John Lennon: Shocking Secrets Of The Night He Was Murdered

John Lennon was shot outside of his New York City home by a crazed gunman on the night of December 8, 1980 — and The ENQUIRER was there to capture all the bizarre details of that tragic night! The country's top entertainment reporters soon provided the world with bombshell exclusives revealing how psycho killer Mark David Chapman went from being an obsessive Beatles fan to being a Beatles assassin! The ENQUIRER even gave John's fans one last chance to mourn with the last photograph ever taken of the hit songwriter — just hours before his body was cremated!

Mark David Chapman "killed Lennon because his twisted mind saw [John] as the anti-Christ," a close friend of Chapman's revealed to The ENQUIRER. John was on the verge of a major comeback in 1980, having just released "Double Fantasy" with his wife Yoko Ono as his first recording after a five-year retirement. But as revealed by the insider, Chapman saw the former Beatle as "demonic figure," and was convinced that Lennon's comeback would lead people away from God!

The ENQUIRER also had the inside story on how Chapman's obsession with Lennon had turned him into a ticking time-bomb. The crazed killer's arrest didn't come as a shock to people who had recently met the 25-year-old Chapman. Just weeks before leaving on his deadly mission to New York City, Chapman (seen above in a photo with a former coworker) blew up at the mention of John's name, and accused the singer of "thinking he's Christ!"

On December 6, The ENQUIRER revealed, Chapman took a cab in Manhattan after having flown to the city from Hawaii. The driver, Mark Snyder. told The ENQUIRER: "Chapman said, 'I've just left a recording session with John Lennon. I've worked as the sound engineer on John Lennon's records.' Then he offered me some cocaine. I refused it. but he snorted it."

Forty-eight hours later, Chapman shot his former idol while holding a copy of the book, "The Catcher in the Rye" in one hand. "The book was sort of Chapman's message." a source close to the case told The ENQUIRER. "He thought he was like the main character — an innocent telling the world about the evil around it. Lennon was the evil, and it had to be dealt with!"

"If Lennon had stayed in seclusion, he would be alive today," one source close to the case told The ENQUIRER. Jules Bernhardt — a Chapman family friend and psychological counselor — strongly agreed: "Chapman would never have killed Lennon had the rock star stayed in retirement. It was only when Lennon's comeback convinced Chapman that the former Beatle would again be in a position to rival Christ that a death plot was triggered by his tortured mind."

The first hint of the burning fuse inside Chapman came in 1975 when he was working at a center for Vietnamese refugees at Ft. Chaffee in Arkansas. He was discussing the Beatles with co-worker David Moore, who recalled Chapman remarking: "John Lennon shouldn't have said the Beatles are more popular than Jesus Christ. . . Its only going to bring the Beatles harm." Bernhardt also said that *Chapman saw himself as an "avenging angel." And when the killer remarked that the Beatles would come to "harm," Bernhardt said, "It was a masked threat."

The ENQUIRER would later reveal that John Lennon had been planning a Beatles reunion — a rock 'n roll dream concert that was forever shattered by Chapman's psychotic act. Lennon gave a sworn deposition in 1980 in which he said he was intent on organizing a new Beatles concert. Just 11 days before his death, Lennon had said he and his former colleagues would soon be visiting their native Liverpool, England.

Ironically, as a youngster Chapman worshipped Lennon. He styled his hair like Lennon, wore wire-rimmed glasses like the singer - and played his albums for hours on end. Then one day, when Mark was just 16, he attended a religious rally that changed his entire life. He accepted Christ, recalled a friend. "He dramatically changed his appearance from that point on. He cut his hair short and dressed much more conservatively." Tragically, Chapman was also beginning to lose his mind, culminating in one of rock 'n roll's greatest losses on December 8, 1980.