NEW YORK, Oct 15 (AFP) - Mark Chapman, the man who shot and killed John Lennon, said he acted out of a sense of zero self-esteem and a desire to "steal" the former Beatle's fame.
According to a transcript of his unsuccessful parole board hearing last week, Chapman also says he planned the murder for three months and would have shot Lennon earlier but managed to talk himself out of it.
Chapman, now 49, was sentenced to 20 years to life after shooting Lennon five times in the back on December 8, 1980.
"I committed this act for attention," Chapman told the parole board, "to, in a sense, steal John Lennon's fame and put it on myself, thinking I was a nobody at the time."
Chapman was denied parole for a third time after the board cited the "extreme malicious intent" of his crime and said releasing him would undermine respect for the law.
Chapman appeared to pre-empt that decision when he told the board that he deserved nothing given "the pain and suffering I caused."
He also recalled the moments following his arrest, when Lennon's widow Yoko Ono, who had witnessed the murder, walked over to the police car and stared at Chapman through the window.
"That was a very traumatic thing that I blocked out of my memory for several months," he said.
Ono had led appeals to the parole board to keep Chapman behind bars, saying he posed a continued threat to her family.
Chapman said he had pondered Lennon's killing for three months, and had gone earlier to New York to carry out his plan, but returned to his home in Hawaii having overcome the anger he felt towards the singer.
Once at home, however, the negative emotions returned when he looked through a book with pictures of Lennon.
"It just angered me. You know, here I was with these troubles," he said. "It was just a tremendous compulsion of just feeling this big hole, of being what I thought was a big nobody, a big nothing and I couldn't let it go."
Chapman can seek a new parole review in October 2006.