Yoko Ono forced John Lennon's son to sign a confession over dad's missing diaries
In the emotional aftermath of John Lennon's 1980 assassination, a then-17-year-old Julian Lennon was thrust into a world of grief, confusion, and suspicion.
Julian, Lennon’s son from his first marriage to Cynthia Lennon, had been living quietly in the U.K. when Yoko Ono summoned him to the Dakota, the Manhattan home she shared with John. The purpose, at first, seemed rooted in grief. But what unfolded was far more complicated.
“She was falling apart,” Julian recalled of Ono. “I had to be strong for myself — and strong for her. She hadn’t even told Sean [John and Yoko’s son] that dad had died yet. She asked me how she should break the news.”
But things soon took a tense turn. According to Julian, Ono grew suspicious when a guitar that had belonged to John was anonymously delivered to him in England. That delivery, she believed, might be linked to the theft of some of Lennon’s missing diaries.
“Shortly after Dad died, Yoko found out about the guitar being given to me and sent someone over from New York so I could sign for it,” Julian said. He continued: “Then I was flown to New York and asked to sign a confession, saying I knew nothing about the missing diaries.”
Julian complied, though he maintains he had no connection to the stolen items. “Apparently, someone told Yoko the diaries were given to me, which they weren’t,” he said. “Some have now been recovered, but not all.”
Julian recounted the episode with an eerie calm manner, but the implications were stark: amid mourning, he was caught in a web of distrust within his father’s inner circle. He had little financial support at the time. John had left a modest trust fund for him years earlier, which had largely dried up.
Source: irishstar.com/Connor McCrory
