Mark David Chapman denied parole, 7th time

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ALDEN, N.Y., Aug. 23 (UPI) -- Mark David Chapman, convicted of killing former Beatle John Lennon, was denied parole for a seventh time Thursday, New York state corrections officials said.

His request was denied following a hearing Wednesday, the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said in a statement.

Chapman was also denied parole in 2000, '02, '04, '06, '08 and '10.

Chapman, 57, is serving a sentence of 20 years to life after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in Lennon's death. He has received psychological treatment throughout his imprisonment.

He is in protective custody in a single-person cell at the maximum-security Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, N.Y., near Buffalo. He is allowed out of the cell three hours a day.

He was moved to Wende May 15 from New York's super-maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility.

Since his transfer, Chapman reapplied to participate in a state program called "family reunion," which lets inmates spend more time with family members, CNN reported.

Chapman -- who once said he thought of killing Johnny Carson, Elizabeth Taylor and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis before deciding on Lennon -- told a parole board in 2010 his Christian faith deepened while in prison and he hoped to get a job and live with his wife after release from prison.

Chapman married Japanese-American former travel agent Gloria Hiroko Abe, who lives in Hawaii, in June 1979, 18 months before he killed Lennon outside The Dakota apartment building next to New York's Central Park, Dec. 8, 1980.

Chapman pulled a .38-caliber revolver and fired five shots at Lennon after getting the former Beatle to autograph a copy of the "Double Fantasy" album Lennon released with his wife, Yoko Ono, that year.

The New York Daily News reported in 2008 Chapman had conjugal visits with his wife at Attica at least once a year since 1990.The 44-hour visits took place in a special modular "private homelike setting" on the prison grounds, the newspaper quoted prison officials as saying.

The state's three-member Parole Board said after Chapman's 2010 hearing it denied his parole due to the "disregard you displayed for the norms of our society and the sanctity of human life."

Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, has consistently pleaded with the board not to release Chapman, saying she feared for her own life and those of her two sons, as well as for his.

"There are so many people out there who dislike him," Ono told the News in 2008. "It's safer for him to stay in jail."