John Lennon's diaries and watch were stolen from Yoko Ono's home and taken to Berlin; Switzerland's top court ruled the watch hers in 2024

Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon outside the Dakota, his New York apartment building, on 8 December 1980. Lennon was 40. In 1983 his assistant Fred Seaman pleaded guilty to grand larceny over Lennon's diaries, received 5 years' probation and was ordered to return them. Lennon's will left out his elder son, Julian, who sued the estate and in 1996 reached a settlement reportedly worth £20 million. Koral Karsan, Yoko Ono's chauffeur from 1995 to 2006, spent 60 days in a US jail in 2007 for trying to blackmail her and was deported to Turkey. In 2010, according to the Swiss Federal Supreme Court, he handed Lennon's Patek Philippe watch, item 23 in the estate inventory, and 86 other estate items to another Turkish man, who consigned them to a Berlin auction house. An Italian collector bought the watch there on 2 March 2014. In July 2017 the bankruptcy administrator of the Berlin auction house Auctionata reported Lennon items in its storage. Police seized about 100, including 3 diaries, the last written on the morning of 8 December 1980, and 2 pairs of glasses. The items went back to Ono's lawyer in September 2018. On 27 February 2019 the Tiergarten district court in Berlin convicted the consignor of handling stolen goods and gave him a 1-year suspended sentence. A Europol arrest warrant for the chauffeur followed on 13 September 2019. The collector had sued Ono in Geneva in 2018 to be declared the watch's owner. Geneva courts ruled for Ono in 2022 and 2023, and on 13 September 2024 the Swiss Federal Supreme Court dismissed his appeal, holding that German law gives a buyer of stolen goods no title, even in good faith. In October 2026 Sean Ono Lennon wrote that he and Julian "inherited the same amount from our dad."