On his way back from what would be his last recording, John Lennon was shot while entering his home in the Dakota building located in New York City, on December 8, 1980.
The man convicted of the crime was Mark David Chapman, who was sentenced to 20 years to life in jail after 6 months of trial, when he suddenly began pleading guilty to second degree murder, with the claim that, "God made him do it."
Conspiracies have surrounded Lennon's death ever since.
Chapman's 5 shot, Charter Arms Undercover.38 Special revolver could not have fired all of the 8 to 10 bullets that were shot at John Lennon.
Journalist Mae Brussell, as well as author Fenton Bresler have strong beliefs that Chapman was merely the "fall guy."
The book, "Drugs as Weapons Against Us," written by John L. Potash details an investigation by former Sunday Express legal correspondent Fenton Bresler, who obtained classified documents from the FBI and CIA that claim Lennon was being tracked by the intelligence agencies during the 1970's.
Potash writes that the U.S. agencies were becoming more concerned with Lennon after he moved away from drug use and towards activism, noting that he was only a month away from becoming an American citizen at the time of his death.
The FBI and CIA ordered agents to keep Lennon under surveillance, according to the book, while Bresler's documents claim that the star's arrest for drug use in 1972 was to neutralize and disrupt Lennon's activities.
There was domestic as well as foreign spying operations against Lennon, not to mention, the massive effort by the Immigration and Naturalization service, lead by the Nixon administration, attempting to deport John to England.
In the running of the 1972 presidential election, Richard Nixon was especially paranoid about losing the youth votes. Simultaneously, FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover was constantly worried about the "corruption of the young." Both of these men felt particularly threatened by the influence of Lennon.
Such was Lennon's global status, millions mourned his death, with a memorial service at New York's Central Park, attracting 100,000 people.
It was this influence, the book theorizes, that worried the intelligence services.
"He was a countercultural revolutionary, and the government takes that shit seriously, historically. He was dangerous to the government, these pacifist revolutionaries are historically killed by the government, and anybody who thinks that Mark Chapman was some crazy guy who killed my dad for his personal interests is insane, I think, or very naive, or hasn't thought about it clearly. It was in the best interests of the United States to have my dad killed, definitely." A quote from John's son, Shawn Lennon in 1998.