Mark David Chapman used a string of coincidences to decide to murder.

Some people use coincidences for psychotic purposes.

Mark David Chapman used coincidences to initiate his decision to murder John Lennon. On December 8, 1980, Chapman was standing outside the Dakota, the New York City apartment building in which John Lennon was living. Chapman put together a series of ideas that became signs that the time was now.

This was the building where the movie Rosemary’s Baby was filmed. The movie was directed by Roman Polanski who was the husband of actress Sharon Tate. Tate was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with their unborn son when she was killed by the Charles Manson gang. The gang’s favorite song was “Helter Skelter,” which was credited to Lennon/McCartney but written by Paul McCartney. As he thought about these things, the actress Mia Farrow, who played the character of Rosemary in the movie, walked by. This meant to Chapman that today was the day.

The movie connected him to the building and to its director. The director connected him to Sharon Tate and murder. The song “Helter Skelter” connected him to John Lennon. Mia Farrow’s showing up outside the building as he was thinking about these things completed the circle back to the movie-building connection and the present. To Chapman’s delusional mind, these were the signs.

On the day of the murder, David Bowie was appearing on Broadway in the play The Elephant Man. “I was second on his list,” Bowie later said. “Chapman had a front-row ticket to The Elephant Man the next night. John and Yoko were supposed to sit in the front-row for that show too. So the night after John was killed there were three empty seats in the front row. I can’t tell you how difficult that was to go on. I almost didn’t make it through the performance.”

References

Jack Jones, Let Me Take You Down: Inside the Mind of Mark David Chapman, the Man Who Killed John Lennon (New York: Villard, 1992).