John Lennon was given an eerie prediction about his death before he was fatally shot in New York City.
The Beatles icon and his wife, Yoko Ono, received the warning from “one of the best palm readers in Greece,” according to their close friend Elliot Mintz.
“The palm reader was very emphatic about the fact that John would be killed on an island,” the Los Angeles-based radio DJ, 79, told Fox News Digital in an interview published Tuesday.
“When I think of islands, I think of the obvious places surrounded by water, and I was raised in New York. I just never thought of it as an island,” Mintz added.
Lennon was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman outside his apartment in NYC on Dec. 8, 1980. He was 40 years old.
Mintz, who has written a new memoir called “We All Shine On: John, Yoko, & Me” about the legendary singer and his widow, said that Ono, now 91, led the charge to visit the palm reader in Greece.
“Yoko had relationships with psychics, tarot readers, astrologers and others in what I called the ‘paranormal world,’” he explained. “She consulted with these people for years on an almost daily basis… There were very few decisions Yoko made without first getting clearance or guidance from these people.”
Lennon and Ono, despite the warning, were allegedly not worried about the “Let It Be” singer’s safety at the time.
In Mintz’s book, Lennon was quoted saying he didn’t need bodyguards because “I’m just a rock ‘n’ roll singer.”
“All [my] life, I’ve had guys around me who were supposed to be protecting me,” Lennon said, per the memoir. “When [the Beatles] toured, there were hundreds of police around us. But if they want to get to you, they’re gonna get you. They could get you in Disneyland. Look at all the people that Kennedy had around him. I don’t need bodyguards. I don’t want them… Even the thought of it makes me cringe.”
“I’ve never been afraid of death — to me, it’s like getting out of one car and into another,” Lennon also said.
Ono at the time did not want to live differently because of the palm reader’s prediction about her husband.
“Nothing can be prevented if it’s destined to happen,” she was quoted saying in the book. “Should we avoid all islands? Should we never go anywhere? If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen.”
While Lennon wasn’t worried about his own safety, he did insist that he needed to die before Ono.
“John said, ‘The only thing that scares me is that Yoko would go first before I did because I can’t live without her – I need to go first,’” Mintz said to Fox News.
Mintz explained that “the first time” he feared for Lennon’s safety was when his friend, actor Sal Mineo, was fatally stabbed near his Hollywood apartment by a mugger in 1976. Mintz recalled the conversation he had with Lennon after the incident.
“That’s when I told him, ‘You don’t have any security people around you, no bodyguards or anything like that. Aren’t you concerned about that?’ That’s when John patiently said… ‘I don’t believe those people make any difference at all. I’m not scared of death,’” Mintz recalled.
Mintz has acted as a family spokesperson for Ono since Lennon’s death. He also has a close relationship with the couple’s son, Sean Lennon, 40, who gave Mintz his blessing to write the memoir.
Chapman, the man who murdered Lennon, got the singer to autograph a copy of Lennon’s double album, “Double Fantasy,” hours before the shooting.
The convicted killer is currently serving a 20-years-to-life sentence at Green Haven Correctional Facility in New York’s Hudson Valley.
He said at a parole hearing in 2022 he murdered Lennon because he wanted fame and had “evil in my heart.”
