Quote Originally Posted by andy6025 View Post
I had heard a theory that Chapman was a Manchurian style assassin, but I haven’t heard the details. I’ll look it up.
There's an awful lot of rubbish out there to wade through, including daft theories that Yoko was behind it and that the doorman was CIA and a veteran of the bay of pigs (which he wasn't despite sharing a name with somebody who was).

Basically, Lennon had been hated by the Christian right since the "bigger than Jesus" debacle in 1966 and then became a thorn in the side of the Nixon admin in 1972 when Lennon fell in with the far left and intended to play at a series of anti-Nixon rallies. There are still classified documents on Lennon held to this day from the time they were spying on him.

Mark David Chapman was being groomed for something like this since the early 1970s when he fell into the orbit of pastor Charles McGowan who had links to intelligence and knew Nixon, so it was those two elements coming together who had a serious grudge, with the potential for Lennon to become problematic for the incoming Reagan admin and operations in Central America.

The lawyer who was initially representing Chapman lasted only a few days due to death threats and was replaced by somebody who worked in the same building as the CIA's law firm and he granted full access MK Ultra, one of whom was on US TV a year before the murder boasting he could convince somebody to carry out an assignation in the space of 6 months. Chapman had no idea why he'd done it when interviewed on the night, he said he had nothing against Lennon or The Beatles but just felt a compulsion to do it. Two fans who'd had lunch with Chapman earlier that day said he knew next to nothing about The Beatles and it was they who suggested he buy Lennon's album and get it signed (which he did and was photographed doing). The notion that he'd done it for Lennon's fame came later when the "Catcher in the Rye" link became problematic for intelligence when that book was also linked with the Reagan assassination attempt. In 1981 it changed from the book to demons making him doing it, the fame angle came in later years and has since stuck ,but if he'd done it for the fame he would have opted to go for the trial to get himself on TV.

Chapman's wife knew full well of the plot, has admitted as much and is still closely involved with McGowan to this day. In a press conference two days after the murder she said on camera "I'm sorry that John Lennon HAD TO DIE." which is very telling I think. It's incredible she's never faced any heat for being an accomplice. She drove her husband to the airport having arranged his flight knowing full well he'd been to NYC the previous month with the intention of killing Lennon and she rang the police station to speak to MDC before his name had been made public.