I Don't Like Mondays

An in-depth look into America’s first modern school shooting, featuring interviews with witnesses, local reporters, and the killer herself.

In 1979, Brenda Spencer, a seemingly average teenage girl living in a nice suburban neighborhood, made and executed plans that would place her in infamy and set a violent and terrifying national precedent. She receives a rifle for Christmas and a month later set her sights and opens 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 fateful day, presenting the raw and riveting facts for the first time. This book lays bare this seemingly average teenage girl’s brutal motives and subsequent arrest.

N. Leigh 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 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.