I came face-to-face with John Lennon’s killer in Scientology ‘cult’ months before murder – he gave me sinister warning
NATALIE Webster was 10 years old when she became friends with “Mark the security guard”.
She knew Mark to be protective, “paranoid”, and an art lover – before the world came to know him as John Lennon‘s killer.
Natalie, 53, had an unusual childhood and, in 1980, was living in Hawaii with her younger sister Lana and their mum Donna-Gail – a newly converted Scientologist.
Together, they often attended a building in Waikiki, O’ahu, where the Church of Scientology had a base.
Sisters Natalie and Lana, then aged 10 and seven respectively, would virtually be free to roam the streets while their mum, then 27, became acquainted with the religion.
It was then that Natalie and Lana came face to face with Mark.
Natalie recalled: “My sister and I, we would draw pictures. We would colour pictures and try to sell them to make money to buy candy.
“We got kicked out of the Scientology building for doing that. They said, ‘You can’t do that in here. You can’t run a business in a Scientology organisation.’
“So we took our business to the streets. We went across the street and we would talk to a security guard named Mark, and he would buy the drawings from us for 25 cents.”
Mark quickly became the girls’ “best customer”, purchasing many of their drawings and encouraging them to create more.
He was “a bit odd”, Natalie remembers thinking, but all adults were “kind of odd” to her at age 10.
She said: “He was really into the art, and encouraging about the art.
“That stood out to me as well because not only did he buy some of our drawings that we did, he encouraged it.”
It appeared to Natalie that he was at least familiar with Scientology and “wasn’t open” to the religion.
Natalie said: “He seemed to be kind of over the top. He was pointing out, ‘don’t go down the street’, like it was dangerous outside and not a safe place to be.
“But I can remember thinking ‘he’s worked up about it’. Now, I can put words to it: agitated, paranoid, looking around. ‘Don’t go down there’, ‘don’t go down there.'”
Mark’s “energy” and the way he communicated “scared” Natalie, but she said, laughing as she told The Sun, that she wanted to maintain their relationship “because he was my best customer”.
On several occasions, while speaking with Mark, Natalie encouraged him to take a “personality test” – as she had heard her mother do to others many times before.
The “personality test” was a list of 200 questions that the Church of Scientology administers as part of its recruitment process, usually in public settings such as on the street, at local fairs, and at carnivals.
Following one of Natalie’s regurgitated spiels, Mark marched over to the Scientology building and burst through its doors, declaring: “This is a cult.”
Natalie said: “I inadvertently, I guess, ‘body-routed’ Mark David Chapman into Scientology.
“He thought it was a cult and he didn’t stay.”
I inadvertently, I guess, ‘body-routed’ Mark David Chapman into Scientology
Natalie Webster
She later wondered if his fury at the Scientology members stemmed from knowing that they regularly allowed two young girls to wander the streets outside their building alone at nighttime.
Just a few months after storming the building, Mark resigned from his job as a security guard and was on his way to New York City.
He murdered John Lennon on December 8 as the musician walked into his apartment on the Upper West Side, firing five shots at him from metres away and striking him four times from the back.
Lennon was rushed to hospital and pronounced dead upon arrival.
Mark pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received a sentence of 20 years’ to life in jail.
He continues to serve his sentence today at the Green Haven Correctional Facility north of New York City, having repeatedly been denied parole.
It emerged following Lennon’s death that Mark, who grew up in Georgia, developed an obsession with the Beatles – Lennon in particular – when he was a teenager.
He moved to Hawaii in 1977, where he attempted suicide and was taken to hospital, and where he later picked up work in maintenance.
In 1979, he married and became a security guard – becoming increasingly unstable and homicidal all the while.
Mark is said to have quit his job in October 1980, purchased a gun, and flown to New York City with the intention of killing John Lennon, before changing his mind and returning to Hawaii in November.
He flew back to New York on December 6 and, two days later, waited outside Lennon’s residence at The Dakota.
The ex-security guard reportedly remained at the crime scene reading The Catcher In The Rye until he was arrested.
He would have been 25 years old when he murdered John Lennon, and when he knew Natalie and Lana.
Mark’s arrest led to Natalie’s family being “temporarily banned” from Scientology, because they had “brought the FBI” to the organisation.
… we were in trouble for communicating with [Mark Chapman], that he went into the organisation
Natalie Webster
Natalie said the FBI began looking into whether Mark may have had ties to Scientology as they investigated his motive for killing Lennon.
She recalled: “I just know that we were in trouble for communicating with him, that he went into the organisation.
“It was being insinuated that that was somehow my fault, and it probably was, to a degree.”
For years, Natalie felt a rush of guilt wash over her every time she heard music by The Beatles play.
She explained: “I didn’t do anything wrong. We had nothing to do with it. But we were made to feel like we did something so wrong by Scientology.
“It was not about John Lennon being murdered and dying. That was not Scientology’s upset. They were upset that the FBI came to the door.”
Natalie escaped Scientology 14 years ago – along with her mum, her sister, and her children – and now lives in Minnesota.
After 35 years in the “cult”, she works in real estate and shares videos to her YouTube channel every day, “exposing the abuses within Scientology”.
What is Scientology?
SCIENTOLOGY is a religious movement that was founded in the early 1950s by American author L. Ron Hubbard.
It promotes the idea that humans’ analytic mind is clouded by life’s traumas which prevents them from experiencing reality.
Members of Scientology participate in “auditing” – involving a series of counselling sessions – to relive traumatic experiences.
The aim of auditing is to neutralise humans’ experiences and reassert the primacy of the analytic mind over the reactive mind.
Ultimately, the goal is for followers to achieve a “clear” spiritual state.
Scientology has its own set of scriptures, including Hubbard’s writings, and offers various courses and programmes for both personal development and spiritual advancement.
Some of the religion’s most well-known followers reportedly include Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Elisabeth Moss, and Riley Keough.