FIRST OFF . . .

What was in the mind of Mark David Chapman as he confronted John Lennon outside the Beatle’s New York apartment in 1980, about to kill him? Two London newspapers on Wednesday published Chapman’s recollections, gleaned from what the papers said were previously unreleased taped police and psychiatric interviews. “He looked at me, I tell you the man was going to be dead in less than five minutes, and he looked at me,” Chapman was quoted in the Today and Daily Mail newspapers as saying. “My head started saying, ‘Do it,’ over and over again. I don’t remember taking aim, although I must have. I just pulled the trigger steadily five times. . . .” The Daily Mail said Chapman told police and doctors: “I was angered at his phoniness. I was saying to myself what a phony, what a fake. And I thought to myself I am going to kill John Lennon.” Excerpts from the taped interviews--which were not released earlier because Chapman pleaded guilty--are to be broadcast next week by British Independent Television. The program will also feature a videotape of Chapman in his cell three hours after the shooting, boasting: “They changed the world and I changed them. It’s the last nail in the coffin of the ‘60s.” Chapman is serving a 20-year-to-life sentence in solitary confinement in New York State’s Attica prison.