The silicon chip inside her head,
Gets switched to overload.
Gets switched to overload.
Brenda
Spencer lived with her father after her parents divorced. It would be a massive understatement to say
it was not a normal relationship. Not
many 16 year old girls sleep in the same bed as their father.
She had been
depressed for quite some time, but her father refused the doctor’s advice to
admit her to a psychiatric facility. She
asked for a new radio for Christmas, instead he gave her a gun.
Brenda had
already been in trouble for shooting her BB gun out of her front window at the
school across the road, shooting out the windows. Now she had a real gun.
And nobody's gonna go to school today,
She's going to make them stay at home.
She's going to make them stay at home.
Unfortunately
for many students, they were already at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in
San Diego, lining up outside, waiting for Principal Burton Wragg to unlock the
gates and let them in. It was January 29th
1979 and Brenda Spencer was about to become the first school shooter.
She used her
Christmas present, a Ruger 10/22 Semi-Automatic .22 calibre rifle with
telescopic sight, to shoot at the children lining up across the road. Principal Wragg tried to protect his charges,
and was fatally wounded in the process.
The school janitor, Mike Suchar, came to assist his boss protect the
children, and paid for his heroism with his life. One of the first responding officers, Officer
Robert Robb, was wounded in the neck. The
shooting was only stopped because another brave police officer drove a garbage
truck between Brenda’s house and the school, blocking her view of the children. After 30 rounds of ammunition, 2 men lay
dead, and a police officer and 8 children were wounded.
Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays.
I don't like Mondays.
Brenda then
barricaded herself in her house for nearly seven hours. She told police negotiators that she was going
to “come out shooting”. A journalist
began ringing all the local phone numbers, to ask residents of the area if they
had witnessed the events, trying to get a scoop. He unintentionally managed to call Brenda,
and so he asked her “Tell me why?” Her
response, according to that journalist, was the now iconic “I don’t like
Mondays”. She ended the conversation by
saying “I have to go now. I shot a pig,
and I want to shoot some more”. The
journalist had his scoop.
Brenda
claims to not remember this exchange, but it would be safe to say that on that
day she was not strongly connected to reality.
Eventually,
she surrendered, and walked outside, dropping her rifle on the front lawn. The person terrorising an elementary school
and a whole neighbourhood was a 5’2”, very thin girl, with long red hair. Police searched the run-down house, finding
evidence of beer and whiskey, although Brenda tested negative for any
substances in her system.
Brenda was
tried as an adult. She pled guilty to
two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon and was sentenced to 25
years to life.
Brenda clearly had
a mental illness at the time of the crime, which doesn’t seem to have ever been
effectively treated. At her first parole
hearing she told the parole board that she was hoping that the police would kill
her. She claims to have attempted
suicide the previous year, and she felt that her father wanted her to kill
herself, which is why he gave her a gun.
She also claimed to the parole board that she was under the influence of
drugs, but the police conspired to falsify the drug test results. She has self-harmed several times in prison,
once using a heated paper clip to burn the words “courage” and “pride” into her
chest after a relationship break up. Brenda has been treated for epilepsy and
depression while in prison, but still seems to be significantly disconnected
from reality.
At her parole
hearing in 2001 Brenda claimed her father had sexually abused her. This was the first time she had mentioned it
to authorities, so they did not believe her.
After Brenda’s arrest, her father went on to have a relationship with
Brenda’s 17 year old roommate from juvenile detention, later marrying her. Brenda’s roommate looked just like her. In a cruel twist of fate for one of the
children shot by Brenda, a child of Brenda’s father and Brenda’s roommate –
Brenda’s half-sibling – attended the child care centre where the now adult
victim worked.
Brenda has
expressed concern that she is responsible for the school shootings which have
occurred since.
“With every school shooting, I feel I’m partially responsible,” she told
the parole board back in 2001. “What if they got the idea from what I did?”
Sadly, I suspect
that even though Brenda was the first, she did not create nearly four decades
of copy cats.
Long before my
interest in crime, I loved the song “I don’t like Mondays” by The Boomtown
Rats. The first two songs I asked for on
vinyl, aged 5, were ”I don’t like Mondays” and “Video Killed the Radio Star” by
The Buggles. I clearly had excellent
taste. It was more than 30 years later
before I discovered the story behind the music, after watching the documentary about
Brenda titled “I don’t like Mondays”. If
you get the chance, I recommend watching it.
It gives a fascinating insight into Brenda, both at the time of the
crime, and throughout the years in prison.
It really is a story of a mentally ill person who needed help, but
didn’t know how to get it. As a result
two heroic men died, 9 more people were injured, and psychological scars were
inflicted on scores of innocent people, many of them children. She is still in prison, and I doubt she will
ever be released. At her last parole
hearing in 2009 the parole board decided that she would not be eligible again
until 2019.
nice post
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