LITERATURE’S INFLUENCE ON SERIAL KILLERS

disorder and from process schizophrenia.’” (Caplan). Even though he was found not guilty, he still spent around 30 years in a psychiatric hospital. In 2016, Hinckley was released, with multiple conditions But in 2022, he received a full unconditional release Upon this, Hinkley tweeted, “After 41 years 2 months and 15 days, FREEDOM AT LAST!!!” (Hinckley)

The second case said to be influenced by the novel is the murder of John Lennon. Lennon was murdered by Mark David Chapman. In 1980, Chapman purchased a gun and flew to New York, planning to kill Lennon then but he had a sudden change of mind; however, a month later, he returned and met Lennon outside of his apartment, had him sign a copy of his album, and then shot him in the back

Chapman even read this passage from the book during his trial:

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be (quoted in Nolasco)

Chapman felt deeply connected to Holden as a character, he even went to the lengths of calling himself, “this generation’s catcher in the rye” (Nolasco)

Two other killers have been associated with this novel. Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who assassinated John F. Kennedy in 1963, and Robert John Bardo who stalked and killed model Rebecca Schaffer. There is no concrete evidence to connect the book to Oswald but, as reported in "A Fan's Fatal Obsession," it is said to have been in his possession after the assassination

Chapman had been an avid Beatles fan, especially of Lennon. He murdered John Lennon because he believed it would make him famous: “My big answer to everything. I wasn’t going to be a nobody, anymore” (Nolasco) Chapman pled guilty to the murder in 1981 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison Unlike Hinckley where The Catcher in the Rye could not be directly linked to his actions, it is quite the opposite for Mark Chapman, who had his copy of the book on him when he shot Lennon and continued to read it while waiting for police to arrive at the scene.

Robert John Bardo was sentenced to life in prison after he shot and killed model and actress, Rebecca Schaffer in 1989 (Johnson). Writer Beth Johnson reported the following:

Around 10:15 on that morning of July 18,1989, the buzzer rang at her apartment in L.A.'s pleasant, middle-class Fairfax district. The intercom was broken, so Schaeffer, still in her bathrobe, went down to answer the door On the other side was 19-year-old Robert John Bardo, an unemployed fast-food worker who for three years had been trying to contact his idol Bardo pulled a 357 Magnum from a plastic bag and shot Schaeffer once in the chest with a hollow-point cartridge. A halfhour later, she was dead on arrival at CedarsSinai Medical Center (Johnson)