Mark David Chapman Character Analysis

“Do it, do it, do it!” These words bounced against Mark David Chapman’s mind before he shot five fatal rounds of his .38 pistol into the famous John Lennon’s back. Many people believe that the novel “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger had heavily influenced and triggered Chapman’s assassination of the famous Beatles member. Curiously, there are three well known serial killers and murderers who idolized Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye”. So, why were these three, Mark David Chapman, John W. Hinckley, Jr. and, Robert John Bardo obsessed with “The Catcher in the Rye”?

To even begin to understand these serial killers’ infatuation with Salinger’s novel, one must learn a bit about the serial killers themselves. Let’s start off with Mark

David Chapman. He lived through a troubled childhood with history of drug abuse and an attempted suicide. Chapman had been obsessed with Lennon’s fame more than the man himself. In Manhattan, Lennon lived in the Dakota, a high-class apartment building. In the Dakota, at around 5:50pm, Chapman had seen Lennon and asked for his autograph, Lennon signed the album and said “ Is that all? Is that all you need?” Chapman, himself, believes that Lennon knew that Chapman was going to assassinate him. Later, on that same night, while Chapman was leaning against a gargoyle that was perched on top of the stairway, Lennon had returned to his apartment with his wife, Yoko Ono. While Ono was entering the building, with Lennon about 20 feet behind her, Chapman took 5 steps forward, revealed his Charter Arms .38-caliber pistol and shot Lennon five times in the back.

Chapman’s sole justification for the famous John Lennon’s murder was from the most famous passage of “The Catcher in the Rye”: “I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all.

Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around–nobody big, I mean–except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff–I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.” “ The Catcher in the Rye” is a novel heavy with a theme of innocence and it’s preservation. Within the first chapter of this novel, Caulfield calls his own brother, D.B, a prostitute for Hollywood. According to Perez, from The American Scholar, Chapman believed that Lennon’s “innocence” aka his ignorance of commercial gain, would soon be corrupted. Chapman didn’t want Lennon to become a

“phony”.

John Warnock Hinckley, Jr. was the son of the president of World Vision United States (an oil company). He lived a normal childhood and had a rich family. When Hinckley went to Texas Tech University during his time as a college student, he moved to California in hopes of becoming a songwriter. At this point of his life he was already in need of psychiatric care. In 1976, Hinckley became obsessed with Jodie Foster in the film “Taxi Driver”, where she played the role of a child prostitute. For a while, Hinckley had stalked Foster during her university days and sent her countless letters, poems, and even phone calls yet, she failed to recognize him as an equal. Because of this, Hinckley fantasized of hijacking an airplane or committing suicide in front of her to get her attention but settled for assassinating the president at the time, Jimmy Carter but he was arrested in Tennessee for firearms. After he got out, he went for the newly elected President, Ronald Reagan. On March 30th, 1981 at 2:27 pm, Hinckley his .22 caliber Röhm RG-14 revolver six times at the President but missed and hit the bulletproof limousine which caused a ricochet bullet to hit Reagan in the chest but no damage was done. James Brady, a press secretary, was paralyzed in this attack and two other cops were injured but all survived. Hinckley was arrested on the scene.

An important bit of evidence from Hinckley’s 1980 trail was his monologue ,which, was him speaking through a tape recorder saying many things, this among the many: “John Lennon is dead. . . .I still think-I still think about Jodie all the time. That's all I think about really. That, and John Lennon's death. They were sorta binded together. . . . “ Hinckley, too, believed that the young Jodie Foster, was soon to be corrupted, if not, she already has been. His obsession with her movie, Taxi Driver, shows even more proof that , indeed, the innocent are being corrupted because she plays a child prostitute.
Robert John Bardo was quite similar to John Warnock Hinckley.

Bardo was obsessed with an actress named Rebecca Schaeffer from the show “My sister Sam” and “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills”. Bardo was able to obtain Schaeffer’s address via a detective agency which received this information from the California Department of Motor Vehicles. This later contributed to the ratification of the Driver's Privacy Protection Act, which prohibited DMVs to give out any personal information as well as many anti-stalking laws. As soon as Bardo has obtained the information he wanted he a yellow Polo shirt and rang Schaeffer's doorbell. The intercom wasn't working, so she had to go down to the apartment building's front door. She saw Bardo, and essentially ignored him and said that he was wasting her time. He waited an hour and rang the doorbell once more. Annoyed, Schaeffer opened her apartment door. Richard Goldman, Schaeffer’s neighbor, claimed he heard two gunshots and two bloodcurdling screams from Schaeffer to later find her arms in awkward positions and her feet wedged between the door and the frame of the door. He also claimed to have see a man in a yellow shirt running up the street. By Interstate 10, many people believe that Bardo was trying to get hit, he was captured and had immediately confessed to Schaeffer’s murder and was tried at court. He was given a life sentence in a “special needs” prison where many gang members, notorious prisoners and those who were

convicted of sex crimes. In this same prison, Bardo was stabbed eleven times by two other prisonmates of his.
“According to one of his teachers, Bardo was "a time bomb on the verge of exploding." Bardo needed psychiatric help already by the time he began to attempt communicating with Schaeffer. Like Chapman and Hinckley, he too was thought to believe in the protection of innocence.

All of these murders have one thing in common. The desperate attempt of preserving innocence. Bardo and Hinckley could have potentially been triggered by their victim’s beauty which could be compared to Caulfield’s admiration of Phoebe’s. What is most interesting is, not once does Salinger condone murder. Caulfield himself is a pacifist. It could be the relatability between above mentioned killers and Holden Caulfield. Could this novel be inspiring a future serial killer at this very moment?