John Lennon Photo: Apple TV+Murder trials, like funerals, are intended to provide closure—not for the dead, but the living. The murder of John Lennon , much like the Kennedy assassination, deprived a traumatized public of its constitutional means of catharsis—including a public plea and public trial; God, the killer said, had told him to plead guilty. The three-part “John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial,” in a sense, attempts to be the Warren Commission of the ex-Beatle’s death, without magic bullet or grassy knoll. John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial Begins Wednesday, Apple TV+It’s a tall order. Although the series does explore the Nixon administration’s paranoia about the activist Lennon (territory explored more deeply in “The U.S. vs. John Lennon” of 2006) there did not seem to be a government plot involving CIA brainwashing.

---

Persons: John Lennon, Kennedy, Lennon, John Lennon ”, Kim Hogrefe, Hogrefe, Mark David Chapman Organizations: Apple, Warren Commission, CIA Locations: New York’s Dakota, The U.S