John Lennon's killer believes the late musician would have supported his release from prison 20 years after his crime. "I think he would be liberal, I think he would care," Mark David Chapman, now 45, told the U.K.'s Daily Express newspaper. "I think he would probably want to see me released. That's my opinion."

Chapman, who will face a New York parole board Oct. 3 as state law requires, wishes for a life minus the infamy of his crime. "I don't know how easy that would be but I'd try just to lead an ordinary life again. Stay out of the papers," he told the Express. "There's not many places to go once you've killed someone like John Lennon."

Nonetheless, Chapman claims he is a changed man who has found religion, and his post-incarceration plans include a life as a touring revivalist preacher. "I could have an impact, a positive impact," he insists. "I could travel to different places and tell people what happened and how their answer, as well as mine, is in Jesus."

Chapman says he clearly remembers the evening of Dec. 8, 1980, when he shot Lennon five times in the back a few hours after the former Beatle signed a copy of "Double Fantasy" for him outside of the New York apartment building where he lived with Yoko Ono. "A voice in my head said: 'Do it, do it, do it, do it.' I aimed at his back and pulled the trigger five times and all hell broke loose in my mind," he recalls.

As for how he has dealt with his crime, Chapman says he has written off his past as if it was another person who lived that life. "There really is no Mark Chapman," he said. "That's the person that killed John Lennon and that's in the newspaper. I don't live that life."

The full Daily Express interview is available at the publication's Web site.