Crime at Bedtime30 Juli 2025

"I don't like Mondays" Inside the Mind of Brenda Ann Spencer

On a quiet Monday morning in January 1979, the peace outside Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego was shattered by gunfire. Sixteen-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer, armed with a .22-calibre rifle her father had given her for Christmas, opened fire from the window of her home—just across the street from the school gates.

In a shooting that stunned the nation, Spencer killed the principal and a custodian as they tried to protect children, and wounded eight students and a police officer. When asked why she did it, her response would become one of the most haunting quotes in American criminal history:

“I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.”

In this episode we explore the disturbing life of Brenda Ann Spencer. From her neglected and troubled upbringing to the many red flags ignored by adults and authorities, we uncover the events that led up to that horrific day. We follow the chaos of the shooting, the chilling phone call to a journalist, and the police standoff that followed. We then trace her path through the justice system, where she was tried as an adult, and examine her life behind bars, parole hearings, and the claims of abuse that emerged years later.

This is not just the story of a school shooting. It’s the story of a system that failed to see what was coming—and the lives that changed forever because of it.

Become a Patreon or Apple + subscriber now for ealry and ad free access from as little as $1.69 a week. All the details here

Subscribe to Crime at Bedtimes Youtube channel HERE

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(275)

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: Andrew Cunanan's Killing Spree

The assassination of Gianni Versace on the 15th of July 1997 was the shocking end of one of the deadliest killing sprees in modern American history. On that summer morning, the world-famous Italian fa...

19 Aug 35min

The Attack on Nancy Kerrigan: The Tonya Harding Olympic Scandal

The attack on Nancy Kerrigan on the 6th of January 1994 became one of the most notorious scandals in the history of the Olympic Games, and it involved one of the most famous rivalries in sport: Nancy ...

16 Aug 31min

If It Doesn't Fit: The O.J. Simpson Case

At approximately 12 minutes past midnight on the morning of Monday the 13th of June 1994, in the leafy Los Angeles neighbourhood of Brentwood, a group of residents on South Bundy Drive were woken by t...

12 Aug 34min

The Thing on the Hill: The Mothman of Point Pleasant

Shortly after midnight on the morning of Tuesday the 15th of November 1966, in the small Ohio River town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in the county of Mason, two young married couples in a black ...

11 Aug 30min

Listen in app The Firing Squad: Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran

At approximately 12:35 in the morning on Wednesday the 29th of April 2015, in a small clearing in the jungle of a prison island called Nusa Kambangan, off the southern coast of Central Java in Indones...

9 Aug 33min

The Woman Who Took the Cartel's Mother: Yadira Guillermo García

On the morning of Tuesday the 13th of December 2016, a video began to circulate on Mexican social media that would, within 48 hours, be seen by millions of people around the world. It had been recorde...

5 Aug 29min

The Fishermen and the Craft: The Pascagoula Abduction

At approximately 11 o'clock on the evening of Thursday the 11th of October 1973, two men walked into the Jackson County Sheriff's Office in the small Gulf Coast city of Pascagoula, Mississippi, and to...

4 Aug 31min

The Elf Cleric: The Menhaz Zaman Murders

At approximately 10 o'clock on the evening of Saturday the 27th of July 2019, a 23-year-old man in the Toronto suburb of Markham, Ontario, logged in to a private chat server on the messaging app Disco...

2 Aug 31min