A trial will bring lots of attention from around the world. He imagines people holding the book, waving and laughing and cheering. He shares his promotional plans with Bantam, the publisher of the paperback edition—and with psychiatrists.

“Everyone will read The Catcher in the Rye,” he tells one psychiatrist. “The Catcher in the Rye will become the No. 1 best-seller and will probably become one of the biggest motion pictures in the history of literature.”

He has the guards check the stock in bookstores. Some bring copies for him to sign. He signs them all the same way: “Mark Chapman, the Catcher in the Rye.”

Two weeks before the date set for his trial, he tears up his copy of The Catcher in the Rye and tells his lawyer that he has changed his mind about an insanity plea.

On June 22, inside a closed courtroom and against his attorney’s advice, he pleads guilty. He arrived at this decision, he explains, because he received a message from God.

The judge allows Assistant DA Sullivan to question him.

“This is your own decision?”

“It is my decision,” Mark replies, “and God’s decision.”

Mr. Sullivan has more questions—about voices, prayer, and religion. Mark plays along accordingly.

“Why do you use hollow-point bullets?” Sullivan asks.

“To ensure Lennon’s death.”

Back at prison, he refuses to see anyone, including Gloria, who has traveled all the way from Hawaii for the trial. He shaves his head and tears up his Bible and stuffs the pages into his toilet. He destroys a radio and a TV. He jumps around his cell, manic, and screams at everyone that they’re going to hell.

That he’s possessed by a demon.

It’s all reported vividly in the papers and on the news.

Now it’s time to receive his sentence.

On the morning of August 24, he puts on his bulletproof vest and dresses for court. The turnout, he keeps hearing, will be like nothing the world has ever seen.

It’s going to be a beautiful day.

“Is there anything you’d like to say?” Judge Dennis Edwards Jr. asks him in court.

He pulls out a copy of The Catcher in the Rye and reads a section—a quotation from the main character, Holden Caulfield.