On the morning of Monday, January 29, 1979, a 16-year-old girl opened an attack on an elementary school in the San Carlos district of San Diego. Two adults, Burton Wragg and Mike Suchar, were killed. Nine other people were wounded, eight of them children. The girl was Brenda Spencer. She was charged as an adult, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced the day after she turned 18 to concurrent terms of 25 years to life.
She has been refused parole at every hearing since. The most recent was on February 21, 2025, her sixth denial. The San Diego County District Attorney's Office, survivors and victims' families have attended those hearings to argue against her release.
Grover Cleveland Elementary School stood in San Carlos, a residential district of San Diego. January 29, 1979, was a school day, and the attack Brenda Spencer began that morning ended in two deaths and nine injuries.
Burton Wragg and Mike Suchar were the two who died. Both were adults at the school that morning, and both died trying to help children. Nine others were wounded. Eight were children, and the ninth was a San Diego police officer who answered the call. All nine survived. Survivors have attended and spoken at the parole hearings.
Police surrounded the area, and Spencer held out for about six hours, by the Board of Parole Hearings' account, before she was taken into custody.
Prosecutors in San Diego County charged Spencer as an adult. The case was filed in the Superior Court of California for San Diego County under case number C42488. The counts were numbered one through twenty: two of first-degree murder, one of assault on a peace officer, and a series of assault counts covering the wounded. She did not go to trial. In 1980 she pleaded guilty, and the Board of Parole Hearings later recorded the two murder counts as the controlling offenses, with the assault counts, some carrying a sentence enhancement, running concurrently with them.
On April 4, 1980, one day after her 18th birthday, she was sentenced to concurrent terms of 25 years to life. She was received into the California state prison system that month.
A term of 25 years to life is indeterminate: release depends on the state parole authority, now the Board of Parole Hearings. Spencer was denied parole at her first hearing, in 1993, and again in 2001. At the 2001 hearing she told the panel that she felt responsible for school attacks in the United States since her own.
On September 27, 2005, Spencer appeared before a two-member panel at a California state prison for women. She was represented by a supervising attorney and a certified law student from a university law school's clinic. A deputy district attorney from San Diego County appeared in opposition, the San Diego Police Department opposed release by letter, and a survivor of the attack and a victim-witness representative attended. Four reporters were in the room.
The presiding commissioner announced a denial of four years. The District Attorney's Office had asked for five. The victims, the commissioner said, had asked that she remain in custody permanently, and he told her that a life term with the possibility of parole meant she was entitled to review. The panel gave several grounds. It cited the nature of the offense, committed against multiple victims in one incident. It cited the need for further therapy and self-help programming and for greater insight into the crime. It cited an unfavorable psychological evaluation dated June 27, 2005, and the absence of viable parole plans. The panel also commended her work in the prison's vocational programs, her anger-management and peer-education participation, and her upholstery and electronics ratings, and it recommended that she remain free of discipline problems and continue her education. The decision became final on January 25, 2006.
Spencer's next hearing was on August 13, 2009, before a presiding commissioner and a deputy commissioner, with a third commissioner observing. Her attorney was again a supervising attorney from the university law clinic, assisted by an intern. The San Diego County District Attorney's Office and the San Diego Police Department opposed release, victim impact statements were read into the record, and a survivor of the attack spoke in person.
The panel denied parole for ten years. It could have set a term of fifteen, and it said that it had not because of what she had done in custody: she had been free of serious discipline for nearly thirty years, with six minor, non-violent violations in that time, she held vocational certifications in electronics repair, upholstery and warehousing, and she volunteered in several prison programs. Against that, the panel found that the offense itself weighed heavily against suitability and that its motive remained unclear to it. A psychological evaluation dated March 4, 2009 was unfavorable and found a lack of insight, and the panel wanted more therapy and self-help work before it would consider release. Her parole plans were described as solid.
By the time of the next hearing Spencer was 60. It was held on August 18, 2022 by video conference before a presiding commissioner and a deputy commissioner, and the board's own records number it the seventh subsequent suitability hearing in her case. She was represented by an attorney from the USC Post-Conviction Justice Project, who told the panel that Spencer wanted to stipulate to unsuitability for three years so she could keep developing her parole plans.
The panel explained that by stipulating she gave up her right to a hearing that day, and she answered that she understood and that no one had threatened her or promised her anything. The deputy district attorney who appeared for San Diego County called the three-year stipulation appropriate. A survivor of the attack, present by video, had no comment on the request and chose to wait and give his impact statement at the next hearing. The panel accepted the stipulation and adjourned after twelve minutes. The decision was subject to review: the board's proposed decision becomes final within 120 days unless it is modified or sent to the full board, and the governor may then review it.
The next hearing was on February 21, 2025. The board heard three victim statements and the District Attorney's position, and it considered the state's elder and youth offender parole laws. The District Attorney acknowledged that the newer laws can speed the release of people convicted of crimes committed as minors and of inmates over 50, and said that the circumstances of the crime, taken as a whole, did not warrant release. The board denied parole and said she could seek it again in three years. The District Attorney's Office gave 2028 as the year of her next eligibility. Spencer was 62 and held in a California state prison for women. At the hearing she apologized to the victims in a letter.
Spencer's term of 25 years to life fixed a minimum before parole eligibility; at each hearing the board decides whether she is suitable for release. The San Diego County District Attorney's Lifer Unit, formed in 1995, handles the county's parole hearings for people serving life terms in California prisons. After a life sentence is imposed the unit prepares the case for future hearings, including preserving victims' statements, and its stated aims are to see that dangerous prisoners are not released carelessly and that victims are heard.
Two statutes shaped her later hearings. Under Penal Code section 3051, a person who committed the controlling offense at 25 or younger is entitled to a youth offender parole hearing; for a term of 25 years to life the hearing falls in the 25th year of incarceration, and psychological evaluations used in it must account for the diminished culpability of youth and later growth and maturity. Under section 3055, a person aged 50 or older who has served 20 continuous years is entitled to an elderly parole hearing, at which the board must give special consideration to whether age, time served and any diminished physical condition have reduced the risk of future violence. Neither statute changes victims' rights at hearings, and each leaves the board free to deny parole where it finds an unreasonable risk of danger. The District Attorney's Office has said its position is unchanged by either.
Spencer has said that at the time of the attack she was suicidal, and in interviews and before the 2001 panel she described seeing figures in military clothing. These statements are her own. She pleaded guilty, so they were not tested at trial, and no court has made a finding on them. In 2009 the panel recorded that, after years of hearings, the reason she attacked the school was still not clear to it. What the court did find, on her plea, was guilt of two counts of first-degree murder and the assault counts.
January 29, 1979: Attack at Grover Cleveland Elementary School, San Carlos, San Diego; Burton Wragg and Mike Suchar killed; nine others wounded; Spencer, 16, taken into custody after a standoff of several hours.
1980: Pleads guilty as an adult in San Diego County Superior Court, case C42488.
April 3, 1980: Spencer turns 18.
April 4, 1980: Sentenced to concurrent terms of 25 years to life.
April 1980: Received into the California state prison system.
1993: Parole denied.
2001: Parole denied.
September 27, 2005: Parole denied for four years; the District Attorney's Office had asked for five.
August 13, 2009: Parole denied for ten years.
August 18, 2022: Three-year stipulation to unsuitability accepted at the seventh subsequent hearing.
February 21, 2025: Sixth denial, after three victim statements and opposition from the District Attorney's Office; the board set the next hearing three years out.
2028: Next parole eligibility, as given by the District Attorney's Office.