Was John Lennon's Murderer A CIA Hitman?

But he wasn’t about to bring down capitalism. He was doing much too well out of it himself for that. Grumbling to an aide one day about soaring business expenses, he was reminded: ‘Imagine no possessions, John.’ Lennon shot back: ‘It’s only a bloody song!’

Still, the fact that some of the files relating to secret service investigations into Lennon’s activities remain closed continue to fuel suspicions of a cover-up.

Strongman writes: ‘I am as convinced as any human being can be that elements of both the FBI and CIA were undoubtedly behind a cover-up in December 1980. They were also deeply involved in the killing itself.’

Meanwhile, Chapman — crazy stalker or robot assassin — lives on. Strangely, if Strongman’s theory is true, he has managed to survive three decades in one of America’s most violent prisons despite the dangerous information he must still possess.

He remains in Attica, 30 years into his life sentence and well beyond the 20-year minimum decreed by the judge who sentenced him.

When asked by a parole board in 2006 to explain why he murdered Lennon, Chapman said: ‘The result would be that I would be famous . . . I would receive a tremendous amount of attention, which I did receive.’

Earlier this year, he told another parole board that back in 1980 he had a long list of potential targets, which included Liz Taylor, chat-show host Johnnie Carson and Paul McCartney.

‘They were famous, that was it,’ he said, and by killing them he would achieve ‘instant notoriety’.

He hit on Lennon, he explained, only because the Dakota was easy to get at. ‘I felt that by killing him I would become somebody and, instead of that, I became a murderer, and murderers are not somebodies. Instead of taking my life I took somebody else’s, which was unfortunate.’

In 2006, his fourth application for release — opposed as it has always been by Yoko Ono — was refused, as it was again in 2008 and once more this year. He is eligible to try again in 2012.