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You are now listening to True Murder The most Shocking Killers in True crime History and the authors that have written about him Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker VTK every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening.
In nineteen seventy nine, Brenda Spencer, a seemingly average teenage girl living in a nice suburban neighborhood, made and executed plans that would place her in infamy in set a violent and terrifying national precedent. She received a rifle for Christmas, and a month later, Setter sits and open fire on
the elementary school across the street. The event is forever glorified by the song I Don't Like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats, and marks the bloody beginning of the American phenomenon of school shootings, long before Columbine and Sandy hook, there was Brenda Spencer. I Don't Like Mondays, The True Story of America's first modern school shooting, sifts through the mythology that has sprung up around this faithful day, presenting
the raw and riveting facts for the first time. This book lays bare the seemingly average teenage girl's brutal motives and subsequent arrest. N Lee Hunt spent years researching and uncovering shocking details from officers, investigators, and lost police dispatches. He has interviewed people who were on the scene and local reporters who spoke with him with the perpetrator directly
after her shooting spree. Hunt has even cultivated an unlikely rapport with the killer, and through personal interviews, has shed light on previously unknown details about her upbringing and influences. The book that we're featuring this evening is I Don't Like Mondays, The True Story behind America's first modern school shooting, with my special guest, author, crime historian and broadcaster and Lee Hunt. Welcome to the program, and thank you so
much for this interview. And Lee Hunt, thanks for having me.
Dan plead to be here.
Thanks, thank you so much. Now, first off, please tell us how you came to be the author of this story, why you wanted to do this story, and how you had the opportunity.
Well, I grew up in San Diego, like so many people, and you know know San Diego as being that small town in the seventies, and it just grew bigger and bigger, bigger. Now it's a massive city. My parents were British and we moved there sort of living the American dream. When I was a young kid. My dad was the journalist the Satday Evening Tribute at the time, and he was working at the city desk and one day he came home from school and said, you won't believe what's happened.
I'm so glad you're safe. And he just said, you know, a number of kids your age were just shot today at school. It's just changed San Diego forever. And we sat for a long time and talked about this story. So it's something I was essentially my first venture into true crime, if you will. I mean, now it's a
genre that everyone talks about. Back then, it was just called horror, and I spent my entire life thinking of this case, and it was something that's you know, I went in to do research and crime history, and I studied serial killers for a long time. I went into broadcasting and even done some radio stuff about local crime. And someone said to me, you know, you really should write a book about Brenda Spencer, because you know so much about it, because your father was heavily involved in
what happened that day. And it wasn't until I sort of got late into my years that I noticed that no one had written a book about this, nobody had ever sort of captured it. But yet we're You're hearing every single year, and sometimes more than once a year, about another school shooting that was happening in America, and nothing was changing. So I just dove deep into it
and thought, let's actually recount all the facts. Let's get all the information without any hoopla, without any media hype, and just recount everything that happened that day, by everyone who was involved, and maybe we could come to some sort of idea as to why it happened. I'm not looking for solution. I just wanted to sort of get the facts together to see if maybe maybe the story behind Brenda is not that different than the story behind
all the other dozens of school shootings. So that's pretty much the motivation for doing it. I went back to my basics, the one that actually brought true crime into my orbit, and just thought, let's just make my first book about Brenda. And that's exactly what it did. So I wrote to her. She wrote back, and the rest is history.
Well, let's get to that history as you write. Monday, January twenty ninth, nineteen seventy nine, in San Carlos, which is a suburb of San Diego, a little after eight am, tell us what happens at this Cleveland school.
Yeah, we'll start with San Carlos because sant Carlos is actually more of like a really big neighborhood in sort of the East County of the San Diego City. And the reason why that's important is because I think people in the East County of San Diego felt that it was part of the county, which the sheriffs would be part of their jurisdiction, and the city kind of part didn't even know that it existed, and people said San Carlos,
I didn't know where it was. But it was actually the police, the local police who were called to attend, so shots ring out the reception after school. Here's the bullets and looks around and doesn't know where they're coming from. Nobody can really identify where the bullets were coming from. Kids were running into the office saying this were being shot. Children had fallen in the driveway leading up to the front of the school. And this is a California style
sort of bungalow style school, so it's one level. It's not like the tall school buildings that you see on the East coast of America. It's a very small, one level school with a car park in the front. And the kids came running up and the receptions called to the police, and back then you dialed zero and asked the operator and then said I need the police. So there was no nine one one, There were no paramedics.
It was literally just scared people on the phone calling other people who were hoping to do the right thing to dispatch. Police started turning up as fast as they could from all over the city and everybody came in and as they arrived on the scene, it was then quickly determined that Brenda was across the road shooting from her front door with the twenty two, and she had already shot a number of students and bullets had hit the principal and the custodian as they came out to
rescue children in the front of the school. Quite an alarming saying.
You write that there was parents at this time and at various stages after eight am that were dropping off their kids that were oblivious to this sniper across the street shooting at students and teachers and staff.
Exactly right. Twenty two caliber rifle is not the loudest of weapons, one of the smallest caliber weapons that was available at that time. Brenda was a sixteen year old girl who received it for Christmas just prior to the shooting, which was January twenty ninth, so it's certainly had it just over a month, and these bullets were ringing out. People thought, you know, perhaps it was backfiring car, perhaps
it was even fireworks. Because it was the Chinese New Year weekend just passed, parents pulled up in their car, dropped their kids off, kids got out of the car, they drove away like any normal school day. It was quite unremarkable in that respect, except for Brenda was shooting from across the road. So one of the students that luckily got away actually was dropped off by their mother and just walked up the path happily while someone was
shot right next to them. Could have been them. Very lucky to tell.
Us about the actions of Principal Rag and and also custodian Mike Sukhar, which they called mister Mike.
Yeah, mister Mike was sort of this sort of legendary big hero guy, you know, when of these big, sort of strapping veteran who took care of the school and everybody liked him. Principal Rag was a career educator, really decent guy. A lot of students tell stories about how he would he would pretend to have the same interests as them to keep them motivated and interested in school each day. He really really these two guys seemed as, if you know, some of the greatest people that had
ever worked within the educational environment in San Diego. They saw a child fall to the ground, didn't know what it was, I think, without thinking, both these gentlemen ran to the front of the school to help the children. One of them saw the other fall to the ground with some sort of injury. Didn't know what that was, so they ran to his rescue. So it's essentially just people you know who were in roll model positions taking care of their students, and Brenda targeted them. I think
they were larger targets for her. Perhaps perhaps maybe she was aiming for the adults, because she didn't actually kill any children that day, and she swiftly lended bullets right into the chest of both these gentlemen. It was quite a shame. Police arrived and were told to arrive in the back of the school. Some did, some didn't because this going back to the days of radio dispatch. They ran right One of them, Officer Rob ran straight up, straight up to mister Mike and Principal Rag and took
a bullet straight to his neck. With all the adrenaline he was still managed to lift them to a gurney and get them into an ambulance and off to the hospital, and then later found that the bullet hit his spine and he then later collapsed but did survive.
There was another officer that realized that there was a trash truck and he could use it to his advantage. What did they do with this trash truck?
Well, yeah, Ted Kasigknak, who now sort of become friends with in a way, he's a bit of a hero. He arrived from the opposite side of the school and was able to sort of identify that, hey, this shooting is coming from across the road, and he sort of looked around and didn't know what to do. And a large trash truck had just been picking up the trash on any normal neighborhood, and I've got I sort of mentioned that San Carlos is sort of like a Spielberg
Ass type neighborhood. This is a very typical track home, you know, all sort of single level dwellings. All the houses down the road kind of looked alike, all the gardens are maintained. This is a very nice neighborhood in southern California.
Standard.
He saw the garbage truck and thought, you know what, these people are being shot in front of the school. And somehow he jumped in it and commandeered it, got it started, drove it up a narrow part the parking lot in front of the school, around a few vehicles that were parked there, and managed to pull it within twenty feet of the front entrance to the school, the walkway, blocking Brenda's vision from all the students that were hiding
along that walkway. He saved potentially dozens of lives that day. It is one of the most heroic I think in San Diego history, part of one of the most heroque things that could have happened that day, and certainly school shootings forty three laters could still use that type of heroic action. So Ted Cazignak is pretty much a legend. He stayed the entire day behind that truck, keeping siphon Brenda until finally she was apprehended. It's quite remarkable fate you had.
One of the teachers is featured in this book named Barns, and he was seeing the principal and the custodian down in front of the school and then was yelling to children that were oblivious to run and run into the school. Tell us about the efforts of the teachers to safeguard these students, not realizing what was going on whatsoever regarding the sniper across the street.
Yeah, I think when the principal and the custodian, it was traditional for the principle to be out in the mornings to open the gate with the custodian and even a way to parents. You know, they were doing their role, so they were in the place they need to be Barnes, the teacher was sort of his role was more to stay in the office and to take care of some of the administration stuff. So when he saw this unfolding, he had no choice would take a leadership role. You know,
he was the assistant's principal. It was I suppose he took that role, and he essentially ushered dozens and dozens of children and actually organized some of the other teachers to pick the children into their rooms, lock the door, hide, get down. I think unwittingly, Barnes and the other teachers who were on scene that day, and some of the police officers, I think it are unwittingly setting up dynamic
sort of crisis education for all the children. And a lot of the things that they did that day are incorporated in the ALICE training, which is the school violence training the police officers get today. Just by their actions that day that saved lives. It was essentially duck and cover, is what Barnes was telling the students, and they all
ran for cover. Some were stuck in the bushes along the walkway, somewhere behind the cars in the parking lot in between the front of the school and Brenda's house. Across the road. I think he just said, we're all getting for cover. Everybody get down, and he continued this chant throughout the fire alarm was going off. There was a lot of stress. More parents were pulling up with children in their cars. It really became quite a scene.
You could imagine for those who were at the school, they could hear the gunshots and knew what were going what was going on, But for those just arriving, all they could hear was fire alarm, had a frenzy teacher telling everyone to get down. It's part of what an alarming steam. Now.
The San Diego Evening Tribune comes into this story with police reporter Frank Asaldera. He's on the police scanner and he recognized the call was out of the ordinary, so he calls into the newspaper's head office and the chief assistant city editor is Bernie Hunt. Your father tell us about this.
My father. Yeah. So his role was to make sure all the boarders are out on their beat doing their stuff, and Frank was down at the cop shop as they call it. And you know, a shooting in San Diego was not that uncommon. It was uncommon, but not that uncommon. But that time of the morning at a school. It was really uncommon, and they took the call and immediately
my dad sort of dispatched anybody it was around. But at eight o'clock in the morning, their newspapers are already out in their day there, you know, they're the evening paper. They're already kind of started their day is their deadline is sort of around nine am, So this was sort of right at a key moment where people weren't available.
My dad and Mike Walker, who is the city editor, they walked down to a desk where they found an available reporter and it just happened to be Steve Wigan, who was the political reporter for San Diego, and he was just getting ready to leave up to Los Angeles to cover some politics that was going on around town. And he said, you're not going anywhere. I needed you to start making phone calls. We got a shooter in San Carlos, and of course everyone said where and he said, look,
just cover it. Here's a crisscross directory. Now, back way back in the day, you and I are probably old enough to remember, but many people wouldn't won't be. They used to have these big phone books with everybody's name in it and their phone numbers, and they have this thing called the Crisscross which was the exact opposite of that. So it had the address with the phone number and the name of people, so you can look it up
by address. So Steve Weigan just thumbed through this phone book Crisscross record found the house that was across the street from the from the shooting from the school. He just he dialed it first. It was a very sort of easy number to dial. I think that the doal was two three four five with the last four digits. So he went there first. A young girl answers the phone, and he initially says, you know, it's your mom home, because he can't believe that. You know, what's she doing home?
It's got to be a parent I want to speak with And she said no, I'm here alone. He said, well, I hear there's a shooting. Do you know anything about it? And she says, yeah, it's me and he doesn't believe it. She kind of hangs up, and he calls back away and says, well, why are you doing this? And she says, well, you know, I just don't like mondays livens up the day. I got to go now and do some more shooting.
So Steve Wigan and the guys at the evening tribute, and one of them being my father, had actually stopped Brenda in mid shot to answer the telephone. Either her vanity or adolescence, I don't know what it was stopped her from shooting to answer the phone. It's quite remarkable.
He asked her obvious questions right away, like why are you shooting at innocent people? What kind of responses does he get.
I don't think he gets any clear response other than I just don't like mondays, this livens up the day. You know, I see their blue jumpers, I want to shoot, you know. I don't think he was getting anything out of her immediately, he says to my dad, he says, you know. To the editors, he says, look, I've got her on the phone, and my dad says, well, you
get to writing the story because we're hitting deadline. He calls in Gus, who's another key journalist and reporter who was on the scene, and said, you give her call back. You get as much information out of her as she can, and the two of them sort of worked together to fashion the story for the front page that afternoon. It was all about getting the story and all about finding
out why she was doing it. I don't think they got any clearer or anything really out of her, but is the most remarkably that she stopped shooting people in order to tell everybody what she was up to. Eventually, if I can carry on with the story, they try and stay on the phone with her as long as they possibly can, because I think twofold they realized that they're getting the story, which of course their reporters and
that's their job. Secondly, I think they suddenly realized that as long as they speak to her, she's not shooting anybody else. Eventually, the police have now cordoned off the area. The students were pretty much in safety. Ted Casanat had done this in a tremendous job of blocking her vision with this truck. They eventually called the Tribune and go, we hear you're on the phone with the shooter. Knock it off, get off the phone. Will you want to
speak with her? And that's kind of where they kind of put it to rest there and just decided to go to press with the story.
Now, the police contact parents, Wally and Dorothy. What you called dot? What did they find from the parents, What information do they find from the parents, and what do they want from the parents at that time.
Well, again, she's you know, they know that she's under age, or they believe she's under age. They are going to contact the parents. Certainly. The father was only working at San Diego State University not far away, so he was quite available, and he was semi popular orcs, so people knew him. The mother was working at a golf tournament up in Tory Pines. San Diego has this beautiful golf course I don't even know. Tory Pines was actually stunning, and she was one of the accountants for a huge
golf tournament that just happened over that weekend. They initially call her and she says, you know, I can't make it. I've got a table full of cash, I'm counting money. I can't come. Whatever it is, Brenda can handle it. And they said, no, I don't think you understand your daughter is shooting people. And I think there's something in that that has never sat right me, with the fact
that the mother didn't immediately jump to attention. The family had gone through a horrible divorce a number of years before, and I think Dodt had just felt that Brenda was Wally's problem, or Wally should take care of all these little things like whatever Brenda's not going to school or whatever she's doing during her day. Wally came right to the scene, came right to the cordon where the police blocked the road, and actually started giving as much information
as he could. He told the police officers, that is my daughter, this is where she goes to school. This is how old she is, this is the weapon she has. This is how much ammunition I bought her for Christmas. So she had nearly one thousand rounds of ammunition and she was stuck up in the house. So he actually gave a lot of very vital information to the police
and really helped them on how to proceed. Eventually, the mother did arrive as well, but she she did take a little bit longer to get to the scene.
Now, meanwhile, there's a SWAT team being organized, and what happens of this endeavor.
Well, swat back in nineteen seventy nine is not as slick as we think it probably was. These guys were all full time police officers, some were off duty that day. They were called to the scene and then when they arrived. They show up in their cars and start to unpack their gear from the boots in their car. SWAT didn't have a huge van with these guys in camouflage who come jumping out with their huge weaponry like we see today.
It was a very without using the word low budget, it was just sort of low tech is probably the best way to say it. Police officers didn't wear bulletproof vests. They had kind of a white bib that kind of sat just above their navel and just below their shoulders, which kind of covered the middle of their chest, but really not much of a bulletproof vest at all, And so they were putting these on and trying to get
themselves in some kind of position. Luckily, San Diego being a huge military town, a lot of these these guys on the SWAT team were X Marines, ex army and very skilled with weaponry. They took positions on houses, around the back side of the house, round the top of the school, some were just down at the end of the block, all positions aiming at the front doors or
the windows of the house. At this stage, SWAT only knew what Ted Kasanak and the other police officers on the scene could tell them, and that was we have a shooter in the house. They had no idea how many shooters. They really only had the idea from the father of how what kind of weaponry they were talking about. And slowly, as time ticked on, no more shooting, no more bullets rang out. Once Brendick got off the phone with the reporters for the final time, she didn't fire
another shot. So they weren't really sure what they had at this point, what else was in that house. Perhaps the perpetrator had killed themselves. They really didn't know. It's what really had to move close to the house, really small baby steps to find out what was going on at the premises. I was lucky enough to find the original dispatch tapes from the police. Now, these are not digital, these are not things that were kept on file. Back
in nineteen seventy nine. I went into a group of radio enthusiasts and one of them was a twelve year old who had a love or police dispatch and he just recorded this on a cassette tape and I managed to find him and he shared it with me. It's the most remarkable finds. It's an incredible insight into what the San Diego PEDI did at a time where they had no idea of the hostility that was taking place,
or what the perpetrator had, or even the threat. It's quite remarkable, and I tried to capture them as best I could in the first ten chapters of the book to show what people do when they're forced to do it. And I think it's remarkable. The Santiagopedia are truly heros.
You talk about the San Diego Police Department and Detective Olson at twelve twelve oh six, Now Brenda Spencer answers the phone, and so they have a conversation. What any kind of value does she convey to Detective Olson?
Yeah, and that's what I'm doing. By twelve o'clock, I mean we're talking almost you know, it's three and a half hours after the shooting and almost three hours since her final bullet. They were calling the house and calling the house, and she wasn't answering. They shut off the power. She's unaware. Ted Olsen is in the sort of the bathroom of the house next door, kind of yelling through the window, answer the phone, answered the phone. Chet Thurston,
who's the other interrogator. Both these guys are highly skilled military interrogators. These guys have been you know, they've been around the block. These were not young interrogators. They're very seasoned veterans. In the STPD, he was out of the front of the bullhorn. She's trying to make noise to get her attention, you know, in a safe position. Obviously. Eventually she answers the phone and Olsen starts chatting to her, saying, hey, you know, how can I help, Trying to build that rapport.
She ends up telling him all kinds of things about how proud she was of what she did. You know, there was nothing like seeing feathers fly. And she was quite bullsh and arrogant, a lot of bravado, she said. And I think she was semi impressed with the fact that she might be on television. She was impressed that somebody was listening to her. And then in the next sentence she's saying, you know, I mean to get in
a lot of trouble with my father. So it was clearly it was an odd conversation to say the least. I think Olsen had to dig deep and use all of his skill, and the negotiations went on for hours. It was a three hour negotiation by telephone.
Meanwhile, they interview her father, Wally, and the mother and to try to get some information from them that will help in this negotiation. Tell us what the fruits of that negotiation are eventually, and the terms.
Well, I think I'll start with the terms. I think the terms were you come out and bring your weapons and everything will lend it okay, and your parents will forgive you and everything will be okay. I think Brenda really believed that. He kept saying are you hungry? And she said, well, yeah, I could really do with a hamburger, and they promised her a whopper, and you know, it seems quite a remarkable thing. Brenda, of course, now disputes that I've written to Brendan asked her a number of
bits information. She disputes that she wanted a whopper. She really likes fried chicken and said she had some in the house and was eating it during that time. But you know, again, it's in Paul Awson's notes. I don't debate what he wrote, and she probably did just agree to anything at that stage. I think she was probably quite scared, and I'm not so sure what the mother offered A tall in this there's nothing with the police files.
She was unavailable for comment. I was unable to find any connection that she made with Brenda directly during this time. But Wally certainly had said, you know, he explained that she was a truant from her school and she had gone to a different school, and she didn't have a lot of friends, and she was a bit of a tomboy, and he was sort of giving a lot of background information about Brenda. But sadly, neither of them played any huge role in her coming out and surrendering that day.
I think that was just pure, pure, great police work from the interrogators. But also Brenda was recognizing that, you know, the time is sick, and there's no electricity on in the house and kind of here alone. I think maybe she, by her mind, was sobering up. She claims that she was under the influence. I think it's just was time to get out of the house. I know Olsen and Thurston were desperate to get her out by three o'clock because kids were coming home from school. You're gonna hit
rush hour. There's a number of things that the number of threats that could re emerge if she weren't out of that house and apprehended. He did say to or can you bring out the ammunition and your weapons? And, remarkably, and this is something I haven't seen very often, she exits the house with two weapons. One was the twenty two she got for Christmas. The other was a pellet gun, which wasn't gonna hurt anybody, but she carries them both with so much care. She cared for both of her weapons.
I think it's interesting her intent using the pellet gun does make a lot of people believe that her intent to kill was diminished because she had this pellet gun that wasn't going to kill anyone. I don't know if you're in that camp, but some people think that. And then he says to her, can you go in and get the ammunition now? And so Brenda gets back off the sidewalk from in front of the house, well back
into the house and gets the ammunition. And I asked Paul directly this, I said, why did you have her go back and get the ammunition when you had her with the weapons. She was no threat to anyone you had her And he said, well, she says she wanted to do it, and I trusted her, and she did go and do it and got the ammunition, and I'm glad she did. And he left it that So Paul obviously was in control of the situation as a negotiator,
and Brenda did exactly as he said. So I'm in no position to tell a seasoned negotiator like Paul Olson what was the right thing to do. But I've never seen it since.
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There is the issue immediately in nineteen six seventy nine with California legal guidelines. You say, if a crime was a result of adult thinking a minor could be charged and tried as an adult, tell us about that.
Well, it's far more clearcut today than it was in nineteen seventy nine. California politics was a strange thing at that time, but also jurisdictions and who was in charge of what, and the whole legality of what was happening in California was a crazy time for those who remember the seventies. I mean, I was just a child, but you know, you had such things that's going on with Patty Hurst and Stockholm syndrome, and you had Twinkie defenses. You had a number of different crazy sort of legal
aspects that were playing up, specially with insanity. Now it was decided quite quickly that Brenda was going to be tried as an adult. It was kind of just happening around Brenda, and she had a court, a pointed attorney who was trying to help her as best he could, and he was trying to get the information out and say, hey, this is a young, vulnerable girl who didn't know what she was doing. Toxicology reports came up that she was clean,
she wasn't on an influence of anything. She was quickly decided that it was just pure evil and she was going to be tried as an adult. And I think from that moment forward, it was just about damaged limitation. Let's try and find a way to give Brenda the least sentences possible. She eventually pleaded guilty. It is a long, dirty, dusty road for her to get to that place. She truly believed from the letters that she had written to
family and friends. She truly believed that she was going to get out out of jail not too long at all. I don't think she understood what she had done, or that even killing somebody was going to put her in jail for the rest of her life. She eventually plea bargained to twenty five to life, but under a law really strange home environment, circumstances and things that were happening
where I don't think she used her best judgment. If she had just accepted the guilty plea and got life in prison, she could very well be out of jail now. But by taking twenty five to life meant that she would serve at least twenty five years before her parole hearings even begin so Brendan is now in prison, I think, my personal opinion because of a misjudgment during the plea bargaining phase of pleading guilty. It's all outlined in the book, and I try and cover it. It is a really
you know, Dan, you've read the book. It's a lengthy piece of California litigation that's difficult to read, and even writing it, I had to go through a number of times to make sure that that I cover this, because it's not as easy as just saying, ah, she's tried as adult and yeah, she plea bargained twenty five to life. It's actually far more murkier than that.
Absolutely. You also say there's contributing factors, major ones like the media frenzy and her attorney Courter Point attorney tried to address that and won't get into the whole legal battle, but there was, you know, trying to fight for change of venue and things like that. In this book, you did wanted to dispel the mythology and the misinformation that
had sprang up almost immediately via the media. And also you talk about the damage that Brenda Spencer did to her own case, enduring damage to her case by some of the statements she did make, but also some of the misinformation that was reported by the media that was again in a frenzy to get any and new information regarding the case.
Yeah, in the book, I cover a number of different things. I try and I tackle her best friend at the time. I try and cover the family asposed as I can, to just sort of show you what type of actually quite typical family. I mean, they were divorced, but there was quite typical in that respect. They're originally from Arkansas and were gun owners. I don't think there's anything unusual about that in America actually, And I don't think there's anything usual about a sixteen year old having a twenty
two rifle. In fact, many do I know here over in the UK where I live now. It's quite a remarkable thing. And certainly to Bob Off who wrote the famous song I don't like Mondays taking her quote and making money out of it. He must have found that was a markable thing for a sixteen year old to have sixteen year old girl to have a gun. It just isn't in the United States. And his words in the song and what was happening with that at the same time they release it specifically at the time of
the trial. They then released the album at the same time as the guilty pleay. You know, every time it hits the news. There's also a second story about the release of this song, So they were following the trial quite nicely to capture some sales. As they call it, cash from chaos. But it's really the family and the father in particular that actually causes her so much trouble and grief. During this plea bargaining phase, I was unable to speak to her attorney, Michael McGlenn. He had retired
by the time I was writing the book. I did reach out to him and he said, look, any information you need. I've now learned that he was very ill at the time and has since passed away and making arrested base. He was a decent man. I was only able to get any new information out of him. But it was really well documented through the years of how Michael McGlynn was battling not just Brenda, but the fact that she was so stoic, but also the father who
was up some stuff. And I don't know if you want to get into this now, but it was for me. It is very key to how Brenda behaved at the time of the incident and certainly at the time leading into her imprisonment.
Yes, let's discuss that, because her father is a fascinating and an important part of this story.
Yeah, and I'm going to be I'm going to be brutally honest with you, Danny. He's a bit of a scumback. Yes, not not my favorite guy. Let's just tell the story. So Wally is this guy who's kind of a loner, really tight with his money. He had, He had a pretty good job, he had some good cash. He owned his house which had a very low mortgage, and he had some investment property down in the South County. It's believed that Brenda's family was poor and there was alcohol
over the house. Just not true. None of the police photo show any alcohol. There's no alcohol in your system. Wally was known to be a bit of a teetoter. He didn't drink at all. He had plenty of money. He was just stingy, and he was messy, and the house was a mess. And you know, Brenda often went to school with unwashed hair and had notts in her hair and was a tomboy. And you know, she was very close with her father, in that respect. So she
goes to jail. She's in juvenile Hall of Juvie as they call it in San Diego, and another girl comes to juvenile Hall who burned her house down. Her name was Shela McCoy. Now Brenda says that Shela McCoy really liked her, and that Shela McCoy wanted to be like Brenda because Brenda was this face of evil. She had become this sort of very famous criminal in San Diego
very quickly, as you can imagine. Well, the father took a shine to Sheila McCoy, and when she was moved from a closed facility at juvenile Hall across the road to an open facility, he helped her abscond from that facility and she moved in with him. So Wally, while his daughter is on trial for murder, shacks up with a seventeen year old arsonist and knocks her up and
then has a child with her. While Brenda is awaiting her plea mart So, well, Brenda is deciding what to do with the rest of her life, whether it's in jail or out of jail, or what decisions she's going to make. Her father is saying don't have an evasive trial plead guilty because I don't want the lawyers and the cops and everybody digging into our personal lives, because you're gonna find out that I'm a pedophile, that I
like little girls. And it's quite a disgusting moment in their family history is the fact that Brenda now is if she wants to do the right thing by her father. That's not saying anything, but actually, at that moment, with a little bit of clarity and maybe a little bit of guidance, Brenda shitld said, Hey, something's wrong at home, and my dad's a bad guy, and maybe things would have turned out different for her. That story moves on and Wally ends up having the baby with the shean McCoy.
She ends up disappearing out of the scene. She's remarried and done a number of things with her life, nothing of any note. They have a daughter named Brie, who's named after a local newscaster, Bree Walker in the area. Brie and Brenda never get along, they've never really even met, and she's skated off into the distance with Wally's money. He's passed away and she's living out of state and Brenda sort of has no family structure at all. It's quite a sad scenario for the Spencer family. All the
way around. The only person in her life is her mother, who's elderly and still lives in the same house around the corner. It's quite a tragic event. But that being said, I think if your child were a murderer, you'd have to make those decisions as to how you deal with that. Wally, on the other hand, saw it as an opportunity and thought, yeah, I'm going to shoot up to juvenile Hall and pray on some of the young girls that are that are imprisoned. There quite a remarkable thing.
With these damaging statements that she made to reporters and to Detective Olson, these things saying like she was happy that she killed a pig when she shot a police officer. Parole hearings, You describe all these parole hearings and various parole hearings when she was denied and she had to wait at a minimum of three years, four years, even five years. Tell us about the fight for parole and what she eventually does say at one of these parole hearings, or what the narrative becomes.
Well, you know, and these included the books, because it's interesting that, you know, initially, you know, she called in the reporters her first parole hearing to say that I'm not a cold, blodic killer. It wasn't me, you know, could have been in somebody else. She made a statement saying it wasn't me at all, and that seems quite remarkable considering, you know, she spoke to reporters, you know, in real time and told them what she was up to and what she wanted to do next she was
banged to rights. I don't think the investigators, you know, needed much work here. They just they just transcribed what she had already told the interrogators and the newspaper reporters. I'm not really sure where she felt that this was the best defense to get her out of prison, and was just lead wasn't me. But then over the course of time I think she becomes a bit more savvy
with the system in prison. She eventually says that, you know, I'm sorry for what I did, and it was because my father had been doing horrible things to me since I was a little girl, and was beating me up and doing all these horrible things. Was Wally didn't attend the parole hearing, so he had no idea this was going on, that she was saying horrible things about him. And of course the information about Wally marrying this seventeen year old, well sixteen at the time they started dating,
but seventeen at the time they marry. It's almost as if because the things about Brenda, from the song, from the alcohol in the house, from the fact that she was just this face of evil, and everyone believed that she was the face of evil. And I think they're right in saying that she was the face of evil. I think they turned a blind eye to things that were happening at the house. They just weren't having it.
And I think because Brenda waited, you know, nearly fourteen years before actually putting some meat on the bones of these acts usations. I was able to go through the records and go deep into the police files to find something from someone who had possibly mentioned that there was some sexual abuse or some demancy from the father with Brenda. I was unable to find anything other than one psychologist who said that Wally enjoyed Brenda combing his hair and
sitting on his lap and those sort of things. It's nothing that leads towards definitive answer about there being some sort of abuse, But it certainly does raise the question that nobody delve deeper into that question. I don't know how it would have got her off. The original trial certainly hasn't gotten her out on parole. And this story does change slightly, it becomes a little more developed. The
parole panel asker deeper questions. There's nothing told legally to back it up other than Brenda's word, But I personally tend to believe her. I'm not in a position to say she's not telling the truth. I think my question for Brenda, and I've never really had an opportunity to ask it with any tack, is why did you wait so long to tell the truth? If it is the truth, it does appear that Brenda is just changing her tack to to find the way that she can get out
of prison. It doesn't appear to be honest. If you read all of the parole hearing transcripts one after another. And that's why I put him in the book that way, so you can read the trail of events that she's taken to try and find her niche to get out of prison. So honestly from Bredda wouldn't go a long way, and I think we would also help a lot to maybe put some more information towards the phenomena school shootings that's happening in America. She's never ever said why she
did it. She's shown remorse, she said she was sorry. She even says she feels accountable for all school shootings because of what she did, But she doesn't actually give that clarity as to the mindset of why I go from being unhappy teenager to picking up a weapon shooting children. There's a big gap for me in that, and I try to uncover it as best I can.
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Terms and conditions apply. See website for details. You talk about corresponding with Brenda Spencer and any insights that you gained from that correspondence, and you do write that you tried to look for her reasons for the shooting and any kind of proof of abuse and other claims that she said that she was an addict since she was eleven years old and had done PCP. Again, there was no evidence that she could put forth or you could find to support that.
I think it's hard to go back to the nineteen seventies and find the evidence of a teenager doing drugs. In California, the nineteen seventies loads teenagers doing drugs. The curious thing is that she was tested for all drugs and alcohol at the time, and the toxicology reports came back negative. The only drug that she was not tested for because there wasn't testing available nine was PCP, and this just happens to be the only drug that she she says that she was on at the time, so
the convenience level was quite high for her. And again this is years later, so she claims she was on PCP and did this shooting, and it just happens to be the only drug they could test for. I think that's that core part of the parole here. It's so curious, is it's just very convenient at this stage.
You chronicle the influence that Brenda Spencer had and the continued phenomena of school shootings.
Tell us about that, well, you know, I call it the first modern school shooting. There were school shootings before Brenda. There's you know, obviously the famous Whitman shooting in Texas, which is considered a school shooting, but of course very different. I think the reason why I say Brenda is the first modern school shooter is just because the legacy that's left after the fact she did attend the school that she shot out, although she didn't attend school at the time.
It's more of a convenience shooting for her than than taking a weapon and going after a target, which is which seems to be to say that the way a lot of school shootings are happening now. I think this. I think her image who she was, the sheer disregard for authority. I think she became up until the Columbine I think she became the face of school shooting. And
I think since Columbine. We now find that they can be premeditated and and you know, planned and over the long term, whereas Brenda, I you know, there is an argument that it was planned beforehand, but I really don't think so. I think she had the idea that I was going to do it. She went out and did it, but not as planned as say Columbine. But I do feel that all other school shootings sort of got a
little bit of a kickstart from Brenda. The fact that she's still live and in prison and still kind of in a weird regard like the Manson sisters, She's held in some sort of there's there is some hero worship with her within a certain culture of America, and I find that pretty disturbing, and I know that I'm probably contributing to it with my book. I'm not going to lie. You and I both are in a business of death
and murder. But I truly hope that in writing the book, I'm listing the facts as they happen, as factually as I can so that we can learn from it. And it is sad that in doing that I may have accidentally glorified Brenda myself, when actually my intent was to learn from her, and and that's probably my only threat from writing the book. But she corresponded with me for years. We're still corresponding today. She's read the book. She's quite
a funny character. She's still seventeen into her mind. She's a real good example of arrested development. She's never really turned into an adult. She's never had any of the challenges adults would have. Certainly she's in prison. She hasn't been the most popular prisoners, and she hasn't been the most perfect of prisoners either. But now she's sixty years old. She's a beast. She has no teeth, her hearing is poor, her eyesight is poor. She's now just sitting in California
Institute for Women in the middle of the desert. I'm just trying to get through the days. And perhaps perhaps that's where she should be. I don't know. I'm not going to pass judgment on that, but I wish her well in her attempt to get out.
You right that she had a hearing or was to have a hearing in August twenty twenty two.
What of that, Well, yeah, there were a few reporters, and I was one of the lucky people to be selected to go to that hearing, and at the last minute, like the day before, she was really quite soon before the hearing, we were notified that only one person of the media was going to attend and transcribe the entire event.
Brenda rocked up and she did what was called a three year stip So a number of years ago, she's got a new attorney who has got this new plan for her to get out, and because she was a teenager, and they're going to, you know, look at the new laws, and laws are changing all the time in California, so it's a movie target. I think they decided that they were going to put a plan together where she was going to take all these boxes of the parole board wanted.
And I think they realized that getting close to her parole board hearing that she hadn't done all these things, and she went into them to say, hey, look, I've still got a few things to finish off that you've asked me to do. Can I get what's called a three year stipulation, which means that we're going to forego this parole hearing to give me more time to complete all the things you'd ask for my action plan. If you will and the pro board accepted that and gave
her what again, the three year stip. Now three year stip really means eighteen months, so actually, you know, a year from now, she might very well be having, you know, the parole hearing and this just kind of happens. And reason why that's important is because throughout her prisoner, her
her incarceration career, will call it. There have been victims who have been attending, one of which is cam Miller, who was actually shot by Brenda, and he's now a probation officer and he's intended every single probation hearing for Brenda. And in the state of California, I don't I've looked at the records. I can't find one person who is paroled where the victim attended the parole here. And I think he's making it his life mission. He certainly works
with in law enforcement. I think he's making his life mission to make sure he attends every one of these. He's in a position to get the information, and I think he'll be attending again in the year's time. And I think Brenda's chances of getting out are quite slim because of that, and cam Miller, I think, you know, he's got a really good case case to keep Brenda in. He was actually shot by her himself, and I think that's really vivid testimony. Whenever he speaks to these parole hearings,
it's all captured within the book. I try and capture what cam Miller says and and and his emotions. He's a he's a very very intelligent man, and I don't think he's gonna let Brenda get out anytime.
So you write about the memorial that was at the school, and then the school was torn down and another school built. Tell us a little bit about that.
San Diego is a growing city and it's forever changing. I think, actually half the time that at Cleveland Elementary, the school she shot from across the road from her house, the intendance was about one hundred and fifty five students. But they are building other schools around the area, bigger, more modern schools. I think it was probably destined to close in the next ten years anyway, but it certainly a shooting at that school does put the writing on
the wall. It reopened the following week after the shooting, and it was important to get the students back in to give some closure. A remarkable job from people who work in education in San Diego to get that school up and running. I do know that the psychologists in San Diego were then called upon to different school shootings around the country, certainly all the way into the eighties.
I'm currently working on a book about schools in Wyoming, and all of these psychologists were called up there in nineteen eighty six to assist as well. I think San Diego police force, I think Brenda. I think the psychology, the education, everything that surrounds his case has really kind of been the first template for school shootings. And I think, going into you know, twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two, when I was finishing the book and VOLDI happened at
rawb Elementary School to watch that on television. How different the police behaved that day compared to how the police behaved in January nineteen seventy nine. It was staggering, and it left me with an awful lot of sadness to think that forty three years later, we're not any better at stopping school shootings. And I think the book for me becomes more poignant now because Brenda was just a young girl with a gun who had a half farded plan.
These kids today are coming with much larger weapons, with a much larger plan, and the death tolls they're getting larger, and the police force are running away. It's harsh, but that's what happened in RVOLDI, and I'm really sad to hear it. And I hope that maybe maybe Ted Kazanak', the hero in San Diego, could make a phone call to Texas and to other jurisdictions and say, hey, guys, here's what I did, and you can be a hero too.
I just Vold, I think really upset me when I was finishing my book and putting it to the publisher.
So you you say that seems that no one, not society, not these police departments have learned enough or adequately enough to prevent any kind of shooting in the future.
Well, all I can say is that history is proving that to be true. You know, we've I'm not a doctor, I'm just a guy who wrote a book about about a school shooter, and I'm a crime historian, and I've followed the trails. School shootings are still happening, And if we were to find out that there was another school shooting tomorrow, would be surprised. We've had a number of active shooters in many different parts of society all over the United States. We've had a number in the last
few weeks. In fact, it just doesn't surprise us anymore that there there's an active shooter. And I really think that we need to start looking not just making categories of types of crimes, but actually look deeper into why they're choosing that form of outlet for the for the crime. And Brenda, Brenda, I think may hold some of the key to that. I don't know if she realizes it, but certainly she's one of the few that survived this
type of attack. And I'm not saying it's a hadible lecture thing where she's going to help us find other shooters. I'm not saying that, but there's certainly is some education that we could get from Brenda. And nobody has gone to speak to her. She's spoken to no one in forty years. I was the first person to approach her about writing a book. I was the first one to
approach her about her her relationship with her father. I found that really shocking that here we have a real life school shooter who might be able to give us some insight as to her thinking, and no one's tried to broach the subject. Instead, we want to lock her away, put her in prison, pretend it never happened, just make her the face of evil while everyone around her is making money off of her image. I think there's something a bit diabolical about that. I'm being honest with you again.
Absolutely, I have to agree after reading your book and the story of I don't like Monday's. The song and the fame and success that Bob Geldoff and the boomtown Rats had for themselves via this song just didn't come true. And all the negativity that was associated with it really prevented this song from the kind of success that the record company and the boomtown Rats thought.
It might well say that, but an actual fact, you know, over here in the UK it was a huge number one for a number of weeks springboarded. Bob Geldoff is the position to create something like Live Aid and you know his help for Africa. You know. In the book, I do two chapters on Bob Geldoff to explain who he is and how his life is actually just as tragic as some of the victims from the school shooting. You know, Bob's had a real tough time of it
as well, and you know I wish him luck. Making that song about Brenda was a pure attempt to make money and to corner the American market, and it backfired horrifically for him. I don't feel that bad for Bob in that respect, right his prison life is parbaty, very different from Bob's, but yet they both have fame for the same event.
Absolutely, I want to thank you so much and Lee Hunt for coming on and talking about your book. I don't like Mondays, The True story behind America's first modern school shooting. I know this is a Wild Blue Press release and it's available on Amazon. Tell us about that.
Wild Blue Press is a great, great option for first time authors specifically and mostly about true crime, but they do other different genres. It's a great publisher. Check it out at wildbluepress dot com and you can go on Amazon. Enley Hunt, I don't like Mondays. It's about the first modern school shooter, Brenda Spencer, and that's the best way to just pick up the book, give it a read, let me know what you think. Always available online, you should be able to find me.
Thank you so much, Anne Lee Hunt, I don't like mondays the true story behind America's first modern school shooting. Thank you so much for this interview, and good night,