Former NYPD officer Stephen Spiro is selling four chilling letters written to him by John Lennon‘s killer, Mark David Chapman. The convicted felon wrote the notes to Spiro from prison over the course of several months in 1983, after he pleaded guilty to murdering the former Beatle.
“They’ve been in my possession for 30 years, and I’m 66 years old, and I’m saying, you know, what am I going to do with these things?” Spiro told CNN. “So I figured I’d sell them.”
Chapman often refers to “The Catcher in the Rye” in the letters and asks Spiro to read the coming of age novel to understand his motives. “I would like you to read it and tell me what you think of it,” Chapman writes. “As you remember, in the copy that was taken from me I had written ‘This is my statement’. I am wondering if you now understand this.”
Spiro said that he responded to several of Chapman’s notes “to get information from him to admit why he did it and what his motives were” and also re-read “The Catcher in the Rye.”
The letters are currently being sold for $75,000 through the auction house Moments in Time. Spiro plans to donate a portion of the proceeds to a shelter for battered women and will use the rest to pay off medical bills.
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