Just so you know, this show is about scary stuff, so don't say I didn't warn you guys.

Remember, don't be scared.

Episode 107 Unforgiven and alone, war baby here with another episode of murderous minors.

For more than 40 years, the specter of 16-year-old female school shooter Brenda Spencer has continued to loom large with her name, face and actions being remembered anew when bullets fly on a campus full of children or the song inspired by her crimes plays on a classic radio station.

Back on January 29, 1979, the young students of Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California stepped onto campus with hope in their hearts that a fun day would be had by all, only to walk directly into gunfire coming from an unknown location.

On this episode of murderous minors, we take a trip in the way back machine to Southern California at the dawn of the 1980s and the Cleveland Elementary School shooting, one of the first of the modern era.

My main sources for this episode are Spencer's parole hearing transcripts and archival news footage, along with Dr. Peter Langman's Brenda Spencer, sorting out the contradictions.

Allegations of child abuse and sexual abuse did come up in this case, so we'll discuss that and there's also talk of suicide attempts in addition to the senseless violence that day so many years ago, so please be advised.

Some call Spencer the first modern day school shooter as she was a juvenile.

She was technically in the 11th grade at Patrick Henry High School when they attack on the elementary school students took place.

She had history with the school, though, and went there after her parents divorced when she was 9 years old.

They'd married in 1954 and divorced in 1972, with Spencer's mother keeping the marital home and her father, who was the supervisor of the audiovisual department at San Diego State University, buying a house very close to his old one in the San Carp.

Los Neighborhood and across the street from Cleveland Elementary School on Lake Atlin Avenue.

So though custody of Brenda, 9, and her siblings, who were 13 and 15, was given to their father, they remained in close enough proximity to their mother to see her daily if they wanted to.

She was the bookkeeper for the Andy Williams San Diego Golf Tournament and volunteered with the local Junior Golf Association, which all three of the Spencer children participated in.

They were excellent golfers, but after the divorce, that stopped in Brenda, being so much younger than her siblings, was eventually the last one left at home with her father, with whom she seemed to have a normal relationship.

But how things seemed in 1979 and how Spencer wants us to see them in retrospect are two completely different stories.

In the decades leading up to now, she's claimed that behind the doors of her father's suburban middle-class home there wasn't neglect, physical abuse and sexual abuse.

Spencer described herself in 2009 as having been abused by her father since the age of 9, but as being depressed as early as 6 and beginning to self harm by cutting around the age of 10.

She described her mother as close and physical proximity after the divorce, but as emotionally distant, saying that the only time the kids saw her was when they went to her house and even then, she acted detached and showed little interest.

Nothing in the investigations done in 1979 support any of these claims as those who knew her described her as a cheerful child who smiled often.

Her mother described her as being an avid reader and a writer of poetry who had a love of art and photography as well as for animals and mentioned tentative plans to become a veterinarian when she grew up.

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