Interview With The Killer

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By Newsweek Editors

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Most Americans remember where they were the night of Dec. 8, 1980, when a young man with a copy of "Catcher in the Rye" in his Pocket assassinated John Lennon in front of the Dakota apartment building. Since pleading guilty to murder and receiving 20 years to life at Attica, Mark David Chapman, now 37, has shunned the public. Until now. In his first-ever TV interview, airing on Friday's "20/20," Chapman tells Barbara Walters of growing up with an abusive father in a twisted world teeming with imagined people and voices. As a teen, he idolized the Beatles, but decided his hero, Lennon had "sold out"-"voices" told him to shoot the musician. In prison, Chapman's demons plagued him until a priest performed an exorcism. He recalls, "I could feel them when they came out of my mouth."

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