While we don’t know precisely what each and every witness to John Lennon’s murder has been up to for over 40 years, the AppleTV docuseries “John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial” by all accounts does a thorough job of collecting everything they saw and did on December 8, 1981.
The most striking account might come from taxi driver Richard Peterson, who was sitting outside in his cab when he watched Mark David Chapman shoot Lennon. “Lennon was walking in,” The Telegraph quotes him, “and this kid says, ‘John Lennon.’ He was a chunky guy. I’m looking at him through the front window of my cab. I’m looking at him shoot him. This guy just shot John Lennon. I thought they were making a movie, but I didn’t see no lights or cameras or anything so I realized, hey, this ain’t no movie.”
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Meanwhile, The Telegraph says that Dakota building concierge Jay Hastings saw events unfold from the other side, as Lennon ran by and said, “I’m shot.” Hastings continued, “He had blood coming out of his mouth. He just collapsed on the floor. I half rolled him to his back and took his glasses off, put them on the desk. And Yoko was screaming, ‘Get an ambulance, get an ambulance, get an ambulance.'”
NYPD Officer Herb Frauenberger, meanwhile, had no idea that it was John Lennon who’d been shot. He turned his shooting victim’s head to the side to look for a pulse and said, “Holy smokes, this is John Lennon” (via The Telegraph.)
