Erasing the First Witnesses

The first accounts of John Lennon’s assassination were swiftly forgotten and buried. They tell us much that is important and not official

They say in any investigation, the first hour of witness recollections is the Golden Hour. Where memories of the crime are still fresh and clear and counter-narratives and doubt have not had a chance to confuse and befuddle.

There were three separate reports in the immediate aftermath of John’s assassination which all counter the official narrative of a mortally wounded Lennon running into a building followed by his wife.

The first report was a radio bulletin by NBC’s Brian Ross, just one hour after the murder.

Ross described a taxi driver witness who had a very different set of recollections to taxi driver Richard Peterson.

*Peterson first emerged in a dubious 1992 book and has embellished his story ever since.

The Brian Ross taxi driver:

“Rushed to the scene and saw Lennon on the ground with blood coming from his mouth and chest”.

As we all know, this is not what the official narrative wants us all to believe.

The television news crews then interviewed a distressed woman who has recently been identified as Nina Rosen.

In this Nina Rosen video edit that we have been allowed to see over the years, Nina describes hearing the shots and hearing a woman scream. A woman she identified as Yoko.

Nina also gave an interview to Detective Hoffman:

“I walked down the street and saw John and Yoko get out of the limo. I passed the gates and heard the shots. I turned up the block. I went back to gate. I saw doorman and heavy man. I didn’t see a gun but I heard Yoko screaming. Yoko was in courtyard. I didn’t think it was him that got hit (JL). Doorman was talking to guy. I didn’t remember what was said, except doorman said ‘police will be here in two minutes’. Heavy set man said ‘I should leave if I were you’.

After I saw he is the same man whose photo was in the papers. Doorman was in uniform. He was middle-aged and had a Spanish accent. Person that told me to leave was calm, no glasses. 5.8 or 5.9. He was taller than me (5.6). About 3 feet away, very dark and dim. After he spoke to me I left.

I heard 5 shots, all in succession, evenly spaced. I got caught up in a conversation with the news reader so I didn’t go to the police station. I gave the press my name. Yoko arrived 5 minutes after they carried Lennon out. Lennon was wearing jeans and leather brown jacket. Yoko was wearing pants. I left at about 12.30.”

I used to think that when Nina described the courtyard, she was referring to an area beyond the driveway. I now believe Nina probably meant the driveway when she referred to Yoko in the courtyard.

I used to also think that John Lennon was not in the driveway when Nina arrived there, prompting Nina to tell Hoffman ‘I didn’t think it was him that got hit (JL). But I now believe that Nina may have been referring to how she felt after hearing gunfire. IE: after hearing the shots, I did not immediately think John was in danger. Nina doesn’t mention John being in the driveway when she got there, but she also doesn’t categorically say he wasn’t.

If Yoko was screaming in the building ‘help me’, when Nina heard her, how could Nina be so certain that this woman was Yoko? She could only be certain if she could actually see Yoko, which Nina confirmed by telling Hoffman that ‘Yoko was in the courtyard’.

An interview with Nina appeared in the New York Daily news on 9th December 1980. In it, Nina ‘identified herself’ as Nina McFadden. The ‘identified herself’ line was almost certainly newspaper speak for, this is not her real name.

“I saw John and Yoko step out of the limousine. They walked inside the gate. Then I heard four or five shots. They were loud. Ear-shattering. I heard Yoko scream, ’help me, help him’. It was then that I saw the man with the gun and watched him drop it from his side to the ground”.

The first few lines are pretty much what Nina said in her TV interview. Observing Chapman drop his gun is a new detail of what may have happened to the gun. Going by this account, Perdomo clearly never shook it bravely from Chapman’s hand as we were later told. In his police statement, Chapman could only remember Perdomo kicking the gun away. He did not remember dropping it. Perhaps he was in a kind of trance at this point? Nina saying to Hoffman that ‘she didn’t see a gun’ somewhat refutes what she told the Daily News. I suspect she told Hoffman that she didn’t see a gun after she saw Chapman drop it, because by the time she reached the courtyard, Perdomo had already kicked the gun to the back of the driveway.

The newspaper then strangely moved away from direct quotes and described what Nina said next:

She said she then saw a man walk over the building security guard and heard him say ‘I would leave here if I were you’.

Albert Goldman attributed the ‘leave here if I were you’ line as a warning to Nina from Chapman. Nina’s statement to Hoffman makes this even clearer. Yet, the Daily News implied that this was a line spoken to Perdomo by Chapman or another unknown person. This makes no sense and is probably a journalistic error.

So, we have an early witness taxi driver saying John was lying in the driveway and we have another early witness intimating that Yoko was also there. If only there was another immediate witness account that corroborates and places John and Yoko in the driveway.

Enter Carrie Rouse.

In the early hours after the assassination, the Associated Press published an account of a witness called Carrie Rouse. Some papers including the Liverpool Echo, published this detailed and specific account on the 9th December:

“Neighbour Carrie Rouse heard the gunfire and rushed across the road to see Lennon being cradled in his wife's arms. She heard his last words.

"It was only a whisper," she said. "But I heard him say 'Help Me.' Then Yoko screamed 'He's been shot, he's been shot. Somebody come quickly.' She was hysterical.

"He was bleeding heavily. His eyes were closed. Then he slowly rolled over."

This account corroborates with what the Brian Ross taxi driver said he saw and with what Nina Rosen implied she saw.

According to these first accounts, John was shot somewhere in the driveway and heavily bleeding, dropped down immediately. Yoko rushed to his aid and very shortly thereafter, John died. At some point in the next couple of minutes, John was moved into a back office and was left lying face-down until the cops arrived. Medical testimony would back-up this scenario. I now strongly suspect Jose Perdomo’s concealed testimony will also probably back this up.

One of the major problems with all of this, is the fact that the alleged shooter Mark Chapman has never said this happened. But Chapman’s statement on the night of the murder lacked any detail beyond ‘I shot John’. His court statements and media statements later evolved to shooting John ‘four times in the back’. Chapman also once said he saw Yoko’s head pop up from behind a door. That’s as far as it goes. Chapman has never been able to say anything beyond this. You would have thought that if Chapman saw John lying in the driveway with Yoko cradling her dying husband, this would have been something Chapman might have seen and later reported. Why would Chapman lie about seeing this? Perhaps he was in a trance or perhaps he wasn’t all there due to the drugs we now know from toxicology reports that he had in his system?

The major problem with the scenario painted by these early witnesses is the fact that Jay Hasting stated and Yoko Ono heavily intimated, that John ran into the building, with Yoko swiftly following him in. It’s not hard to imagine why Jay Hastings may have wanted to cover up the fact that he carried John into the building and placed him in a back office. He may have thought he injured John while lifting him and decided to invent a story to keep himself out of the events. As for Yoko, there is simply no logical reason why she would lie about what happened to her husband after he was shot.

The day after the murder, nobody in the media ever bothered to try and find the taxi driver who Brian Ross reported on. Nina Rosen was never interviewed again by the media. Despite being a major witness to one of history’s most infamous assassinations, Nina, like Jay Hastings, was not asked to ever give an official statement. Like Nina, Carrie Rouse was never mentioned again by the media after 9th December. She completely disappeared.

The media and the NYPD, were simply not interested in identifying and formally interviewing these three crucial witnesses. The media were only interested in talking to a young man called Sean Strub. An opportunist young man who saw nothing beyond John being carried out of the building.

Crucial witnesses were ignored and attention seeking nobodies like Strub were given blanket airtime and staged studio interviews.

The mainstream media of the time, and let’s not forget the mainstream media of today, should all hang their heads in shame.