Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing (31 page)

Hare finds similar traits in the psychopathic individual, be that person an office control freak, a con artist, or a killer. “The Hare Psychopathy Checklist,” considered a “gold standard” indicator, zeroes in on specific behavioral factors that ultimately define who can be considered a psychopath. In Kehoe’s case, the profile fits all too well. Among the checklist items he scores high on are glibness/superficial charm; grandiose sense of self-worth; pathological lying; conning/manipulative; lack of remorse or guilt; shallow affect; callous/lack of empathy; poor behavioral control; lack of realistic, long-term goals; failure to accept responsibility for own actions (“Criminals are made, not born”); and criminal versatility. Psychopaths, by Hare’s standards, have a unique ability to lead a double life, respectable in public while maintaining a well thought out plan and cunning talents used to manipulate—and sometimes kill— their victims. “Psychopathic killers,” writes Hare, “are not mad, according to accepted legal and psychiatric standards. Their acts result not from a deranged mind but from cold, calculating rationality combined with a chilling inability to treat others as thinking, feeling human beings. Such morally incomprehensible behavior, exhibited by a seemingly normal person, leaves us feeling bewildered and helpless.”
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Dr. Hare’s words echo and amplify the findings of William Searl and the Bath inquest jurors: “We find that the said Andrew P. Kehoe was sane at all times, and so conducted himself and concealed his operations that there was no cause to suspicion.”
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While it’s tempting to play armchair psychoanalyst decades after the bombing, the reality is that in suicide Kehoe took the “why” of what he did with him. It’s part of the mystery of who Andrew Kehoe was, something buried deep within a soul blown to pieces by its own compelling force.

Ava Sweet was temporarily sent to live with her sister Clara in Lansing. No one talked with Ava about her younger brother Dean. In fact, no one seemed to want to talk about anything related to the school.

After a couple of days, Ava was told that her older sister, Florence Hart, was in mourning. Florence’s son Robert—Ava and Dean’s nephew—was among the dead. But still there was no word about her brother.

The silence about Dean drove Ava just about crazy. Day after day passed, and the topic remained taboo. She felt left out, as though the grownups were protecting her, shielding her from something terrible. Ava was empty inside and led her to one conclusion: Dean was dead.

About five days after the bombing she was finally told the truth. Dean wasn’t dead but was clinging to life. In a coma. Her mother was keeping vigil by Dean’s bedside. Her father, though wracked with concern over his children and mourning the loss of his grandson, had to keep going. May was always a busy time for Bath residents; like his neighbors, Willard Sweet had a dairy farm to run. Farmers could not afford to neglect land or animals.

The news, while providing the answers she hungered for, brought Ava no sense of satisfaction.

Ava had a problem of her own, though obviously it was not a matter of life or death. Her hair, thick with plaster dust, had to be washed time and again. A single shampooing simply couldn’t do the trick; it took the better part of a week to wash all the dust out of her hair and scalp before Ava’s shoulder-length bob was restored to its normal dark brown hue.
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Kehoe’s work was unprecedented. There was a public struggle, an awkward search for the exact words to describe what he had done. On May 27, the
Lansing State Journal,
in an editorial headlined “Bath Crime Suggests New Noun, New Verb,” attempted to resolve the dilemma.

Because the crime of Andrew Kehoe, dynamiter of the Bath Consolidated School, is the first of its kind, and therefore unique, it is believed, in at least modern times, no descriptive word has as yet been evolved which would indicate the character and quality of the act, if a similar one is ever perpetrated. A member of the
State Journal
editorial staff has therefore coined the verb “kehoe” to cover the situation. Applications of the idea would cause any person who destroys another or others by explosives to be termed a “kehoe,” the act committed would be a “kehoe,” while the victim would be considered as having been “kehoed.”

The word “burke,” more familiar in the British Isles than in the United States, is a verb describing the act of murdering a person so as to leave no marks of violence. It was coined when William Burke, the first person known to have committed this crime, was executed for it in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1829. He had sought to sell the body for dissection.
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Although “burke” remains a standard—albeit obscure—word in the English language, “kehoe” never made its way into the lexicon of criminal acts. It would be many years before the terror wave of splattered blood, broken bodies, and perpetrators packed with determination and explosives brought the term “suicide bomber” into the language to better describe “any person who destroys another or others by explosives.”

A week after the blast, in nearby Saint Johns, an older man garbed in ratty clothing and carrying a burlap sack rambled through the streets. When he reached the main business district, the man stood for a moment, then dropped his bundle to the sidewalk.

“Don’t touch that sack,” he warned anyone who came near. “There’s dynamite in it.”

In the wake of the news from Bath, people in Saint Johns took no chances. Sheriff Fox was sent for immediately. But Fox knew the man, Sid Stickney all too well. Stickney was often a temporary tenant of the Saint Johns jail. The would-be bomber was less inspired by Kehoe than he was by his unsteady mind.

Fox examined Stickney’s baggage. He found no surprises. The “dynamite” turned out to be an old stovepipe, a few water basins, and a battered teakettle.

It was another night in jail for Sid Stickney.
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On Sunday, June 19, the curious spilled into Bath once again, tramping through the remains of Kehoe’s farm. Like the thousands who preceded them, these tourists stared with a mix of awe, horror, and cheap thrills at what remained of the devastated farm.

A perfect way to spend an early summer Sunday.

The milling of the crowd and the usual hushed tones were interrupted this day by a voice. Sidney J. Howell carried a rare distinction: he was a defender of Kehoe. The two men had been friends—as much as one could be friends with Kehoe—and Howell was deeply troubled by the actions of his late companion. In the weeks that followed the bombing, Sidney Howell turned over in his mind the pieces of Kehoe’s crimes. How could his friend have done such a fiendish act? It just wasn’t possible, not the Andrew Kehoe Howell knew.

Throughout his testimony during the inquest, Howell had struggled with the overwhelming evidence against Kehoe. Yes, he told the jurors, he noticed that Kehoe seemed “cooler” in the days before the explosion, less talkative and more introspective than usual. But the wiring around Kehoe’s house could have been preparation for linking the farm to the coming Consumers Power resources. As for Mrs. Kehoe’s burned body, Howell believed that Nellie had died and Kehoe—perhaps in an act of kindness—had placed her body outside for someone to find; her charred corpse might have been a complete accident. As for the timing device setting off the explosion, Howell believed it could have misfired and was meant to go off at the Parent-Teacher Association meeting the night of May 17. “He had no enmity toward the children, and I thought
possibly he might have toward the people. In fact I never know him to have any hatred, be vindictive,” Howell told the jurors.
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Something in Kehoe’s psyche must have slipped, he decided, something so horrendous, so evil that the man whom Howell called “friend” underwent a Jekyll and Hyde transformation beyond human control. Emotions swept away Howell’s better sensibilities. He took to the streets of Bath determined to clear Kehoe’s name, a sort of defender of the dead, trying to salvage what he could of his late friend’s reputation.

Howell’s efforts didn’t pass unnoticed, particularly by the legal authorities. Both Searl and Sheriff Fox warned him to watch his tongue lest he get into serious trouble.

It was no use. Howell maintained that he had the right to say what was on his mind whenever he wanted. “Free speech is every man’s prerogative in this country,” sniffed one newspaper editor, “but it may be carried too far, althoug[h] Howell evidently doesn’t think so.”
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So it was on this warm day on the remains of Kehoe’s land. Howell began his speech. “Mr. Kehoe was such a fine man that he would never have done what he did unless he had been insane.”

They were the only words Howell spoke. A man burst through the crowd, hands stretched out like the claws of a hawk closing in on its prey. Locals immediately recognized the avenger. His son was a broken survivor of the blast.

The hands clamped around Howell’s neck. Someone managed to separate the two, probably saving Howell’s life in the process. Howell was sent packing, his defense of Kehoe silenced at last.

Howell’s loyalty to Kehoe made him a
persona non grata
in Bath. Anything he did with Kehoe in the past was immediately suspect. Howell’s son had once borrowed a horse from Kehoe, you say? Well, it just goes to show you what kind of people those Howells are. One local woman was particularly ruthless in her gossip, saying anything and everything she could about the Howells regardless of its veracity.
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