NEW YORK, July 7 -- Yoko Ono says she will do her best to make sure John Lennon's diaries of the last five years of his life are not published. The New York Post reports London publishers have been offered photocopies of the diaries and tapes of Lennon making audio entries.
The last entry was made on the day of he was gunned down in New York. The five leather-bound diaries were stolen by Lennon's personal assistant after the former Beatle's 1980 murder, but returned a year later. The assistant, Fred Seamen, was sentenced to five years probation for stealing the journals, and agreed never to reveal their contents. However, he later wrote the book 'The Last Days of John Lennon' and provided background material for Albert Goldman's unflatering 1988 biography. Publisher Robert Smith of Smith-Gryphon told the Post that writer Geoffrey Giuliano of Buffalo, N.Y., offered him the diaries earlier this year. Smith said the detailed diaries contained day-to-day accounts of Lennon's life in Manhattan's Upper West Side. He said, 'John Lennon was agonizing over everything.' Little is known of Lennon's life during the last half of the '70s. He lived as a recluse, and some biographers claim he was addicted to heroin and may have been insane at the time. Ono says she will block the publication of the diaries because they are too private. Lennon's widow says she may agree to release them after many of the people named have died. ---
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