Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing (27 page)

No dynamite went off.

The box contained a set of ledger books and a simple note.

Dear Sir,

 

I am leaving the school board and turning over to you all my accounts. They are all in this box. Due to an uncashed check, the bank had 22¢ more than my books showed when I took them over. Due to an error on the part of the Secretary in order No. 118, dated Nov. 18, 1925 (He changed the figures on the order after the check had been sent to the payee), the bank gained one cent more over my books, making the bank account show 23¢ more than my books. Other wise I am sure you will find my books exactly right.

I thank you for going my bond.

 

Sincerely yours,

A. P. Kehoe

In his own way Kehoe proved himself a meticulous man to the end when it came to public finances.

But, stating that he was “leaving the school board” seemed like a twisted attempt at macabre humor, a dark and disturbing coda to his stenciled declaration that “Criminals Are Made, Not Born.”
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Newspapers throughout the country published a grotesque pencil rendering of Kehoe. This is the face of evil, editors collectively thundered. Look upon it with horror.

The picture bore only a passing resemblance to the man it represented. The real Andrew Kehoe was handsome with youthful features crowned by steel gray hair. His eyes were bright, and he had a rakish air
about him. Photographs show a man who by looks alone could have been a banker, a businessman or a college professor, not a mass murderer.

The pencil sketch was otherworldly, resembling the creature in Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein,
a visual depiction of what Monty Ellsworth would call “the world’s worst demon.”
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This Kehoe, as imagined by an anonymous artist, has a broad forehead and jutting cheekbones. His nose is more of a snout, long and triangular with porcine nostrils. The lips are thin, tight, and expressionless. His eyes, two black hollows shoved deep into the skull under heavy brows, are compelling. They glance to the side with a sense of melancholy, the ironic gaze of a haunted man.

At the Kehoe farm, the natural aromas of the land mingled with the stench of smoke. Policemen combed the area. Nellie Kehoe had yet to be found.

A piece of paper lying near the remains of the Kehoe furniture caught the eye of A. R. Cournyer, one of the many people come to see the Bath wreckage and now roaming the burned farmland. He picked it up.

The scrap, written in what later was determined to be Kehoe’s handwriting, was an ordinary shopping list with items any farmer might use. Both sides of the paper were filled. On the front Kehoe had written, “fuse, snaps, cotters 3/8, pump leathers, seed corn, potatoes.” Beneath these items, in a different hand, were the words “Farm Bureau will send you the 20 bushels of yellow corn screenings.”

The back of the paper completed Kehoe’s shopping list. “Ammunition, plow points, 12 foot sash cord, telephone bill, watch, 2 pieces 1 ½ × 16 inch pipe, 3 threads, 1 ¾ inch, 45 degree bend, one 1
¼
inch elbow, three pounds of putty.”

The paper was undated.
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The State Police reassigned the rookie officer George Carpenter from the school site to Kehoe’s farm. He and another policeman patrolled the area throughout the morning, then decided to take a well-deserved break for cigarettes.

They chose a space by the chicken coop. Nearby, they saw a cart. It wasn’t really a cart, more like a makeshift wheelbarrow made out of a hog chute attached to a pair of wheels and a metal axle. How many people had passed this cart in the last thirty-six hours was hard to say. But
by sheer chance Carpenter found what so many people were searching for.

Fig. 14. The remains of Nellie Kehoe.
(Courtesy of the Bath School Museum.)

Human remains, charred to the bone, lay in blackened repose on the cart. Nellie Kehoe finally was accounted for.
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Her left arm lay over the axle, completely loosened from the shoulder. The right was bent backward, bones fractured. It was impossible to tell if either of these limbs had been broken by human violence or fire.

Although both feet were burned away, Nellie’s left toe was simply scorched; others were more or less intact. The body apparently had been dressed; fabric remains were found where the arm lay across the axle and corset stays littered the body.

Nellie’s skull was cracked at the forehead. It was possible this break was the result of the fire; under extreme heat a human brain will expand and turn to gas until the skull gives way.

The other cause of this crack could have been a blow from a blunt instrument. Because the head was so badly charred, determining how Nellie’s
skull had been broken was impossible. Regardless, it was assumed by many—members of the inquest jury, legal authorities, newspaper writers, and Nellie’s family and neighbors—that Kehoe had bludgeoned his wife then moved her body to where it was found.

A small piece of flesh and hair was still intact at the back of the skull.

Personal items were found with the body, laid gently with Nellie as if placed in ceremonial positions. Silverware was next to her head and atop her chest. A metal box, about a foot long, was beside the body. It wasn’t a big box, maybe eight inches across and three inches deep, the kind of thing used to hold items for safekeeping.

Some objects inside probably had personal meaning. A lady’s gold watch. A brooch and chain. Earrings. Two rings, one opal, one diamond. A dozen teaspoons with
a K on
each handle. A pin from the Knights of the Macabees, a social organization with considerable membership throughout Michigan.

Badly singed papers were also found inside the box. A marriage license. Statements and bills from the Saint Lawrence Hospital in Lansing and Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

And a large roll of what was either money or uncashed Liberty Bonds left over from the Great War, now burned so badly it was hard to tell which of the two currencies it was.
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Did Andrew Kehoe know about these funds? Could the money or bonds have covered his debts? It was another secret Kehoe—and Nellie—took to their graves.

The pilgrimage of sightseers that began on the afternoon of May 18 continued into the next day and all through the weekend. It wouldn’t slow down for months. The curious and the ghoulish alike came to catch a glimpse of the school, to tramp through the grounds of Kehoe’s blackened farm.

It was overwhelming, long lines of black cars snaking along the roads into town, choking the air with gasoline fumes. Honking horns and chattering voices developed into a nonstop cacophony. The small town, which wasn’t used to many automobiles in the first place, was jampacked by the nonstop parade.

Within hours of the explosion, the line of people wanting to see the ruins followed ambulances and other emergency vehicles. They came
throughout the night and into the morning, nonstop it seemed to an already emotionally overwhelmed town. By weekend, the traffic caused backups that ran for miles. State Police officers switched duties from rescue and cleanup to traffic control. Lansing police and county sheriff’s deputies also helped to steer the lines.
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Fig. 15. Onlookers viewing the cart where Nellie Kehoe was found
(Photograph by Fred A. Stevens.)

The influx of sightseers turned into an epic, albeit macabre, pilgrimage. One officer counted 2,750 machines pass by his watch in the course of just two hours. In downtown Bath, 173 automobiles were seen in the space of fifteen minutes. On Sunday alone, an estimated 85,000 cars passed through town.
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And they kept coming. The train between Bath and Lansing ran steadily, packed from door to door, window to window, with the curious.
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Kehoe’s ruined farm was popular with the mobs. There was something compelling about the sight, a hypnotic attraction of evil that drew wave after wave of viewers. Thousands tramped through the grounds, paying no heed to the possibility that there might be unexploded dynamite on the premises.

The favorite—if macabre—attraction on the farm was the roped off cart where Nellie Kehoe’s charred remains were found. People reached across the flimsy barrier to touch the large spoked wheels, tentatively grazing their fingers across the rims as if they were mystical portals into Kehoe’s dark psyche.
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And still they kept coming. At daybreak on Sunday, the roads were clogged. Come three that afternoon, the traffic stretched out for nine miles from the town center. Machines weren’t moving at all, just waiting, waiting for the morbid parade to inch its way into Bath, grab a peek, then slowly retreat out of town. The traffic, jammed in all directions, turned into a good-sized city of motor vehicles; one Sunday estimate put the crowd at more than fifty thousand. Accidents were inevitable. Fender benders were common, and there were some larger smashups. In one case a rear-end collision sent a child to the hospital; his stomach was sliced open in the crash.
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The State Police, by now used to wrangling the epic traffic, finally got orders: stop this foolishness. Red Cross workers from Lansing couldn’t get through. A trip between Lansing and Bath took up to four hours, and even that was with a motorcycle escort.