The crazed fan who killed John Lennon almost 43 years ago has been granted a new parole hearing early next year.
Mark David Chapman, 68, who is serving a sentence of 20 years to life, will make his 13th bid to walk free when he appears before the parole board at New York’s Green Haven maximum security prison in February.
This comes after refusing to appear in a new TV documentary series about the Beatles star’s murder.
Chapman, who has repeatedly expressed remorse at previous hearings, described his own actions in shooting Lennon dead outside his Manhattan apartment building in 1980 as “despicable” during one application for release in 2000.
His latest attempt to win parole comes after last week’s release of Now and Then, the last ever Beatles song.
Read more: The Beatles Now and Then music video reunites the Fab Four in unseen footage
It also follows the announcement of a new four-part docu-series on streaming TV giant Apple+ titled John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial.
It is being billed as “the most thoroughly-researched examination” of the Fab Four icon’s killing and will feature “exclusive eyewitness interviews” as well as previously unseen crime scene photos.
Its aim is to “shed new light” on Lennon’s last moments.
No release date for the series, which is narrated by actor Kiefer Sutherland, has yet been set.
Although Chapman refuses to talk on camera about the murder, a spokesman has confirmed it will feature a first-ever on-screen interview with one of the attorneys on his defense team at his 1981 trial.
It will also use poignant accounts of Lennon’s final days by some of the Imagine singer’s closest friends and loved ones.
A Parole Board spokesman confirmed Chapman is scheduled to be heard in February.
