Bath has been described as a typical small town where everyone knew each other and while it might sound cliche, it seemed safe enough for people to leave their doors unlocked at night. Around the time of this incident, the majority of Bath’s population relied on farming and trade as their primary sources of income. Most of Bath did not have access to electricity in their homes during this time, and in fact, on the day of the massacre, the power company was actually putting up electricity poles so the town could finally have access to power on demand.
It was the morning of May 18th, 1927, and the students of Bath Consolidated School in the Bath Township, Michigan, were playing out in the schoolyard. They were meant to give their final exams that day, but they had a bit of time before the morning bell. It was a day that started out like any other, but by the end of it, 38 students and 6 staff members of the school were lost to the deadliest school massacre in American history.
To understand how the events of that day played out, we have to take a closer look at the life and psyche of the man that caused it all - Andrew Kehoe. Kehoe was born on the 1st of February, 1872, to parents Mary and Phillip Kehoe. Kehoe belonged to a very large family, but it is unclear how many siblings he had - some sources say he had 10 siblings while others say it was actually 13. He spent his initial childhood years in Tecumseh, Michigan, after which the family moved to New York state. His mother passed when he was young, and his father went on to marry a woman named Frances Wilder. It’s been widely reported that Andrew and Frances were not on good terms, primarily because Frances was closer in age to Andrew than she was to his father.
His father Phillip was a well-respected farmer and the family was doing well financially, owning about 325 acres of farmland. In 1886, when Andrew was about 14 years old, an oil stove exploded while Frances was using it, and she died as a result. In hindsight, people have speculated that Andrew might have tampered with the oil stove as a way to get her out of the picture. Not much else is known about Andrew’s early life prior to his leaving for Michigan State College in East Lancing to study electrical engineering. During this time, he reportedly had an accident that resulted in him being in a coma for about 2 weeks, although the nature of this accident is unknown. Several sources also suggest that this accident may have been the cause for his erratic and violent behavior in the years to come.
Andrew eventually returned to Bath where he met and married Nellie Price in 1912. The pair bought a 125-acre farm from her aunt and went about trying to make it their home. The farm cost them $12000 ($201,500), of which they paid $6000 and mortgaged the remaining $6000. Andrew’s neighbors describe him as having a duality to his character.
He seemed perfectly normal and agreeable during certain times, but during others, he seemed odd and easily irritable. For instance, he had 2 of his neighbors arrested for hunting on his property, and when they were released, he simply walked up to one of them and handed him $10 with no further explanation. He was also known to be extremely cruel to his farm animals, and is thought to have beat one of his horses to death. Additionally, it was during this time that members of the community also began to take notice of Andrew’s unusual propensity for explosives. He would use explosives to get rid of boulders and tree stumps on his property.
Andrew seemed keener to test out machinery on his farm than to actually do any substantial or profitable farming. In addition to this, Nellie could not help with farm work as she was chronically ill with Tuberculosis, and was in and out of hospitals for extended periods of time.
As a result, the farm was becoming more neglected as the days passed. Soon enough, they were no longer able to make their mortgage payments. Andrew became increasingly bitter after this, going so far as to blame the local tax regulations for the couple’s financial troubles.
He was particularly angry about the tax payments made toward a new school - a cause which was spearheaded by Emory Huyck, who was the school board superintendent at the time. This led Andrew to take matters into his own hands and he contested in the school board elections. While he was successful in becoming the treasurer, he only held the position briefly.
Although his reelection campaign was unsuccessful, his short stint as the treasurer made the school management of Bath Consolidated School take notice of Andrew’s knack with machinery. As a result, they appointed him as a custodian for the school, making him in charge of maintaining the electrical equipment and machines in the school. Unbeknownst to them, Andrew was actually using his now unrestricted access to the school campus to essentially pack the place with explosives. He planted over 1000 pounds of explosives, focusing primarily on the attics and crawlspaces within the school campus. It’s theorized that he started buying dynamite in small quantities from mid-1926, under the guise of using it for farm work. He wired all of the explosives to go off at the same time. Additionally, in December of 1926, he purchased a 0.30 caliber Winchester rifle.
Andrew then filled his truck with various forms of metal waste that would produce shards during the explosion. He was seen making several trips to and from the school in the weeks leading up to the massacre, but people assumed he was there for maintenance work. On the 16th of May, 1927, Nellie Kehoe was released from the hospital, and sometime between the 16th and the 18th of May, Andrew murdered her by hitting her on the head repeatedly. He left her in a wheelbarrow in the farm’s chicken coop.
He then placed several boxes of silverware and a metal cashbox by her remains. It was later speculated that he killed her out of fear that she might draw attention to his plans. If she had been on the farm mere days before the incident, it would have been impossible for her to not have seen the explosives.
The first series of explosions happened on the Kehoe farm at around 8:45 a.m. on the 18th of May. The explosions were so powerful that the debris travelled as far as a neighbor’s farm and members of the community rushed toward the farm to help rescue its residents and animals. They used a broken window to get into the house, but found nobody inside. One of the men found dynamite packed into a corner of the kitchen and alerted the others. Fortunately, they were all able to get out of the house unharmed. While outside, they noticed Andrew driving away in his truck. Before he left the property, he stopped by the men and made a rather eerie remark - he told them they should get to the school.
Andrew had programmed the dynamite and petrol explosives in the school to go off shortly after 8:45 a.m., around 15 minutes after classes would have commenced. By the time the bombs started to go off in the school, there was really nothing that anybody could have done to protect the people inside. In minutes, the school campus became covered in fire and smoke, and families began rushing to the school to check on their children. The entire North wing of the school building collapsed, making it impossible for the people underneath the debris to escape. Andrew was also present at the scene. He had arrived about 30 minutes after the bombs went off, but the people present at the school were unaware that he was responsible for causing the explosions. He offered to head back to his farm to retrieve heavy rope to help lift debris from the blast scene.
He then called Superintendent Huyck to his truck, supposedly to have a conversation. The two were seen fighting over the rifle Andrew had placed in his truck. Not long after this, Andrew set off the dynamite in his car, killing himself, the superintendent, an old farmer named Nelson McFarren and an 8-year-old named Cleo Clayton. Cleo had actually survived the first blast that happened in the school and had managed to stumble out of the ruins, before dying as a result of the truck explosion. The truck explosion also wreaked havoc on the community, with debris from the explosion being sprayed several blocks from the blast site, causing severe injuries as well as property damage. 34 firefighters from Lansing were sent to help with rescue efforts, along with assistance from the Michigan State Police.
Bath did not have the facilities to treat those injured in the blasts, so they were sent to Sparrow Hospital and St. Lansing Hospital, both in Lansing. The remains of those who died as a result of the blasts were also sent to these hospitals. Volunteers began to pull away at the debris in the blast site to look for survivors and found an additional 500 pounds of dynamite in the southern parts of the school. These devices had failed to detonate during the initial blasts and search efforts were paused while the State Police worked on disarming the explosives.
It is believed that had the rest of the explosives denoted, the damage done to the village would have been irreversible. Additionally, Nellie’s remains were discovered later in the day while officials were investigating the explosion that happened on the farm earlier that day. While there, they also found a wooden sign on the farm fence. The words “Criminals are made, not born,” were stenciled onto the sign, presumably by Andrew Kehoe. 39 lives were lost as a result of the school bombing, and 5 as a result of the truck bombing, including Andrew himself.
An inquest was held on the 23rd of May, 1927, to determine whether the school should be held responsible for negligence. The school board was exonerated after the court heard from over 50 witnesses over the course of a week. In hindsight, it seemed as though the members of the community did believe that Andrew “had a mania for killing things.” It took several years for the town to rebuild itself following the massacre, but the emotional wounds from the incident are still fresh to this day.
