Letters written by John Lennon's killer up for sale The four letters from Mark David Chapman to Stephen Spiro are for sale for the fixed price of $75,000 (£48,000), Moments In Time auction house owner Gary Zimet said. Mr Zimet is selling the letters on behalf of Mr Spiro, who arrested Chapman on Dec. 8, 1980, shortly after he shot Lennon outside the ex-Beatle's Manhattan apartment building. In the first letter, from Jan. 15, 1983, Chapman says his reason for writing, besides wanting to be Spiro's friend, is to ask for help in locating his copy of "The Catcher in The Rye," which he was reading at the time of his arrest. "I was trying to get information from him to admit why he did it and what his motives were," said Mr Spiro, who had the other letters sent to a post office box. In one letter, Chapman said he'd let Mr Spiro decide whether Lennon was a "phony" or not, a reference to troubled "Catcher in the Rye" narrator Holden Caulfield, who refers to people as "phonies" in the book, written by J.D. Salinger. Mr Spiro said he re-read the novel on Chapman's request. "I wanted to try to relate to him in the letters," he said. The letters stopped abruptly, and Mr Spiro said he believes someone told Chapman not to write to the police department anymore. An injury ended Mr Spiro's job as a New York police officer in 1983, but he said he kept the letters in a file for more than 30 years. He decided to sell them in part to pay off hefty medical bills from cancer and other illnesses and because he thought they should be in the public domain. "I wanted to publicise them to the world because they're part of history," he said. Mr Spiro, 66, had no contact with Chapman after the last letter. Chapman, 57, was denied parole in August for the seventh time. During the hearing, he again expressed remorse for Lennon's killing and spoke of his Christian faith. Lennon's widow, singer and artist Yoko Ono, still lives in the Dakota apartment she shared with Lennon, who was 40 when he died. She was celebrating her 80th birthday with a concert in Berlin and couldn't be reached for comment.