John Lennon's killer Mark Chapman has lost his latest freedom bid after a parole board snubbed his request for the 11th time.
The 65-year-old will now remain behind bars for at least another two years.
Chapman shot dead the Beatles legend outside Lennon's Manhattan apartment in December 1980.
He is serving a 20-year-to-life sentence at Wende Correctional Facility in New York.
The New York State Board of Parole said Chapman's parole was denied following an interview on August 19. He is next scheduled to appear before the board in 2022.
The reasons for the denial were not immediately available.
Lennon was 40 when he was shot four times outside the Dakota apartment building in the Upper West Side on December 8 1980, as wife Yoko Ono looked on.
Chapman, who admitted the murder was motivated by a thirst for notoriety, was first eligible for parole in 2000.
In previous hearings, he told how he was still receiving anguished letters about the pain he caused by murdering a revered musician.
Ono, 87, who married Lennon in 1969, had previously opposed Chapman's release, saying she feared for her safety and that of Lennon's two sons, Julian and Sean, should he be freed.
At his previous parole interview in August 2018 Chapman said he was a changed man and a religious Christian who would welcome freedom even though he said he did not deserve it.
A remorseful Chapman, whose 2018 prison photo shows a leaner man than the pudgy 25-year-old who pulled the trigger, remembered being in a "tug of war'' with himself over what he was about to do before yielding to the idea of killing for fame.
"I was too far in," he said in a transcript of the hearing.
Chapman has worked as a porter and wheelchair repairman at the prison hospital and has occasionally been visited by his wife Hiroko whom he married about 18 months before the murder.
