Brenda Spencer: “I Don’t Like Mondays”

The mass murderer who inspired a hit pop song

Jan. 29, 1979, was a cold, frosty Monday. Students at Grover Cleveland Elementary in San Carlos, California, were just arriving for the day, milling around outside the school waiting for the principal, Burton Wragg, to open the gates to let them inside.

Across the street, inside a cluttered one-story home, Brenda Spencer, a junior at Patrick Henry High School, was alone. Her father and two brothers had left for the day, but she had called in sick.

Spencer had been having problems recently, with truancy being the least of them. Neighbors said she had also been engaging in petty theft and drug abuse. She was so withdrawn at school teachers weren’t sure she was mentally there at all.

At one point, she was sent to a “special” school for her behavior problems, and a therapist had suggested hospitalizing her because she was suicidal. But her father (who was her custodial parent) waved these warnings off.

For Christmas, she had asked her father for a radio. Instead, he gave his troubled teenager a Marlin .22 rifle with a scope, along with more than 200 rounds of ammunition.

That weekend in late January, classmates recalled her saying that she was going to do “something big” on Monday, but none of them suspected what that would be.

At about 8:30 a.m., Spencer pointed the rifle her father had given her through a window, looked through the scope, and took aim at the crowd of children across the street.

In the cold morning air, the students and staff heard what they described as “pops” that might have been fireworks. But soon, people began dropping. Screams filled the air as Spencer picked off children. She would later say that she specifically took aim at the color blue (her favorite color) and those in down jackets because she enjoyed “seeing feathers fly.”

Principal Wragg ran outside to try and protect the children. Spencer shot him in the chest, killing him. A custodian and WWII vet, Michael Suchar, ran to Wragg’s aid. Spencer killed him, too.

When the San Diego police arrived, the scene was utter chaos. Children were huddled against the building for safety, even as Spencer continued to shoot. Officer Robert Robb was the first to rush in to aid the victims, and Spencer shot him through the neck, wounding him gravely. Another officer quickly requisitioned a nearby trash truck and drove it to the scene, using it to block the schoolyard from the then-unknown shooter.

Spencer continued to shoot for about 20 minutes, firing 36 rounds. Besides killing Wragg and Suchar, she wounded Officer Robb and eight schoolchildren.

Then, with over 100 officers, 30 patrol units, and 20 SWAT members surrounding her, she barricaded herself in the house, promising to “come out shooting.” Snipers were stationed at the school and a neighbor’s roof, with a green light to shoot her if they got an opportunity.

Responding to the police presence, a reporter from the San Diego Evening Tribune, Gus Stevens, began calling people in the area to find out more. To his surprise, Spencer answered his call. When he realized he was talking with the shooter, he asked her why she was doing this. Her response was: “I just did it for the fun of it. I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day. I have to go now. I shot a pig (policeman) I think and I want to shoot more. I’m having too much fun (to surrender).”

That phrase would inspire Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats to write the song “I Don’t Like Mondays.” The song would shoot to the top of the charts in multiple countries and stay there for weeks.

Meanwhile, a police negotiator talked to Spencer on and off by phone and bullhorn for hours, urging her to throw out her gun and surrender. Finally, at about 2:30 p.m., lured by the promise of a Burger King Whopper, she laid down her rifle (along with a pellet gun) and surrendered. Many were shocked at the sight of the killer: a slight young girl with long red hair, dressed in baggy hunting clothes and a dark knit cap.

Spencer didn’t speak during the drive to the homicide unit.

***

In court, Spencer — who was tried as an adult — made a plea deal: in exchange for pleading guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon, she would be spared the death sentence. On April 4, 1980, the day after her 18th birthday, she was sentenced to 25 years to life at the California Institution for Women in Chino.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about Spencer’s case is that there is no clear “why.” Her story has changed throughout the years. First she claimed that she had been taking a mixture of drugs and alcohol, which numbed her and made her hallucinate. Yet her initial drug tests were clean.

Later, she would claim that her father had been molesting her “almost constantly” since the age of 9, when she first went to live with him after her parents’ divorce. While her father denied it to his dying day (in 2016), there is some evidence this could have been the case. Her behavior and psychological problems in the time leading up to the murders could easily have been triggered by abuse. During the investigation it was revealed that she and her father shared a mattress (though he would claim they “only” shared a room). And perhaps most bizarrely, while her father was visiting her in the juvenile detention facility, he meet a fellow detainee named Sheila — who looked nearly identical to his daughter, but younger. Spencer’s father and Sheila struck up a romantic relationship and got married. They had a daughter together, but Sheila left soon after the baby was born.

While this doesn’t excuse Spencer’s actions, it might help shine the light on her state of mind.

***

Since then, Grover Cleveland Elementary School closed down. The property was sold and, after many years, the building leveled. The owners, along with the community, erected a small memorial to those who were killed on that site.

Barbara Spencer is one of the rarest kinds of killers: the female mass shooter, even rarer than the female serial killer. Studies have shown that only between 3 and 4 percent of mass shooters are women. Hers was almost the first mass shooting at a public school (as opposed to on a college campus) — but only because she took less than four lives. In fact, since that Monday 40 years ago, at least 143 children, teachers, and others have been killed and another 289 injured in gun assaults at schools. Last year was the bloodiest in American schools, with 35 people killed — 28 of whom were students — and 79 injured.

Spencer expresses a great deal of regret for her crimes, and has said she is bothered by the thought that what she did might have inspired all the other school shooters who have followed.

Now aged 56, she is due to be considered for parole again in August of this year.