Garfield Beat Her To It

Here's your soundtrack for the post

September 18th, 1978 was an auspicious day in history. It was a hot (high of 31°C) September day in Muncie, Indiana, and the work-week was just starting. It was a sweaty Autumn day. It was the first time that Garfield the cat said, "I hate Mondays." He wasn't the first person to declare a hatred of Mondays, and he certainly wouldn't be the last. Perhaps the second most famous declaration against Mondays would take place less than a year later.

Bob Geldof, perhaps best known nowadays for his charitable works, once wrote a song for his band the Boomtown Rats called "I Don't Like Mondays" (which you're hopefully listening to right now via the YouTube clip above). The thing is though, the line "I don't like Mondays" wasn't his, not really. He got it from a piece of breaking news he saw coming over the telex while doing a radio interview in January 1979.

Telex: Think a old-timey stock ticker combined with a
typewriter, only it gives news instead of stock info.

What was the news coming in over the wire? That 16 year old Brenda Ann Spencer had decided that a good way to liven up her boring Monday was to start taking pot shots at the elementary school across the street from her house with a .22 rifle.

Geldof said, regarding the writing of the song:

I read it as it came out. Not liking Mondays as a reason for doing somebody in, is a bit strange. ... And the journalists interviewing her said, 'Tell me why?' It was such a senseless act. It was the perfect senseless act and this was the perfect senseless reason for doing it. So perhaps I wrote the perfect senseless song to illustrate it.

I have to agree with Bob, that's a pretty weird reason for deciding to take thirty shots at a crowd of children. According to Spencer, that's not entirely the whole story though, although I should note that the parole board hasn't been convinced by her justifications. She has, at various points, claimed that she was on drugs at the time (PCP & alcohol) and that she was physically and sexually abused as a child. If either were true, the killings wouldn't be forgivable, but at least they'd make a little more sense than "I don't like Mondays."

Unfortunately, I tend to agree with the parole board on this. There's no evidence that she was on drugs at the time (she claims that the prosecution and her attorney conspired to hide the evidence), and initial police reports say that even though there was plenty of alcohol in her house at the time of her arrest, she didn't appear to be intoxicated. Add in that she told them that she had fantasies about becoming a sniper. And she had bragged to classmates that "she was going to do something big to get on TV," the week before. As for the abuse thing? The first time she mentioned it was at a parole hearing in 2001, not at any of the court mandated counseling sessions she'd had in the twenty years she'd been incarcerated. I'm not saying that's proof that she wasn't abused (far from it), but still, it gives me doubts. If I was creeping up on 40 years old and had spent most of my life in prison, I'd start looking for reasons for the parole board to look on my case with some sympathy.

Unless I was worried about ending up like Brooks Hatlen...

So, she put thirty bullets into a group of kids, what was the result? Two men killed (the principal and the janitor), eight kids and one police officer injured. The principal, one Burton Wragg, was actually shot and killed while saving the life of one Chris Stanley who went on to become a teacher himself. Mike Suchar, the janitor, was killed while he tried to drag Wragg's body to somewhere that he could get medical attention. Mary Clark, aged 8 at the time, was shot and didn't tell anyone for several hours. That kid was either in shock, or she had an unhealthy obsession with school. As for the police officer, one Rob Robb (not making that up, I swear), he was shot through the neck but was stabilized by the time the news had hit the papers.

After a long standoff with the police, Brenda eventually gave herself up to the police, and she's been in prison the entire time since, barring her time in court, which isn't surprising given the comments she made either during the standoff or during the time before her trial:

• "I just did it for the fun of it. I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day. I have to go now. I shot a pig. I think and I want to shoot more. I'm having too much fun [to surrender]."
• "I had no reason for it, and it was just a lot of fun"
• "It was just like shooting ducks in a pond"
• "[The children] looked like a herd of cows standing around; it was really easy pickings"
•  That she was going to "come out shooting"

"I Don't Like Mondays": A problem better solved with lasagna than with a rifle.

---

Sources:
Telex image taken from Al-Ahlia Contracting Group
Image of Brooks hanging taken from JoBlo.com


Indiana State Climate Office
The Milwaukee Journal, Jan 29, 1979 edition
The Boomtown Rats website - it seems to be the official fan-website, not the offficial band website
San Diego Union-Tribune article on Chris Stanley
Wikpedia articles on I Don't Like Mondays and Brenda Ann Spencer
Snopes.com

One edit made out of respect for the deceased