00:00Hello and welcome to the Dark Mystery Lounge.
00:03Today we're going to take a trip out west to California to take a look at Brenda Spencer.
00:08She's known as the grandmother of school shooters, just like Charles Whitman is the grandfather of school shooting.
00:13She's also known for her only explanation as to why she shot up the school across the street from her.
00:19Female school shooters are very rare.
00:21Out of the hundreds of school shootings done by men or boys, there's only about a dozen that are done by girls or women.
00:27So let's jump right into this one, shall we?
00:30Brenda Ann Spencer was born on April 3, 1962 in San Carlos, California, which is a suburb of San Diego, to Wallace and Dot Spencer.
00:44She's the youngest of three siblings.
00:46They grew up relatively poor, but her mother would describe Brenda as a happy child.
00:50Dot and Wallace argued often, mainly about Wallace having affairs.
00:54He asked her if he could leave for a year, but he didn't want to end his marriage.
00:59Dot laughed and said no, then filed for divorce in 1972.
01:03For some reason, Wallace ended up with custody of all three kids.
01:07Dot became a little bit more distant from her kids after the divorce, only really seeing them on weekends.
01:13But Brenda described later on that she felt like her mother didn't want them around.
01:17At home, things seemed to be okay for a while, until Brenda was getting in trouble for petty theft.
01:23She dabbled in drug use and drinking as she became a teenager.
01:27Although Brenda showed exceptional abilities at photography, winning first prize at the Humane Society competition, she was generally uninterested in school.
01:35She attended Patrick Henry High School, where one teacher frequently inquiring if she was awake in class.
01:42She was sent to a school for troubled children because of her truancy.
01:45They informed her parents that she was suicidal early in 1978.
01:49For Christmas that same year, her father gave her a .22 caliber rifle, a scope, and lots of ammunition.
01:56He thought that she was ready for her rifles since they went up to the mountains to go target shooting.
02:01It was time for her to have a gun of her own.
02:03In a later statement, she said,
02:04A week before carrying out the shooting that would make her infamous, she allegedly told her classmates that she was going to do something big to get on TV.
02:19Unfortunately, that statement would soon become all too true.
02:22On the morning of Monday, January 29, 1979, there was a line of children just outside the gates of Cleveland Elementary School,
02:33waiting for the principal, Burton Ragg, to unlock the gate as he did every school day.
02:38Brenda, too, was getting ready for her big day as well.
02:40She had her rifle and ammo ready.
02:42Looking outside her living room window at the school just across the street, loud popping sounds began to fill the air.
02:48No one knew what that sound was or where it was coming from.
02:51It sounded like a kid's toy going off rather than a gun.
02:54Until nine-year-old Cam Miller was shot.
02:57Mr. Ragg and a teacher, Daryl Barnes, tried to help the injured child.
03:02Then Mr. Ragg was shot in the chest and killed, flailing backwards.
03:06More shots rang out through the air as the children were trying to take cover from the bullets flying.
03:10When 56-year-old custodian Mike Zucker was shot and killed as he tried to pull a student to safety.
03:16Police were called to the scene of the chaos.
03:18As he was arriving on the scene, police officer Robert Ross was wounded in the neck by a bullet, but he survived his injury.
03:26The rest of the children were bused to safety so parents could pick them up.
03:29In all, 36 rounds were fired at the school.
03:32Brenda barricaded herself inside the house and was discouraged from continuing her shooting spree when police had a garbage truck parked in front of her house, blocking her view.
03:41She stayed in the house for several hours.
03:43She did pick up the phone when it rang.
03:45It was a reporter for the San Diego Union-Tribune, who had been randomly calling phone numbers in the neighborhood.
03:51Brenda told the reporter she had shot the school children and adults because,
03:55I don't like Mondays.
03:57This livens up the day.
03:58She also told police negotiators the children and adults whom she had shot were easy targets,
04:03and that she was going to, quote,
04:05come out shooting, unquote.
04:07The standoff lasted over six hours.
04:09She ended up coming out peacefully when one of the negotiators promised her a Burger King Whopper.
04:15The police were shocked as this tiny, 5'2", skinny girl with long red hair came out with her hands up.
04:21She was immediately arrested.
04:23After 20 minutes of shooting, in all, two people died and nine children and adults were injured.
04:29She pled guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon.
04:33But because of her guilty plea, there would be no trial.
04:36So her statement about not liking Mondays was the only reason she ever gave as a motive for the shooting.
04:42On April 4th, 1980, a day after her 18th birthday, she was sentenced to 25 years to life with the possibility of parole.
04:50Once she was in prison, Brenda changed.
04:56She seemed to thrive, becoming a model inmate.
04:59She was diagnosed with epilepsy due to the trauma on the frontal lobe of her brain from a bicycle injury when she was younger.
05:06She was treated for epilepsy and depression.
05:08While at the California Institution for Women in Chino, California,
05:12she worked repairing electronic equipment and later drove a forklift.
05:16She became eligible for parole in 1993, but it's rare for anyone to be released on parole for murder.
05:22So her attempts each time were rejected for one reason or another.
05:26Her parole hearing in 2005, she revealed a lot of secrets that she kept hidden for a long time.
05:32She claims that her father would physically and sexually abuse her.
05:35She slept on the same mattress in the living room and also claiming that her mother was neglectful as well,
05:40turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to any of her problems.
05:43She also revealed something that she has never shown before, remorse.
05:47She would start getting teary-eyed and apologize for what she had done,
05:51saying, I didn't have the right to do that to those people.
05:54In an older interview with Brenda, she claimed that she was hallucinating when she did the shooting,
05:59but toxicology reports showed no traces of drugs.
06:02Brenda claimed she has no memory of the shooting,
06:04claiming she doesn't remember everything in sequence, but she's sure she did it.
06:08She has never given a true reason why she did the shooting.
06:11I don't think we will ever truly know.
06:13Even with the secrets that she revealed at her 2005 hearing, she was denied parole again,
06:19mainly on the basis that she wasn't mentally stable enough due to an incident where she took a hot paperclip and burned her chest.
06:26She wrote what looked like to be courage and pride on her chest, but she said it was written in ruins.
06:31It actually said, unforgiving and alone.
06:34Her depression was not in control like everyone thought.
06:37She fell into a deep depression after a breakup with her girlfriend in prison.
06:41When Wallace learned what she said at her hearing, it was a complete shock to him.
06:45He said it wasn't true, and he would take a lie detector test on that one,
06:49but it seems like he was hiding something that would make him look like a child molester.
06:53While Brenda was in juvenile hall, her cellmate, upon her release, hooked up with Wallace and got pregnant by him.
07:00They got married, and after the baby was born, she took off, leaving the child for him to raise.
07:05That lady was younger than Brenda and looked very similar.
07:08Some people wondered what Brenda was doing out.
07:10That's how much they looked alike, but Brenda's half-sister grew up normal.
07:14Her father still lives in that same house across the street from the school and visits Brenda every Saturday,
07:20which he had been doing since Brenda was arrested.
07:22Brenda was up for parole several times over the years and was denied each time.
07:27Just recently, on August 18, 2022, at the age of 60, she told the parole board that she was stipulating to a three-year denial,
07:36which means she won't get another chance at parole until 2025.
07:40At this point, she's been locked up longer than she's been free, so there's no doubt that she's going to die in prison.
07:45The Irish band, the Boomtown Rats, released a song called I Don't Like Mondays, written about Brenda and the shooting.
07:56It was released in July 1979 and was number one for four weeks in the United Kingdom and was the biggest hit for the band.
08:04Although it did not make the top 40s in the U.S., it still received extensive radio play outside of the San Diego area,
08:10despite the Spencer family's efforts to prevent it.
08:13A plaque and a flagpole were erected at Cleveland Elementary in memory of the shooting victims.
08:18The school was closed in 1983, along with a dozen other schools around the city, due to declining enrollment.
08:25For decades, it was leased to several charter and private schools.
08:28From 2005 to 2017, it housed the Magnolia Science Academy, a public charter middle school serving students in grades 6 through 8.
08:37In 2018, the school was demolished, and the plaque was relocated to the corner of Lake Atlin Drive and Lake Angela Drive.
08:46New houses were built where the school once stood.
08:49The Spencer house still sits there.
08:51Same paint job and circa 1970s diamond pattern windows.
08:55It's almost eerie, like a time capsule.
08:57During an interview, Dot Spencer blamed herself for the shooting,
09:01thinking that if she would have let Wallace have his little fling and tried to keep the family together,
09:06this never would have happened.
09:07But until we get a real answer out of Brenda, the only one to blame is Brenda, and no one else.
09:12And the only explanation for her shooting up the school was that she didn't like Mondays.
09:17I can definitely say that Brenda came from a really odd family, very cold and very distant.
09:27The truth was never revealed as to her true motives.
09:30She had gotten in trouble for shooting at the school and breaking a window with a BB gun a year prior.
09:36How that wasn't a red flag for her parents, I have no clue.
09:39I wouldn't doubt that something sexual happened between Brenda and her father.
09:43The fact that he got a young girl pregnant that looked similar to his daughter and younger than her
09:48just sent even more red flags.
09:50But why didn't she bring this up from the get-go rather than wait until 25 years later at her parole hearing?
09:56I think she was trying to gain some sort of sympathy so that people don't see her as a monster.
10:01She's lied in the past about all sorts of little things that it makes me doubt anything that comes out of her mouth.
10:07Anyways, if you made it this far into the video, thank you.
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10:19Thank you for hanging out with me in the Dark Mystery Lounge.
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