dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Moar vintage Holden conspiracy.

Sounds pretty far fetched, this theory is the most popular one. John Lennon’s assassin, Mark David Chapman, had a particularly creepy association with the novel. After he shot and killed the Beatles co-founder, he reportedly opened up the book and began to read it before he was arrested. In fact, he was even going to change his name to Holden Caulfield days before the murder, but he wasn’t able to finish the forms.

The book is also linked to John Hinkley, Jr. (Ronald Reagan’s failed assassin), Robert John Bardo (the man who murdered Rebecca Schaeffer and stalked Madonna), John F. Kennedy’s killer, Martin Luther King’s killer, Charles Manson, the Boston Strangler, the Zodiac killer, the Washington Sniper, and Ted Bundy–who were all said to have had copies of The Catcher in the Rye with them or in their apartments. This leads conspiracy theorists to believe that this novel was an assassination trigger.

This conspiracy theory came to a popular rise after the release of the 1997 movie, Conspiracy Theory, starring Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts. Gibson’s character has an obsession with the novel, and the film quickly intensifies when the viewers learn that his character is involved with the CIA and his mind is being controlled by the controversial MK-Ultra program.

The idea was that the CIA had implanted codes in The Catcher in the Rye that brainwashed them to do whatever the government wanted. Leaked documents from the CIA confirmed that during the MK-Ultra mind control program, once patients heard a certain set of numbers or words in a certain order, they would immediately be hypnotized and follow every command they received.

https://thebite.aisb.ro/index.php/theories-and-conspiracies-surrounding-the-catcher-in-the-rye

Haven't personally dug/verified, but have heard about this for decades. Muh Holden.