John Lennon’s killer was brainwashed by the CIA, a wild conspiracy theory suggests.
The Beatles singer, who would have turned 84 today (October 9) in 1940, was shot and killed outside of his New York City apartment on 8 December 1980. His assassin, Mark David Chapman, fired five bullets into the music legend before dropping his gun and waiting for police to arrive.
His death has been the subject of several shocking conspiracy theories, including one claiming the CIA had a plot to stop Lennon radicalising young Americans with his leftist views. Author John Potash suggested Chapman was trained by the CIA to kill Lennon.
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He claimed in his 2017 book, Drugs as Weapons Against Us, that the US agency wanted to stop the rocker spreading “radical” ideas. Lennon held several anti-war protests – he famously stayed in bed for two weeks with his wife Yoko Ono.
(Image: Getty Images)
His book cites the investigation by former Sunday Express legal correspondent Fenton Bresler, who obtained classified documents from the FBI and CIA. The documents allegedly suggested Lennon was tracked by the intelligence agencies in the 1970s.
They also allegedly showed the star’s arrest for drugs in 1972 was to “neutralise and disrupt” his activities. Potash claimed the authorities were growing increasingly concerned with the step up in activism by the Beatles icon, who was just one month away from becoming an American citizen when he died.
(Image: AFP/Getty Images)
Potash wrote: “This exemplified the international interest and influence of Lennon, underscoring why his leftist activism was a threat to the CIA and the oligarchy.” Elliot Mintz, a former spokesman for Lennon and Ono, apparently revealed Yoko had been worried their apartment area had been bugged.
He said in a three part Apple TV+ series John LennonL Murder Without A Trial: “I’ve never expressed this before. One of the things Yoko asked me was to look into the various conspiracy theories after John’s murder. The two of them were convinced that the Dakota building, their apartment area, was being bugged.”
A shocking suggestion in Potsah’s book was that Lennon’s killer, Chapman, could have been trained to kill in Beirut – somewhere the CIA had a heavy presence. An earlier book by Phil Strongman, titled John Lennon: Life, Times and Assassination, explored the idea Chapman was “programmed” to carry out the murder.
(Image: ITV)
An NYPD lieutenant who questioned Chapman, Arthur O’Connor, said the shooter looked “programmed”. He told Bresler: “Chapman looked like he could have been programmed and I know that you are going to make of that word. That was the way he looked and that was the way he talked.”
Bresler claimed Chapman could have been controlled through drugs and hypnosis. A CIA spokesman told Express.co.uk the claims in the book were baseless and not worthy of consideration.
(Image: Getty Images)
Chapman, a 25-year-old security guard at the time, was a huge Beatles fan and had no criminal record before killing Lennon, who was just 40 and died after being rushed to hospital in a police car. His killer was famously holding a copy of JD Salinger’s book The Catcher in the Rye.
Chapman himself said he knew killing Lennon was wrong but that he had “evil in my heart”, and admitted he was motivated by fame and wanted to “somebody”. He is still serving time in prison at Green Haven Correctional Facility in New York’s Hudson Valley
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
