New York – where the Kid bought Etta a Tiffany watch – and then by steamer to Argentina.
They bought a ranch in Cholilo; Etta and the Kid went back twice to the US on visits. But then they began to run out of money and in March 1906 they started holding up banks again, first in San Luis Province and then in Bahia Blanca. In 1907, they robbed a train in Bolivia and then, swinging back into Argentina, another bank. Etta went back to the States and disappeared, and finally so did Butch and the Kid – either into death or oblivion.
The usual version of the story is that Butch and the Kid were cornered by the military in San Vicente, southern Bolivia, after holding up a mine payroll. There was a furious gun-battle; the Kid was fatally wounded and Butch, with his last two bullets, shot, first the Kid, then himself. Butch’s sister, though, swore that he paid a visit to his family in Utah in 1925 and that he died twelve years later somewhere in the northwest of the United States. There are also rumours that the Kid joined Etta in Mexico City and died there in 1957. A mining boss, with whom they were friendly, had deliberately misidentified the bodies.
Mark David Chapman
M ark David Chapman wanted to be John Lennon. He collected Beatles records; he’d played in a band; he’d even married an older Japanese woman, just like his hero. But when it finally dawned on him he couldn’t be John Lennon, he first attempted suicide, and then he decided that Lennon himself couldn’t be John Lennon either.
At the beginning of December 1980, Chapman flew to New York, determined, he said later,
‘to go out in a blaze of glory.’
If he couldn’t get near John Lennon, he said, he’d shoot himself in the head on top of the Statue of Liberty, because ‘no one had killed themselves there before.’ But Lennon proved all too accessible. He regularly signed autographs for fans outside his home in the Dakota Building in Manhattan; Chapman joined them there on the morning of December 8th, holding up a copy of Lennon’s Double Fantasy album for his signature.
Mark David Chapman – ‘clearly not a sane man’
He might have left it at that, he later said. But he didn’t. For that night, when Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono got back from a recording session, Chapman, who’d waited for hours, calmly walked up to them as they were getting out of their limousine and fired five bullets from a Charter Arms .38 into Lennon’s body. Then he simply waited on the sidewalk, holding his signed album and reading a copy of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye , until the police arrived.
At preliminary court hearings and at the eventual trial, the prosecution described the murder as a ‘deliberate, premeditated execution,’ pointing out that Chapman had not only stalked Lennon before killing him, but also had previous convictions for armed robbery, kidnapping and drugs offences. The defence painted Chapman as someone with an ‘incurable disease’ who had committed a ‘monstrously irrational crime’ – he was clearly ‘not a sane man.’ What neither side seemed to recognize was that in killing John Lennon, Chapman had actually solved the central problem of his life. For he had not only eliminated a role-model it had proved impossible to live up to, he had also made sure that his own name would be from now on inextricably linked to his hero’s.
When asked to say something in his defence, Chapman simply read out a passage from Catcher in the Rye . He was given a sentence of twenty years to life and recommended for psychiatric treatment. A year later, when visited by a British journalist, he was still reading Catcher in the Rye .
Caryl Chessman
C aryl Chessman was famous, not for his life, but for his death. When he finally went to the gas chamber in 1960, after twelve years on San Quentin’s Death Row, editorials all over Europe denounced his execution as ‘appalling’ and ‘monstrous.’ There were violent demonstrations in
They bought a ranch in Cholilo; Etta and the Kid went back twice to the US on visits. But then they began to run out of money and in March 1906 they started holding up banks again, first in San Luis Province and then in Bahia Blanca. In 1907, they robbed a train in Bolivia and then, swinging back into Argentina, another bank. Etta went back to the States and disappeared, and finally so did Butch and the Kid – either into death or oblivion.
The usual version of the story is that Butch and the Kid were cornered by the military in San Vicente, southern Bolivia, after holding up a mine payroll. There was a furious gun-battle; the Kid was fatally wounded and Butch, with his last two bullets, shot, first the Kid, then himself. Butch’s sister, though, swore that he paid a visit to his family in Utah in 1925 and that he died twelve years later somewhere in the northwest of the United States. There are also rumours that the Kid joined Etta in Mexico City and died there in 1957. A mining boss, with whom they were friendly, had deliberately misidentified the bodies.
Mark David Chapman
M ark David Chapman wanted to be John Lennon. He collected Beatles records; he’d played in a band; he’d even married an older Japanese woman, just like his hero. But when it finally dawned on him he couldn’t be John Lennon, he first attempted suicide, and then he decided that Lennon himself couldn’t be John Lennon either.
At the beginning of December 1980, Chapman flew to New York, determined, he said later,
‘to go out in a blaze of glory.’
If he couldn’t get near John Lennon, he said, he’d shoot himself in the head on top of the Statue of Liberty, because ‘no one had killed themselves there before.’ But Lennon proved all too accessible. He regularly signed autographs for fans outside his home in the Dakota Building in Manhattan; Chapman joined them there on the morning of December 8th, holding up a copy of Lennon’s Double Fantasy album for his signature.
Mark David Chapman – ‘clearly not a sane man’
He might have left it at that, he later said. But he didn’t. For that night, when Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono got back from a recording session, Chapman, who’d waited for hours, calmly walked up to them as they were getting out of their limousine and fired five bullets from a Charter Arms .38 into Lennon’s body. Then he simply waited on the sidewalk, holding his signed album and reading a copy of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye , until the police arrived.
At preliminary court hearings and at the eventual trial, the prosecution described the murder as a ‘deliberate, premeditated execution,’ pointing out that Chapman had not only stalked Lennon before killing him, but also had previous convictions for armed robbery, kidnapping and drugs offences. The defence painted Chapman as someone with an ‘incurable disease’ who had committed a ‘monstrously irrational crime’ – he was clearly ‘not a sane man.’ What neither side seemed to recognize was that in killing John Lennon, Chapman had actually solved the central problem of his life. For he had not only eliminated a role-model it had proved impossible to live up to, he had also made sure that his own name would be from now on inextricably linked to his hero’s.
When asked to say something in his defence, Chapman simply read out a passage from Catcher in the Rye . He was given a sentence of twenty years to life and recommended for psychiatric treatment. A year later, when visited by a British journalist, he was still reading Catcher in the Rye .
Caryl Chessman
C aryl Chessman was famous, not for his life, but for his death. When he finally went to the gas chamber in 1960, after twelve years on San Quentin’s Death Row, editorials all over Europe denounced his execution as ‘appalling’ and ‘monstrous.’ There were violent demonstrations in
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