miles away from Attica, so last Wednesday, August 12, I went to see Mark. I arrived at Attica about 1:00 PM for my visit. Before I even went in, I helped jump-start the car of a mother who had come in the morning fog and left her lights on and had a dead battery.

Entrance was easier this time than other visits. I had only one form to fill out because I was already on Chapman’s visitation list. I showed my ID, took off my shoes and finally made it through the metal detector the third time since I had forgotten about my belt buckle and my watch the first two times. I put my shoes back on and then went through two iron gates and crossed a wide inner area to another building where I went through two more iron gates (and had to show ID each time) into yet another building, which turned out to be the wrong one, and then went back through the two iron gates to get back out.

Then I was taken through a chain link fence gate into an area of the prison where high profile inmates are housed for their own protection, and I again had to show ID. Then I was led through a couple more iron gates and into a waiting room with three caged visitation areas off to the side. There was another small visitation room on the right where I would meet Mark. I was locked into this small oblong room that had a black floor-to-ceiling cage about 4’ x 4’ at the far end. A long table just wide enough to reach across and join hands went from the doorway to the wall in front of the cage.

I waited for ten to fifteen minutes. Looking around, I noticed a camera near the ceiling and also note on the wall about a microphone, so I assumed everything was being carefully monitored. I wasn’t allowed to bring a Bible or anything else except for a plastic pen and some paper, and I scribbled some questions while I waited for Mark.

At length, Mark came through the rear door, and we warmly greeted each other. He is doing well and rejoicing in the Lord. Our conversation ranged far and wide.

Mark told me that he lives in a cell that he estimated is about 6’ x 8’. He is awakened at 6:30 each morning and works 12 hours a day, seven days a week, in the prison library and kitchen. He has to make up for any work time lost due to visits. Few people come to see Mark, and he is not giving interviews to any media people as this is his current leading from the Lord. He can have a radio but no Internet access.

We talked about many things that Mark requested I not share on our radio broadcast or here. When I asked him what I should tell my audiences from him, he simply said, “Know Jesus.”

Addtionally, he would like people to know that he and his wife Gloria, who resides in Hawaii, are hoping for funding to get his printed testimony, “The Man Who Shot John Lennon,” shipped to many prison ministries for distribution around the world. (You can request a copy from us if you would like to read it.)

Mark is deeply spiritual, deeply repentant for his actions, concerned about evangelism, willing to stay in prison for the rest of his life and willing to be whatever God wants him to be. He and I prayed together several times, joining hands across the table. He prayed for me, my family and ministry. I prayed for him, his spiritual life, his wife and his literature outreach.

Before being led back out though all those gates at 2:30 PM, I asked Mark to review an interview he did with Larry King back on Sept. 30, 2000. I asked Mark to share the story with me once more, and he did.

Through King’s friendship with then-NY governor Mario Cuomo, he was able to get a live interview with Chapman and sent his crew into Attica. Mark sat in a darkened room with nothing but the camera lens pointed at his face. King could see Mark, but Mark could not see King.

In the interview, Chapman told Larry King, “I became a Christian when I was 16, Larry, and that lasted about a year of genuine walking with Him. Through my life, off and on, I have struggled with different things, as we all do, and at those times I would turn to the Lord. The night of the death of John Lennon I was far from Him. I wasn’t listening to Him. I wasn’t reading the Bible anymore.

“Today I’m different. I read the Bible. I pray, and I walk with Him. He forgives me. He doesn’t condone what I did—and that’s a very important thing—He didn’t like what I did 12 years ago. He didn’t like all the pain I caused everybody, especially John’s widow. But He forgives me and He hears me and He listens to me, and He is the one, all these years, that has brought me out of the abyss, not medications or counseling. I, basically, had to counsel myself through these years, not that it’s not available here, but I’ve been very private about this. This is not anything that’s easy to live with.”

As I listened to the interview back in 2000, I was stunned by King’s next question. The instant retort by Chapman surprised me, and I thought it might have been rehearsed. Larry King asked Mark how he knew it wasn’t a crutch, and his response was:

“Well, in a way, it’s got to be a crutch, because we all need a crutch. Life is not easy and life, for me, isn’t easy. And, therefore, I think the Lord has a tender spot in His heart for prisoners. He said so. The rest of the Bible says so in many different places. And I’ve leaned on Him—if it’s a crutch, I've been leaning on a crutch, but it’s a crutch made out of the cross, because without that I probably wouldn’t be alive today because I was very suicidal and I certainly wouldn’t be in a well state of mind, not without Him.”

Mark told me that seconds before Larry King asked that awkward question, his gaze was diverted momentarily. Out of the corner of his eye in the darkness, he saw a fleeting vision of a crippled man walking down a lonely road with a cross under his armpit in the form of a crutch. He looked back into the camera and answered Larry’s question.

Our wonderful crutch of salvation is indeed formed by the cross. “The old rugged cross, so despised by the world has a wondrous attraction for me…” It’s the message I preached last week 14 times in six days in two Bible conferences. “In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o’er the wrecks of time….” “At the cross, at the cross where I first say the light, and the burden of my heart rolled away….”

Driving away from Attica is a sobering experience. When I left, I said to myself, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” Salvation is just as needed inside the prison or outside the prison, for Mark David Chapman and for David Mark Virkler.

Dave Virkler