TV review: 'John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial' explores the motives of the music icon's killer

The Apple TV+ docuseries includes interviews of witnesses to Lennon's fatal shooting.

December 7, 2023 at 2:00PM
Archival footage of John Lennon in “John Lennon: Murder Without A Trial” on Apple TV+. (Apple TV+/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Mark David Chapman's motives in fatally shooting John Lennon are explained in the Apple TV+ docuseries.

"John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial" looks at why Chapman decided to murder Beatle Lennon. Interviews with Chapman's defense lawyer David Suggs and Dr. Naomi Goldstein, the psychiatrist who assessed Chapman, give new insights into his state of mind at the time of the 1980 killing.

The docuseries features exclusive eyewitness interviews and previously unseen crime scene photos, shedding new light on the life and murder of Lennon, and the investigation and conviction of Chapman, his confessed killer.

A witness to Lennon's murder, cabdriver Richard Peterson, and Jay Hastings, a doorman at the Dakota who heard Lennon's last words before he was shot outside the building, also speculate what compelled Chapman to kill.

The docuseries, narrated by Kiefer Sutherland, also explores the immediate outpouring of grief that greeted reports of Lennon's death, including fans gathering in front of Lennon and Yoko Ono's home.

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