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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them, Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good Evening. On May eighteenth, nineteen twenty seven, the small town of Bath, Michigan, was forever changed when Andrew Kiho set off the cachet of explosives concealed in the basement of the local school. Thirty eight children and six adults were dead, among them Kiho, who had literally blown himself to bits by setting off a dynamite charge in his car. The next day, on Keiho's farm, what was left of
his wife burned beyond recognition. After Keiho set his property in buildings ablaze, was found tied to a hand cart, her skull crushed. With seemingly endless stories of school violence and suicide bombers filling today's headlines, Bath massacre serves as a reminder that terrorism and large scale murder are nothing new. A chilling and historic character study of the unfathomable suffering that desperation and fury, once unleashed inside a twisted mine,
can reek on a small town. Contemporary mass murderers Timothy McVeigh, Columbines Dylan Klebold, and Virginia Tech's Sung Hu Cho can each trace their horrific genealogy of terror to one man, Bath school bomber Andrew Kehoe. The book that we're featuring this evening is Bath Massacre, America's first school bombing, with my special guest, journalist and author Arnie Bernstein. ownA Welcome to the program, journalist and author Arnie Bernstein, thank you
for a greeting this interview. Hi, thank you, sorry for the delay, just getting onto the program a little bit late, had some problems connecting. Welcome to the program. And again, an amazing story I had no idea about. Let's get right into this. What brings you to this story? Without giving anything away, but what brought you to this project? Why was this a compelling story to undertake this big
book project that you have, Bath Massacre. So tell us exactly how you came to be involved with this project.
Well, I had been looking for a story to write about. I was looking for I'm a big fan of stories that have been kind of lost in the cracks of history, and basically was scouring the internet and you know, I like to site find a grave.
I'm sure many of.
Your listeners are familiar with it, right, trolling through that a little bit here, a little bit there, and then up came the Bath memorials, and I thought, what is this and started digging and digging and digging, and I realized this was a compelling crime. It had never been properly explored, and it was something I had to do.
Now. You start off the book a little unusually unusual because it was a very linear this book really not like a lot of books, very creative and going back and forth from really to separate scenes, you know, very much like a movie esque. But it's pretty straightforward. But in the beginning, why do you choose the story that you do with sung? Who chose? And well, tell us about that story and obviously then I'll be an introduction of why you know you chose the story for this book.
But tell us a little bit why you chose this story and tell us a little bit about the story that you did choose.
To open up your book, Well, the Virginia Tech shooting happened in April of that year, and it was about a month before the eightieth commemoration of the school bombing. Now you have to keep in mind, this is something that every year when it comes around, it weighs heavy on this town. Bath is when you think the quintessential small Midwestern town, that's it. And it weighed heavy on them. And in talking with many of the people, they said
when that happened, they felt it. And they feel these things much differently than you know, you or I might certainly, you know, most recently with Sandy Hook they I really felt it bad their Columbine certainly, even nine to eleven. Uh, you know, and reporters always contact them when these things happen.
Sure you know you've been.
Through this, how do you feel about this? And so you know, I mean, eighty is a you know, I mean, it's a significant year. Most of the survivors have passed and there but there's a few around and they, you know, I opened it with the two of them who have since passed by the way, and they felt it. They felt in a way that we can't even begin to understand. And because as they say, it was it was a decade marker it seemed like the right way to start it, and it was going certainly to the end too.
Okay, without going too far into you know, originally the Virginia Tech massacre. But just and we'll see as we're talking about this story right away, but tell us about some of the just the real, real i would say, blatant similarities or the real found similarities before we go into this, you know, an apt introduction to oh, you think it only happens recently, and the right of fact of course this story which will surprise I think people that are used to being surprised, so.
You know, and it's interesting, you know, you talk about the similarities because even more so with Sandy Hook were the similarities which really was quite profound on everyone there. But in essence, you know, there with what happened to Virginia Tech, he's you know, he initially killed somebody, he went and sent a message out to the world, and then he went and did the rest of his killing, which is more or less how the killer in Bath, Michigan, uh, Andrew Keyhoe did his work.
Now, before we get into Andrew Keyhole, because he's not originally from Bath and she sees he moves to the area. So tell us about Bath, Michigan and really what it's about in its proximity to say Detroit or I know Lancing is near there. So tell us really how small this place really is and how you know, out of the way it really is and it's proximity to bigger places than we might all know about.
Sure, Now, Bath in nineteen twenty seven, they're about i'd say maybe fifteen twenty miles outside of Lansing, Michigan, the capital of the state. But in nineteen twenty seven there's no interstate so they're pretty isolated. And in fact, they did not have electricity then. They were still stringing up. It was a relatively new thing that they were starting to string up. I like to say this was the
town that the Roaring Twenties were right by. Although interesting fun fact, Capone actually had a little cottage outside of Bath. One of his cohorts had hold up in Lancing and was a fruit stand that was sort of a warehouse for a component when he was shipping liquor in Chicago. But you know, that's neither here nor there.
But it was.
It was small town America and still is. They still do not have a stoplight in Bath, and a lot of it looks like it looked in the nineteen twenties. A lot of the same buildings are still there. It's it's as I said before, it's it's quinto quintessential small town America.
And the Bath Collins Consolidated School itself as well. I mean we're talking, you know, previous to nineteen twenty seven. So and we're talking a very small place and right, and it would magically happened construction of school.
So yeah, they had it was a series of one room schoolhouses were in the area and they decided to consolidate them, and that's why it was called Bath Consolidated School. Now, there had been a high school building, but they wanted to incorporate all the grades, so they kind of took that building, built it in you know, the center of town, and it became kindergarten through senior year of high school.
And that building was originally built in nineteen twenty two, so at the time of this of this bombing, the building was about five years old.
Now, what was the population in Bath at that time? Oh, I god, I'm round.
I'd like to tell you, but yeah, I would say maybe five hundred to seven hundred. But that's that's a guest demate on my party. Couldn't have it off the top of my head. But it's small, let's put it that way.
Very small.
Yeah, and then they again they don't have electricity.
Keep that in mind.
Some places had electricity, such as the school.
But that was because they had a generator. Right now, some of the characters in this what maybe we'll get to Andrew Keyhole because he has you basically done an incredible amount of research in his background and who he was beforehand, and there is a way there's records about what his character really was like. So tell us about Andrew Keijo, where he came from and his wife Nelly, and tell us a little bit about who he was. Well, key Hoo came from a different town in Michigan.
He lived outside. I can't remember the name of the town off hand. I'm sorry about that, but he lived in a different town. He and his father did not get along. There was kind of a give and take between the two men. Now, his mother passed away when Keyho was young, and Kiyo's father remarried married a woman who was in essence, maybe a couple of years older than Keiho himself. He was very angry with his father for marrying a woman that young, and it said she
could have been his sister. And Keyhoe was a master electrician. He studied electricity and was, you know, it's something of a genius had it when it was still a new, relatively new thing.
This was in like the round.
Oh god, this is like the early nineteen hundreds were talking. So electricity was the new thing. And his father's wife, Francis, his father's new wife, Francis, they didn't get along either. Now, on September seventeenth of nineteen eleven, Francis was lighting the stove. The stove itself exploded. It was, you know, the old fashioned gas stove. Once by one account it was lit by oil. Another count was gasoline. And she was just engulfed in a ball of flame. Kehoe himself was the
only one there. He came in. Now he threw water on her to stop it. Now, oil and water don't mix, causing the you know, it causes the flame to spread. You're supposed to throw baking powder things like that in that kitchen fire, things like that. Well he didn't, and it caused her brain burns to be even worse. Kehoe went to the house next door. They had a phone at the house next door, and he said, could I
bire your phone friend? He's been burned, you know, like she dropped up, you know, a pot of hot water on her foot or something like that. And he said, oh, by the way, call the priest. They went back to the house. She hung on for a few more hours.
But.
Just in absolute agony. Now, Keyho, nobody knows how this thing started. But Keho had the knowledge on how to set things like this. He was an expert in explosives. Now that sounds a little odd, but keep in mind in this day and age, there was a thing called stump blasting for people don't know what that is. If you have a stump in your field, a stump, boulder, something like that, you need to blow it up.
They could.
You couldn't use your horse, it would kill your horse.
Cars were relatively new, but it would rip your car to shreds. And they did him grinder in those days.
They just blew him up.
So Kehoon was an expert in this kind of stuff, and he was an expert in electricity even at this young age. And did he set off the fire the explosion in the stove, there's no way to know. On the other hand, his behavior was awfully strange, awfully strange on that day, and the way, you know, the way he said Franny got burned and call a priest, and very nonchalant about the whole thing, and the way, of
course he threw water on her. He certainly would have been smart enough to know that you throw you know, baking powder or flour or something like that in a in a kitchen fire of such magnitude.
So what was his father, What was his father's reaction in terms of father.
And he had he had to he was using two canes basically, and he had slowly had to get through the house to get to his wife and his son, and he was in absolute agony, you know, psychologically over this, but there was nothing he could do. He was, you know, an elderly man and quite sick at the time.
Was he suspicious of his son that there was something, there was foul play.
There's no record of it. He could have been, but there's no record of it. Right, And again this is something he was never charged with anything. Nobody could prove anything, and at the time, nobody said anything. It was a terrible kitchen accident. It's one of those things in retrospect, when after the bad school bombing happened, people you know, heard about this and that, oh, maybe he had something
to do with it. But it was something in his record in his past that not many people knew about it that came to light after the school bombing.
Now, in terms of people that testify to his character, that were witnessed to his character, it wasn't like he wasn't well loved, but there were some peculiarities about this medling some things that he was very adamant about, and other things that he was so was somewhat odds. So maybe tell us a little bit about some of his you know, he had political he was interested in politics. He was interested in religion, or at least he was religious.
So well, he was very anti religious. He was very anti religious man. When they came to collect for the Catholic church, he said the old church had burned down and they were coming to build a new one. He said, no, we don't want any money. We won't give anybody say that, so he did not This was before he moved to Bath. Now, when he moved to Bath with his wife, Nelly.
We had married.
Nelly's uncle was Lawrence Price, who was well known in the Bath area as a politician there. And they moved into a home in Bath on the outskirts of Bath, which was actually Nelly's childhood home. And Kio himself ran for school trustee and one and became a treasurer. And they had no children.
But he felt that his tax.
Money was going into the school, he should have a say, people in the area should have a say on it. Which is perfectly normal, you know, perfectly you know, understandable. He was a farmer. He would wear a suit and tie when he did his farming, which and people said that his toolshed was cleaner than some people's barns.
It was, you know, remarkable.
He would go to you know, the local they had like a local gathering hall, you know where they would have you know, dances and things like that, and he would go to the card games there and he would always you know, get into fights about the rules things like that. At the school board meetings, he would get into arguments about how money was being spent with the Emery Hike, who was the superintendent.
Of the school.
Now I've worked in education for many years I've been to school board meetings many times, and there was nothing unusual about this behavior. But to go with a you know, a cantankerous relationship between a school board member and you know, the person in charge of the school, you know, such as the superintendent. So he was and other people just thought he was just the nicest neighbor that could be.
The children all loved him, they you know, one of the survivors said to me, he was the nicest man, always tipping his hat to children, things like that.
So he was.
He was a real dichotomy of a man. And but he could be the cranky neighbor or he could be the nice guy, depending on you know what day you ran into him, I suppose. But again, nothing unusual about this.
What I thought was unusual was some of the like I say, he he was really stubborn in certain respects when he had something he really believed in. Tell us a little bit about his mortgage. Yeah, how the bank reacted.
Okay, Now he was The mortgage was actually in his wife's name because his wife's family owned the property, and he felt that the farmers could control if they controlled their crops, they could control you know, the prices so he let his farm go to seed and basically the crops just rotted. The land was rotting.
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He did not pay his mortgage. He did not pay his mortgage for years. The bank tried to work out an arrangement with him, and he refused to pay. He was not going to be There was no way he's going to be kicked out. It was in his you know, his wife, his wife's name, and his wife was quite ill. She had some sort of lung disease, could have been tuberculosis, and they weren't about to throw them out, particularly with you know, with the power power of her uncle, you know,
and her sisters as well. Nellie had two sisters. There was no way they were going to throw them out. But keyho Set often said that the taxes on the school were ruining him and that's why he was going broke, and he did not pay his mortgage for many years. And you know this, you know, led us to eventually, you know, the bombing.
Now. The other thing that he was was he was sort of mechanically inclined. He had when he even moved to the area. He was kind of known as a progressive farmer. Guys were coming around looking at his machinery.
Odds he was one the first one was attractor there, but he was he.
Wasn't the first guy with a vehicle. So he didn't have a vehicle, but he had a modern machine, right.
And they call it's funny because they called the machines in those days, they called cars machines. Eventually he got a truck, but he did not have a He didn't have a car for many years. Cars were still relatively new at that point too, and if he had one, it was it was, you know, something of a sign of a you know, a steam but you know, people were slowly, surely starting to get cars, and as I say,
he eventually got one. He got a truck. But he had a tractor, and you know, people were impressed by him. And certainly he had this mechanical knowledge. As I say, he was trained as an electrician. He was a master electric and he had a generator at his house, so he had electricity and the school. Because he was on the school board, they had him work at the school, the electrical systems there and pretty much everything there, and
he was sort of a general handyman. They had an incident where they were somehow bees had built up a nest next to the furnace and in the winter it heated up and the bees flew through the school and they tried and tried, they couldn't get it out.
They asked, Kejo, can you do this?
Nobody knows what he did, but somehow he was able to solve that problem, you know, and he fixed other things here and there. So he had twenty four hour access to the school, complete access, and nobody thought anything of it.
Now this plays in there much later, you really, you know, it doesn't come out immediately at all but this parent teacher kind of meetings that were were to happen often, and he would be in arguments on those. How often were these meetings and when was the next meeting going to be in May?
Well?
He was it was the school board meeting was on once a month, which is is you know, standard stock stuff, and there was going to be a meeting in a couple of days after the bombing.
He was. He had, you know, a he.
Timed everything beautifully. It's quite strange. When I was doing the research, I actually saw the books where of the school board meetings and the notes and there's his name, you know, signed and you know, saying you know, you know, you know, meeting adjourned, you know, next meeting May whatever, you know, a couple of days after you know what would be the bombing. At that point he knew what
was going on, He knew what he was doing. It was you know, of course no one else did, but you know that he made so calm, cool, collective about the whole thing.
Did he have any real close friends neighbors that they were real close to him that would say that later said, listen, I really I knew this guy as well as probably anybody, and and they testified. Obviously, people asked what was he like a few days before, a few weeks before, So what was the official from somebody close to him, a neighbor or a close friend, what was he like? Were there any differences in the days proceeding or week proceeding,
Nothing terribly unusual. It's one of those cases where I mean, it was completely you know, nobody of course, nobody expected anything like this, certainly, but he was. He in fact, with his neighbor across the street, they had like they were practicing gun shooting. Everybody had guns, which was you know, standard, and he and his neighbor, you know, took some shots and he offered to buy the gun. And it did not you know, they couldn't come to terms.
But you know, I mean again, nothing, absolutely nothing. Again, some people thought he was cranky, some people thought he was fine. Nothing unusual.
Now, And you talked about stump blasting, you know, using dynamite and another substance to pirate t hall as well, just another way of having some explosions, and it wasn't maybe you can tell our audience it really wasn't. It was very common for people to have access to pirrat Hal and dynamite and do this blasting, wasn't it right?
Pirate Hall was a World War One, uh explosive that was you know that was still around surplus war surtplus stuff. And he was the go to guy for dynamite in town because he was he knew how to set up a stump to blast, and there was you needed your stump blasted, you go to Keiho And there was nothing unusual about him having hundreds of thousands of sticks of dynamite in his barn, you know, sat and blasting caps
things like that. That one of his neighbors they went out to Lansing to pick up more dynamite and drove it home in the neighbor's truck and put in Kyo's barn.
He was also offering a couple of the farmers and his neighbors that if they needed any explosives, he had plenty then oh yeah, the one and there were you know the no ahead, sorry go ahead, no no, no go ahead. Now really really key element here is the relationship he had with this super Superintendent Elmore hayak Is at.
The pronouncement, Emory hike Emery hike Man.
Okay now so you can tell us. You know, he ran for politics and you know, for for office and basically got in and was involved than Bath politics. KYO. So what was his relationship with with Elmer Hire, with Emory Hike?
Yeah, he was they were oil and water. They were just did not get along at all. He was convinced that Hike was spending money recklessly for the school. Hike was trying to make the school better. He was considered a model superintendent.
But Keyho had.
Everything down to the penny as far as you know, balancing the books.
It was his role as treasure work.
The two of them were constantly arguing, constantly fighting. If Keyho did not get his way, he would try to adjourn the meeting. He and at some point Hike said, I think this guy is out to get me. He said that to several people, said I think this guy is out to get me.
In what warrior?
Did?
He think that there was so much unnecessary spending, in particular.
Things that we take for granted in schools, new books, wallpaper, you know that well, but I mean just you know, spoosing up the classrooms, things like that, desks, things, anything that really costs money. Ko didn't want to do. He felt that they had to be responsible to the taxpayers and spend you know, judiciously and prudently, and he felt that Hike was taking a check book and running wild, which he was not. You know, they were reasonable expenses.
Now in that in support of that were the Again the other taxpayers, as other council members, other trustees will say, other people that would you know, weigh in on this. Did they agree with Keyho or did they agree with Hike?
It depended on the issue. It depended on the issue pretty much, you know. They you know, you pick your battles wisely. Ko did not pick his battles wisely, and so some of you in some you lose. And there were you know, which is standard for again, standard for school board stuff having been done many a school board. Meaning it's funny because my friends in education said to me, oh, you you must have modeled this after you know, you know such and such a person and another such a person.
You know, that's what they sounded like, a SA. No, it's it's pretty normal apparently what.
Went on there, right, Yeah, So nothing to indicate any kind of foreboding of anything to occur, certainly, and in terms of violence, he didn't have a violent past or predisposition or any behavior that would There was well, other than the incident in the past, which of course came out later with his stepmother, there was an incident where he shot a dog. There's different versions of the story. One he shot the dog, another one he poisoned the dog.
It was the neighbor's dog across the street. And he readily admitted that he did it because he was tired of the dog running around his property and barking and yipping around. So that's probably the most unusual thing, and it certainly, I know, there's no defending it, but that was probably the most unusual thing. Another incident where he tried to sell a man a horse. The horse had one eye, and he came up with a bill of sale and told the guy, am, okay, here's your horse.
The guy didn't want to buy the horse, but somehow Keio had come up.
And said, okay, here it is, and here's your bill of sale. It was it was weird, strange behavior, you know, little things like that here and there that were a little bit you know, offbeat.
Now, just prior to this, they have a janitor at the school itself and right, that janitor had noticed something amiss but really didn't chalk it up to anything. What happened and what was his reaction? And tell us about that?
Yeah, he know what ko had done was then they figured this over the course of months, he had planted dynamite, six hundred pounds of dynamite beneath the school and wires and timers and things like that, and had carefully hidden it within the rafters. When they found it, you know, after the explosion, they were just it was mind boggling how he had carefully hidden everything. Now, the janitor of the school noticed that a trap door was open, and then a lock had been busted on a regular door.
And but you know, it was nothing unusual. Maybe the wind blew that trap door open. Who knows, in retrospect it was probably Keho had you know, somehow gotten in that trap door and used it, or perhaps it busted a lock. On January first, it was going into December thirty first to January first, nineteen twenty seven, there was an enormous explosion at Keho's place. He said he was setting off fireworks for the New Year's but it was an annoying It wasn't like fireworks. It was a dynamite
explosion of some sort. And his wife said, oh, the old boys just having some fun. In retrospect, it was probably a dress rehearsal to make sure the timers worked and things like that, because it was people heard the explosion for.
Miles around it was. It was that intensive an explosion.
How close was his property to the school itself.
About two miles about two miles from the property, not far at all.
Now, tell us about the day before, the day proceeding, and then we can talk about the day.
Itself, normal day. But at that night there was a band rehearsal or something like. There was a little band contract going on. And one of the students, when he was leaving, he saw a man standing outside the school at night and he thought, oh, that's mister Keyhoe. And he was just standing there in front of the school. There was no board meeting or anything like that. He had no reason to be standing in front of the school, but he was just standing there by himself, quietly. And
then the next day happened. What happened was the next morning, the janitor there was a problem with the furniture with the generator. The generator wasn't going on, and oh no, I'm sorry, excuse me. It was it was a problem with the boiler.
The boiler wasn't going on.
So they called Keyhoe and he came and he took a look at it, and he was getting quite agitated. It was about eight thirty or so in the morning. He was quite agitated, and he said, I've got to get going. I've got to get going, and he left. About eight forty five students were all in school. The suddenly the janitor and a handyman are thrown against the wall. They didn't know what was going on. Enormous explosion. People
thought the boiler had blown up. The school was two stories, rose about maybe three to six feet in the air, and then pancake down, trapping people and trapping children. One wing of the school went up. Now they estimated maybe one hundred pounds of the dynamite had gone off. Kioid they estimated planted six hundred pounds of dynamite.
Pirate tall.
Why the other five hundred didn't go off? Maybe there was a short and the wire. Maybe the explosion ripped up one of the timers. Hard to say, but you know, for what it's worth, that was you know, the best you know thing that happened was not all of it went off. If it had all gone off, the town would have been wiped off the map. Six hundred pounds
of dynamite is an enormous amount of dynamite. Now, simultaneously, when the school blew, there was across the street, the woman who lived across the street from Kyo in the farm across the street, heard a big bang and in mind, she said, that's key hose and she just felt that, and an enormous fire broke out a key hoose and just spread rapidly through his house and through a couple of his buildings, and it was the neighbors came to the fire to you know, his you know, they were
going to form a bucket brigade or something help put out the fire. Kehoe emerged in his truck from this big plume of smoke, and he looked at the neighbors and he said, boys, you better get out of here. You better go down to the school. And he drove off to the school.
And what is he talking about?
They didn't know what he meant, but that was starting to come out. There'd been an explosion at the school and yet of course everybody in town either had a child or children there, or knew somebody who had children there. It was their estimated between about two hundred and seventy five children are in school that day. Tiho drives down
to the school. Now the school is no As I said, people thought it was a boiler that had gone off, but it was just epic what was going on there, the enormous pancaking down of the roof onto the second floor, that there's this big pile of debris. There's no fire, but it is just debris. There's smoke, there's dust. They are pulling children out with their hands. They form a
triage at what was the telephone office. There's a mortgage starting to form the front lawn and people are opening up their houses to as triage is temporary hospitals, things like that. A call there's one phone, you know, the phone exchange. They call out to ambulances and lancing, please get here. They're throwing kids into trucks, into anything they can get them to get to the hospitals. Keyo drives up and Hike sees him and he runs up to the truck and you know, at this point, you know
our animosity. We need to save these kids, and he looks. He says, we need your truck. We need to get ropes, we need to get ladders, and Kia says, okay, I'll take you with me, and Hike just freezes and he says, you know something about this, don't you. At that point, Keyo takes a gun fires it into a cash of explosives he has in the cab of his truck, and he has packed the cab of his truck with nails, rusty bolts, hoe heads, things like that. It blows up,
he blows up, he blows up. Hike with him. This stuff sprays out like shrapnel and kills other people as well. At the end of the day there were.
Thirty eight children.
Actually one child did later, but thirty eight children and six adults counting Keho and his wife, who I'll get to in a moment, were dead.
Of course, when Keio blew.
Up the truck, they realized it wasn't the boiler, but something horrible had happened and he was at the epicenter of it. Now his wife Nelly, as I said, it was a sickly woman people were looking for. They didn't know where she was She was found on the next day on the farm, her in a she was in a cart. She was burned beyond recognition. Her skull was cracked.
They don't know if it conceivably the heat without getting disgusted in here, that the heat could have expanded the brain and cracked her skull, or he could have cracked it. Nobody knows if he killed her, if she was dead before he brought her out there. There's just simply no way to know. But next to her, on one side was a family strong box with like bonds and things like that in it. And on the other side was the jewel the excuse me not the jewel, the silverwar,
the family silver War. It was almost ritualistic the way it had been placed about her, and as I say, she was burned beyond recognition.
Now with this.
Response, what I found interesting In nineteen twenty seven, in a very very small town, they've called for emergency for firefighters, and emergency the equivalent of an ambulance, I guess. And it's like sixteen minutes. So tell us about this herculean effort to be able to you know, first they make calls and realize there's no one to call there's no one to be able to offer assistance. How do they get people to you know, the incredible amount of manpower, doctors, nurses,
how do they try to manage this? And tell us about that herculean effort.
Well, they, of course, the hospitals, the calls came in and said there's been a massive explosion. They had children in the hallways, they had you know, it's like almost like you know, the things that we saw, you know, in a strange way, what we saw on nine to eleven with the you know, suddenly the hospitals opening up and you know, people in the hallways things like that. They didn't have the cranes or anything like that. They were literally using their hands to pull.
Up the debris.
They at one point were trying to get a telephone poll and work it as a lever to pull the roof off the school.
It was.
It was a monumental effort. And you know, of course in the days later they were able to get in heavier equipment, but initially it was largely by hand and what you know, implements that they had, you know, available to them. At one point, one boy who was you know, badly injured. They were out of vehicles. So they threw them in the only vehicle that they could find, and that was a hearse, and the hearse brought this kid
to the hospital and Lansing. It was it was remarkable what they had id you have this.
This is a school that goes right through grade school up to high school. And when this ceiling fell or the roof fell, it so tell us what not to break it all down. But primarily this was afflicting the younger students, wasn't it right?
It was it was the youngest students. It was the second graders and the kindergarten the third graders for second third graders were the ones who were killed. Now it was exam day, was final exam day, and students who had done well, the high school students didn't have to come in that day, and so some of them were playing, you know, catch on the front lawn. One of the fibers I spoke with said she was picking flowers in the you know, nearby, and she heard this enormous explosion.
So not every kid was in the school necessarily at the time, and a lot of the high school kids too, who were inciting war studying for exams, they were able to get out and participate in the rescue as well. You know, people really, you know, rose to the occasion, you know, and you know, although you know, certainly the worst that happened, it brought out the best in everyone.
It reminded me to the scenario, or at least the description. The only thing I could associate it with was nine to eleven, where you had this sort of rain of dust and dirt and smoke and silt. And that's sort of what I got from this, was this tell us about that sort of environment post the explosions.
Yeah, I parents, you know, the children were covered in dust, you know, I describing the book as they were climbing out of the debris like dust covered moles. And the dust was thick throughout the area and inside the school itself. Some of the children who survived said they couldn't see anything because the dust was so thick. One child saw a beam of light through maybe a dime sized hole.
Had no idea how we had gotten in that position, but it was, you know, just a tiny beam of light to all this thick, thick dust, and inside of course.
Was just horrible womage. There was one that.
Teacher, she was wedged in she couldn't move her head.
There was a boy above her. She realized that.
The boy's eyes were opened, and she realized the child was dead and his face was inches from hers. She couldn't do anything. She couldn't move, she couldn't get out. The only thing she could do to avoid the boy's death there was just keep her eyes closed. Other children were, you know, trapped in you know, different ways. One teacher, Hazel Weatherby, she was the second grade teacher, and she reminds me very much of Vicky DeSoto, who stood up and when that madman came into Sandy Hook and started
firing away. In a way, she reminds me very much of Hazel, because what miss Weatherby did when they found her, she was barely alive, and she had a child in each arm. It was like her teacher instincts that kicked in, and she must have reached out to grab the two children and pulled them towards her, And when the rescuers came, she gave the children over. The children, of course, unfortunately, had died. But after the rescuers had the children, she
died herself. She was barely hanging out to life, but she wanted, you know, her teacher instincts kicked in. She wanted to make sure her students were safe.
Yeah, Now how did they manage? Was there any was there a call and a response to more medical help or how did they deal with all these victims in a small hospital that certainly wasn't built for that kind of number of victims or number of people needing attention? So how did they deal with them?
It was it was almost like you know when we think of like a mass unit or something like that. They had to do you know, quick and dirty. You know, there was so many you know, they had to choose which victim was hurt, you know, the worst, who needed the most help at the moment. One person they saw I was a teacher who did die. The nursery called. She looked at the woman and said that poor woman is blown apart and there was nothing they could do for her. It was, you know, as horrible as seen
as you can imagine. And they, you know, they did what they had to do, but you think, you know, they could only save you know, so many children. One child did hang on, but she ended up dying in her injuries.
A few months later, there was a boy that also was in a coma.
Yeah, but.
His heart was they thought he was gonna they thought he was gonna die. Yeah, they didn't you know, they didn't know his sister was. They wouldn't tell the sister or anything. She was just terrified. But his they thought he was going to die. And his heart was just like pounding so hard that the bed was shaking. And eventually they gave him whiskey to help keep him under control.
Whiskey of course being illegal because prohibition, but someone had it, of course, and it did the trick, and it stopped his heart from pounding so hard for the rest of his life, though he had trapannel in his is.
And you know, I'm kids.
I mean, they suffered one you know, they had broken you know, one man at a twisted angle.
All of his life.
Certainly they had you know, the post traumatic stress disorder as well. One woman told me she remembered her grandmother thunderstorm. He was an enormous thunderstorm was rolling through a town and she was just completely freaking out. And they realized it was because of the sounds, the explosions there was.
I spoke with the school. Eventually itself, it was rebuilt, but it was torn down in the in the in the seventies, and uh I spoke with a woman who was a who had gone to the you know, the new school, and they had there was a bomb scare and periodically some really sick people would call in and with bomb scares to the school and they were all hustled out, and she said her teacher was crying. She
couldn't understand why her teacher was crying. And she found out later that many years later when she was reading this Tachu's obituary, that the woman had been a survivor of the bombing and probably was relivingated in her mind when this is happening. So the effects were long, both physically and psychologically.
Let's go backwards though here because one of the things I found most profound, and this is not the first time I've been surprised, but I was again even more surprised from this because as soon as you think you've you've seen it all, then I read this. So was the public's response and the media's response. So tell us first about the media. How big was this story? How did the media respond in terms of descending on this town, just to kind of illustrate that eighty five years ago,
how was the media eighty five years ago. So first tell us about the media response, and then you can tell us about even more profound public response.
Oh yes, well, the media certainly came in. It was it was newspapers. Radio was in its infancy. So there were newsreel reporters who did come in. They flew in. They you know, there's actually if you look on YouTube, you can see a shot of the of an airplane flying over the school. They so there were news photographers, the papers inundated the place and bo What's really interesting, this happened in May of nineteen twenty seven, three days
after the bombing. There was a guy named Charles Lindberg who took off from New York and flew to Paris and gone completely. It was an international story what had happened in Bath gone. Everybody wanted to read about Lucky Lindy, and it dominated the newspapers in a way. I think it was probably the best thing that could have happened, because, I mean, today we're we see what happened in Paris with the big media, you know, NonStop, and certainly in Sandy Hook it was non stop media. I think it
really helped Bath. You know, heal such as you can heal from something like that, to be left alone, at least by the media. But Nick, keep in mind, I said, this is the quintessential small town. Not many people, no stoplights there was. This is previous to the interstate. They estimated fifty thousand people descended they wanted to see the sights.
It was.
I mean, twenty cars in Bath is a traffic jam, but I can't even imagine all the people coming in. They people couldn't go to the funerals. They had to There were a pair of sisters who would sing, you know, at funerals. They had to take them by police motorcycle from place to place because they couldn't get through. Traffic was so loud that people could not hear what was going on in the funeral. They would hold the funerals in the living room, the parlor or things like that.
They couldn't hear because there were so many people outside. One person, you know, said Hey, where's the cemetery where they're going.
To bury these children?
And said, oh, it's up that way. We're bearing my son there. Later another house, somebody knocked on the door and said they wanted to see the dead body. Can you imagine that it's just as horrible as horrible can be. I still find it hard to comprehend. First of all, the numbers of people who came in. I mean, this is a teeny tiny town and it's just swamped with tens of you know, I mean literally hundreds of tourists.
You know, for lack of a better word, walkers, you know, ghoules. You know.
They were you know, picking up you know, dirt from the keyhole place in Mason jars, things like that, taking bricks, things like that.
They didn't get it.
They might be dynamites two in the ground, which was really odd. And they continued well into the summer. People have he coming in and seeing the sights as it were.
Yeah, it's really shameful behavior. And what I found so surprising was it wasn't, you know, wasn't spurned on by the media by a hungry, sort of voracious media, was just by the people themselves. And I was very surprised by that behavior. Knocking on people's doors. It was beyond cross and unfeeling. And again it was from small town people as well. It's not like they came from the big city looking at people like they're in a zoo.
It was people that should have been able to be able to relate, but incredible sort of behavior.
Yeah, I still can't. I still can't fathom. And every time I'm in Bath, i'man there, you know, once or twice a year, as they say, you know, if there's ten twenty cars, it's a traffic jam. I cannot imagine. I mean, they had to close down part of the road, the roads leaning into from Lansing leading into Bath because they were then they would the state police had to come in and they had to turn people back.
They said, go, don't.
Stop it because the cars were there was traffic jams. It was incredible, incredible that people would would do this. And you know, I still can't, as I say, is I still can't fathom the numbers.
Now the big thing in this book, and you know, I don't want to be a spoiler here, but because you really unfold this much later, which I appreciated and I think the reader would as well. In that why would Keyhole kill these children? We alluded to the meeting, the teacher parent meeting and his dissatisfaction at this. Superintendent Hyak height right, and basically at least we see the motive, but the motive to kill innocent children where he had
no seemingly no argument with them. And then later much later in the book, you talk about somebody's talking about a mechanic named McConnell. So at least in terms of the investigation, if you don't want to give that, you don't want to give that away in terms of the investigation after this bombing to what possibly could have motivated this man, tell us about that, and also you can tell us about Sidney Howell, the unfortunate person that, yes, Sidney decided made stick up for him.
Yeah. Now, at the.
At the edge of Keyho's farm, they found a sign and said killers are made, not born. You know, they made me do it, you know, is a nice way of putting it. And again that was like like Choe when he at at Virginia Tech when he was you know, we all saw those horrible videos where he said, you made me do this.
It wasn't me, you made me do this.
Killers are made, not born. And you know, in a sense, the most frustrating thing I think about this is there is no why, you know, I mean, the mythology is that Keyho blew up the school because he was upset about the taxes. You don't blow up a school full of children because you're upset about your taxes. You blow up a school full of children. And I mean it certainly took months in planning this and executing it, and
you know, taking the care to do it. It was clearly well thought plan and you know, certainly in his house to go off. At the same time, as I said, the man was a master and electrician and a master in dynamite and explosives, you know it. The frustrating thing about this is there's no why. You know, we reach for why. The rational mind wants to know why, why would somebody do.
Something like this?
And in the case of Andrew Killo, the why was blown up with him. You know, poor Sydney Ow or Sidney Owl was a friend of his and could not wrap his mind around Qihow having done this.
And you know what they had.
They held an inquest a few days about a week afterwards. The inquest was in theory to find out why he had murdered Hike. That's how it was looked at, why he murdered Hiked. But the reality, if you read the inquest it's available online, is there trying to find out everything, what happened, what led up to it. It's it's more or less an autopsy of the day's events. And Sidney Howell just couldn't wrap his mind around that Kyo, a man he thought he knew, had done such a thing.
So when throughout the summer is people were coming to the farm, you know, looking around Kiyo's place. Well, he got up one day and said, Andrew Killo was a fine man and you know, couldn't have done something like this. And somebody, you know, people were in justs furious with him for this, and you know, the sheriff you know in town said hey, you know, watch your mouth. You know, you know, you know you got freedom of speech, you know,
watch your mouth. But he couldn't stop defending his friend, you.
Know, Keho.
So one day at the farm, he gets up and he starts making this speech and somebody leaps out of the crowd and wraps his hands around you know, poor Sidney Howll's thrown and you know, you know, could have joked him to death, pulled the man off him. It was his son had been you know, in the school when the bomb had gone off, and how was in his car stopped on a railroad track some time later and he was the train hit the car and he
was killed. Probable suicide, but hard to say. There was no I know anything, but it's conceivable.
He just you know.
And I've actually met his granddaughter and she and I had some very interesting and talks.
About this as well. What's interesting too is that a gentleman named Monty Elms basically writes a book and he's not really he's not an author. This is his first foray into that. So tell us a little bit about him and his book.
Well, he was the guy who lived across the street from keyhow as I mentioned, you know, there was a he had you know, done some shooting with you know, with the guy who lived across the street from him. The week before well that was Matty Ellsworth and his people were coming in to town. He more or less self published this book and it was about how the uh you know, it was the stories of all the children who died and their photos and some history of
the school. And this is where the story of Keiho, you know, then the stepmother who was you know, blown up, This is where it first came to light.
And he.
So this booklet was created. Basically people were coming in and it was sold almost you know, in a sort of macabwey as a souvenir booklet. And it's a useful document, certainly. And I don't think he meant any ill will by creating this document by any means. I mean, he used his own money to do it. And one of the survivors told me that, you know, he and you know the other boys in town, they would go and they'd sell them, and then they'd run back to mister Ellsworth's get more.
Copies and go sell somewhere.
And it's actually you can buy a facsimile of it too, and it's and it's it's also you know if Ecximbli is also available on the internet, and it's if you do a Google search. It's an interesting little booklet. It's an interesting time capsule of the time. And it was the first book. There was another book that came out. The author actually recently died. Grant Parker came out about twenty five years ago. But my book is came out about four five years ago.
Right, some interesting stories as well. While I still have this one fresh in my mind, as the pennies collected and the Girl and the Cat. Maybe you could tell us that because it's really this is a sad story. But I mean, overall this book, but there are some little bright spots of.
Yeah, sort of girl in the cat statue. Yeah.
They wanted to have a memorial to these children. It's always been a struggle how do you memorialize this? And it took many, many decades really to figure out how to build a memorial to this. And one of the things that they did was they created a statue. It was a girl maybe ten years old holding a cat, and it was just representative of the children who had died. And for many years it was in front of the it stood in front of the school. As to say, they rebuilt the school.
The senator, the.
Cousin senator, Yeah, cousins, he Jim's cousins.
Cousins.
Excuse me, was he gave the money to rebuild the school and was called the Cousin's School after that, And so it stood in the hallway in the school there for many many years until the school itself, as I say, was torn down in the seventies. The uh but now in the middle school, they in the middle school which is actually across the street from where the former school site was.
Uh.
They have a museum, the UH School Museum, where they have artifacts of the day and photographs, the flag that was flying over the school that day, the clock that's frozen in time, various pictures, things like that, and the girl in the cats statue was there, and the woman whose father uh. You know, children from all over Michigan and actually all over the country, you know, and in
fact some of the world. They sent pennies to raise the money to have the statue created, and it was it was children from all over saying, you know, these are you know, we want to be part of this. We you know, we feel we want to do something, you know, And it's a it's a lovely statue. It's a lovely memorial to these children. Now, the side of the school itself is you know, as they say, the
school is torn down. It's become a park and it's in the center of the park is a is the cupola that stood uh there was on top of the school building. If you ever look at photographs you can see on the Internet of the of the cupola on top of the school. It stands approximately in the same space that it would have in the park where it would have been on the school and there's some you know, memorial markers around, and there's a bricks with all the
victims names surrounding this cupola. It's a small, quiet memorial and.
It's it's a profound space and a sacred space.
I've been there many times and it never I always always moves me.
Every time I'm there.
You feel something very deep. You're you feel you're almost like on you know, hallowed ground when you are there. And the cemetery is a a few miles from there, not very far, and seventeen of the children are buried there as well as some of the adults who are killed that day.
And it's it's it's quite a place. It's quite something to see.
Now. Officially, this Andrew Keijo is not really thought of in any kind of compassionate terms or understanding any kind of terms or juicy was mentally ill. What is was his official status then now.
And always a murderer, a madman, a psychopath.
But you know, it is what it is.
He is the I mean, it's the it's one of those stories, as I said at the beginning, forgotten in history. This is the first school killing of massive scale in the United States. And you know, it's still the deadliest. Anyone wants to break that record, but it is still the deadliest school killing in the history of the United States.
And uh, it's you know, it's a lot of as it is.
Sandy Hook unfolded in a similar way too. As I say, the example of uh, Hazel weatherby the teacher in Bath and Vicki DeSoto, the teacher at Sandy Hook, him killing his mother, uh killing his wife, there's a lot of parallels.
It was.
They felt that really hard in Bath. I can promise you they felt it very hard at Bath when Sandy Hook happened, and it was by a strange coincidence. And I have said, this is where when Einstein says, you know, God doesn't real nice with the universe, I truly believe that. I have a friend who's a minister in Connecticut, and
I emailed her, said, you know what's going on? Well, yeah, she knew what was going on because she just a couple of miles from Sandy Hook, and she had been in the firehouse when the children were killed, or when the parents told them that the children were coming back. And I called my friends in Bath. I said, my god, we have this incredible moment. You guys know exactly what
they're going through. And I said, yeah, you're right. And the people of Bath sent the letter to the people of Sandy Hook and saying we understand, we know, and we are with you. And they sent a letter back and it's it was.
I was there.
They always have a lunch and like a reunion thing that they do every year in May, for like the fiftieth you know, the fiftieth class reunion.
You know, our is honor right, but.
They always, they always, you know, say something about what happened to It's always on the Saturday closest to the bombing commemoration. I don't like using the word anniversary. To me, anniversary is happy, so I always say commemoration. And at the the year after Sandy Hook a couple of years ago now they read both of the letters and it was it was one of those moments I will never forget it. It was. It was profound. And the people, the people in that room.
You know, the children of survivors. Most of the survivors are gone.
And I got to be very tight actually with a woman who is more or less the star of the book that's what I called her, and she thought that was very funny. But her brother had been killed and she and people can read the book and find out the connection there. But she and I got to be pretty tight towards the.
End of her life.
And I still miss josephe She died a couple of years ago, but it was after Sandy Hook when those two letters were read at that school reunion. Was was some moment in my life I will never forget.
Yes, that's Josephine, is what you're talking about, right right.
Josephine Cushman Vale was, and she told me she was. When I interviewed her, she was in her nineties and she lived to be one hundred and passed away shortly after one hundredth birthday.
I interviewed. She was about ninety four to ninety five when I interviewed her, and she was.
Telling me some of the most I mean, there's no way to describe it other than gory. I mean these things were gory, unflinching things. I didn't want to upset her. You know, she's ninety four old you and I want to upset her. I said, you know, you don't have to tell me this stuff. Even though I wanted the information. You don't have to tell me this stuff, and she said, no, people have to know. I'm not going to be here forever, and I want people to know what happened. She didn't
want it to be forgotten. She didn't want her brother to be forgotten. Her brother Ralph was you know, seven years old when he was killed, and she did not want him to be forgotten. She was fourteen when he was killed and did not want any of this to be forgotten.
And it is.
She told me some of the and some of the most graphic stuff in the book was what she had told me some eighty years later.
Yeah, and it is quite graphic, and you you draw the reader into that as well. The other thing is there is some there is some of these stories that are really quite interesting. Like the coma we talked about the boy in a coma. Well, that boy eventually was told, well, you got to stay in the house and don't challenge yourself or anything, and he said, I'm going outside and that's it, and they went okay, and he lived along and healthy lives. Basically he was still pulling shrapnel out of his scalp.
But you know, oh yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, even you know, when he became an older man too, see Pete, there were the purple scars and you know it was the shrapnel in his head. But yeah, no, he refused. He simply rebelled. He didn't want to sit inside and knit with his sister. He wanted to do what little boys do and and blessus already did it and wash and lived a long, healthy life. Yeah, because I interviewed one of the he was in the early stages of
Alzheimer's when I interviewed him. But you asked him about that day and he knew, he knew. He might not have known, you know, what he was, you know where he was, you know, from moment to moment, but you asked him about that day, he knew, he knew exactly what was going on.
Yeah, that's fascinating too. Really, that's something he could never forget, even though he's forgetting everything else.
Yes, yes, wow, Yeah.
It is amazing too that you had access to these older people that still had their faculties about them and can with very very vivid memories. There's a lot of access thanks to mister elswere Ellsworth's book, which is very interesting. Some of the stuff he had in that book was quite fascinating. The photos that you filed for this as well, and some of the other just really interesting stories of people being dug out of the rubble and just kid just ran off. They dug about yeah okay.
Yeah, in fact, yeah, he picked up his chair and ran.
He was kindergarten.
He picked up his chair and he read all the way home. And that chair now, actually the family later donated it to the museum. You know, many years later. It just basically sat in the attic.
You know, they didn't know what to do with it.
And that's one of the and it's it's in the it's in the school museum.
Now, yeah, there's there wasn't too many bright spots in that day because everybody was affected because even if your child you found okay, they weren't hurt and they weren't killed, because as many people hurt and very seriously hurt as well too, both you know, you know, not the shrapnel and hips and broken arms.
And it's something that that happened to me. I was at the I was a book I was at the Grand Rapids, Michigan. I was at the book festival there. Now there's a story when when Keeo blew up his cab, the cap of his truck, the strapla flew out. One woman was hit in the head and she ended up losing an eye. And she's holding her baby, and she had her wits about her. She did not drop the baby. She hung on to that kid for dear life, even though she'd been hit in the face and as they say,
lost and I was gravely injured. And a woman came up to me, She's an elderly woman, came up.
To me and said, I was the baby in your book, and I yeah, I knocked me over with a feather.
That was one of those moments that she showed me a picture of her mother. Mother always would turn her face away from the camera so that you couldn't see, you know, the way she had lost her eye.
Yeah.
Yeah, And also too, you have some great photos like the car, the truck itself that really is And again, this is such a profound moment that you have that interaction with Hike and with Keyho and the truck and the grounds right there, his property, like I said, a couple of miles away, smoke rising from and from his property, and people not at that, you know, really not knowing what was going on. But you know, Hike At a little too late found out, Yeah, this is this is
what it really is, and that's why he's here. He'd wave to a couple people full he was very nonchalant, wasn't he. He's he was in this murderous campaign rampage, and he was waving to people like he stopped going on, just had to a young girl and let it cross the street.
Yeah, I mean, clearly an unhinged mind. And we've basically we've given your listeners a bare bones version of the story.
It's there's so much absolute in the book.
Yeah. Absolutely. Now I I want to ask to what does Bath look like because it seemed to be obviously it's a very resilient group of people in this community that would make a community thrive or just not. Yeah, so what does Bath look like? You know, in twenty ten or so, what does it look like now? Not that different?
Some of the old houses are still there, you know, they electricity.
Now.
Obviously there's new school buildings and things like that, but it you know, there's still the old downtown such as it was. A lot of those buildings are still standing. What was the Blacksmith shop because they're still blacksmiths. Then is still there? What was the community hall is still standing?
You know it.
You know people have told me that you know they have there's cracks in there, you know, in the foundations and things there of homes that you know, or in the roofs or something of their homes that you know are definitely because of the of the bombing itself. It doesn't look that much different then. As I say, it's the quintessential small town America. When you think small midwestern town, that's it. And they don't have it. They don't have a stoplight, it's it's a fur way stop sign is
the center of town. It's you know, finest kind too. I mean just the people there are just wonderful, wonderful people, but this thing is a shadow that that hangs over them. You can't ever fully recover for something like this, and it's a generational thing. There's you know the people now or you know their parents, you know, people down their fifties sixties, you know their parents were you know, in it,
or their grandparents, you know, things like that. I think there's maybe one or two survivors left.
I'm not sure.
I interviewed four for the book, and they've all since passed away. I know there's there's one woman who she's got and I think like one hundred and four now.
Bless her art's still you know active.
You wouldn't even know it. She's you know, fantastic, really great shape. But I think there's maybe that I'm aware of. There's maybe two or three survivors left of that day.
Well, well, it's an incredible tale, and like you say, we've only really scratched the surface. And I mean, it really is amazing how you've compiled everything and brought the reader really in to this uh you know, very important historical moment and very again very lots of parallels with what's going on now where instead of serial killing being all the rage, it's now my murder, and you know, and these kinds of things too, very very you know, you can't killing kids in a school and blowing up,
you know, that's I mean, there isn't much more. Yeah, I know, there can't be any more heinous a crime.
Yeah, I know. And we today it's we're in a strange way. I hate saying this, but it's almost like you know, I mean, certainly when Sandy Hook happened when you know, they not again, you know, and it's almost like, in a strange way, we're almost you know, used to these things happening, as awful as they are, you know, when the thing happened last year with that kid in
Washington State is not again and yet again. And but people don't you know, realize that, you know, in Bath, Michigan in May of nineteen twenty seven is the first one and still you know, not you know, worse, but certainly still the deadlist that everyone is the worst one killing children in the school. Is I nothing more horrible I can think of? And this is still you know, the deadliest.
Yeah, absolutely, Well. I want to thank you for bringing this book to you know, the public's attention as well, and thank you for this interview so we can talk.
And our interest. They can go to my website Arnie Bernstein dot com and books available on Amazon, certainly.
And how about Facebook? Do you do that at all? You're interesting in that, Yes I am.
If people want to, and there's actually a page for the book on Facebook as well, they can you know, contact me on Facebook or look for the Bathmasteracre page on Facebook as well. Absolutely, certainly happy to talk with people if they want to contact me.
And you have some other books as well. This is not your first, Oh.
No, no no.
My most recent one is Swastika Nation Fitzkoon and the Rise and Fall of the German American Bond. It's about the pro Nazi movement that swept America in the nineteen thirties and people who.
Beat them up.
In a wild get it's completely different, wild guest of characters, you know, the crazy Nazi at the center of it, and Walter Winchell and Mayer Lansky and Edward g. Robinson and Dewey and Laguardi and a whole bunch of other fun gil. It's it's quite different, but.
Just as good, I think.
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, well I want to talk with the author.
Absolutely, you got to be shameless, so right, it's not so shameless, Absolutely, it's just right. Well, anyway, I want to thank you very much for coming on Arnie and talking about bath massacre, America's first school bombing. I'm sure we'll be talking again soon, So thank you very much for this interview and.
Thank you for having me.
Okay, take care, thank you, good night, Good