Brenda Spencer

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## Brenda Spencer

### Goals

Shooting Cleveland Elementary School because she doesn't like mondays. (succeeded)
Avoid punishment for her crimes (failed)

### Crimes

2 counts of murder
Theft
Property damage
Assault with a deadly weapon

### Type of Villain

Mentally Ill School Shooter

*"I just started shooting, that's it. I just did it for the fun of it. I just don't like mondays.... I just did it because it's a way to cheer the day up. Nobody likes mondays"*

~Brenda Spencer

**Brenda Ann Spencer** (April 3, 1962 - ) is a American school shooter who is responsible for the Cleveland Elementary School shooting, in which she killed 2 people and injured 9 others on January 29, 1979 at the age of 16. She shooted from the window of her house to the Cleveland Elementary across the street with the gun her father bought her. She is infamous for her excuse for the shooting, not liking mondays.

## Biography

Brenda Ann Spencer was born on April 3, 1962 in San Diego, California, United States to Dot and Wallace Spencer. After his parents separated, she began living in poverty with her father, Wallace. Her father was an alcoholic and the house was full of empty alcohol bottles. She and her father were lying on a single mattress on the living room floor. Acquaintances said Brenda wanted to shoot someone, had hostility towards police officers, and wanted to do something big enough to be on television. Brenda was very talented at taking photographs, she attracted attention with this feature, and she won first place in a competition called the Humane Society. She was an uninterested student at Patrick Henry High School, where a teacher would always ask her if she was sleeping in class.

In early 1978, Brenda ran away from school and was referred to a facility for troubled students. The professors she interviewed here told her family that Brenda was suicidal and told the family to be careful. In 1978, she was allegedly hunting birds in the neighborhood. At the same summer, she was arrested for shooting at the windows of Cleveland Elementary with a BB gun and robbery. In December, Brenda received a psychiatric evaluation from her parole officer, who recommended that Brenda be admitted to a mental hospital for depression, but her father refused to give permission. Her father gave her a Ruger 10/22 semi-automatic .22 caliber rifle with a telescopic sight and 500 rounds of ammunition for Christmas 1978. Brenda later said, "*I asked for a radio and he bought me a gun.*" When asked why her father might have done that, she answered, "*I felt like he wanted me to kill myself*."

## Cleveland Elementary School Shooting

On January 29, 1979 just before 8 a.m. monday morning, Cleveland Elementary students were waiting for the principal, Burton Wragg, to open the school gates as Brenda watched from her home across the street. Then Brenda took the gun her father gave her and started shooting at the students. She injured 8 students, starting with Cam Miller, because he was wearing her favorite color, blue, and injured a police officer who came to help in the neck. Brendan shot principal Wragg and teacher Daryl Barnes, who were trying to protect the students, killing Wragg. She then shot and killed custodian Mike Suchar, who was trying to protect a student.

The police pulled a garbage truck in front of the school to stop Brenda from shooting, but Brenda fired 36 more shots. Then she locked all the doors and windows in the house, drew the curtains and waited inside the house. Refusing to go out, she barricaded herself inside the house and waited for several hours. While there she speaked by phone to a San Diego Union-Tribune reporter who called random phone numbers. Asked why she did this, she told the reporter that she shot at schoolchildren and adults because she "didn't like mondays." The cops told Brenda to get out, but she said children and adults were easy targets and she would come out shooting. Brenda was extensively reminded of these statements during parole hearings. She eventually surrendered and left the house after negotiators promised her a Burger King meal. When Brenda went outside, the police entered the house and found it cluttered with empty whiskey and beer bottles, but Brenda was not in any intoxicated state.

## Imprisonment

Brenda was charged as an adult with 2 counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon for her crime. 9 attempted murder charges were dismissed. On April 4, 1980, one day after her 18th birthday, Brenda was sentenced to 25 years to life. In prison, Brenda was diagnosed with epilepsy and began treatment to treat her epilepsy and depression. While at the California Institution for Women in Chino, she worked repairing electronic equipment. Tests performed while Brenda was in custody revealed an injury to the temporal lobe of her brain. It was attributed to an accident that occurred when she fell off her bicycle when she was younger.

At her first hearing in 1993, Brenda said that she thought the police were going to shoot her and that she was using alcohol and drugs at the time of the crime, but the results of the drug tests performed when she was taken into custody were negative. At the 2001 hearing, Brenda claimed that her father beated and sexually abused her, but she later said the allegations were not true. Spencer's girlfriend was released from prison in 2005, indicating that Spencer was psychotic and unfit for release. Initial reports indicated that Spencer had carved the words "courage" and "pride" into her own skin; Spencer corrected it during the parole hearing, reading it as "unforgiven" and "alone." In 2009, the board again rejected her parole application and ruled that it would take ten years for her to be reconsidered. In August 2022, Spencer and the Board of Parole Hearings agreed that she was ineligible for parole and could not attend another hearing for another three years as a result of her parole eligibility denial. She is currently detained at the California Institute for Women in Chino. The next opportunity for a parole hearing will be in 2025.

## Trivia

* Brenda's excuse for the shooting, became the inspiration for the song "I Don't Like Mondays" by The Boomtown Rats in 1979.

## Videos

1993- Convicted school shooter Brenda Spencer speaks with San Diego's News 8 - PART 1