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

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

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