London, Dec 8 – The wife of John Lennon’s assassin knew about her husband’s killing plot but remained mum. After 30 years since the former Beatle was gunned down in New York, the wife of the killer reveals how he told her of his plan and even showed her the gun he was going to use, reports the Sun.
In the newly-released tapes of interviews with murderer Mark Chapman and his wife Gloria, she admits that rather than go to police or get her mentally ill husband to seek psychiatric help, she trusted herself to help him get through it.
Three weeks later Chapman flew to New York from their home in Hawaii and on December 8, 1980, shot Lennon dead outside his Dakota apartment building.
Chapman had aborted a previous mission to kill Lennon, instead coming home and telling Gloria it was only his love for her that had prevented him pulling the trigger.
In a previously unheard interview, featured in a new US TV documentary, Gloria said: “He had finally realised what I meant to him and finally understood something, and he was ready to come home.”
But in another interview, recorded after his conviction, Chapman himself claimed his wife should have done more to stop him when he returned to Hawaii.
“It’s crazy. I laid out the gun and I laid out all five bullets – she’d never seen a gun before. And I said this is what I was going to do,” he said.
“My God, I still have deep-seated resentment that she didn’t go to somebody, even the police, and say, ‘Look, my husband’s bought a gun and he says he’s going to kill John Lennon,” he said.
Today Japanese-American Gloria, 59, is still living in Hawaii. She quit her job as a travel agent and dedicated her life to helping others in a bid to win forgiveness from the Lennon family – including his widow, Yoko Ono.
But they still remain married and once a year she travels to his New York jail for a 44-hour conjugal visit when the couple are allowed time alone for sex, away from guards and cameras.
