Lennon's Death Lingers For Witnesses

NEW YORK - A television news producer. An emergency room doctor. Two NYPD beat cops. Before that December night 25 years ago, they shared little but this: As children of the '60s, the soundtrack of their lives came courtesy of the Beatles.
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Alan Weiss, a two-time Emmy winner before his 30th birthday, was working at WABC-TV. His teen years were the time of "Revolver" and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." In his 20s, Weiss admired John Lennon's music and politics.

Dr. Stephan Lynn was starting his second year as head of the Roosevelt Hospital emergency room. He remembered the Beatles playing "The Ed Sullivan Show," although he didn't quite get the resultant hysteria.

Officer Pete Cullen, with partner Steve Spiro, did the night shift on Manhattan's Upper West Side. They'd occasionally run into Lennon walking through the neighborhood with his son, Sean. "The Beatles were a big part of my life," Cullen said.

On the night of Dec. 8, 1980, Lynn was in the ER, Weiss was heading home from the newsroom, Cullen and Spiro were on the job — and the murderer was lurking outside Lennon's home.

The chubby man with the wire-rimmed glasses stood patiently in the dark outside the Dakota apartment house. He carried a copy of "The Catcher In the Rye," the J.D. Salinger tale of disaffected youth, and a five-shot Charter Arms .38-caliber revolver.

Lennon, just two months past his 40th birthday, returned from a midtown Manhattan recording studio at 10:50 p.m with wife
Yoko Ono. The limousine stopped at the ornate 72nd Street gate; John and Yoko emerged. Chapman's voice, the same one that had beseeched the ex-Beatle for an autograph hours earlier, rang out: "Mr. Lennon!"

The handgun was leveled at the rock world's foremost pacifist. Four bullets pierced their famous target.

The voice of a generation was reduced to a final gasp: "I'm shot."

"Do you know what you just did?" screamed the Dakota's doorman.

"I just shot John Lennon," he replied softly.

___

THE COPS

Back in 1965, while still in the Police Academy, 23-year-old Pete Cullen's first real assignment was working security outside the Warwick Hotel on West 54th Street. Upstairs, safe from the insanity below, were the Beatles.

Fifteen years later, the officer was staring at a dying John Lennon within minutes after the murderer opened fire. Cullen and Spiro were first to answer the report of shots fired.

Cullen was struck by the lack of movement: the doorman, a building handyman and the killer, all standing as if frozen.

"Somebody just shot John Lennon!" the doorman finally shouted, pointing at Chapman.

"Where's Lennon?" Cullen asked. The rock star was crumpled inside a nearby vestibule, blood pouring from his chest. There were bullet holes in the glass; Cullen went to Lennon's side as Spiro cuffed the gunman.

Two other officers lugged Lennon's limp body to a waiting police car, which sped downtown to Roosevelt Hospital. The cuffed suspect directed Spiro to his copy of "The Catcher in the Rye," which was lying on the ground nearby with the inscription, "This is my statement." And then he spoke: "I acted alone," he said.

"That blew my mind," said Spiro, who suddenly felt like he was in a movie. The veteran officer later thought about Lennon's 5-year-old son, Sean, who was sitting a few floors above. Spiro had a boy the same age.

In the midst of the chaos, Cullen spotted Yoko Ono. "Can I go, too?" she asked as her husband disappeared. A ride was quickly arranged. Cullen and Spiro then loaded him into their car for a trip to the 20th Precinct.

"He was apologetic," Cullen recalled — but not for shooting Lennon. "I remember that he was apologizing for giving us a hard time."

___

THE PRODUCER

As the wounded Lennon made the one-mile trip to Roosevelt Hospital, Alan Weiss was already there. The TV news producer's Honda motorcycle collided with a taxi around 10 p.m., and he was awaiting X-rays.

A sudden buzz filled the room: A gunshot victim was coming in.

The ER doors opened with a crash as a half-dozen police officers burst through, carrying a stretcher with the victim. Doctors and nurses flew into action. Two of the cops paused alongside Weiss' gurney.

"Jesus, can you believe it?" one asked. "John Lennon."

Weiss was incredulous. He bribed a hospital worker $20 to call the WABC-TV newsroom with a tip that Lennon was shot. The money disappeared, and the call was never made.

Five minutes passed, and Weiss heard a strangled sound. "I twist around and there is Yoko Ono in a full-length fur coat on the arm of a police officer, and she's sobbing," he said. Weiss finally persuaded another cop to let him use a hospital phone, and he reached the WABC-TV assignment editor with his tip around 11 p.m.

The editor confirmed a reported shooting at Lennon's address. Weiss returned to his gurney, watching in disbelief as the doctors frantically worked on the rock icon. A familiar tune came over the hospital's Muzak: the Beatles' "All My Loving."

It was surreal. And then too real.

"The song ends. And within a minute or two, I hear a scream: `No, oh no, no no no,'" Weiss said. "The door opens, and Yoko comes out crying hysterically."

Weiss' tip was confirmed and given to Howard Cosell, who told the nation of Lennon's death during "Monday Night Football."

___

THE DOCTOR

Dr. Stephan Lynn walked to the end of the emergency room hall where Yoko Ono was waiting in an otherwise empty room. It was his job to deliver the word that John Lennon, her soulmate and spouse, was dead.

"She refused to accept or believe that," Lynn recalled. "For five minutes, she kept repeating, `It's not true. I don't believe you. You're lying.'"

Lynn listened quietly.

His 15 1/2-hour shift had ended at 10:30 p.m., with Lynn returning to his home in Lennon's neighborhood. His phone was soon ringing; could he come back to help out? A man with a gunshot to the chest was coming to Roosevelt.

Lynn arrived by cab just before his patient did. The victim had no pulse, no blood pressure, no breathing. Lynn, joined by two other doctors, worked frantically. Gradually, they came to realize that they were trying to save the life of one of the world's most famous men.

Twenty minutes later, they gave up.

Ono left the hospital to tell her son the news, leaving Lynn to inform the media throng that Lennon was gone.

Back in the emergency room, Lynn arranged for the disposal of all medical supplies and equipment used on Lennon — a move to thwart ghoulish collectors.

It was almost 3 a.m. when he began walking home up Columbus Avenue. His wife and two daughters were there; one of them attended the same school as Lennon's son Sean. Many nights, the Lynns and the Lennons sat in the same restaurant eating sushi. Often, the famous family strolled down 72nd Street.

That world was gone along with Lennon.

"I never again saw Yoko and Sean walking the streets," the doctor said. "Going out in public? That ceased to take place."

___

Yoko Ono never remarried, and still lives in the Dakota. She tends to the Lennon legacy, which includes convincing the state parole board that John's murderer should die behind bars. He comes up for parole next year.

The cops from the 20th Precinct hold a reunion every two years. Cullen comes up from his home in Naples, Fla., to hang out with the old gang. They don't talk about the Lennon shooting.

Weiss, after getting the scoop of his career, wound up leaving the ultra-competitive news business. "The major events of my professional career all had to do with other people's tragedy," he said. He now produces a syndicated show with teens reporting the news for teens.

Lynn is still working at Roosevelt Hospital, still the director of the department. As Dec. 8 approaches each year, he gets phone calls from reporters, from fans, from kids born years after Lennon's murder.

"It's hard to imagine it's 25 years," he said.

Imagine.

 

Wow, good thing the doctor disposed of the medical equipment -- that stuff would be in the hands of collectors not two shades removed from John Lennon's killer.

 

Apparently some morgue employee was bribed and that's how that photo of John appeared on the Enquirer.

I read somewhere -- don't know if this is true, could be an urban legend -- that some of the same morgue employees brought in a video camera and recorder and videotaped their famous subject, with someone using their hands to move John's mouth open and closed while someone said "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" -- like he was lip synching to She Loves You. This video may exist in private circles.

Just sickening.

 

God I hope that isn't true. Seems kinda far-fetched but stanger sicknesses are out there.

 

It does not surprise me at all. I got a real dose of reality when some ambulance workers came into a sandwich shop I worked in. They were cracking jokes about accidents they worked on. I can understand the necessity for comic relief in such a macabre industry as the storage of the dead. I still have only heard of, but not seen the part in The Demise OF Western Civilization where the punkers came upon a house painter who was dead after falling off of a ladder. They were posing him and taking pictures!

Regards
Robert Morin

 

Many years ago I had a sales job in San Francisco. There was this guy who I worked with for a while who had been John Lennon's limo driver during this period. On the night of John's death, he had asked for the night off. He said the guy who was subbing for him the night of the shooting screwed up....that he always would drive John inside the Dakota before letting him off. I hated him for taking the night off that night....despised him for the entire time I worked with him. I don't know if it's fair to this guy or not...but I kept asking myself what was so important that this guy had to do that night so as to leave John Lennon in unprofessional hands?


Also...a word of advice to Beatles fans....don't EVER look at the John Lennon autopsy photo that is floating around on the web. I've seen it and I can't describe the way it made me feel. It's an image I'll never forget.

 

I understand how you feel but blame for John's death can be directed at just one person. And we all know who that is.

Tony

 

I vote for "not."

 

Here's the link to that article about the coroner/morgue stuff that allegedly happened...

http://www.findadeath.com/Deceased/l/John Lennon/john_lennon.htm
----------------------------------------------

"Hi....here's just a little story about the murder of John Lennon, I'd like to share:
In 1984 or so, I used to live in Lindenhurst, Long Island, and I was catching a train to go west (toward the city). I saw this guy on the platform, and he looked familiar to me and I decided to speak to him (I usually wouldn't do such a thing, but something told me to). This guy had on a work uniform, kind of like a sanitation worker with a jacket over it, so you couldn't see who he was working for. I remember he had wavy hair and really thick sideburns, almost hippie looking.


I told him he looked familiar to me, and he said, "You must have seen me on TV". He told me he worked for the coroners office. And then it clicked, I did see him a few years earlier, moving John Lennon's body.

He told me he was on TV recently with the Jennifer Levin murder case, and just saying that she was outright strangled from what he saw, it wasn't a rough sex thing that Robert Chambers (her murderer) had said it was.


I said to him that I had seen him on TV with Lennon's body, and he replied yes, that he had moved it, and that a lot of people had gotten in to take pictures of Lennon. Some people were actually able to get in video cameras (they were rare in 1980). (I would imagine this was an after hours deal). He had even mentioned how people had moved Lennon's mouth and made gestures of him going "Yeah, yeah, yeah".
I was shocked to hear this, but according to this fellow, he was there. "

 

You're right.

 

That son of a b&%@h should have been hung by the nuts the next morning. It absolutely disgusts me that NYC taxpayers' dollars are keeping him alive behind bars.

 

As sickening as it is, John might have appreciated the joke. He was known for his dark sense of humour, if one believes the different biographies.

In fact, I can think of a quote from one of the biographies, and a quick google search even confirmed a couple of different references of it{check out the quote below and Mal Evans for proof}, so I'll set up the story;

Mal Evans, a long time employee of the Beatles was depressed over the breakup of his marriage, Evans locked himself in his bedroom with an air pistol. His live-in girlfriend called the police, who shot him several times when he refused to drop the gun. He died instantly.

He was cremated after his death, and his ashes shipped back to England... becoming lost in the mail enroute. John Lennon's wry comment when he heard the news was that Mal likely

.

John could be warped as well, remember that when you hear such ghoulish news.