‘What drives a man to do this?’: re-examining the murder of John Lennon

In a new Apple docuseries covering the shocking murder of one of music’s most beloved figures, the life and motivations of his killer are placed under the spotlight

The production company 72 Films specializes in what the executive producer Rob Coldstream calls “box set” documentaries, “archive deep-dives into compelling figures, events or moments in history that also say something about the world”. They have tackled such enigmas as Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Bashar al-Assad, but their latest project – John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial, a three-part miniseries streaming on Apple TV – presented an unfamiliar challenge in its seeming straightforwardness.

There are no big question marks hanging over the assassination of the former Beatle and counterculture icon by Mark David Chapman: plenty of eyewitnesses watched it play out in front of the Dakota apartments, Chapman was immediately apprehended, and his guilty plea stuck him with a 20-to-life sentence at the Green Haven correctional facility, where he remains today. The co-directors Coldstream and Nick Holt reasoned that they would break new ground on the subject by privileging depth over breadth, inspecting the known components of an infamous case more closely than anyone had before with help from those embedded in the situation.