“John Lennon has been shot in front of his apartment building and died on the way to the hospital,” Monday Night Football producer Bob Goodrich is told over the phone by WABC-TV’s Neil Goldstein.

Is this the truth? Is this some kind of hoax? Goodrich thinks.

With less than a minute to go on the game clock, the tragedy is communicated to the broadcast booth. It’s manned by NFL greats Fran Tarkenton and Frank Gifford—and legendary announcer Howard Cosell.

Before Cosell breaks into the game with the tragic announcement, the announcer’s mind flashes to his 1974 Monday Night Football interview with John, when the singer said the rowdiness of an NFL crowd “makes rock concerts look like tea parties.”

With three seconds remaining and the Patriots’ kicker, an Englishman named John Smith, warming up to attempt a field goal, Cosell begins speaking.

“Remember this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses,” Cosell announces. “An unspeakable tragedy, confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps, of all of the Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead…on…arrival.”

John Smith’s kick is blocked.

*  *  *

Geraldo Rivera sits in the living room of his apartment, overlooking Central Park West. From his location on 64th Street, he hears gunshots in the vicinity of the Dakota but is unfazed by the sound.

“There was a lot of crime in that area back in those days, and gunfire wasn’t uncommon,” he recalls.

His phone rings. Rivera’s assignment editor is calling him in to the television studio on West 66th Street. He’s to report live, via satellite, on the murder of John Lennon, joining British-born anchor Ted Koppel, who is broadcasting live from Washington.

Geraldo hangs up the phone, fighting off shock as he makes the connection between the shots he heard earlier and the breaking tragedy.

“The most tragic aspect of this terrible thing is the ironic thing about the fact that John Lennon was back; John Lennon, after a five-year absence, was finally back in the studios, had finally released a record album,” he tells Koppel on the air. “[He was] one of the cornerstones of one of the most incredible musical units in the history of the planet. Changed the course of rock ’n’ roll, changed the course of many of our lives…I’m trying to put my thoughts in order and give them to you in a logical way, but the painful aspect of what’s happened has really skewed my reasoning on this.”

Decades later, when Rivera recalls that moment with Koppel, he says, “Attempting to put John’s life into context in real time was very challenging and extremely emotional. I tried to prevent myself from breaking down and crying, but it was very difficult.”

*  *  *