The apartment where John Lennon was killed

Shooting Location in Manhattan, New York

This is the apartment building where John Lennon was shot dead.

It is called the Dakota, and it is situated at 1 West 72nd Street in Manhattan, New York.

On the night of December 8th, 1980, Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, were approaching the front entrance of the Dakota when a crazed fan named Mark Chapman pulled a revolver out of his coat jacket and opened fire on the Beetle's singer.

Lennon collapsed after being shot four times in the back.

John Lennon's apartment — The photograph at the top was taken shortly after Lennon's murder. When news broke about the shooting, hundreds of fans started gathering outside the apartment building. The Google Street View image at the bottom is from October 2017.

Bizarrely, his assailant made no effort to flee the scene of the crime. Instead of running away, he stood on West 72nd Street and casually read J. D. Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye.

When the police arrived, Chapman calmly apologized to the officers for "ruining their night."

Murder site — Following the murder, fans began leaving flowers at the entrance to the Dakota. The NYPD erected crowd barriers to prevent people from entering the property.

Although the police rushed Lennon to a nearby hospital, the damage to the arteries around his heart was far too extensive.

As a result, efforts to resuscitate him failed, and he was pronounced dead 15 minutes after his arrival.

1 West 72nd Street — This is an aerial image of the area around West 72nd Street and Central Park West. Lennon was shot with a .38 special revolver. After being critically wounded, he stumbled through the gates of the Dakota and collapsed on the steps to his right.

Roughly six hours before the shooting, Chapman had approached Lennon while he was leaving the apartment building and asked him for an autograph. The singer obliged, despite the fact that he was running late and his limousine was waiting for him.

After Lennon and Ono left, Chapman hung around the front entrance and patiently waited until they returned. When the couple arrived back at the Dakota, he stood and watched them as they walked past. Then, once they had their backs to him, he pulled out a gun and opened fire on Lennon from behind.

Initially, Chapman claimed that he murdered Lennon because he was a "phony" who had made controversial remarks about the Beatles being "more popular than Jesus." However, he later revealed that his true motive was to gain worldwide notoriety.

"It was just self-glory, period. It was nothing more than that. It boiled down to that. There's no excuses."

Chapman pleaded guilty to Lennon's murder in January 1981. Seven months later, a judge sentenced him to 20 years to life.

He remains in prison to this day.

Address

The address and the GPS coordinates for this location are as follows:

Address

1 West 72nd Street, Manhattan, New York, NY 10023, USA

Map

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Google Maps

GPS coordinates

The latitude and longitude coordinates for the apartment building are:

40.776523, -73.976337

Directions

The Dakota apartment building sits on the corner of West 72nd Street and Central Park West in New York City. The front entrance is roughly 200 feet away from Central Park.

It is a short walk away from Strawberry Fields, which is a tiled section of Central Park that is dedicated to Lennon.

This location belongs to the following categories:

Crime Scenes Celebrities

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The apartment where John Lennon was killed