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Brenda Ann Spencer (born April 3 1962 in San Diego, California) wounded eight children and one police officer and killed two adults in a shooting spree at Cleveland Elementary School in the San Carlos section of San Diego, California, on the Monday of January 29, 1979.
The school was across the street from her house. She used the rifle she had recently been given for Christmas. When the six-hour incident ended and the sixteen-year-old was asked why she had committed the crime, she shrugged and replied, "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day." She also said: "I had no reason for it, and it was just a lot of fun", "It was just like shooting ducks in a pond" and "children looked like a herd of cows standing around, it was really easy pickings."
She pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon, and was sentenced to prison for 25 years to life, currently being served at The California Institution for Women in Corona. Since she was jailed she has been up for parole four times and has been turned down each time, the last in 2005. Spencer will be eligible for parole again in 2009. In 2005 she claimed that she was drunk and under the influence of PCP at the time of the shootings and also that her father, Walter Spencer, had sexually abused her as a child. She has also claimed that the State and her attorney conspired to hide her drug test results.
On 23 January 2006, the British broadcaster, Channel 4 screened a documentary titled I Don't Like Mondays. It spoke to members of the Spencer family, including Brenda's father, who had never before spoken publicly about the events twenty-six years earlier. He denies being responsible for the shooting and says that he has absolutely no knowledge of the accusations his daughter made against him in 2005. To this day he continues to visit her every Saturday afternoon of the year, when possible.
"I Don't Like Mondays": The Boomtown Rats' song
Spencer's crime, lack of remorse, and inability to provide a serious explanation for her actions when captured inspired the song "I Don't Like Mondays" by The Boomtown Rats, written by musician Bob Geldof. This was played regularly on Monday mornings by album-oriented rock format radio stations in the United States throughout the 1980s. It got to Number One in the UK singles charts in July 1979, and was also covered by Bon Jovi as a bonus track on the double CD version of their 1995 album These Days and by Tori Amos on her 2001 album Strange Little Girls.
The chorus includes the lines:
- Tell me why
- "I don't like Mondays.
- I want to shoot the whole day down."
At a concert in London in 1995, just before the tenth anniversary of Live Aid (during which Geldof himself performed the song in the Boomtown Rats' final major appearance), Bon Jovi covered the song after being joined on stage by Geldof. This recorded performance features on Bon Jovi's live album One Wild Night. Geldof himself performed an impromptu version of the song while hosting the Live 8 concert in London, on 2 July 2005 (11 days before the 20th anniversary of Live Aid).
In "20 Hours in America Part II", the second episode of season 4 of The West Wing, the song was featured during a fictional bombing at a university, the story behind the song having been told earlier in the episode.
External links
American murderers | Spree shootings | School massacres in the United States
"Brenda Ann Spencer"