Further Reading for Brenda Spencer & Jane Toppan
Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer
Episode: 21
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The Grover Cleveland Elementary School shooting took place on January 29, 1979, at a public elementary school in San Diego, California, United States. The principal and a custodian were killed; eight children and a police officer were injured. A 16-year-old girl, Brenda Spencer, who lived in a house across the street from the school, was convicted of the shootings. Tried as an adult, she pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon, and was given an indefinite sentence. As of February 2019, she remains in prison.
On the morning of Monday, January 29, 1979, Benda Spencer began shooting at children waiting for Principal Burton Wragg (aged 53) to open the gates to Cleveland Elementary. She injured eight children. Spencer shot and killed Wragg as he tried to help children. She also killed custodian Mike Suchar (aged 56) as he tried to pull a student to safety. A police officer (aged 28), responding to a call for assistance during the incident, was wounded in the neck as he arrived.
After firing thirty times, Spencer barricaded herself inside her home for several hours. While there, she spoke by telephone to a reporter from The San Diego Union-Tribune. Brenda Spencer told the reporter she shot at the schoolchildren and adults because, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.” She also told police negotiators the children and adults whom she shot were easy targets and that she was going to “come out shooting.” Brenda Spencer has been repeatedly reminded of these statements at parole hearings. Ultimately, she surrendered. Police officers found beer and whiskey bottles cluttered around the house but said Brenda Spencer did not appear to be intoxicated when arrested.
Jane Toppan (August 17, 1854 – October 29, 1938), born Honora Kelley, was an American serial killer, nicknamed “Jolly Jane”. After her arrest in 1901, she confessed to 31 murders. She is quoted as saying that her ambition was “to have killed more people—helpless people—than any other man or woman who ever lived”.
In 1885, Toppan began training to be a nurse at Cambridge Hospital. While she was there she had a lot of friends, and was well liked. Unlike her early years, where she was described as brilliant and terrible, at the hospital she was well liked, bright and friendly, evoking the nickname ‘Jolly Jane’. Once Toppan became close with the patients, she picked her favorite ones. The patients were normally elderly, and very sick. During her residency, she used her patients as guinea pigs in experiments with morphine and atropine; she altered their prescribed dosages to see what it did to their nervous systems. However, she spent considerable time alone with patients, making up fake charts and medicating them to drift in and out of consciousness and even getting into bed with them.
She began her poisoning spree in earnest in 1895 by killing her landlord, Israel Dunham, and his wife. In 1899, she killed her foster sister Elizabeth with a dose of strychnine. In 1901, Toppan moved in with the elderly Alden Davis and his family in Cataumetto take care of him after the death of his wife, Mattie (whom Toppan had murdered). Within weeks, she killed Davis, his sister Genevieve, and two of his daughters, Minnie and Edna.
The surviving members of the Davis family ordered a toxicology exam on Alden Davis’ youngest daughter, Minnie. The report found that she had been poisoned, and local authorities put a police detail on Toppan. On October 29, 1901, she was arrested for murder. By 1902, she had confessed to 31 murders.