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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 BTK. 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 Zupanski.
Good Evening. The new edition of this misgan notable book includes a new introduction and stories from interviews with two additional survivors, Rna Gates Colter and Ralph Witchell, which took place after the first edition was published in two thousand and nine. On May eighteenth, nineteen twenty seven, the small town of Bath, Michigan, was forever changed when Andrew Kehoe set off a cache of explosives concealed in the basement
of the local school. Thirty eight children and six adults were dead, among them Keyho, who had literally blown himself to bits by setting off a dynamite charge in his car. The next day, on Keyho's farm, what was left of his wife burned beyond recognition. After Keyho 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. The book they were featuring this evening is Bath Massacre, new edition, America's first school bombing, with my special guest, journalist and author Arnie Bernstein. Welcome back to the program, and thank you so much for this interview. Arnie Bernstein, Thank you for.
Having me back.
Thank you so much, thank and congratulations on this new edition and always always timely considering all the school shootings and mass shootings at schools. Let's talk about as you do in the introduction you had originally in your two thousand and nine release of this book, Bath Massacre, you had four of the survivors that you were able to interview for the book. In this new edition. Tell us about what is in the new edition.
Well after the original came out, I was contacted by a couple of other survivors, Ralph Witchell, who at the time lived in Nebraska, and we're in a Gates culter. She was Murna Gates when she was at school who lived in Windsor, Canada. They both have since passed. She lived to I think one hundred and one and he lived to ninety three, and which I find interesting because a lot of the survivors lived the ripe old ages too. Josephine Cushman lived to one hundred, a few others. In fact,
there's another one, Irene, I mean Dunham. There's another Irene Dunham who is just turned one hundred and fourteen. Believe it or not, she's one of the oldest people in the world. Absolute delight too. But in any event, both Rna and Ralph contacted me independently of each other, and I interviewed them just for the record, you know, just so that we would have their stories on the record. And I gave the CDs of those interviews to the
Bath School Museum for their archives. And I always had in the back of my mind that someday I would return to the book and time was ripe, and I took the material I got from them, which was considerable, considerable, and it gave shade to some of the stories. It filled out some of the stories that I had, and it also gave me new stories, new elements that I think really deepened the book and gives a larger picture of what happened on that terrible day.
You included early on in the book A Horrible Moments, as you mentioned, or A horrible week. December fourteenth, twenty twelve, Connecticut, Sandy Hook Elementary School. What happened in regards to Bath massacre, this book and the twenty twelve Newton, Connecticut Sandy Hook shooting.
That was a day. That was a day. One of the first things I did actually was called a friend of mine in Bath who's one of the museum committee members, and I said, this looks really bad. This looks really bad, and this looks really a lot like Bath. And I thought, so after the you know, the oh my god, horror moment realizing that was happened, I thought, I think I'm
going to be busy, which is unfortunately what happened. I got a lot of calls that week from radio stations and TV that wanted me on to talk about it, and I but what really hit home. I had a friend in Connecticut who was a minister, and I emailed her, I said, do you know what's going on? I didn't know where she was in relation to it, and she said, yeah,
I lived five miles from there. I've been ministering to some of the families, and I was in the firehouse when they told them that their kids weren't coming home.
Wow.
And it was like one of those moments where you, just like I said in the new introduction, God doesn't roll dice with the universes, Einstein said, for some reason, I was the fulcrum of these two terrible, terrible things. And so I talked to my friends in Bath. I said, look, you guys know better than anyone how this feels. Maybe you can send a letter to the people in Newtown. And they wrote a beautiful letter and sent it via my friend and it was published actually in the local
Newton paper. And my friend wrote a letter back on behalf of Newton, you know, saying thank you, thank you,
thank you, And it was profound. There was now every spring in May, actually at the like this Saturday, closest to the commemoration of the bombing, they have a luncheon from It's called the school Reunion luncheon, and they honored the fiftieth graduating class, you know, at the at the luncheon at that year, Sandy Hook was weighing on everybody's mind, and every every speaker who got up said something about
Sandy Hook, myself included. And the two letters were read, and there were survivors too in the audience too, and it was it was a moment.
I mean it was.
There was not a dry eye in the houses. The cliche goes, but it was. It was one of the most moving moments of my life. That was honored to be a part of. It was my you know, I it's one of those moments where you wonder, you realize there's some you know, sometimes you realize, you know, I don't want to get all ethereal or anything, but sometimes you wonder why you're here. And I think that was one of those moments where I realized maybe this was my purpose, was to connect these two communities.
It was a day.
It was a day, and it was and there's there's so many and I want to get to a far off Sandy Hook and Sandy Hook and Bath. But there were a lot of similarities, mostly that they lost a whole generation of children.
You also talk about a brave teacher in both stories, yes, and in the Bath story, a new teacher, Hazel Weatherby and there was she was a new teacher, and heroically she was found up to her waist in bricks with the two children beside her. Before we get into you, you spoke to Josephine Cushman Vale. You interviewed her. She was in her mid nineties. Right at the time, she was fourteen, and her brother that was killed was seven years old, right, and you say she recalled everything with
grizzly detail and two interviews with her. Let's get to, of course, the event May eighteenth, nineteen twenty seven. But let's, as you do once again, let's get to somehow trying to find out the why, because in this book you really do have the complete story of who this person was and really their development and what really happened to create this bath massacre. Talk about him growing up, his father and his early interests.
Well, Andrew Keiho, he's an enigma. He is a very normal life, as it were. The why I'll get to that in a minute, such that I can he I believe is to come side. Don't remember off hand, but he grew up there. He was something of a boy genius with electricity, was always creating these little gadgets and things participated in the school plays, things like that regular guy.
Then he went to Michigan State College now Michigan State University and Lansing studied electricity, which at the time, in the late eighteen hundreds early early nineteen hundreds, excuse me, was relatively new learning how to study that at the time. He met a woman named Nelly Price, and then he went out to further his studies at further his educational
electricity at a school in Saint Louis. Now at some point we don't know exactly what happened, but he got zapped and fell and was in a coma for two weeks. Did this affect him? Who can tell it?
Could?
It may not have, There's just no way to know. Eventually he recovered. He worked his way around the Midwest, worked as a power alignsman in Iowa for a while, and then moved back to Michigan. And his mother had died and his father, who was an older man, had been married and his new wife friend was actually a couple of years older than Andrew, old enough to be a sister, not uncommon for the time, but Andrew deeply resented this, and in fact they had had a little
girl who was his half sister. Now his father at that point was getting was older and needed the help of a couple of canes to get around the house. Now, one day friend Keho and again she and Andrew had a contentious relationship. She was going to light the oven it required. It was a gas stove. One counts as it was operated by gasoline and other says oil. Either way, it was petroleum based. And she lit the stove to turn it on and a woosh of flame came out
and she was engulfed in flame. He was in the kitchen and he threw water on her. Now you don't, I mean everybody know, you don't throw a trollum fire. You don't throw water because petroleum spreads the fire. You throw a flour, baking powder or something like that to call the fire. Well, this only made the situation worse and they managed to get her into a bed. She was just horribly burned and in absolute agony. He and
his little sister went next door. They didn't have a phone, the Keiho family, so he went next door and knocked on the door and said, could I use your phone? Friend, he's been burned. Made it sound like you know, a pot of boiling water, it'd fallen on her foot or something, and he said, oh, by the way, call a priest. And she lay in agony for a few more hours and then died. Now, the question this did not come
up until years later. It was more or less forgotten, and came up years later after the bombing, of course, and people wondered did he do it. Well, he had the mechanical know how to do something like this, but did he do it? There's no way to know. Certainly his behavior was strange, you know, throwing water on her, you know, saying, oh, Frank, he's been burned. To a borrow the phone, called a priest. Very I mean, there was no sense of urgency.
You said there was a motivation, Yeah, certainly a motivation, it seems seemingly a motivation with the with the estate his father was ailing. Yeah, now suddenly he has competition with a young bride and and a three year old exactly.
But there's no way to know in the court of law, which just wouldn't stand up without you know, something.
Like circumstantially, retrospectively, circumstances or substantially could have pulled it off. Certainly could have said it to go off. We just don't know, and the what would be deemed psychopathic response in light of the injury next door with the neighbor. Sure is again some circumstantial, not right actual evidence, but certainly yeah, a harbinger of things will say it could be.
Yeah if I were, If I were, you know, I won't say that he did it. But if I were, off the record say and I'm not off the record if I were, if they were, got to say, yeah, he did it, But again, no way to know. After that, he eventually makes his way. He reintroduces himself to Nellie Price right, and they ended up getting married and moving to her childhood home in Bath. He buys it and they you know, it's a nice three story home too. And everybody remembers Nelly from when she was a child
because she kind of grew up in that house. Her mother died and she had been raised by her uncle, who was well known in the area. He was a politician and a very well known man in the area.
They had an opportunity to buy the home as a result of her uncle dying, so there was an agreement for him to put a down payment down and then terms of payment. They moved to this new eighty acres this land. What about those payments?
He didn't make him I mean that simple. He stopped paying the mortgage. There was you know, there were various attempts to get him to pay the mortgage and he just refused. Now there was no danger of them to us seeing him out because the family owned owned the house, and he was paying off the mortgage to Nelly's family, So they never would have been kicked out of the house. They never would have were closed in. And did he know this in the back of his mind that that
would have happened. I don't know. Possibly, but he just refused to pay his mortgage.
You talk about his character though, and his father was a big influence in terms of his father hated taxation and had an idea that farmers should share in the wealth of their crops by managing them and maybe even holding them back in the market exactly. So he had
some radical ideas. He was a well known figure in the area, and despite Andrew not starting off in that regard, he seemed to be influenced by his father and picked up some of the same messages and was involved in the same kind of discussions with farmers and these roles that cropped up, right pun intended, I guess regarding management of their farms.
Exactly what both his father and you know, Andrew Kiho believe was that the farmer again, as you say, should control his product, and in doing so, he let his his farm go to seed. You know, pardon the pun on my part, but I mean he let the crops rot, and he thought, you know, his feeling was why should I, you know, why should I grow my crops and sell them when and everybody else can sell them if we stop, if we hold back, we can control our price and
we can make more money. It's not a sound way to farm, but that's what was his that was his belief, and he told others that this is what you should do.
Now you write about this interest in electricity morphs into him being sort of a go to guy expert on this new fledging electricity. But also he was a handyman, and he was also wanting to be involved in the school board. Right, So tell us about his involvement in the school board and just his behavior in that right right.
Yeah, Now, he had one of the most modern farms in the area. He had a steam powered tractor and which people are a guess powertractor, excuse me. And people were, you know, quite fascinated with all these technical things that he had on the farm that nobody else did. And he also, he felt and there was nothing crazy about this.
Though he and Nelly didn't have children. He felt when they were building the new school, well, he paid taxes, and his feeling is that, you know, as a taxpayer, he should have say and so he ran for the school board. Nothing wrong with that, and he was elected treasurer of the school board. Now, he had a very contankerous relationship with Emery Hike, who was the superintendent, and they would often fight back and forth about what things cost.
You know what. Andrew didn't want anything that was, you know, he felt was an unreasonable us. Things that were needed for the school, new desks, new books, art for the walls, a playground, equipment, stuff like that. Now, I've been in education for a long time and I've attended many, many school board meetings. There was nothing outlandish about this behavior. When I would friends of mine read the book, they said, well, you must have based their arguments on you know, this
person in that person. I said, well, they certainly helped inform me of you know, there was nothing unusual about that kind of behavior. When things didn't go his way, he would often try to shut down the meetings. He would go to a journey the meeting didn't always work, but that was his feeling. I'm a taxpayer, I should be involved. And he and Emery Hike were just oil and water, and Hike often said, I think this guy
is out to get me. He didn't know, of course how deep he was out to get him, but he felt that Andrew Killo was out to get him. Now. Andrew Killo, as you know I've said, was new electricity, was a handyman, excellent repairing things. So because he was a school trustee, they felt, you know, they would save money on you know, handyman, you know, hiring somebody to
fix things. So he was given complete access to the school to fix things when something broke down, when the generator broke down, they didn't have electricity in Bath at this point, I like say, the Roaring twenties roared right pass Bath right, it was because they were just getting electricity actually the weak of the bombing and there was a generator and he would fix the generator. He had a generator on his farm too, one of the few people in town who had an electrical generator, but he
would fix that. He would fix the boiler when it was broke. There was an incident where there were there was a beehive. Apparently some bees built a hive next to the furnace, and when it warmed up in the winter, the school was infested with bees. And they tried one thing, and then they tried another thing, and then they said, Andrew, can you do this? And he went down there and nobody knows what he did, but the infestation was gone. He stopped the bees. And interestingly, as an aside, the
school's nickname today the team name is the Bees. And there was groomed. It was because of what happened with Kio finding the bees, but it was not that it was some kid. His father ran a beehive or something like that, and so he named suggests to name the bees.
What when you talk about Keiho. At this time as well, there was some of the work that he would do on his father's farm was blowing up stumps and removing boulders and using dynamite. Further along in this story a little bit, we we talk about a year's eve in nineteen twenty six.
Right and twenty six into twenty seven, Right. What was the.
Situation in terms of the relationship with Nelly. What was her health like?
Well, Nelly was Nellie was sick. She was often sick. She was often in and out of the hospital. She had some kind of lung issues, might have been tuberculosis, but she was she was thinned, she was constantly coughing. She was quiet, and he took care of her. They was you know, whenever they were at ten meetings or something, she would say next to him, and she was very quiet. She was quite dependent on him. As far as the dynamite. He was the go to guy in town for dynamite.
And it sounds strange, but for the time, there was nothing wrong with it. There would if you had a stump, old tree stump in your field, or a giant boulder or something. You couldn't have a you know, your horse drag it out. You'd kill your horse, or you know, you'd wreck your automobile your truck trying to pull it out, so you would blow it up. And that was a
dangerous proposition. You needed to know exactly how to wire the dynamite and where to stand in all these things, and he had this knowledge, so he was the go to guy for blowing up stumps. It was known as stump blasting. Today they used enormous grinders to get out stumps and boulders, but back then you just blew them up standard thing. People came to him all the time, you know, could you blow up a boulder? Here, blow
up one. They're sure happy to do it. And he would often go to Lancing to pick up more dynamite and pyratol, which was a worst surplus World War One surplus explosive that was also common for the era. On New Year's twenty six and twenty seven, at midnight, there was enormous explosion at key Hoost Farm that people heard from miles around, and people you know asked, you know Nelly later, you know, when she was questioning about it, she said, oh, though, the boys just having some fun.
What I think happened was he said it on a timer. It conceivably was the dress rehearsal. Obviously, what he did took a long time to plan and required exacting timers within the school, and because he was an electrical expert, you know, he was able to set timers you know, you want your dynamite to go off at midnight exactly if you're setting off, you know, things to celebrate the
new year. So he set it on timers and set it off at you know, midnight on New Year's It conceivably was a dress rehearsal for what was going to happen in a few months.
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true murder. It could save you thousands a year. Now, Ernie, we were talking about this what you considered a dress rehearsal New Year's Eve nineteen twenty six, and in this after New Year's there was a couple people you mentioned, a guy named job Slight and another neighbor that realized that he had just blown off these explosives. In fact, the one neighbor was employed basically to go pick up some of these supplies, these explosives in je Accent and in Lansing at different times.
What was the.
We talk about this school board and he was a treasurer, but he had tried to attempted to make some moves and try to convince other people on that board of the kinds of things that he was interested in. Despite having this this major dispute with this superintendent Hike. But in terms of his success with this school board, where was he at in nineteen twenty six?
He wanted to run for other offices in the area, just as the piece a couple of other offices. He was briefly appointed to an office when someone one woman who held the office and died. But when he ran for reelection, he didn't win. And so when the election was held at the town hall and he was he and his wife excuse me, at the town community center.
His wife just sat there while it was clearly obviously he was not going to win, and didn't say anything about it, but so just went back to doing his duty. It apparently it had, you know, hopes of achieving some political power in the area, but it just was not meant to be. Unfortunately, you know, had he done, so who knows, you know, what would have happened, could have the story be different? Would it be telling this story today? Who knows?
You talked about Nellie's deteriorating health, but also the idea that the Price of State wanted to negotiate some kind of payment plan and they were having a hard time even trying to get any kind of negotiation with Keyho. What was the status at that time and what happened in that period of time that may have affected Keyho and some of his decisions.
Well, in fact, there was an inheritance that Nelly got and their attorney, you know, they had applied it to the mortgage given that there hadn't been any payments made now and Trew Kia was furious about this, and he and Nellie went to an attorney and a judge and you know, you didn't ask us, you should have done this first. And while it was agreed, yeah, that that was a wrong move and legally was a wrong move. It would be in the best interest to apply this
money to the mortgage given how much they owed. Q absolutely refused and even though it was Nelly's money, because the inheritance was to her, he said no, we're not doing it, and she acquiesced to her husband and so they got the money, but they didn't apply it to the mortgage. It was just it seemed like he was spiraling out of control. He couldn't handle his personal life very well. He was he couldn't get reelected, he was letting his farm rot, he was not paying his mortgage,
and there was clearly was something going on. On the other hand, he was able to maintain a veneer where people understood that, you know, Andrew was cantankerous and had some very odd things about him, and other times he was he was you know, he was a nice guy the children. In fact, Josephine Cushman, one of the survivors, said to me, he was always nice to us kids. Tipped his hat, you know, always, you know, be sure to study kids, and it was always very nice to them.
There was a move by the family, though, to try to persuade him to negotiate. They really hadn't intended to do what this note threatened. So what was the threatening note and what happened with the one of the sisters boring them not.
To do it right now? There was there was a the sheriff was going to foreclose, and foreclosure notice was sent out and one of the sisters. Nearly's sisters said, no, don't do it. She's in bad health. This really could break her. Please don't do it. And so they tried to stop this foreclosure notice from reaching the key host.
But unfortunately this was the day where communications is not as wonderful and easy and quick as we have it today, and the courier did not get the message, and so Hero the foreclosure noticed to Kiyo Ko said, well, if it wasn't for the school, I would have been able to make I would have able to have been paid my mortgage. He felt that the school taxes were killing him, right, it was that. It's one of those you know, in
retrospect you see how his thinking was. But at the time it was just like, why isn't he paying his mortgage? What is with this guy?
Now? Nelly was in the hospital off and on and Lancing, and so he had gone into Lancing. Her sisters lived in Lancing, three of them, and so tell us what happens with taking her back to the home and then the phone call from the sisters finding out about her wealthare right?
Yeah, he picked up from the hospital and he said he was taking two friends in the area and that they were going to spend some time with them, and they said, oh, that sounds good and he says, yeah, well, we'll talk to you soon. That was the last they heard.
They didn't speak to Nelly. That was the last they heard of Nelly though, And it turned out later that he did not go to those friends house because when after the bombing and Keyho's house was ablaze and Nelly was missing, the sisters called those friends and they said, no, he never came here.
Yeah, So we mentioned one of these friends that had an automobile and it was really a good natured guy that would give people rides to Lancing, for example, and had done as I mentioned, some errands where he had picked up some supplies on behalf of Kiho, and Keho said it was regarding the school and repairs. What were some of the things that he was asked to pick up on a couple of these occasions, dynamite and blasting caps.
Dynamite and blasting caps, and it was again ko is the go to guy for dynamite. It wasn't unusual. Nobody thought anything of it, although when they were driving back at that point, Ko did not have a car. He got himself a truck maybe the year before or the bombing, I can't re call off hand, but when his friend saw he was putting the blasting caps, he said, you
hold those in your lap. We're going to keep the dynamite in the back, and you hold those blasting caps in your lap because one, you know, one bump and you know we're blown to Kingdom come and again, nothing unusual about that, That's the thing. It was also normal. You know, I'm sure people are thinking, my goodness sold this dynamite, but yeah, that was the way it was.
And if anyone is a farming background, and I've talked to people who have had farming background, so they said, yeah, that was how my grandpa did it.
You feature and well, the story features a janitor named Smith. Smith notices some odd things of weeks before and days before. What does he notice and then take us to that morning and how it is that Keyhole is asked to come to the school.
Right. Well, what the what Smith had noticed was that there was a trap door in the basement and it was open, and he swore he had closed it and he couldn't figure out why it was open. So he just closed it up, and then he noticed that the lock on the basement door was broken. How it was broken, why it would be broken made no sense, but you know, they had to take it and get it fixed. This is not They couldn't get a locksmith in or something.
So those those were unusual. He wouldn't have noticed that. All the wiring that Kiho had done, he wouldn't have noticed any of that. You wouldn't think to look for it. And it was a you know, it's a basement. It wasn't well lit or anything like that. It was later. I mean, Keiho must have been months planning this and
setting everything up. It was intricate what he did. And because he had access to the school twenty four hours a day and everybody trusted him, there was no reason to think that he was doing you know, I mean, who can you know, fathom these things, And so he was spending his nights laying everything out in there setting you know, he ended up putting six hundred pounds of dynamite and pirratol in that basement. Only one hundred pounds went off under the north wing of the school, but
also an elaborate electrical system with timers. There was gasoline soaked drugs for accelerants, things like that that thankfully did not work. Those were the kinds of things that he was doing all along. Now, that morning he mailed a package that the package later was We can go into that later with the package was, but it was an action an old dynamite box, believe it or not. And they didn't think anything of it at the time. And they saw him, they said, hey, there's something wrong with
the boiler. Could you take a look. And he went in there and he was kind of agitated, right, and he kept looking at his watch and he said, you know, I really don't have the time for this, and he drove off. What's with the entry this morning? That was maybe forty five ministers So before the bomb went off.
When the bomb went off, you talk about neighbors seeing hearing, and then there was the Keyhole farm, right, that wasn't too far away, and there was neighbors and witnessed it to that as well. So what was the first thing that was seen, as you do in the book tell us right.
It was actually I mean, as I say, I think the New Year's Eve event was for the New Year's Eve, you know, explosions were just rehearsal. Both the school and the house went off pretty much simultaneously, right, and people didn't know what was going on. It was about eight thirty or so in the morning, and there was just this enormous explosion of the north wing of the school.
I mean, it was supposed to be the whole school, but something must have happened, maybe there a short or wires got ripped or something, but only the north wing of the school went blue. It rose about four to six feet in the air, two stories, and then peck pancake down on top of itself. People didn't thought maybe the boiler had exploded. The sheriff in the area originally thought that maybe they had been using airplane fuel in the boiler. People had people known to do that right
in the area. I need, yeah, it's almost it was a different era. And at the same time his farm started, you know, we just went a blaze and they were periodic explosions inside his house. They learned, of course he had laced it with dynamite and set off explosions things like that, you know, with electricity. So there were the people who were closer to his farm. We thought that the farm was a blaze. And then there were the people by the school who the school had exploded, and
nobody was connecting the two. Nobody was you know, what do you mean the school it blew up? A Kio's Farmer's on fire? What do you mean Kio's Farmers on fire? The school has just blown up. You know, people thought it was a mistake, you know in some cases, and then you know, they realized something really awful was happening in town. You know, as it gradually they understood that these two things were going on simultaneously.
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Now you disbelief from everyone. I mean, they heard this explosion. Some people see the inferno. That is the farm itself, Keyhos Farm. There's a gunshot heard by a neighbor named Lulu sometime in the morning as well. Tell us what possibly the responses and by who first?
Okay, yeah, Lulu Heart was the Hearts lived across the street from there were a lot of people named Heart in town. Everybody kind of drove me crazy because there were Hearts with an E at the end and hearts without any at the end, and they were all branches the same family and that and that is bath. There's you know, people who have lived there for generations and you know they she saw his farm was a blaze, and her first reaction was he must have done it.
She said, don't go over there. He said it. He must have said it himself. Now, being a farm community, they set off a bucket brigade trying to you know, stop stop the blaze. Meanwhile, the Heart farm there was you know, there were embers and they were afraid that the farm was going to go. You know, that the barn would set on fire. Unfortunately, there had been a rain the night before, so there was like a light layer of dew on top of the barn roof and
that stopped the embers from from catching fire. The meanwhile, you know, people are coming to Kiyos and and to say it was on fire is to put it mildly. It was inferno. It was just thick with smoke and there was periodic booms from the dynamite he had inside the house, and people gathered at the sides saw his truck was disappeared into a cloud of smoke and then came out and he looked at them and he said, boys, your friend's of mine. You better get out of here.
You better go down to the school. And it confuses what what what? What is going on here? And Keho started driving in the direction of the school.
Now you have this incredible scene where the superintendent Hike is helping people. He's up on a roof at one point and telling people not to jump off, wait for the ladder. So he's involved in this desperate rescue mission. And then Keho arrives with his flatbed truck and they meet, their eyes meet, and he calls them over to the vehicle. Tell Us I describe this scene as you do in the book.
Yeah, Niki Kyo pulled up, you know, I mean Hike Super Hike was pretty much the marshaling the rescue effort, as well as participating in at dragging kids out, you know, taking the safety going back. He was telling the high school boys not to jump out the window, and they said they jumped anyway. They did on the list that day and it was probably a good thing they And when he Kio pulled up, he was driving out like a bat out of hell, and in fact, a couple of people had to jump out of the way before
they so they wouldn't get hit by his truck. He pulled up and as much as he hated Kiho said, you know, he went up, he said, you know, he put his it was old fashioned truck. He put his foot on the running board and he put his hand on the window. Window was rolled down on the passenger side, and he said, we need your help. We need you to get ropes, we need to get ladders. We need to use your truck that way. And Keo looked at
them and said, okay, I'll take you with me. And something clicked in in Hike's mind and he said, you know something about this, don't you. Now this story was told to me by one of the survivors. His sisters had seen this and seen the entire exchange that happened. So this is what happened, according to their eyewitness account, And there was an immense explosion. Keiho had packed the truck with a and he fired a gun into the charge of dynamite. It blew up the truck, blew himself up,
blew hike up. He had packed the truck with nails and rusty cans things like that. It was shrapnel. It just spread out and killed a couple more people and I you know, injured many more. Now, one of the people I interviewed Irna Gates. She was a freshman in high school at the time. She was one of the new interviews I did. She uh was holding a trachea on a victim, a young child named Helen com I believe, and it's it's what she told me was more or less confirmed all that, not that I you know, it
was from her perspective. Now, there was a nurse there and by the name of Crumb, and her husband was that was the local doctor and pharmacist, and so she was helping with the rescue effort. And this this girl, Helen Cobb, couldn't breathe, so they they had to put a trachea in her. And now they there wasn't time to get anything, you know, like a tube or anything like that. So what missus Scrum did was crack open a ballpoint pen and she took you know, fourteen year
old Myrna and said, okay, here's what you do. Here's how you hold the you know, it's that not you know, incredible simple direction. It was just like quick and dirty. Here's what you got to do. Hold it so she can breathe. Yeah, And so Myrna was holding this traka so this this poor girl could breathe and stay alive. And Myrna told me she heard this enormous scream. It was just ghastly and that's and an enormous flash and boom. So you know that that was when Hike and you know,
confronted Kyoh and realized what was going on. It was probably the scream and then the explosion.
Yeah, and you right, again, not to be purposely graphic, but they looked for Kyo's body and found, as you write, a clump.
Yeah, and with the proof were the proof of who.
That person that clump was. Were two documents what were those documents?
I believe one was his driver's license and I can't recall what the other one was off off the top of my head. But also his face was more or less intact and he was visually identified by someone too oka. But the you know, the certainly the the the driver's license. The other document confirmed it it was Keyhoe, but you could tell that it was Andrew Keijo, you know. And I want to get grizzly, and I certainly had to for the book. But yeah, you know, it was a
grizzly scene. There's there's no you know, dancing around.
That this is out of order. But they searched Keyhole Farm and found some dynamite. But who else did they find there?
They found the remains of Nelly. Now nobody knew what, you know, there was a massive search for Nelly. The sisters were were terrified and were calling around and there was this massive search for Nellie. Nobody could find her.
The next day, a couple of Michigan State Police there were guarding the place more or less decided to take a smoke break and uh, you know, went for a cigarette out back, and they saw this cart that people have been walking back and forth and back and forth, and there wasn't plain sight was this was a was this cart with a box on it, and inside were the remains of Nelly Kehoe, you know, burned beyond recognition and her I mean it was a gruesome sight, to
be sure. And the skull was cracked. Now was it cracked because Keyhoe Bleuzeender, Well, there's also it could have cracked because of you know, the fire as well.
There's no way to know.
Did he kill her.
We don't know. Likely he could have.
He could have cracked her head and he could have strangled her, or she just could have died on him, We don't know. Or he could have just put her there alive, and you know, she could have burned to death for all we know. We just don't know what. On either side of her was a couple of strong boxes. One had like the family silverware and another head money and war bonds and a significant amount which probably could have really just sitting there in the house, could have
gone for the mortgage. There was a considerable amount of money. Some of it was burned, of course, it was a terrible thing.
We didn't talk about this and it's hard to even capture speaking about it. But this explosion took down this north wall, as you say, part of the school, just a part of the school, luckily. But so many people were trapped, so many children were trapped under and so there was a mad dash to try to lift up this wall. Somehow. They tried ropes, they tried the Priye
bar type scenario. They but they went through the rubble. Parents, police, they called Lancing authorities and police and firefighters and people came to try to rescue children that were still in the rubble. Yes, and they were finding there was a fear that there was still dynamite and still active in there. Yeah, but you also write about you write about another phenomena.
While the ambulances were pouring in and while the volunteers to help were pouring in, there was somebody another group pouring in as well, causing trouble on the on the roadways.
Yeah, it was, it was awful. It was, you know, for lack of a better word, tourists, gawkers, ghouls, what have you. And they really came in to see what was going on, and they came for days on end, and in fact when they were holding funerals in the days that followed, people could not get around town to go to funerals. There was a couple of sisters who were known to sing at funerals. They had to be basically jump on the back of a motorcycle at a
cop but driving place to place. Some funerals were held in houses you could not hear the service because there were so many people. Now beth Is essentially looks like it did in the nineteen twenties. A lot of the same buildings are still there. It doesn't have a stoplight. It's the quintessential small town in America. There's still no stoplight in downtown Bath. It's a four way stop sign. And I can't you know, if you have ten cars in Bath, it's a traffic jam. I cannot imagine fifty
thousand people to send them into town. And this is before the interstate. It was unbelievable how many people came in, and some of them were really crude about it too. There was you know, one woman, you know, you know, yell Arica, Hey, where's the cemetery? I want to see it? And the woman that she called, so it's that way. I'm bearing two of my children there tomorrow. In another case, somebody just walked up to a door and said, I
want to see the dead body. It's awful people, and the well Kyo's truck was sitting there, you know, before everything was cleared away on that morning, the morning of the explosion, after he'd blown himself up, somebody came in snipped off a piece of intestine that was lodged in the wheel, threw it in a jar, and ran off with a souvenir. I guess you could call it ghoulish, now, what's interesting to me. And people were would scoop up, you know, dirt from the farm and take bricks and
things like that for you know, souvenirs. I mean, it sounds really awful. But in another case where children are killed, I had friends who grew up in the area where John Gacy killed those boys and told me that when his house was torn down, people came by with Mason Jarson were scooping up dirt. So there's some it's not new, No, it's not. Unfortunately, it's some strange and today you can sell it on eBay too. It's really awful, But that
that that element existed then and it exists now. It's I don't understand it myself, but it was.
It was packed.
It was it was a terrible, terrible thing. People could not mourn properly because of all these people who are coming into town.
You spoke to it, Josephine Cushman.
Veil right, Josephine Cushman at the time, Claudevale and.
Her younger brother Ralph was killed and you and and her story is you weave her story all the way. It's went right to the end. It was more profound just because of all the loss that she experienced, her family experience. Just tell us a little bit about her story and their loss. Family.
Low, Yeah, I will say this right up front. I adored Josephine. I fell in love with her, and we had a mutual admiration society. We got to be really
close as a result of all this. I interviewed her twice and she was telling me some really she was in her mid nineties at the time, and she was telling me these really graphic things about what her brother looked like when they found him with his you know, half his shin was gone, and you know, the body was just riddled with metal and things like that, and you know, I felt terrible. I said, Justphine, you don't have to tell me this stuff. I mean, you know,
it would be the book's loss. But you know, I mean, what's that compared to you know, you know, stop you know, not causing you know, do grief to you know, a woman who's at the end of her life. And she said to me, no, I want to know what. I want people to know what happened. And God bless her. She told me exactly what happened. Her mother saw a dog playing with something. She thought it was a glove and she said, no, mom, that's a hand. Josephine saw the worst of the worst that day, and she felt
this terrible pain. She actually she was one of people hit by shrapnel too, and she had a really bad pain in her leg. But she didn't tell her parents because they were going through enough. They kept saying this, you know, you know, parents were going up and down. If you've seen this kid, if you've seen that kid, you know, if you've seen Ralph and there was they said, well,
we saw Ralph, but he got out. But that was probably Ralph Witchell, who I ended up interviewing after the book came out, as I said, and eventually they found her and she that night she you know, when they finally went home and Ralph was dead. They finally went home and they all got in the same bed together, and Josephine said to me that she realized at that moment she's fourteenth. There her childhood was over. It was gone.
And at one point she developed a terrible itch. She never told her parents about it, and she doesn't know what happened, but it was that day she got this awful itch that she couldn't you know, it was really agonizing, but she didn't say anything to her parents about it.
You know what it was.
Who knows? It could have been psychosomatic. For only know my response to physical response to the trauma that she was going through, because she certainly went through her share of trauma, and it was She was a very special
woman and very It's funny I saw her. I would go up to bath every year for the annual luncheon, and when dad was there and she looked at me and she said, I'm going to live to be a hundred and she did, and she had about six weeks after she hit her one hundredth birthday, but God bless her. She made it to one hundred wonder wonderful lady and very upfront about what happened. She wanted people to know.
She felt it was really important to bear witness. And at the end of the book, the way the book closes, it was the eightieth amoration of the bombing, which was at what had happened about six weeks beforehand was was the shooting at Virginia Tech. So it was wayne on her mind much more that year than other years. And she would always always leave tulips for her at her brother's grave. Now, there had been a tulip in front
of the house that Ralph had always wanted. He kept saying his mother in morning, can we have that tulip? Can I have that tulip? And she know we have to let it grow there, And after he was killed, she said, you know what, let Ralph have his tulip. And they put the tulip in the coffin with him. And so every year Josephine would bring out red tulips to his grave every year for eighty years. And it's a tradition that can She was worried that nobody would
the tradition would die out with her. But family and friends every year bring read tulips to Ralph's grave as long as and I do it myself. I mean there's just you know, I owe her that munch and you know it was a beautiful thing. I mean, she never forgot her brother.
You say that and you give thanks to many people like young Alan. Sorry I can't remember her first name, but you say she was instrumental in getting her father.
Oh, Michelle Allen, Oh, Michelle Allen. Yes, Angel, she's one of the she's one of the museum people. And she's actually the person I called the Morning of Sandy Hook too lovely, lovely person. Yeah. But when when her dad, when I interviewed her dad, her dad was in early stage at Wolzheimer's and you know, I mean he couldn't remember what you know, he had had for breakfast, you know, let alone where he was. But when we talked about that day, you know, we had to kind of tease
it out of him. But he knew, you know, he knew exactly what had happened. You know, we you know, would approach him this way, that way to get the story. But he knew he didn't forget and his brother had been killed, and his brother was apparently quite a good ballplayer and was he was convinced that had his brother not killed, he would have made it to the majors. In fact, when I mentioned that the two eye witnesses who saw the confrontation between Qiho and Hike, that was
actually Harropernett's sisters. Interesting, so he told me that story too. So you don't forget things like this. I mean, I mean, Alzheimer's is a terrible thing, but something like this is indelible.
Tell us just a little bit briefly about the Bath Consolidated School Museum, and you say that they're the caretaker of memory. Yeah, tell us a little bit about the museum.
Well, the school itself, most of it was your main standing. You know, only the north wing was was really destroyed. So they rebuilt the school and the school stayed in. It was you know, it was used up until the nineteen seventies, so last about fifty sixty years. They when it was torn down, it was yeah, I mean eventually you know, I mean outlived its usefulness. It was built in the you know, the mid twenties, and by the late seventies it was just was it just wasn't it
wasn't safety even be in the school. It was outmoded and you know, other things. So they decided to tear it down. And this was a controversial thing to tear down that school. It was like tearing down a cathedral. But they did it, and there was a lot of anger about it too. Some people thought should be turned to a you know, a nursing home or a library
or something like that. But instead what they did was they took the space that was the school and it's been turned into a memorial park, Cousins Memorial Park, named after Senator Cousins, who helped finance the rebuilding of the school. And they kept the cupola that was on top of the school the original school. They put it in the center of the park at roughly the same geographical space it would have been, and it's really it's really a
contemplated place. There's bricks lining the cupola with names of the victims, and there's a Michigan State Historical marker at the end of the of the park. And the method Is Church that was actually there on the day of you know, you know, there was the principle was actually in the Methodist Church rehearsing kids for graduation ceremonies at the time of the bombing. The Methodist Church is still
there and there's posts and meant posts. You can see posts from the old school foundation poken to the lawn. But the new school was built and they decided to dedicate a wing of it to what happened that day. They didn't want to forget, and they so they created the Bath School Museum. It has a lot of artifacts
of the day. There's the clock that is frozen in time at the time the bomb went off, the flag that was flying over the school that day, Pictures of you know, the school, of what it looked like of the also the key host in there. They don't they they don't hide anything. They don't hide who he was or what happened. And it's it's quite a place, you know, pictures of various graduating classes, things like that, pictures of victims.
There's I don't know what you would call it, but there's like these giant hanging frames with articles, news articles and with reminiscences of survivors things like that, and they also have there's also something called the Girl with the Cat, which was a memorial statue that was made. It was money was raised for it by children throughout Michigan sending pennies. And it's a girl with a holding a cat. That's what I called Girl of Cat and it just represents
hope and the children who were lost. And for years it stood in the foyer of the old school and now it's in a case inside the school museum. And they also have other things. It's it's not just the bombing. They have like various classes, you know, football, you know, they had examples of like band uniforms, things I got. They have what I got a big kick out of the the old you know, Dick and Jane readers, which is how I learned to read, believe it or not,
And they had those in the museum. Do it I got. I got an enormous kick out of that. It's it's kind of a museum of bath schools as well as what happened that day. And it's quite a place.
Now. Before I let you go, we mentioned you mentioned a person named Matt Martin and a documentary project. Can you tell us about Yeah, Matt.
And I have known each other a long time. I started book in two thousand and five and at the same time he was. He's Lancing based filmmaker. He was starting a documentary on it, and he and I we've shared interviews, we've shared information. Over the years, we've gotten to be good friends as well. And he's close to finishing this film. It's called Forgotten. It's going to be
a multi part documentary. It's got interviews with survivors, children and grandchildren, experts, including myself, and it's going to be re released, not sure when. And I've seen parts of it. It's wonderful, as to say, as we creations and the interviews really beautifully put together, really reverent in honoring the children who died, and at the end of the day, that's what matters. And that's what I hope, you know, I got across in my book. This isn't about anything
else but kids who were killed. And that's the important thing to remember. And that's why at the end of my book I include the list of names of all the children who died and the adults as well who were killed. That's the most important thing I want people to, you know, take away from this. These aren't just you know, puppets from history, figures from history. These were real people.
These were real kids, who were really killed and what we see today at things like Sandy Hook or Columbine or Marjorie Stoneman happened to Beth and you know, you can't forget that. It's you know, the persistence of memory is what keeps these kids alive.
Absolutely. I want to thank you very much Narnie Bernstein for coming on and talking about Bath Massacre, the New Edition, America's first school bombing. For people that might want to take a look at this, is there a Facebook page or a week Yeah.
Well, there's my website. I have information. It's www dot Arnie Bernstein dot com, all one word and there is a Facebook page for the book as well. So if you just you know, go to Facebook and type of Bathmask or google it or whatever. It's easy to find. And I'm always happy to talk to people if they want to email me, either through email or Facebook through my web page. Happy to talk to people.
Great. Thank you so much, Arnie Bernstein, Bath Massacre the New Edition, America's first school bomb Thanks.
For having me. Thanks for having me again, Dan, I'm always happy to tell this story.
Thank you so much.
You have a great night YouTube.
Take care,