New York corrections officials said yesterday (August 22) that John Lennon’s killer, Mark David Chapman, was denied parole in his 8th appearance before a parole board.

The decision on Mark David Chapman by a three-member board came after a hearing on Wednesday (August 20), the State Department of Corrections said.

On December 8 1980 Chapman killed John Lennon by firing five shots on 8 December 1980 outside the Dakota apartment house where Lennon lived on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Lennon died in front of his wife, Yoko Ono. Chapman was sentenced in 1981 to 20 years to life in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.

The reason the Parole Board gave to Chapman why they dismissed his release was as follows:

“You would not live and remain at liberty without again violating the law. This victim had displayed kindness to you earlier in the day, and your actions have devastated a family and those who loved the victim.”

At his previous hearing in 2012, Chapman described how Lennon had agreed to autograph an album cover for him earlier on the day of the killing. Chapman said:

“He was very kind to me. I did try to tell myself to leave. I’ve got the album, take it home, show my wife, everything will be fine. But I was so compelled to commit that murder that nothing would have dragged me away from the building.”

At a 2010 hearing, Chapman explained that he had considered shooting Johnny Carson or Elizabeth Taylor instead but he settled on killing Lennon because the ex-Beatle was more accessible, that his century-old apartment building by Central Park “wasn’t quite as cloistered”.

The transcript from last week's hearing will be released in the near future. Chapman will be eligible to try for  parole again in 2016.

An attorney for Ono said Friday that she had no immediate comment.

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Watch John Lennon and Yoko Ono's iconic video, 'Imagine', and Ono at this year's Glastonbury Festival below: