John's assassination (8 December 1980) | Page 4 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

I intended to bump this thread in the next day or two to look at the changing accounts of what took place at the hospital, and who was involved in the attempt to save John, as it came up in another thread yesterday. I feel this is a more appropriate thread to discuss the events, especially given some don’t really want to read about the details of that day. Anyone who clicks on this thread though, has to have some idea it may contain disturbing details.

Once I’ve drawn my sources together, I’ll make that post about Dr. Stephan Lynn, Dr. Richard Marks, and Dr. David Halleran.

However, in this first post of the bump, I want to address the post above:

@Derek_Francis said
The court decision ruled that he knew right from wrong and used the assassination purely as a way to garner attention for himself, denying him the insanity defense.  

This is entirely inaccurate.

John’s killer (I refuse to use his name unless absolutely necessary, and it isn’t here), on the advice of his lawyer, Jonathan Marks, entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity at his January 1981 pre-trial hearing. Most legal experts believed this was likely to be successful.

His trial was set to begin on 22 June.

Minutes before the trial was due to begin, against the objections of his lawyer, he changed his plea to guilty. The reason he gave his lawyer was that on 8 June and 10 June God had told him to plead guilty.

While the Judge could have ordered an assessment of him to determine if he was mentally fit to make that decision, he decided not to, saying, “Every defendant in any case has the right to make that determination. The ultimate decision as to pleading is not that of the attorney, (but) rather the client.”

The only person who denied him an insanity defence was the killer himself.

You can read the New York Daily News report on the 22 June hearing here.

While that man did have a list of other possible targets (among whom was Paul), @QuarryMan, I have never heard the slightest suggestion that he intended a killing spree that night. He had a list, and he settled on John because – alongside his twisted reasons – of his accessibility.

It’s been a difficult few weeks for me but I hopefully will get to the story of the doctors next week, when I should be back at home.

Anyway, the reason I am here now, is the demise of the NME had me hunting out the NME obituary/editorial following John’s assassination. It is well worth a read, though it has errors and mistakes (much of it bad copying from the original, though there are some factual howlers:

“Everybody had a good year, everybody put the fool down,” he sang on ‘Let it Be’ with tongue firmly in cheek…

Really?!!!).

Anyway, in the 20 December issue, under the headline “Lennon: Elergy for Winston O’Boogie”, then-editor Neil Spencer began:

Peace and love. If we are able to take anything from the tragic death of John Lennon – and god knows the senselessness of his murder defies meaning – then it must, paradoxically, be these values we take away from the slaughter on New York’s 72nd street last week.

It would be comforting to say that John Lennon died for peace and love, but his death was not that of a martyr, even though this was a role he seemed to relish at some points of his life.

No, he died without reason at the hands of a madman in a city and country where psychosis, violence and assassination are virtually a way of life.

@meanmistermustard, in another conversation, among other points I largely agreed with, argued this:

And in truth do we really need to be having in-depth discussions on … gun laws…

8 December 1980 is why I believe – and will always believe – America’s gun culture, its 2nd amendment, and, yes!, its gun laws, will always be a valid discussion on a Beatles forum. Beatles fans paid a high price for America’s gun laws, and the ability of “a madman” to legally buy a weapon. I will always rail against that stupidity, at every opportunity, LOUDLY, and make no distinction between a 40-year-old Liverpudlian making his way home in New York City in 1980 and 17 children and adults in a school in Parkland, Florida in 2018, and all those lives lost in-between in similar senseless circumstances.

Every single one of those lives lost was as valuable as John’s, and while knowing it makes some of our American friends uncomfortable (mainly because of their own frustration at their lawmakers inaction because they are in the pocket of the gun lobby instead of their electorate, who polls show want change), in John’s memory, in memory of the 17 who lost their lives in an equally senseless manner in Parkland, just after 37 years since John’s murder, and approaching the 19th anniversary of Columbine (13 dead), when the phrase “school shooting” entered the language, and all those lost lives, lost treasure, lost potential that runs from 8 December 1980 (long before even, that’s just when I entered the debate) through to today, I will SCREAM and RAGE at every opportunity, however futile it may seem, for the US to bring in stronger gun laws.

In that way, I honour John, and every other victim since.

Maybe things are changing though, maybe there is a chink of light in the days since Parkland. The children of Columbine are coming of age. They have spent their whole childhoods under the shadow. Were they growing up in the Fifties, they would have been taught how to hide under their desks in the event of an incoming nuke from Russia, but the children of this generation have been taught how to hide from, usually, a disgruntled and disaffected fellow or ex- student(s) roaming the halls with legally obtained weapons about whom there were warning signals.

The Parkland survivors have been magnificent in the way they have raised their voices on behalf of their dead. There has been a different reaction this time, from companies removing perks they offered NRA members to US stock market funds disinvesting from gun companies. Maybe a corner is being turned. Maybe this generation entering adulthood are going to be the change. We do hope, and possibly feel a little optimistic…

But John Lennon , and the senseless events of 8 December 1980, is why – in my opinion – US gun laws will ALWAYS be a valid debate on a Beatles forum.

[NOTE: I wasn’t quite sure where to put this. The discussion about the future of the forum didn’t seem the right place, and I’m not sure this is now it’s written, so if any mod has a better idea, feel free…]