Let Me Take You Down: Inside the Mind of Mark David Chapman, the Man Who Killed John Lennon

by Jack Jones

The second possession and demonic outburst occurred after Chapman was taken from the city jail at Rikers Island. On June 22, 1981, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced on August 24, 1981, to serve a minimum of twenty years and a maximum of life in prison. Shortly after sentencing, he was taken from Rikers Island and committed to the state prison system at Downstate Correctional Facility. When he found that he was being sent to Attica—where forty-three men had died during September 1971 in the bloodiest prison revolt in U.S. history—the killer panicked. Chapman also feared Attica for another reason: John Lennon’s first public performance after immigrating to the United States in 1971 had been a benefit for the survivors and families of prisoners killed by state police at Attica. The song he wrote and sang for the benefit at the Apollo Theater and later recorded on the Plastic Ono Band album Sometime in New York City, was titled “Attica State.”