On This Day in 1980...

Today is the anniversary of John Lennon's assasination, just wanted to start a thread here to commemorate the day and remember him. In 1980, on this day, the world watched perhaps the last bastion of People Power gunned down out side of his apartment. If there was ever a man who could have truly made a difference and had the following to pull it off, it was him. We miss, and remember you John Lennon!





Post Script:
Any of you guys read the new book claiming the FBI had 'hired' Chapman?

www.jfkmontreal.com...

"...It is difficult to criticize the official explanation of what happened to John Lennon because a universally accepted version does not exist. There was no trial, no testimonies, no witnesses. The police report was certainly of little value and the autopsy report is suppressed from public view....Most of the public�s perception of Chapman is hocus-pocus nonsense, half-truths, media spin, and the power of suggestion. A patsy was needed to take the blame for murdering Lennon, so Chapman was set up to take the fall...."

May He rest In Peace...

[edit on 8-12-2004 by Horus_Re]

[edit on 8-12-2004 by Horus_Re]

Statement of Mark David Chapman to police at 1 a.m., Dec. 9, 1980, three hours after the murder of John Lennon.

www.crimelibrary.com...
"Then this morning I went to the bookstore and bought The Catcher in the Rye. I�m sure the large part of me is Holden Caulfield, who is the main person in the book. The small part of me must be the Devil....Then John came and looked at me and printed me. I took the gun from my coat pocket and fired at him. I can�t believe I could do that. I just stood there clutching the book."

That little facet of the assasination always bugged me, what the hell is up with "The Catcher in the Rye"? That isn't the only time the title has appeared in conspiracies either...

69.28.73.17...
One area of interest I had was Salinger�s connections with U.S. Intelligence. My reason for this line of inquiry stemmed from my suspicion that his classic novel The Catcher in the Rye had been used as a �mechanism of control� in the assassination of John Lennon, and the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. If you recall, The Catcher in the Rye was found in the possession of both Hinkley and Chapman after their respective rampages. In fact, when the New York City police apprehended Chapman in the aftermath of Lennon�s assassination, he was sitting glassy-eyed and zombified, leaning against the Dakota Building, reading Salinger�s book.
When I refer to The Catcher in the Rye as a �mechanism of control� I mean in the sense of a triggering device, which sets off a post-hypnotic suggestion, much like the queen of hearts in Richard Condon�s Manchurian Candidate, unleashing within its mind-controlled subjects the command to kill. According to Hamilton�s biography, Salinger was under the employ of Defense Intelligence during World War II, serving with the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), his time spent mainly in the interrogation of captured Nazis. Later on, toward the end of the war, Salinger was involved in the denazification of Germany.

Another interesting read here...

www.davidicke.net...
It has been fairly well documented that Chapman was psychotic when she shot Lennon. Before the assassination, in the advanced stages of his model psychosis, Chapman sat in his room in Hawai and kept chanting over and over and over :
THE PHONY MUST DIE SAYS THE CATCHER IN THE RYE !
THE PHONY MUST DIE SAYS DIE SAYS THE CATCHER IN THE RYE !
JOHN LENNON MUST DIE SAYS THE CATCHER IN THE RYE !
This is remakably similar to Sirhan Sirhan, writing into his notebook that "RFK MUST BE ASSASSINATED ASSASSINATED ASSASSINATED ASSASSINATED" (isn't it !)...Another item of interest that should be highlighted here is that moments before Chapman assassinated John Lennon, the Dakota's nightwatchman, Jose Perdomo, a Cuban exile, was discussing the assassination of John F. Kennedy with Mark Chapman. (See article(s) in the weekly People Magazine by James R. Gaines, sometime in the 1980's) Mark Chapman later said, "That assassination has always meant a great deal to me !" Can we begin to understand the covert methodologies involved here ? Remember that Jack Ruby was being psyched up by Dallas police officer Olson, that "Lee Harvey Oswald should be cut inch by inch into ribbons", before he shot him.

Interesting side note here about MK-Ultra, Rye is the origin of the ergot mold which produces '___'...

Is there any link to Sirhan Sirhan and MK-Ultra? Or Chapman for that matter? Aside from the catcher in the rye thing?

In memory of John Lennon
May he rest in peace

The similarities in methodology are pretty striking, this tactic goes back as far as WWII though, inducing psychosis through hypnotism and other methods were even a part of a scrapped plot to assasinate Adolf Hitler. MK-Ultra is one of many clandestine operations to produce the same result.

www.psyplan.com...
The MK-Ultra program has different projects with different names. Project Phoenix was the MK-Ultra mind-controlled assassin project. Alumni of this project include Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, Marc David Chapman (who shot John Lennon) and various other luminaries in what noted scholar and conspiracy theorist Robert Anton Wilson dubbed �the lone nut family tree.� The family members of these individuals knew they were not cold-blooded killers � they knew something else was going on.

This site is a little far out but some interesting kernels on info nonetheless...

www.thewhyfiles.co.uk...
Part of MK ULTRA was the NAOMI PROJECT - involved in the creation of what were later to be called "Manchurian Candidates". Manchurian Candidates were people who were pre-programmed to become assassins without their knowledge. A post hypnotic trigger was used to put them into "killer mode" - the American classic novel "The Catcher in the Rye" is regarded as containing these triggers. John Gittinger - a psychologist with the C.I.A. from 1950 to 1979 initially denied these experiments but later remarked " I guess it really did happen".
Helmut Scherer , ex C.I.A. agent, believes that Lee Harvey Oswald was a victim of MK ULTRA and William Balley , ex F.B.I., is of the same opinion regarding Sirhan Sirhan - the supposed killer of Robert Kennedy. Photographic proof of Sirhans innocence taken by photographer Scott Engert was supposedly lost by the police but is now found to be legally sealed for 20 years.

Another name you might recognise is Theodore Kazenski (unabomber), who was a lab rat for '___' pyshotherapy...
www.geocities.com...

www.thewhyfiles.co.uk...
it was revealed by College Professor Erard Debringhaus that Klaus Barbie , Nazi war criminal , was a full time , salaried informant of the C.I.C. Is there any suggestion that a C.I.C. agent could be involved with any other covert organization ? J.D. Sallinger was also a member of the C.I.C.

www.john-lennon.com...
Bresler quotes the late radio journalist Mae Brussell, who broke the Watergate story 2 months before the Woodward-Bernstein expose'. Brussell had no doubts: "It was a conspiracy. Reagan had just won the election. They knew what kind of president he was going to be. There was only one man who could bring out a million people on demonstration in protest at his policies -- and that was Lennon."
Bresler speculates that Chapman was a "Manchurian Candidate," brainwashed and pre-programmed to kill on command. When the moment had arrived, Chapman received his signal and performed his task....
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two weeks before the bust, Lennon had been warned that the police were out to get him because he was a "loudmouth." As a precaution, he had (as he put it) "cleaned the house out [of drugs]." Nevertheless, marijuana was found in the house by the police. According to Lennon, he had been set up. His opinion is backed up by the fact that the arresting officer was later sentenced to two years in prison for planting evidence in other cases.

Here's a good link to check out Fred...
www.daywilliams.com...

If it's hard evidence you are looking for Fred, good luck, Chapman didn't even have a freaking trial!


"Laurel and Hardy, that's John and Yoko. And we stand a better chance under that guise because all the serious people like Martin Luther King and Kennedy and Gandhi got shot."
-John Lennon

[edit on 8-12-2004 by twitchy]
Another interesting note, the same Pharmaceutical Comapny that owns and makes Prozac is the same company that began manufacturing '___' for the CIA after Holland refused to sell a HUGE quantity of the new drug to the US. Creepy considering this...

There are other human time bombs, primed in haste, ignorance or indifference to long-term consequences. Amid all the finger-pointing to causes prompting the recent wave of schoolyard killings, not nearly enough clamor has been raised about the fact that many of these teenagers suddenly exploding into mania were on a regimen of antidepressants. Eric Harris, one of the shooters at Columbine, was on Luvox. Kip Kinkel, who killed his parents and two students in Oregon, was on Prozac.
There are a number of other instances. Apropos possible linkage, Dr. Peter Breggin, author of books on Prozac and Ritalin, has said, "I have no doubt that Prozac can contribute to violence and suicide. I've seen many cases. In the recent clinical trial, 6% of the children became psychotic on Prozac. And manic psychosis can lead to violence."

[edit on 8-12-2004 by twitchy]

It's been about seven or eight years since I read The Catcher in the Rye. I had heard of it for years, but had never bothered to read it, then I found a copy in the homeless shelter I worked in and in one paragraph, I was hooked.

Catcher in the Rye is a favorite of pedophiles, rapists, thieves, social outcasts, sociopaths, murders etc, etc. A book for the criminals.

This isn't to suggest that normal people like me ( ) can't like it.

John Lennon.
May his words of peace have new life in this world of war.

I guess I failed to pay homage to John Lennon. I have to tell you that John, Paul, George, and Ringo were a very big part of my growing up. The Beatles were so inventive and creative that I never grew tired of their music because every new album promised something new. They blazed a trail in pop music and when some other trend would come along, they would jump on board, hijack it and claim it as their own.

When the Beatles broke up, I was in a state of disbelief for weeks. It just couldn't happen. I was convinced that Lennon and McCartney were writing music for the ages and they were going to go on forever.

After the split, I waited anxiously for every album by the members of the band and each one was a bigger disappointment than the one before. I began to wonder how the rock band of the century could be composed of such mediocrity. George plagiarized and played twangy, eerie, creepy mush. Ringo was, well, Ringo. Paul beget the egregious Wings and John seemed to be caught in the hallucinogenic pop art world of Yoko Ono, forever lost.

Then, "Imagine" was released and I thought, "He's got it back!" It had been ten years and now the magic was emerging once more to take us on those fantastical, florid musical journeys that thrilled me in my youth. I was ecstatic.

Then one morning on my way to the furniture warehouse where I worked, I stopped into a corner grocery store on Decatur Street to get out of the cold, buy a hot cup of coffee and a paper. When I saw the headlines, I was stunned. It just could not be. What would be the point of murdering John Lennon.

I can't say that I ever really liked the Beatles as people. I resented the idiotic mania of teenage girls and was embarrassed by the stupidity they sometimes exhibited in their personal lives and when I saw the picture of John and Yoko in the nude, I wondered what in God's name they could be thinking, but the music always triumphed in my mind. I loved it and I didn't care what they did in their spare time.

I never listen to the Beatles much anymore. I've pretty much given up on all pop music. It just doesn't stimulate the neurons anymore. But, I don't really have to listen, because I have the memories. I've changed a lot since those days. Music used to take me places that I simply couldn't explain to others and it was all without drugs. For as long as I live, the music of the Beatles will have a sound in my mind that my ringing, failing ears will never again hear.

Thank God for John Lennon.

[edit on 04/12/8 by GradyPhilpott]

Another great read here...

www.john-lennon.com...
In late 1972, when the "surveillance" was at its peak, Lennon told humorist Paul Krassner, "Listen, if anything happens to Yoko and me, it was not an accident." ...
While any mention of his name is now accompanied by the phrase "deranged fan," Chapman was anything but. He was no more or less ardent a Beatles/Lennon fan than anyone of his generation. His real rock hero was Todd Rundgren, a cynical studio craftsman who could not be further from Lennon in artistic sensibility. Notwithstanding Chapman's announcement months after the murder that he "killed Lennon to gain prominence to promote the reading of The Catcher in the Rye," Chapman never exhibited strong feelings about the novel until shortly before the shooting...
Bresler also notes that when Chapman signed up for a YMCA overseas program, he selected an odd destination: Beirut - a perfect place, says Bresler, for Chapman, a once gentle soul, to be "blooded," that is, desensitized to violence.

Edit: No Replies yet so am adding this interesting little bit, I had heard of this before... The guy that put up this site is a nut case, but I am getting ready to crash for the evening and don't have time to dig into it, so I apologise in advance for this particular source, but the autopsy information is right on the money as far as I know. The same thing happenend with the Robert Kennedy assasination, the ballistic angles don't jive.

www.jfkmontreal.com...
There are a couple of reasons why this scenario might occur. First: Borakove, Hirsch, Gauger, and others are angry with Astucia for digging into the Lennon case and requesting John�s autopsy report, a document that is expected to strengthen Astucia's argument that Lennon was killed by a second gunman firing from a different location than where Mark David Chapman stood. Two days after Lennon's murder, the New York Times cited the autopsy report, stating that Lennon had sustained four bullet wounds to the left side of his body: two in the left shoulder and two in the left side of his back. Chapman was standing to Lennon's right, a few feet behind. In legal terms, public inspection of the autopsy report could be extremely damaging to lots of powerful people and various governmental institutions including the FBI, NYPD, NYC Medical Examiner's office, and the NYC District Attorney's office.

[edit on 8-12-2004 by twitchy]

When the Beatles were together I was too young to understand much about music, but I did hear them played over & over on the AM radio of my parents 68' impala station wagon. Later I bought their records & played them till they wore out. It's too bad John was killed like that.

While I'd rather tell a story about meeting John or at least seeing him play, but that never happened. Instead I crossed paths with his future killer - it was 1979.

While I know nothing of the actual murder except what I saw in the media, I believe Chapman was the killer because I met Mr. Chapman by accident while he was working as a security guard or maintenance guy at FOUR FORTY FOUR NAHUA in Honolulu. At the time all seemed pretty normal from a 16 year olds point of view when I look back there was an event or two with Chapman that seems a bit odd.

I was on the roof of the building hanging out at the swimming pool I was underage & drinking and trying my best to pick some girl my age. I was on my first vacation without anyones parents present along with a neighbor friend. At the time the drinking age in Hawaii was either 17 or 19, but it didn't matter because I was only 16. Ah, the good old days.

Mr. Chapman showed up a few times & just kind of seemed like one of the wacky older guys that like to hang around teenagers - though he really didn't hang out with us, he was doing his job I suppose - he'd just kind of hang in the corner out of range - sort of watching. Of course we thought he was cool because he let us continue to drink (though he made us change to non-glass cups), but you could tell the guy was just somewhere else all the time.

There was one particularly strange event that happened up on the roof. There was a kid about about 10 or so that was a real hellraiser and he would come up on the roof spill drinks and just plain get on your're nerves enough to complain. (when you're 16 booze were expensive & getting carded made them even harder to come by) I don't remember exactly how it happened, but somehow Chapman suggested we frighten the kid into leaving us alone by picking him up and hanging him over the street more than 20 floors below. I was very fit at the time & dumb enough to try - I picked the kid up & literaly hung him over the edge of the building upside down by his legs for just a second or two and the kid started kicking like he wanted me to drop him. I ended up being the one who was frightened.

Now I look back & really don't know how I did that, but I think there was just some kind of bad cloud around that Chapman guy - if you know what I mean. Though I knew I had the strength to hold the kid, it's just the fact the Chapman not only let that event occur, but he sort of instigated it. This is probably the first time I've told this much of that story & I'm not much for name dropping especially when it's a name you don't want to be associated with. No, that doesn't make him the killer, but as far as I'm concerned it just sort of fit his profile.

After John's death & I saw the guy on the news and the report of his work history I realized he was the weirdo I'd met on the roof of 444 Nahua and it just made me feel uncomfortable.


[edit on 8-12-2004 by outsider]

You picked up a ten year old child and held him by his feet over the side of a twenty-story building and thinking that you might have met Chapman there makes you feel weird?

I know I'm a day late on this one, but here goes anyway:

Like Grady, I don't necessarily agree with John Lennons political views, but damn he was good at writing music. I am only 26 years old, but the Beatles, and John Lennon especially have had a huge impact on my life. As I was growing up, my dad was a huge Beatles fan. Living in rural Wisconsin, hunting, fishing, and outdoors were the big activities...however, I never really got into that stuff like my dad did. So the one thing we could truly call a "bond" between us was music. I remember countless nights where my dad would throw on a Beatles album, and fry up some fish for dinner. I was the only child out of 4 that really got into my dads music.

Later in life, I got into playing and writing music myself, and I claim John Lennon as one of my biggest influences. His creativity, his melody, his ambiguous lyrics that always made you wonder "what the hell is he singing about?"...I strive for all of that in my own music. I think I do fairly well, but I am a far cry from the genius that John Lennon was. Every time I write a song, though I may not always be thinking about it, is paying homage to John Lennon, for without him, I would never have had the opportunity to express myself via my music.

For those of you who are interested in hearing some of my songs, go to www.soundclick.com...

My favorite Lennon picture....



Ok, ok...tossing the Kerry fans a bone here.

Originally posted by outsider
I picked the kid up & literaly hung him over the edge of the building upside down by his legs

Your real name isn't Michael Jackson by any chance ?

Originally posted by twitchy
, the world watched perhaps the last bastion of People Power gunned down out side of his apartment. If there was ever a man who could have truly made a difference and had the following to pull it off, it was him. We miss, and remember you John Lennon!

Come on the guy was a pop singer not some type of messiah or martyr. He sang about ideal ideas of peace and love�� wow�.peace? As in�no war? Whoa, how did they come up with a concept like that? You mean they promoted people not fighting etc. That is staggering�.I mean it wasn�t that revolutionary was it. And as for Love, every crappy pop song I can think of revolves around mushy crap like love.

The guy was a good song writer with the power and following to make people buy his records. Dont get me wrong nobody should get gunned down like that not a john doe or john lennon.

[edit on 8-12-2004 by ShadowXIX]

this older thread was suspicious of the book, too........the catcher's back in town

Originally posted by Pisky
Your real name isn't Michael Jackson by any chance ?

No - Michael only does that to people he likes, & I felt bad about it later.

Afraid I'm with Shadow on this one, it was a tragedy he died the way he did but i always thought it was a bit rich preaching peace, love and equality for all when riding around in his Rolls Royce and living in his Newyork penthouse. And that sleep in thing he did with Yoko was a bit cringeworthy.
Yes he could write thought provoking songs but there are people out there who did more than him for peace and are more deserving of peoples admiration.