Mark Chapman ’signed into protective custody to have sex with wife’

NEW YORK - Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s killer, has revealed that he had a simple reason to avoid ever mixing with the general population of hardened criminals at Attica - sex with his wife.

Chapman told a parole panel last week that after spending the first few years in mandatory protective custody, he was offered the option of entering a conjugal visit program.

“The condition was to sign into protective custody because they opened up the program to only inmates in protective custody; so I did that,” the New York Daily News quote Chapman as saying, a transcript of the hearing released shows.

The Daily News reported in 2008 that Chapman is allowed conjugal visits for up to 44 consecutive hours.

Sources say he sees his wife, Gloria Hiroko Chapman, who lives in Hawaii, about once a year.

The rest of the time, he is housed in a special unit apart from the general population, which is designed to keep him safe from attacks.

Chapman is serving a 20-years-to-life sentence for shooting Lennon to death on Dec. 8, 1980, as the singer and his wife, Yoko Ono, returned home from a late night recording session. (ANI)