Mark Chapman had a message for Yoko Ono

ALBANY -- The man who killed ex-Beatle John Lennon said in his most recent parole bid that he hoped to live and work with an upstate New York minister if released, according to a hearing transcript released Wednesday.

Mark David Chapman, 57, was denied parole last week for the seventh time. He can try again in two years.

Chapman shot Lennon in December 1980 outside the Manhattan apartment building where the former Beatle lived. He was sentenced in 1981 to 20 years to life in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.

Chapman, who said his motivation for killing Lennon was instant notoriety, also told the parole board he was surprised more celebrities haven't been the targets of violence and said he has thought about someone trying to kill him as a way to gain fame.

Chapman, who has said he considered killing several other celebrities, told the parole board he wanted Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, to know that he felt no anger toward Lennon.

"It wasn't anything against her husband as a person, only as a famous person," he said. "If he was less famous than three or four other people on the list, he would not have been shot."

During an interview Wednesday, Ono and the couple's son were reluctant to talk about Chapman. "It's not the kind of thing you can really answer simply. I mean, it's complicated," Sean Lennon said. "But let's just say that our lives were changed forever by that, so it's a sensitive sort of thing."

Chapman said during an Aug. 22 parole hearing that he's been offered lodging and a farm job by Stanley Thurber, a minister in Medina, a village between Rochester and Buffalo.

A message left Wednesday at a phone number listed for Thurber was not immediately returned.