She told a reporter she did it because she didn't like Mondays. "This livens up the day," she said. The line, delivered by a 16-year-old girl who had just shot 11 people from her bedroom window, became one of the most chilling explanations in American crime history.
Brenda Ann Spencer lived directly across the street from Grover Cleveland Elementary School in the San Carlos area of San Diego. On the morning of January 29, 1979, she picked up a .22-calibre rifle and began firing at children and staff as they gathered outside before classes. The weapon was not stolen. Her father had given it to her as a Christmas gift weeks earlier, in December 1978, along with ammunition.
The shooting lasted about 20 minutes. Spencer fired dozens of rounds from her window. Eleven people were hit: eight children, a police officer, and two school staff members. The two people killed were Burton Wragg, the school principal, and Michael Suchar, the custodian. Wragg was shot while trying to protect students. Suchar was killed as he moved to help during the chaos. San Diego police officer Robert Robb was wounded responding to the scene.
Teachers moved students to safety as police surrounded Spencer's home. A standoff followed that lasted more than six hours. During that time, Spencer spoke by telephone with a reporter from the San Diego Tribune. When asked why she did it, she answered: "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day." She also said she was trying to "cheer up" the day.
The casualness of the explanation stunned the public. It became permanently attached to the case. In the weeks before the shooting, reports said Spencer had shown troubling behaviour. There were incidents involving a BB gun and damage to windows at the same school she later attacked. Some reports said she had spoken about wanting to do something that would attract attention. The reasons behind her actions have remained a subject of discussion for decades.
Spencer eventually surrendered. She was tried as an adult. In 1980, she pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. She has appeared before parole boards several times over the years. She has remained incarcerated.
Her words outlived the news cycle. Irish rock band The Boomtown Rats turned the phrase into a hit song. Frontman Bob Geldof wrote "I Don't Like Mondays" in 1979 after reading reports about the shooting. It became one of the band's biggest hits. The song ensured Spencer's explanation became part of popular culture, a strange and permanent marker of a crime that was shocking for its violence and for the unsettling contrast between the act and the reason given for it.
The case remains a reference point in discussions of school shootings, though it predates the era when such attacks became a recurring American pattern. Spencer was one of the first school shooters to gain national notoriety, and her stated motive, a casual dislike for the first day of the week, has never been matched for its bizarre simplicity. She offered no political grievance, no history of bullying, no manifesto. Just a preference for any day but Monday.
The boomtown rats' song reached number one in the UK and several other countries. It turned a local tragedy into an international cultural moment. The lyrics recount the shooting and the killer's explanation, with the chorus repeating her words. Geldof later said the song was his attempt to make sense of something senseless.
More than four decades later, Spencer remains in prison. Parole boards have repeatedly denied her release. The school, Grover Cleveland Elementary, still operates. The house across the street still stands. The rifle her father gave her for Christmas is still in evidence. The phrase she used to explain the shooting is still a punchline, a song title, a piece of trivia. She is now in her sixties, still serving the sentence she received as a teenager.
The case never produced a satisfying answer to the question of why. Spencer gave one, but it was too thin to hold the weight of two deaths and nine injuries. The song that came out of it turned her words into a chorus, but the chorus never explained anything either. It just repeated what she said, a circular loop of a motive that made no sense and still doesn't.
According to Pulse.ng.
