RedHanded - Episode 310 - Brenda Spencer: ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

School shootings are now tragically commonplace in the US. But in 1979, when Brenda Spencer opened fire on Cleveland Elementary School, it took everyone by surprise. Killing two adults and injuring nine children – allegedly just because she didn’t like Mondays – Brenda has lived on in infamy as one of America’s first school shooters, immortalised by Bob Geldof and The Boomtown Rats.Follow us on social media:InstagramTwitterVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And welcome and bienvenue to episode 776 of Red Handed, where I am once again breaking the first rule of podcasting. Because I left my headphones upstairs. Oh no. So that's where we are with that. Nope. And I've been up and down those stairs three times in the past 15 minutes.

And my legs are like, no more, please no more. You've been doing more body pumping. I have. I feel like it's very addictive because it's good because they're like 45 minute classes yeah they're in the morning and once i've booked them if you don't cancel before four hours they block you out of the system i have i have been victim to that many times so it's very handy because once you've booked it and then you wake up in the morning, you're like, I really don't want to go. You have to.

That is good. Because I'm like, well, I don't want to get kicked out of the system. I love systems. They're your favorite. I'm just like, look, I understand. The logic is there. So I'm not going to be a dick about it. I woke up on Sunday morning and I'd booked one for 9.30.

On a sun Sabbath. I know. And I was like, I'd booked one for 9.30. On a sun Sabbath. I know. And I was like, I don't want to go. And I was like to ACD face, come, do you want to come? Do you want to come to the gym with me? And he was like, absolutely fucking not. So I had to go. But then once it was done, I came back and I felt fucking great.

And I was like, what have you been doing with your day? Precisely nothing. I'm going to go have a shower, make me some breakfast. So I feel like they're, yeah, they're very addictive. And I feel like I'm going now. I like the people, start making some gym friends with some of the other ladies who go. And I've learned that if you go to the morning classes, you are in the de facto hardcore group. I bet, yeah. Because the other day I couldn't go in the morning. So I went to like the 6.30 class.

And I was like, you fucking pussies. It was so different. And now I was like, do you know what? I'm only going to go to the morning classes because they're my people now. But no, I'm having a great time. The pain is now just a minor lingering in my legs rather than a literal crippling of my physical being which I was enduring a couple of weeks ago and no it's been great it's been good so yeah I just feel like it's fast easy effective yeah get it done tick next so yes I'll tell you what's next what's next do you know what day it is

is it Monday it's Monday and I don't like them. No, and nor does somebody else. Allegedly, no memory of actually saying it. So, we've got another. It is a school shooting, but people are contentious about it. People make the argument that it's not technically a school shooting because she didn't go there.

But I'm also like, is that enough of a point? I don't think it is. What's your point? But like people really take issue with it. So like obviously Columbine is often called the first American school shooting. But in my book, it was not. The first one was actually 20 years before in San Carlos, California. And the shooter's reason for their crime was the inspiration behind the Boomtown Rats hit single, I Don't Like Mondays.

Which if you Google the Boomtown Rats, I guarantee you, you will maybe recognize one other song of theirs, which is Rat Trap. Oh, okay. I won't. I won't even bother. I Don't Like Mondays was number one in 30 countries across the world. And I kind of feel like once you've done one of those, fine. Do whatever you want. Exactly. And it's also been in my head for weeks. Can you give us a little song? I have no idea what this sounds like. You don't know the song? I don't think I know the song. Tell me why I don't like Mondays. Tell me why I don't like Mondays.

I don't think I've heard that. What? No. That is insane. That is insane to me. I will promise to go listen to it immediately after this episode is over. Well, despite Cerise's utter ignorance. The only thing that's in my head these days is the fucking atrocious songs that get played in those said gym classes.

And it is the same. This is my issue. This is my only point of umbrage with the whole thing. Is that you go and you're like, oh, it's that song. Then it's this song. And they don't play the whole song. They just play the bit to make you do the corresponding activity. And I was like, now I just have these four songs stuck in my head.

And they're all horrible, horrible songs. So yes, I will gladly replace it with I Don't Like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats. Although that song was banned by most radio stations in the United States, the lyrics are the reason that we all know the killer's name. Wow. Let's get into it. Differently to any other school shooter that might swim into your mind, as her name might suggest, Brenda Spencer was not a 14-year-old incel. She was not a ostracised goth man in a trench coat.

Even though that's not what happened in Columbine. Brenda Spencer was a 16-year-old girl. So quite a lot of Brenda's childhood is pretty difficult to verify. Even some aspects of the crime are hard to pin down. Because Brenda Spencer never had a trial. But we're going to do our best to unpick this pickly story anyway. In San Carlos, San Diego County, Monday the 29th of January 1979, it was a bit colder than usual.

There was even frost on the ground, which for Southern California is quite something. At around 8am, parents were dropping their kids off at the Grover Cleveland Elementary School. I had to look up who Grover Cleveland is. Who is Grover Cleveland? I believe, and I could be wrong, it's happened before, I believe he was the first ever president of the United States

to serve two terms. Oh, well, there you go. So at 8.15am, principal of the school, Burton Ragg, opened the gates to let the children in, like he did every morning. Then he went inside and grabbed himself a cup of coffee let the children in like he did every morning. Then he went inside and grabbed himself a cup of coffee with another teacher in his office. Nine-year-old Monica Selvig was walking herself to school when out of nowhere she was thrown to the ground with a searing pain

in her left side. She was about 30 foot from the school building and she just couldn't make sense of what had just happened. She thought that the noise that accompanied her pain was a car backfiring. It wasn't. Eight-year-old Mary Clark was next. A bullet whistled through her stomach, but not wanting to cause a fuss, Mary Clark got up and walked into the school building. At almost exactly the same time, Greg Verner, also eight years old, was shot. The bullet hit his pelvis, and he fell on the school driveway.

The shots couldn't be heard from the school's car park and a lot of the parents drove away having no idea what was going on. Some had no idea until they got home and turned on the news. Ten-year-old Crystal Hardy thought the noises she could hear were firecrackers. Boys had brought them into school before. But before she knew it, Crystal was shot through her wrist. Thankfully, the bullet that had come from a.22-caliber rifle missed all of her bones and vital tendons.

Crystal took herself off to the nurse's office, where she was given the primary school cure-all, a paper towel, probably wet. What's happening? I feel like this is so horrific, I hate even, like like saying these sentences in this paragraph because basically a bunch of seven year olds and eight year olds getting shot. And they're just like, I don't want to make a fuss. I'll just get up and go inside. Let me go get a paper towel. Be given a paper towel by an adult.

Quite. I'm baffled. A mere moments later, seven-year-old Audrey Stites saw Monica Selvig and Greg Werner lying on the ground outside of the school building. Before Audrey could take in what she was looking at and understand why all of the other children were screaming and running, Audrey, too, was shot in her right shoulder, and she realised once she got into the school building that she had been burned by a second bullet on both of her thighs. It's gone through her legs, basically. Jesus Christ. In less than two minutes, five children had been shot, and nobody had any idea where the bullets were coming from. Principal Rag looked out of his office window

and saw Monica and Greg lying on the ground. He ran out of the building towards his fallen students and right into the shooter's eyeline. Children and teachers looked on in disbelief as Principal Burton Rag was shot twice in the chest and fell to the ground. Michael Suka, the head custodian of the school and everyone's favourite career veteran ran towards Monica, Greg and Principal Rag. Everyone called Michael, Mr Mike. Mr Mike was shot down as well. Simultaneously, the fire alarm sounded, which may have been an attempt to organise the situation

but actually made things a lot worse. The alarm just meant that a lot of children stopped moving and waited for instruction from the grown-ups that would never come. And it was then that nine-year-old Christy Bewley was shot twice. She vomited because of the shock. And blood seeped through her Winnie the Pooh t-shirt. Oh my God. Okay, I don't know the story because I didn't do the research for this.

You did, Hannah. I'm struggling to see how we get back to a point where this person who's doing the shooting is not cold-hearted. Christy, later on in the day, would find a third bullet inside her hood. Moments later, the 10-year-old Julie Robles heard the commotion. She walked up to the school and saw Principal Rag bleeding on the ground. A bullet whistled through her side. The impact was so great that it knocked off her little glasses. Julie managed to pick them up and run into the nurse's office.

By now we're at 8.20am, and all of the things you just heard happened astonishingly quickly, or maybe not that astonishing for rapid sniper fire. I feel like it just feels like it's happening so quickly because so much is happening, but the reality is it's just shot, shot, shot. And it was now apparent to everyone that was not blindly panicking where those shots were coming from.

The bullets were coming from the house directly across the road from the school, 6356 Lake Alton Avenue. Although teachers were doing their best to guide all of the children into the safety of the concrete school building, the kids still arriving obviously had no idea what was going on. And so they were walking right into the line of fire. One of those children was Charles A. Miller III, but everyone called him Cam.

The nine-year-old was dropped off by his mum and as he walked to school, a bullet ripped through his shoulder, narrowly missing his heart. He managed to find his teacher and just said, I think I've been shot. The first emergency call from the school shooting scene was placed at 8.25am. Interestingly, in 1979, 911 as a system was not fully operational in San Diego County.

In the UK, we have had a fully operational system since 1939. Oh, interesting. So I believe it was, so it's a much greater area. So it's not specific to local police stations. So it could have taken a bit longer than it would now, but I don't think it's that significant. I just thought it was interesting. And fully connected or not, response officers were sent to Cleveland Elementary School immediately.

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But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts. Officer Robert Robb. No. Yes, seriously. That is his name.

Why, why, why, why? Because if you're having a son, chances are he's not going to change his surname after he gets married. So that is his actual birth name that he was given. Yeah. Why on earth, Mr. and Mrs. Rob, would you name your son Robert? Robert Rob Bobinson. Just leave it alone. But maybe it's good to give your child a strange name.

I don't know. So obviously um got a house hooray yay finally only took fucking forever but acd face and i bought a house and uh they do you obviously your credit checks blah blah to get the mortgage in principle and then we had to download this app called true fort where we then had to scan our faces give them our passport scan etc so they can check that you are a real person blah blah blah and then we get an email the next day and uh it's from them saying could you just clarify that this is nothing to do with you talking to acd face and it's somebody with the same exact name as him who

was absconded from the police and is currently on the run in this country and he's got quite an unusual surname it is an unusual surname and yeah it was just so funny because they were just like is this is this you because that person is currently on the lam and i was just like how can you even prove it's not you like how can you even prove it's not you but i'm willing to bet that there are far fewer robert robs kicking about so maybe do give your kid a shit name because then maybe we won't have to answer any awkward questions other than why is your name so shit other than why is your name I'm not Robert Robb's biggest fan oh okay so fuck Robert Robb well kind of like he does get shot so

like you can't be like but in the documentary that I watched in this case basically they're discussing you know if Brenda ever got parole, like what would happen? And he was like, I would shoot her. He said that he would kill her. He was like, I would load up my weapons and I would go and find her. Oh dear. So Robert Robb, I'm sorry that happened to you, but I'm probably not going to be your friend.

And also like, obviously, turning up at the scene of a crime where multiple children have been shot is no doubt going to traumatise you. But that is scary for a police officer to be saying. If it's the parent of a child, I can wholeheartedly understand why they would say something like that. You are a police officer, sir. Don't say that you're going to commit an extrajudicial killing. Yeah. So Officer Robert Robb headed into the chaos that morning wearing a bulletproof vest.

Armed with a first aid kit, he walked up to the principal and Mr Mike who were lying on the ground, but he spilled the kit all over the floor. A first aid kit? Where are the paramedics? Well, 911 doesn't work properly. They're on their way. So it's just fucking Officer Robert Robb in a fucking box full of Super Ted stickers. Yeah. Plasters. Whatever. What? And as Robert Robb looked down at all of the medical supplies that

he had dropped on the floor, a bullet went right into the side of his neck. Oh. Knicking his carotid artery and eventually lodging in his fifth thoracic vertebrae, which caused him lifelong chronic pain. He claims in the documentary that it meant he couldn't work. That's not what I've read elsewhere. I don't know. Again, it may not have been a direct result of the

injury, but presumably if he's got enough PTSD after being shot in the neck, maybe that was what stopped him being able to work. Possibly. Another officer got hold of a bin lorry, which I believe Americans call a trash truck, and drove it in front of the house where the shots were coming from. And in doing that, he blocked the police, the children and the teachers who hadn't already been shot from the incoming firestorm. The San Diego Police Department sent two homicide teams and a SWAT team. And I recently learned what SWAT stands for. Can you guess? I feel like I knew at some point.

Swift. Taylor Swift, yeah. Taylor Swift. Uh, super... I don't know. What does it stand for? Special weapons and tactics. That makes sense.

So then they did the next natural thing. San Diego police called the people who lived in or who were associated with the house that the bullets were coming from. 6356 Lake Atlin Avenue belonged to a local man called Wally Spencer. Wally was at work at a nearby university, so he couldn't be the shooter. Then the police called Wally's ex-wife, Dot, and she was at work too, counting the winnings at a golf tournament a few miles away. So that left just one family member who could be in the house and taking aim. In 6356 Lake Atlin Avenue,

the phone rang and 16-year-old Brenda Spencer answered it. And you might be thinking, okay, great, the police have made contact and they can make a start of getting to the bottom of what the fuck is going on in that house. But you, mon saucisse, are wrong. It was not the San Diego Police Department doing the dialing. On the other end of the phone was a reporter from the San Diego Evening Tribune

called Frank Saldana. Frank had been listening to police correspondence on his NARC scanner and had quickly figured out that there was something horribly wrong down at Cleveland Elementary in San Carlos. So he did what the Tribune always did. He started to ring around the houses close to the school to see if anyone could see what was going on. Little did this reporter know he was speaking to the shooter herself just after 9am. Brenda Spencer told the man on the phone that she had seen the whole thing, and that a 16-year-old girl was the gunman.

When asked where the shots were coming from, Brenda replied, 6356 Lake Atlin Avenue. Frank paused. Isn't that your address? He asked. Sure. Who do you think did it? Was Brenda's reply before she hung up the phone. Brenda indeed had done it. She had fired 36 rounds through the shattered glass of her front door at the primary school across the street with a.22 calibre rifle that her dad had bought her for Christmas the month before. Now if you watch the documentary on this case, you will see a gun enthusiast explaining that.22s are the most popular weapon for school shooters because they have almost no

recoil. Yeah, he's just like, it's an easy gun. It's an easy, easy gun to use. Sure. Anyone, including a 16-year-old girl, can wield it to murder a bunch of children. Now, you'll also see in the documentary a car at a driving range with a bumper sticker that reads, Hey, dumbass, it's a lack of parenting, not guns. Which in San Carlos feels a little close to the bone, as we will go on to discover. I just think, and I have had multiple personal Instagram DMs about how my gun views are wrong and how guns aren't the problem and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What I can never get away from is that we don't have guns in this country. And you know what else we don't have? School shootings. I just don't see how you cannot connect the two things. I just don't. I don't get

it. And I don't think most people in America think that. All of the surveys that have ever been done on this topic show an overwhelming support by the majority of Americans for sensible, sane gun reform. Nobody really advocates for like ridding America completely of guns. It's part of their culture. It's like baked into the constitution. They feel very passionately about it. And they have a constitution as opposed to the UK where we don't have it. So it is harder to change those rules.

But unequivocally, people's tendency is for stronger background checks you know sensible gun reform but i think that obviously we've talked about this before the nra has incredible powerful lobbyists who own the asses of politicians and also and i'll say this and i know this will be incredibly unpopular but it is also true that the Democrats won't do anything about it because it's too useful a political football for them to kick into their own goal every time they need to win an election like they do with abortion. If they wanted to change it, they could have. So nobody really gives a shit about kids getting shot in America, apart from actual normal people who send their kids to school where they might get shot. I just mean that none of the politicians there are incentivized to actually solve this problem, which is why it will never get solved. Not because ordinary Americans don't want it solved. Let's leave politics pocket where it is and get back to Frank Saldana, the journalist.

He had no idea that Brenda was being serious about the school shooting. He was sure that the young girl had to be joking. So he rang her back. Brenda picked up quickly and told the reporter very calmly, I just started shooting. That's it. I just did it for the fun of it. And then Brenda allegedly uttered the sentence that would make her famous and echo around the globe for decades to come. I just don't like Mondays. She followed up this statement with, Do you like Mondays? I did this because it's a way to cheer up the day. Nobody likes Mondays. Saldana told Brenda that she had shot three or four people,

and she said, Is that all? I saw a lot of feathers fly. I nailed me a good pig, and I want to shoot some more. And then Brenda hung up the phone again. Frank Saldana, with a print deadline rapidly approaching, got to writing and handed over comms to a colleague of his, Gus Stevens. Brenda told Gus Stevens that she had never shot a person before

but that she had been in some fights that never lasted that long because she would open up her opponent's heads with a cleaver. Mark that. Brenda lies. She lies a lot. Yes. So it makes it very difficult to extract what she means and what she doesn't. Okay.

She never opened anyone's head with a cleaver. Yeah, I mean, I assumed as much. Brenda also said that she'd only come up with the shooting idea the week before. Now, all of this is allegedly because it was said to the press, not to the police. There is no official recording of it that we know of, something that Brenda would hold on to later. It's interesting because it's such a shocking thing to say that you kind of do believe that she did say it. Like it's quite a specific thing for a journalist to make up. I don't know.

I think obviously it's like you said, that statement and then the corresponding song is what made it such like a thing that everybody was talking about, right, that made it so infamous. But I'm also like, and maybe it's just we haven't got to that part of the story yet to really dig into it, but I'm like, does it matter? Like why isn't it only, like show a bunch of kids.

Like what does it matter what she said so i don't know i feel like somebody who was troubled enough to shoot a bunch of like elementary school children may or may not say crazy shit is it relevant i don't know is it relevant to the story and why it became so i don't know woven into like urban folklore almost, possibly. I don't know. I don't think we would even know her name if it wasn't for the Boomtown Rat song. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, let's continue on. Like we said at the start, to this day,

Brenda claims that she has absolutely no memory of telling anybody that she didn't like Mondays. She says in interviews, she's like, show me the recording. Yeah. Did I say it? I don't remember Mondays. She says in interviews, she's like, show me the recording. Yeah. Did I say it? I don't remember saying it. Yeah. And the recording doesn't exist because it was a journalist, not the police. Yeah.

But what Brenda does remember saying is that she hadn't been aiming for anyone in particular. She just liked red and blue jackets. The San Diego Tribune passed on all this information to a rather pissed off police department who had been trying to get through to Brenda themselves for about 20 minutes. The Tribune were told in no uncertain terms to back the fuck off, which is completely fair. And look, journalists are going to do what journalists are going to do. They're there to

find a story. So obviously they are going to start canvassing around, asking people if they've seen anything. They just so happen to get through to the person in question themselves. Meanwhile, across the road, emergency services were rushing children and adults to hospital. Principal Burton Ragg died 35 minutes after he arrived in an ambulance. His wife has kept her house exactly the same as the morning he left. Oh, Principal Ragg. Mr. Mike was announced dead on arrival. No, Mr Mike.

Yes, Mr Mike is gone, I'm afraid. Thankfully, although some of them needed urgent surgery to stem internal bleeding, every single one of the children that were shot that day survived. Wow. Back at Cleveland Elementary at 9.45, negotiator Detective Chet Thurston was on the scene. I think Chet is the second to Brad as the most American name

that has ever existed. Detective Chet set up shop in a neighbouring house's bathroom and attempted to make contact with the 16-year-old school shooter. Other officers were busy trying to get sense out of Wally Spencer, Brenda's incoherent father. He was no help at all, he couldn't even give an accurate layout of the house. All he managed to communicate to authorities was that Brenda had told him that she was too unwell that morning to go to her nearby high school, and also that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. At 12.06, Brenda answered the phone to Detective Chet, who had isolated her landline so only he could get through.

Brenda told Detective Chet that the scope on her rifle was on the wonk, so she couldn't shoot straight and she refused to surrender, claiming she was having too much fun. She also said a lot of other fucked up things during this conversation and we're going to give you the cliff notes. Otherwise, we'll be here all day brenda said that it was fun to see kids being shot in a group that she had been drinking and taking drugs for days and that her dad had been supporting her dope habit for five years brenda

added that she had plenty more ammunition and that she was about to reload her rifle later on brenda's like oh i was so fucked like, I didn't know what I was saying. And all I could think about when I was reading about it was drinking out of cups. Drinking out of cups, been a bitch. Not my chair, not my problem. Like, I think she wants... She wants people to think that, like,

she had absolutely no idea what she was saying and she was just anything that came into her head, like drinking out of cups. It's not. It's not not that it's just not somehow detective chet persuaded brenda that coming out of the house was a much better idea than reloading her rifle brenda asked detective chet if she shot at the SWAT team would they shoot her back detective chet assured brenda that the SWAT team absolutely would shoot her back and their scopes weren't out of whack and they were a much better shot than she was. And this part of

the conversation has led some to believe that Brenda fully intended suicide by cop that day, but lost her nerve at the last minute. In any case, all £91 of Brenda Spencer, which is six and a half stone, tiny. I mean, I'm sure you've all seen the picture of her being escorted. She's got this long hanging hair. She's tiny. She's tiny. And she remains tiny for most of her adult life. She walked out of her adult home carrying her Christmas present rifle and her pellet gun wrapped in a grey jumper. Brenda walked into the middle of the driveway, unwrapped the weapons and laid them on the concrete. Then she went inside and got straight back on the phone. Then she walked out again with a handful of ammunition and was apprehended by police at 3.06pm and she told

her dad to go and get screwed on her way past him. Soon local TV crews were broadcasting live from the scene and lots of parents were ready to give interviews to the press. Everyone had something to say. One anonymous woman said that Brenda had bragged about one day making a living as a sniper, and that she had always wanted to kill cops. Maybe some of that is true. Perhaps even all of it.

We can't tell you. But what we can tell you is how incredibly rare female shooters are. And as we said at the top of the show, Brenda isn't counted by most as a school shooter. So you won't see her mentioned in any social commentary on the development of the school shooter. It's really interesting, actually, because there are obviously a lot of books out there on, you know, school shooters as a phenomenon and blah, blah, blah. She's never in them. And actually, a fact check fairy from earlier when I referred to her as the first ever school shooting.

She actually wasn't. There was another one in Texas, but no one died. So those two, the Texas one, which I think was in 1976 and Brenda in 1979, kind of aren't part of the sphere of school shootings which i think is really interesting what we do know now is that mass shooters school shooters mass shooters whatever are much more likely to be male in fact in 2023 alone 136 mass shootings in the united states were carried out by men and just four were carried out by women which which again is interesting, isn't it? As to like the psychology of why female mass shooters are so rare. Because it is an element in which, if you think of a gun, especially a.22, which as we've mentioned in this episode, it has almost no recoil, right?

So even a slight woman like Brenda, who's fucking tiny, could use it to cause that kind of havoc. Why do women therefore not use that as a way to level out the playing field if they are going to go on a rampage? It is interesting as to why mass shooters tend to be male. But in 1979, no one was asking any of these questions. Nobody knew any of that because this was the first of its kind. So now we have the story of that morning. Let's get to know our shooter. Who is Brenda Spencer?

And why did she pick up that gun and shoot our innocent children? Most documentaries make out that Brenda was totally normal and all of this came out of nowhere. Dot, Brenda's mum, tells the cameras that Brenda was an active, well-behaved, good child who had never been in trouble until that day in 1979. Dot places the blame squarely on Wally, even going as far as to say that he should be the one in prison for buying Brenda that gun.

But I, Hannah Maguire of Stoke Newington, United Kingdom, England, the world, the universe, do not trust Dot as far as I can fucking shove her, for several reasons. Firstly, when Dot was told by the police that her child was literally sniping at other children and that she needed to get down to the scene straight away, Dot said no. She was like, I'm at work, I can't come. Dot said that she couldn't go to her daughter who was literally murdering people because she was at work.

And Dot also fails to mention in the documentary that she barely saw her daughter Brenda after she and Wally divorced when Brenda was just nine years old. You also won't read basically anywhere that Brenda had been in a bunch of trouble before that fateful day. She had been expelled for truancy and was attending an alternative school for wayward high schoolers. On top of that, the year before the shooting, Brenda had broken into Cleveland Elementary and vandalised the building, smashing windows and spraying fire extinguishers all over the place. She was actually arrested for this,

so there is no way we can say she was a well-behaved good girl. Yeah, it's kind of farcical. Like, most of the things you all read were like, oh, she had no idea, she was a bit weird, but like, came out, absolutely not. She was shooting every weekend, very depressed, suicidal inclination, etc. And I think what often gets skipped over is that it's in the her brother and her sister, Scott and Teresa, three children, to go into full-time custody with the father rather than the mother at that time in history is fucking nuts. Like, that never happens. At any point in history, for the court to award full custodial rights to the father is alarming. Yeah. And Dot clearly just put up no fight.

And what she said, she was like, oh, well, Wally only wanted the kids so he wouldn't have to pay me child support. Sure. That doesn't make sense, Dot. No, of course it doesn't make any sense. And yeah, so I think it's interesting, though. I think it's interesting, though, because like typically with cases like this, you do see a lot of misinformation. Like we hinted at with the Columbine case. I mean, how much of that, even to this day, decades after it happened and after countless reports, countless podcasts, books, etc. on it, people still want to believe to this day or spin this narrative somehow that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were these victims,

were these people who were bullied in school and they'd had enough and they were ostracized and outcast. And that's why they lost their shit. They snapped out of nowhere and killed everybody. But they had been good kids up until then. I'm like, fucking bollocks. They were the bullies. They were the assholes that were doing this. So I don't know why.

I don't know why people spin this story with Brenda, that she had been normal up until that point. Is it just that nobody wants to take any responsibility for all the signs that were missed? I think it is definitely an element of no one wanting to be accountable. And also, this is the first time this had ever happened. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history.

Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app

or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. You don't believe in ghosts?

I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness,

and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. But most interestingly of all, of all of the things that we know about Brenda that is almost never reported, is that when Brenda was 14, she had a serious bike accident. She hit her head on a signpost and knocked herself out.

Now after this, she wasn't taken to hospital until the next day. And she complained of headaches often after the incident. Which actually is like, I'm not saying it's the same thing, but a Fred West. A Fred West, a John Wayne Gacy, blunt force head trauma. Major head trauma that then leads to significant personality changes. Actually, when I fell off that bike and fucked my head up, Eamon, my best friend who was with me, was told by the doctors, you need to keep an eye on her. If there are any personality changes in the next few weeks or months, you need to go to a hospital.

And that was in fucking bumfuck nowhere Cambodia. They were telling us that. I'm fine, by the way. Are you? So far. Once Brenda Spencer was taken down to the local police station, she was interrogated.

And she spoke about her friend friend called Brant Fleming. He was a few years younger than her. They took drugs together and shoplifted. Classic kids stuff, apparently. Brenda also told police that the summers that she spent in Arkansas with her aunt and uncle were the happiest times of her life because, quote, I could just be a kid, not a kid raising myself. Brant was interviewed too, but he wasn't much help because he is literally 13. He did confirm, though, that he and Brenda often got high and talked about killing police, but that he never had any actual plans to do it. Brant's mum, on the other hand, was quick to say that Brenda was a terrible influence on her son

and that Brenda had a habit of saying things that were absolutely not true to get attention and we have all met a child like that some of us even were that child like me so she would do things like very openly talk about doing all of these drugs the day before but would appear completely fine not even a little bit hungover you know so like Brant's mom's like I don't believe you Brenda she's an edgelord so police tested brenda's blood for toxins and surprise surprise they found nothing also they said the half empty bottle of southern comfort with the cat missing by the front door in the spencer house though might beg to differ now this part of the case is a huge question mark for us but we'll get back to this later on so put a pin in it for now we'll come back to it. So Brenda being just 16 years old narrowly escaped the death penalty but she was

still tried as an adult. Had she been tried as a juvenile her sentence would have been a maximum of seven years but that didn't happen. It was calculated that 96% of people living in San Diego County had read about her in the papers, so her hearing was moved to Orange County. Her first lawyer resigned after receiving multiple death threats, and after that, Brenda was represented by a man called Martin McGill. And given the hardest job in the world, Martin McGill gave it a damn good shot.

He did his absolute best to get Brenda Spencer tried as a juvenile, citing two psychiatric reports that described her as a sick and very disturbed girl who appears much younger than her age but tries to act much older. She shows characteristics of both schizoid and psychopathic personalities. Another quote from those reports, her frail physical stature would make her a target for physical and sexual abuse in the adult prison system.

It may be possible to rehabilitate this youngster through the facilitation of the juvenile court, but it won't be easy. Neither of those statements helped. Brenda Spencer was offered a deal, a guilty plea in exchange for 25 years to life with the possibility of parole. Martin McGill encouraged Brenda to take the deal. He knew that she would never get away with not guilty by reason of insanity, which was her original plan. So Brenda took the deal. So Brenda pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, so that's for Mr. Mike and Principal Rag, and several counts of assault with a deadly weapon. This meant that she never had an actual trial because she accepted the plea. And she never told her side of the story in a court of law. Now, again, like, yes, I understand, like, why that is a point worth making because we've never heard from, like, her point of view, like, what she's saying happened. Though we also know that she chats a lot of fucking shit and lies all the bloody time.

And it's like, you know, you can make similarities to her and like other cases that we've covered and I know we're going to go into more of her backstory and stuff but it's like you know head injury okay we see that in serial killers all the time okay traumatic childhood possibly neglected etc etc we see that in people all the time there's nothing about Brenda Spencer that I'm like this makes any sense and could she have said anything that would make me feel convinced of that that I would believe somebody who makes any sense. And could she have said anything that would make me feel convinced of that, that I would believe? Somebody who shoots a bunch of kids or murders a bunch of people,

like some of the parallels we could make to her, they're never reliable narrators. No. So how much is her word worth? I don't know. There's no doubt she's an incredibly troubled person. But what she did is fucking insanity. Not that she would have got away with not guilty

by reason of insanity because she wasn't and i think that probably was the right decision so anyway once brenda was incarcerated after taking the plea deal mr mcgill didn't quit he filed a writ of habeas corpus arguing that brenda's imprisonment was unlawful based on her head injury at 14, her psychiatric diagnosis and a new doctor's report that diagnosed her with abnormal brain waves and a very specific type of epilepsy called psychomotor seizure, which affects the temporal lobe and is also the only form of epilepsy to ever be linked to violent behavior. But still, no dice. Although we should say here that most of the time when brain conditions are linked to violence, we typically see a person who doesn't have an emergency break in their temporal lobe. We've talked about this

fucking ad nauseum in the book, go check it out, it's all in there. But basically basically when you can in any way attribute genetics or brain structure or anything like that to why somebody might have a predisposition to violence what you usually see is that those people tend to snap in the heat of the moment and this is really really a very important distinction because that isn't what Brenda did at all. She didn't snap, given like a stimulus, given like a provocation. She shot 36 rounds, killing two adults. And it was only by some miracle that no children were killed. Brenda Spencer turned 18 the day before her sentencing of 25 years to life. But as a minor, she was sent back to juvenile detention. The epilepsy thing is interesting because a lot of people are like,

oh, you're just pulling that out of your ass like anyone could have a wonky brainwave or whatever. It is true. She does have epilepsy. And to the extent that all of her years in prison, she always had the bottom bunk because she fits in her sleep and she falls out of bed. It was in that juvenile detention centre that Brenda was sent to after her sentencing that this story takes a turn from the tragic to the totally bizarre and downright disgusting. Brenda was visited in juvenile detention regularly by her father Wally. Wally also liked to spend time with another inmate. Some people say she was Brenda's friend,

Brenda doesn't. Her name was Sheila McCoy. Wally liked Sheila so much that he continued to make the five-hour round trip to visit her even after Brenda was moved to another facility. Brenda is 17 at this point. Sheila is even younger than she is. And as if by magic, in late 1979, so the same year that Brenda shot all those people, Sheila McCoy strolled on out of her youth facility and into Wally's van. She was not released. This was an escape. Wally whisked the 17-year-old Sheila back to his house. He's 50, by the way. And he whisked her back to the same house that Brenda had fired 36 shots from the same year.

And he hid Sheila there until the heat was off. I think he also rented her apartment across town. By the end of 1979, Sheila was pregnant with the 50-year-old Wally's baby. And even worse than that, many had said that Sheila looked eerily like Brenda. I have not been able to find a picture of her, so I cannot hand on heart corroborate that. Enough people say it, but I'm also, I don't know if it's enough.

I mean, it's weird, whatever. I mean, I think the thing that's most important that it tells you is that Wally Spencer has a propensity for young women, for young women, for young women for teenage girls. And I think anytime any man has that, and he also has an incredibly troubled daughter, is it a massive leap to ask some questions there?

We're going to go on to find out. In this case, absolutely fucking not. So Wally and Sheila had a shotgun wedding over the state line in Arizona, because in Arizona, you don't need a court order to get married like you do in Arizona. Because in Arizona, you don't need a court order to get married like you do in California. Nine months later, Brenda's old prison buddy, Sheila, gave birth to her father, Wally's baby, Bree Ann Spencer. And all three of them, Sheila,

her husband, Wally, and their daughter, Bree Ann, would continue to visit Brenda in prison for years. Yeah, just to really hammer that home, Brenda's stepmum is... Younger than her. Younger than her and also was her prison inmate. So none of this is good. None of this is good. And Brenda has often said that she never had a good relationship with Sheila

and that their interactions were always awkward and strained. She also said that Sheila abused Bree, even knocking her teeth out, before abandoning her and Wally and running away. Sheila's family, on the other hand, state that Sheila had always been desperate to be reunited with her daughter, Breanne. Now, Wally never spoke to anyone about any of this, so we don't know what he thinks. He's in the documentary, which I think is on Amazon Prime go and listen to Shorthand on Amazon Music and when he's asked about Sheila he just says I'm not

going to talk about that. On the inside Brenda got on with it. She graduated high school and befriended two of the Manson family which given she'd read Hell to Skelter the year before the shooting must have been quite exciting and she's got very Manson hair. Yes, she has. She has. She's got a very Manson-esque look to her, for sure. Brenda's first parole hearing came round in 1993, 14 years after she was arrested. She was 30 years old and she waived her right to a hearing. But she did state that she'd been doing uppers and downers

and PCP for several days before the shooting. Brenda claimed that she was hallucinating and therefore should not have been convicted as a cold-blooded murderer. Brenda had also procured an independent analysis of her blood toxicity on that day, so she was shown to have near-fatal levels of toxins in her system. Brenda also gave a very bizarre press interview, where she claimed that she couldn't be tested for PCP because the tests hadn't been invented yet,

which is fine, But she also claimed to be on a lot of other drugs, which were definitely testable. The police report says that she was completely sober. I don't believe that. I think it was falsified. Where she gets this report from, though, no fucking clue. It's so confusing, isn't it, though? Because it's like, I'm not saying the police are too good to falsify reports absolutely not saying that whatsoever my question is it's like to what end because if she was found to be off her head on drugs absolutely smashed out of her brain and she still shot a bunch of people killed two people it's kind of like i don't think any jury would have looked at her and been like oh well in that case let her off like it would have just made her look more fucking nuts

and more but less cold-blooded though possibly less cold-blooded but then jeffrey darmer used to get himself fucking loaded up on booze before he did anything because he didn't like that particular part of the action he wanted the body to play around with same as dennis nelson etc it doesn't mean i would never say that i don't know cold-hearted cold-blooded, it's a very speculative term. Like, what does it really mean? To me, it doesn't make somebody less culpable if they get smashed out of their head in order to do it. I think when it comes to Brenda, she feels, and other people feel, that her sentencing would have been lighter if she hadn't been portrayed as completely stone-faced.

Sure, sure. My issue here that I take, and maybe it's just that it's omitted in the conversation and maybe she did feel this way and did say these things. But when she comes to make the appeal, when she comes to talk about this, she always says, oh, I was high, I was drunk, I was taking all of this, I didn't know what I was doing. That's very much her, like, get out. Like, that's what she's saying.

Whereas even in the appeal 14 years later, the remorse, the responsibility taking for what she did because it just seems to be once again i was on loads of drugs i was on pcp but you can't test for pcp you know i was off my face and the police lied about the report and said that i had nothing on me which made me look really cold-blooded okay that that's my fault because she does say at the beginning of her statement she says something to the effect of, I live with the unbearable pain every day that I did that. Okay. So that is how she opens it.

And then her following argument is, I was convicted as a cold-blooded killer, and that's not fair. I'm not a murderer. You are. You are. You are, Brenda. And again, though, that again feels like shirking away from taking responsibility for what you did at least if she said and truly seemed to turn her life around in prison and i'm not saying she didn't she like finished high school etc but to say to live with the unbearable pain of what i did

i took two people's lives i killed two people because of terrible decisions that i made here are the mitigating reasons for why that came to be but to say i'm not a murderer it's kind of like tabo best day where it gets really close to taking responsibility for it but stops just short of taking responsibility which i think that's what that's what scares me about somebody like that but you know words are also easy to say so she could have said it and still not meant it words are easy to say she has an incredibly shallow affect so you don't want to believe anything she's saying anyway. So yes, she gives this bizarre interview saying that, you know, she couldn't have been tested

for PCP anyway, though, like we said, there were other drugs that definitely could have been tested as for the falsification, we can't speak to it, but it certainly could have happened. And it certainly plays into this narrative of making her look very cold blooded. How she got her hands on this report, like Hannah said though, is a complete mystery to us. The next year, Brenda was given a new psychiatric report which described her as antisocial with a false sense of reality, and Brenda told the prison board that she was not ready for parole. Four years later, Brenda refused to attend another parole hearing because Cam, one of the kids that she had shot, was there with his wife. Cam is one of the few victims to give a full interview to the press. Others do appear in the documentary, but they don't

really say too much other than how they thought Brenda looked like a creepy person. Monica Selvig says that. And also Crystal Hardy just sort of says, no, I'm fine. I think I Don't Like Mondays is a pretty song. That's what she says. Oh, wow. Cam, on the other hand, told the San Diego Tribune that he looks at the scars on his chest every day and relives the horror of watching Mr. Mike is a pretty song that's what she says oh wow cam on the other hand told the san diego tribune that he looks at the scars on his chest every day and relives the horror of watching mr mike being taken away in an ambulance principal rag surviving family have also been vocal about their ongoing trauma insisting that brenda should never be released again it's just like if you get shot when you're seven or eight and see your principal and like like, Mr. Mike, everybody's favourite fucking custodian,

get shot to death in front of you. I'm not saying it's, like, nihilistic, right, that you're never going to be OK. But does that trauma just not impact you for the rest of your life, even though these children survived? Yeah. No, of course not. There is little doubt that Brenda's actions on that January morning in 1979 have caused unknowable pain to many people,

and the echoes have not got quieter over the years. In the year 2000, Brenda's girlfriend was released and it shattered her. In a period of great depression, Brenda tattooed her own chest with Viking runes. Several red flags there. Viking runes? Bit of white supremacy. Bit of skinhead of you, Brenda. Red flag. The press misreported that this tattoo read courage and pride. It didn't.

What it actually says is unforgiven and alone. In 2005, Brenda tried a different tack in her parole hearing. She claimed that she had been sexually abused by her father until she was 14 years old. Dot, Brenda's mother, backs this up in interviews, claiming that Brenda and her father shared a bed and she had always suspected that something was going on, but she just never bothered to do anything about it, like attempt to get custody of her children away from their father, the man that she says is sexually abusing her daughter. Yeah, I don't like Dot.

I am not saying that I don't believe that Wally sexually abused Brenda. No, no, no. He probably did. Yes. I don't think Dot gives a shit. I think she just fucking hates Wally. Like I don't think anything she says

is in defense of Brenda at all. And look, it's very simple. I just feel like if you're a mother, you think the father is sexually abusing the children, you don't leave the children with him and then leave. You leave and you take your children as far away as possible from that man. So fuck off, Dot. I don't care what you've got to say. Though we should say that for years, Brenda shared a cell with a woman who had suffered years of sexual abuse and attended group therapy for incest survivors while she was in prison. Now look, there have been plenty of studies that we looked into when we wrote the book that show that for certain types of personality disorders,

things like group therapy, not a good idea. Because it actually teaches people to lie better and to absorb stories that they hear from other people. I am not a doctor. I'm not a psychiatrist. I've never met Brenda Spencer. I don't even know this story until we started reading the script today. What I will say is that, for example, one of those conditions is BPD. They say in all of the research that I've read on it is that BPD group therapy sessions are not a good idea. Or somebody who's diagnosed with BPD being in group therapy sessions is not a good idea because it will actually facilitate them picking up new stories that they can then use. Is that what's happened here with Brenda?

I don't know. I don't think Wally is a great guy. But we also know that Brenda lies all the time. Yes. She never brings it up until the 2000s. She was incarcerated in 1979. I would think if it were true, to the extent she is saying it is, it would have come up before. Also, again, you know, we have to say there is a lot of shame associated with rape and with incest and things like that.

So she may not have wanted to bring it up sooner. But Dot, why didn't Dot bring it up sooner? Dot is there at the time that the shootings happen when Brenda is sentenced and she says that Wally is a piece of shit. She says that from the start. Why didn't she say, that man sexually abused my daughter

and that's why she ended up doing what she did? Nobody says this until the 2000s. It's weird. We also have to say that Wally has always vehemently denied Brenda's accusations of sexual abuse. He lived in 6356 for the rest of his life, reclusive, only ever giving one interview and never having any friends. And he died in 2016.

But I will say, he went and visited Brenda every single week. Dot basically never went. Wally goes every week until he died. And Brenda says in one of the many hearings where she's accusing him of sexual abuse, they sort of ask her that, like, you know, what's your relationship with your father like now? And she says, we're friends. She's like, we have managed to be friends or something like that. It's very bizarre. This is is the thing you just have no idea you have no idea and this isn't to diminish anybody who's been through an experience like that not to say like oh she shouldn't be believed because she shot these people like there's just no

way to know for sure what happened and you know we've seen this before look at fucking casey anthony like after she tires out every other possibility to like get away with definitely murdering her child she then turns on her dad and says oh he sexually abused me my entire life and the mum plays along with it like i don't know is wally a prick probably did he rape brenda i don't know in the peak of the pandemic which feels so because this feels so old and timey but like it's because of the way she looks. She looks so 70s. But in the peak of the pandemic, Brenda Spencer still alive, still in prison.

And she waived her right to a parole hearing once again, basically arguing, why would I want to be released into a world that's in lockdown? I can do lockdown in here. I've been doing lockdown for 40 years. I've already had to be six feet away from everyone for 40 years. Why would I? Which makes sense.

So all these years later, Brenda Spencer, the 16-year-old who didn't like Mondays and murdered two men and seriously injured nine children, is still in prison in California. If she's ever released, she wants to move up to the north of the state and drive a forklift for a living, a skill she picked up in prison. Whether she ever will, we just don't know. We also don't know if she was actually sexually abused by her father.

It seems just as likely that she picked up the story from her cellmate who was an incest survivor. Even if we could definitively say that Brenda was abused and that she had a personality disorder, we'd end up in the same place we often have before. Lots of people go through a lot worse and don't pick up a rifle and shoot at children. Can someone like Brenda Spencer truly be rehabilitated? That's another unknown. The year after America's first school shooting, the student body of Grover Cleveland Elementary School presented a plaque in memory of Principal Burton Ragg and Mr Mike Sukar. It read, who died in the service of helping others? 29th of January 1979.

There is now a sculpture standing at the school in their honour too. Now we started this episode with the Boomtown Rats, so let's end with them too. The chart-topper, I Don't Like Mondays, was not met well in the United States, being described as, quote, terrible, degenerate, sick and insensitive. The rest of the world disagreed. The song won an Ivor Novello Award for Best Pop Song and Outstanding British Lyric of the Year. Which lyric? I Don't Like Mondays.

Oh. Bob Geldof went on to produce Live Aid, raise millions and receive a knighthood from Big Liz. Although, as N. Lee Hunt, author of the book on this case, points out, Bob, being an Irish citizen, can't actually be a knight, so it's honorary. But Bob goes by Sir Bob anyway, because you just would, wouldn't you? You would. Yeah, so that's it. I don't know. I feel like what's up with Brenda Spencer? Probably loads of things. I think she probably has some sort of severe issues. Are they brought on by years of abuse at the hands of her

father quite possibly though we have seen people do worse than this for far less reasons you just don't know all it's saying is that has it been caused by some reason outside of Brenda's control was she totally in control of it some combination of both of those things is she where she deserves to be yeah it seems like she doesn't want to get out anyway i mean at this point i don't know how i feel about her getting out pretty indifferent but do i feel sorry for her no i don't think i do i don't think i do i just feel like i don't sit around and waste much time or lose much sleep feeling sorry for people like dharma or bundy or anybody who goes on killing sprees or eric or what the other guy's fucking name was dylan columbine whatever i'm just like look there are reasons to be explored for why these people do

the things that they do i'm not here to just separate ourselves from them in terms of like monsters etc but do people do evil things absolutely was she fucking on one yes she shot a bunch of kids and it's only through sheer luck that she didn't end up murdering a child but she robbed two families of their father's brother's sons and two men of their lives so i don't feel that sorry for her but yeah there you go brenda spencer everybody she just didn't like mondays maybe allegedly allegedly but yeah that's it what is on the menu this week kind of for empty-handed not empty-handed for the other show we do shorthand the 14 year old who orchestrated his own murder oh yeah that's a weird one oh my god okay if you want to hear more about teens

living in a fucking state of delusion on the internet and ordering their own murders or attempted murders um then go check out this week's shorthand over on amazon internet and ordering their own murders or attempted murders um then go check out this week's shorthand over on amazon music and we'll see you next time for a different thing bye bye I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met.

But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it

instantly moved me. And it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding. And this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs.

Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real.

From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery+.