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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 Geese, 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. Brands are spending more on e commerce advertising due to projected rising online sales.
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the first and worst mass murders in American history. In nineteen twenty seven, while the majority of the township of Bath, Michigan, was celebrating a new primary school, one of the most modern in the Midwest, Andrew P. Kehoe had other plans. The local farmer and school board treasurer, was educated, respected, and an accommodating neighbor and friend, but behind his ordinary demeanor was a narcissistic sadist seething with rage, resentment, and paranoia.
On May eighteenth, he detonated a set of rigged explosives with the sole purpose of destroying the school and everyone in it. Thirty eight children and six adults were murdered that morning, culminating in the deadliest school massacre in US history. Maniac is Harold Scheckter's gripping, definitive, exhaustively researched chronicle of a town forced to comprehend unprecedented carnage and the triggering of a human time bomb whose act of apocalyptic violence
would foreshadow the terrors of the current age. The book that we're featuring this evening is Maniac, the Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern mass Killer, with my special guest, journalist and author and historian Harold Scheckter. Harold is going to connect with us very very shortly. I just want to let people know that this book was released. Maniac was released on March ninth, so we have the privilege of speaking to Harold Scheckter, the author.
And Harold Scheckter is an American true crime historian and the author of some of the biggest true crime classics in history, including The Mad Sculptor, Hell's Princess, Man Eater, Derange, Depraved, Deviant, and the list goes on. More than twenty five true crime books among his his historic writing. He is scheduled for many interviews today and so we are just waiting for him to call in and connect, which should be very very shortly. This book, Maniac is available obviously in Kindle,
hardcover and audiobook. And Harold Scheckter is one of my favorite guests because the books that he writes and the type of writing is he is incomparable. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome Harold Scheckter to the program. Thank you so much for this interview. Harold Scheckter.
Well, I appreciate being on again.
Thank you so much. It's always a great pleasure.
As you write you.
Thank you, Thank you so much. As a history in an American true crime, you spend a lot of time reading old newspapers in archives, on microfilm and online. What book of yours were you working on when you read on July seventh, nineteen oh two fort Wayne Daily News issue And what story was that and what special interest? And why.
You know I have to say that, you know, I've written so many books and researched so many books. You have to give me a little more of a clue because there are so many newspapers that I come across. As you were just indicating that I don't actually remember, tell me What's what happened on that date?
Well, you were working on the Hell's Princess about Belgunnis out and yeah, yeah, yes, And so you're working on that book, and then you read about this many stories, but including the one about this bath school disaster.
Yes, but the bath school I guess the reason for my confusion a bit is that the bath School disaster actually occurred twenty five years after that date. It occurred in May nineteen twenty seven.
So yes, And.
It actually wasn't while I was researching my book on Bell Gunnis that I first encountered it. But before that, when I did a book called Psycho USA, Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of, which was a book, as a subtitle suggests about crimes that were very, very sensational in their own day, often received national, even international sometimes
media coverage, but somehow lapsed into total obscurity. And it was while doing that book that I first encountered and wrote one of the entries on the Bath School disaster.
Right now, in preparation for this in this introduction, you talk about several high profile duels before this time, and also you discussed the vain principle of personal honor in some of this as well, and tell us what you found in your research, and of course this will have some relation to this incredible story.
Well, one of the things that has did me for a long time as a historian of American crime is the whole question of why certain crimes become these big sensations, and other equally and sometimes more heinous crimes, you know, don't really get that much attention or disappear almost instantly
from the news. You know. One thing that I have discovered in my researcher reading old newspapers from various times in different places, you know, is that you can open up any newspaper from any day, in any time, any year, in any place in this country and come across terrible murders that happened right But again, only a handful, you know, become these media sensations. So I believe what you are referring.
So in my introduction to my new book Maniac, about the Best school disaster, you know, I discussed that issue, and one of the one of the conclusions I came to is that there are certain crimes that speak to issues of the moment, you know, that are matters of widespread concern or anxiety. So the dueling thing that you
refer to. One of the examples I given the introduction to my book had to do with the subject of an earlier book of mine called Killer Cult, which was a murder committed in the eighteen forties, I think eighteen forty or eighteen forty one by John Colt, who was the brother of the famous inventor of the revolving pistol, and that became a big, big newspaper sensation of the time.
And one of the reasons for that, I speculated, was that it touched on an issue that was a matter of concern and then which was the whole practice of resolving despite dueling. So yeah, I gave that as an example.
I gave other examples the interest, the incredible obsessive attention that was paid to the leopoldovoge Thriller killing of nineteen twenty four, you know, really touched a nerve with a public that was very, very concerned about the moral breakdown of what they call the flaming youth of the jazz age. So yeah. So it was in that context that I mentioned the dueling stuff.
Let's get to Clinton County, Michigan, in the area where this story originates and the key Hose and you write about that they came from Ireland during the Great Famine of eighteen forty seven and tell us where they settle. Then you talk about the father of Philip and tell us about Phillips his father, and about the birth of Andrew and his status in that family after waiting for a son for so many years.
Well, you know, the key Hose fill up. They were kind of epitomes of what people think of as you know, this kind of immigrant American dream type family you say, came over here during the Great Family is millions millions of their countrymen did. They ultimately emigrated to Michigan where land was cheap and plentiful. Uh. He became a very
very successful farmer and a pillar of the community. We're talking about an area of Wisconsin, not too far away from what became the capital of the state, Lansing.
Yeah.
And you know, gave birth to a bunch of children, all of whom were girls. Andrew was the first son. So you know, of course isn't true as is true I think in many immigrant families. You know, he enjoyed a special status uh in the in the family, which one of the things about writing about notorious killers from
the past. Is that until they become notorious killers. Uh, you know, they totally obscure pretty much nonentities, I mean in the law as far as the larger world is concerned, right, you know, So there's so there's very little information, uh that can be gleaned about their backgrounds. A lot of
it is speculative. A lot of stories that begin to circulate about their pasts or are told after they've committed these horrible crimes, and you know, are colored by you know, the knowledge of their capacity for evil or just invented. So we don't know a huge amount about Andrew's background.
We do know that from an early age he was very mechanically inclined and fascinated by electricity, you know, supposedly, and again this is probably at least somewhat apocryphal, maybe entirely, you know, as a child, would invent these gadgets, you know, that were presumably labor saving farming devices. Yeah, but we don't, you know, we don't know a heck of a lot about it. I mean, he did go off to college,
although he doesn't seem to have graduated. He did have several jobs that related to electrical engineering and ultimately, at a somewhat advanced age for the time, he got married to a woman from a very prominent local family and became a farmer.
You talk about his father had married and when Andrew was eighteen, his mother died. There was a long progressive illness, and so Andrew remained at his father's side assisting in the farm work, as you say, in the livestock breeding. His father and continued with that, and then Philip took another wife, and eventually he took another wife much later.
Maybe he can tell us about an event that maybe forebode the future involving this much younger stepmother and when ed Andrew had moved back to the farm with his father and the stepmother.
Yeah, well again, that's one of those events that took on a very sinister cast in light of the atrocity that Kiho ultimately was responsible for. So again it's a little hard to know, uh, you know what really when happened. I mean, what we do know is that at the time, uh, gasoline fueled ovens had been were being marketed around the country as a kind of date of the art cooking device that would save housewives. The trouble of getting up early in the morning and you know, starting a wood
fire and their oven. You know, there are wood stoves, you know, these were devices that had a little you know, a little fuel tank above the stove, you know, which held gasoline that would be fed into a stove. So needless to say, you know there, you know, they were very dangerous and there are all these stories about these horrible gas explosions and you know, people being killed, are horribly injured, and that appears, and that's what happened with
Keto's stepmother. Now, the story that again gained circulation much much later in the wake of Pebo's crime, you know, is that you know, he came to the house and saw that she was in flames, and he basically did nothing. You know. One writer claimed he just stood there and watched her burn. Again, it's very very hard to know how much credence to uh, you know, to give that that account.
M hm, yeah, I understand what you're saying. In retrospect, everything seems to fall in place, and there was all these signs. But obviously if there were never any of this event, we would never hear any of those these signs you talk about.
Again, you know, I am saying that, but I'm also saying that might not have been a sign because it actually might not have happened. In other words, his mother definitely died. His stepmother definitely died in an explosion from a gasoline stove. But whether you know, Keio just stood there and watched her burned to death, you know, that is a very open question.
Though certainly, certainly on May fourteenth, you write that nineteen twelve, eight months after stepmother Francis's death, Andrew took a wife. And this is Ellen Agnes Price, or they called her Nelly, and her dad had served as Lancing's chief of police at one time and president of Lancing Auto body Company. So tell us a little bit about this relationship with uh, with Nelly and the relationship that he had with the parents. What was the There was some ties with the parents
in terms of their home. Tell us about that, Well.
I mean, Nelly came from a you know, a very prominent local family. Uh, and uh, you know she she and Andrew again married what, as I said, for the time, would have been regarded as I mean, she would have been I can't remember exact age, but essentially, again, given the age we live in, or they lived in uh would have been regarded as an old maid pretty much. Uh.
She she had through her uncle. Uh, they were able to purchase uh well when her when her uncle, who owned a great deal of property around the farming community of Bath, died, they were able. Andrew is able and Nelly to purchase from his estate a very large flourishing farm, which is where they ultimately settled. And it was Nelly's relatives who basically owned the mortgage that Keiho had taken out on the farm because they were in charge of they were the executors of the estate.
Right now. At the same time you write about Andrew at this time, he seemed like an unusually clever and capable and accommodating fellow that was always ready to lend a hand and ask for nothing in return, especially when he was willing to put his mechanical skills to use to benefit his neighbors.
Yes now, well, yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead, yes sorry, go ahead? Yeah now.
You talked about Lee Hoo becoming integrated into the into the community, into the social life. At this time with his personality, despite anything that people would say otherwise, he still was enjoying playing card games with other couples. But there were things that people did notice at that time. Not to say that there were you know, deal breakers not having friends, but you write that some of the things that people noticed at that time very very unusual.
Tell us some of the things that friends noticed, you know, the card game, but also how he he he addressed while working in the fields.
Yeah, Keeho would dress like a bank or really when he when he went out to work. You know, obviously all these other farmers were in coveralls and so on and so forth, and you know, Andrew would go out in a suit. He was very very very meticulous, perhaps you know, to an excessive degree. I mean probably, you know, it's very possible a modern psychologist would diagnose him as O. C. D.
You know. And and and it extended again to these card games that he and his wife would be part of, you know, because he was very very rigid in terms of everybody following the rules very very precisely and exactly. You know, so there was something very well, there was something slightly tyrannical about him again, something very very very rigid.
You know, people like that are often keeping, sometimes without their own knowledge, a very very tight lid on all kinds of threatening and disruptive impulses, which, in Keyho's case, sometimes broke through. I mean again, these were stories that were told only later on. But apparently at one point he killed a neighbor's puppy who had wandered onto his property, and at another time apparently beat a recalcitrant horse to death. So you know, underlying, you know, this is a very
very you know, adherence to rigid social behavior. There were these very dark and apparently sadistic impulses.
Mm hm, Now there was you right there. Farm bureaus were were popping up and forming throughout the country, cooperative organizations devoted to promoting the practical and economic interests of local farmers. And when this National Farm Bureau was founded in nineteen nineteen, Andrew volunteered to head its drive for membership. And you write a couple of years later, in nineteen twenty one, he's elected to the board of directors directors
of its Bath of its Bath Township unit. Tell us about his stay in this position.
Well, it's it's you know, again, this only a limited amount that we know about it. Keiho again, in various parts of his life, want to exert you know, it's related to what we were just talking about before. He was, to an extent what we would now call a control freak, and he had very strong and rigid opinions about things and a very very powerful sense that his way was the right way and did not easily brook any kind of opposition and would develop, as it turned out, you know,
very very extreme grudges against people who opposed him. So it's not exactly clear what led him to leave that post, to quit the Farm Bureau post, but it's easy enough to imagine. You know, there was something along those lines.
You talk about them among the various reformist crusades of eighteen ninety to nineteen twenty in America called the Progressive Era, was a movement to overall the badly outdated school systems in rural districts throughout the Midwest. And you talked about the difference in you know, children going to country in country towns being schooled as opposed to people in the
big cities. So there was this reform going on. How did what did it manifest itself in terms of for Bath itself, and what did Andrew feel about this this move towards consolidating a school and building a new school. What did he think about this along with others? Was there why were there some resistance to this?
Well, what you're referring to is this movement which occurred in regional areas throughout the country, sorry, rural areas throughout the country, to do a way with the old one room schoolhouse system and to replace those schools with what they can called modern consolidated schools, where the students in the community would all be educated from elementary up through
high school. And you know, part of the rationalepha that was that there were a lot of farm people who felt that their children were not being educated in the way that city kids were, and that was leaving them at a disadvantage in terms of their future in a
rapidly modernizing world. But there were other people in the community who opposed these consolidated schools because, you know, there were a big expense they would be paid for by increases in their taxes, and they felt that, you know, the old little red school houses were fine for them. And since they assumed that their you know, their kids are going to just grew up to be farmers or farm wise, you know, they had no need for a
fancy education. So in Bath, as in many other communities across the country, there was a debate over whether they should invest in this new consolidated school, and ultimately the people who were for it prevailed. Keyho was among the opponents, largely because he resented having additional property taxes, particularly since
he and Nelly had no children. Once the school was erected and became, you know, really the pride of the community, Keyhoe made sure to get himself appointed as school board treasurer so that he could keep you know, tightrain on school expenditures and so on.
Mm hm.
Who was the superintendent of this new consolidated school and what was what was his character?
Like?
Seemingly well superintendent was a young man, excuse me, a young man named Emery Hoike, a college graduate and you know, very very devoted educator who was determined, uh to bring the educational standards of the new school up, you know, to as high a level as possible, which he succeeded in doing in very short order. The school had to be accredited by the state, and under Hike's leadership it
did so very very quickly. But at the same time, Andrew Keyhoe developed this incredible antipathy toward Hoyke, partly because he felt that Hoyke was spending money a little too freely to improve the school. But also, you know, Keyhoe couldn't really tolerate another man being in competition with him in any position of power, so.
That his animosity, let's use is an opportunity, yes, for a second, loss, opportunity for a second to stop for these messages.
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Now, you talked about the animosity towards Emery Hoyke and Andrew Keyhole. But Andrew Keyhole is still involved in civic civic politics in the community, and he wants to be involved with this school board. But you write about the Great War as you call it, and the fortunes of area farmers initially as a result of this Great War and then the turnaround, the drastic turnaround for farmers, including Andrew Keehole.
Well, the Great War is not more uncoinage. You know. Of course we now know as World War One, but that's a time it occurred. Nobody knew there was going to be a World War two, so they weren't calling it World War One. It was just known as the
Great War. Yeah. That was one of the interesting things that I discovered in researching the book was that, as I think I said, the depression, you know, which we always think about is in beginning with a stock market crash in nineteen twenty nine, happened much earlier for a lot of American farmers because during the Great War, the years of the Great War, you know, their livelihoods were flourishing because there were no very few crops that could
be grown in war torn Europe, so they were shipping all these you know, all these crops overseas and making a lot of money. You know, a lot of them took loans to acquire more farming machinery and expand their property. But once the war was over and those countries were covered and got back to producing their own crops, the US market plunge, and a lot of those farmers you know, again suffered this pre depression depression, and you know, one
of theo was one of those. Keyho was one of the reasons that his finances started to plunge so precipitously.
M you talk about that he was had an assessment and it was twelve dollars and twenty six cents per one thousand dollars of property valuation. In Keyho's case, that was roughly one hundred and fifty per year or twenty three hundred dollars today. And so he was very angered by this assessment, wasn't he especially considered his attitude, but also considering his financial situation.
Well, yeah, and again that was the tax levy to pay for the new school. You know. Ultimately, Keiho, you know, who is obviously undergoing this extreme psychological breakdown, you know, began to believe that if it hadn't been for those increased property taxes to pay for the school, you know, he never would have found himself in the extreme financial peril that he was in. Yeah.
Now he has this ongoing war with Emory Hoyke, but he still believes that he can get a place on the board, and so there's an there's another election. What happens in that election.
Well, there were a couple of elections that you know, he was hoping to win and you know, as turned out, uh, you know, he lost them, you know, and both were blows. You know, suff from a malady that his characteristic of many mass murderers that psychologists call malignant narcissism.
Uh.
And when he lost these elections, they were these unbearable blows to his narcissism. And of course, you know, he blamed his fellow townspeople for the clicking them.
Yeah, you talk about the the couple things that he didn't get re elected treasurer. And then he assumed in a position of a woman that was had a year left and then he thought he would be able to retain that position, but he didn't. But there was an incident where there was a swarm of bees that plagued the school and Keho had volunteered to fix and the fixed up the situation and he got rid of the bees because they were impressed with this handling of the situation.
What did the board authorize him, you say, unofficially to do? What did he unofficially become for the school.
Well, he became an unofficial handyman, you know who is called. You know, throughout his life in bath Keyhoe, you know,
especially before he descended into madness. You know, he was always willing to lend a hand to a neighbor to fix a mechanical problem if they had encountered and so, yeah, he was you know, he did have this mechanical skill and this electric skill, and yeah, so he was authorized to become a kind of unofficial handyman, which allowed him pretty much twenty four to seven access to the school.
And one of the things, of course, was he was able to familiarize himself with the uh, you know, with the structure of the school, when all the inderworkings of the school and you know the lower you know, the basement of the school, and all the nooks and crannies of the school. You know, that knowledge, of course ended up being used for an incredibly malicious purpose. But you know, his his uh, his uh accessibility to the school, you know, gave him all this knowledge.
Mm hmmm. You went about the Great War in the US chemical industry turning out billions of tons of high explosives for the Allies in the war, but since the armyist uh there was still government with vast stockpile of surplus explosives, so that the Department Agriculture came up with a plan. What what what's this plan? And we'll just tell us about Piratel.
Well, Pirtol was a low grade form of dynamite manufactured by the government and sold to farmers using all of this surplus explosives that had been manufactured for the you know, for the for the armaments of the Great War that had been left over after the armistice, and farmers were allowed, every farmer was allowed to acquire I believe five hundred pounds of this. You know, it looked exactly like dynamite, although it had you know, a slightly smaller amount of TNT.
But it was being sold to farmers so that they could clear their fields of tree stumps and boulders and so on. And you know, Keiho was easily able to acquire hundreds of pounds of this, which you don't supplemented by buying other sticks of dynamite. So you know, he
was stockpiling all this explosives. But you know, again that would raise eyebrows today, but at the time, you know, it didn't set off any alarms because again a lot of farmers were buying it in Pyratol, I mean so many that they eventually ran out.
Of it, you right though. Then fall nineteen twenty five, Kio asked a neighbor for a ride to Jackson, nearby town to get boxes pirate tool. He got five hundred pounds at that time and stored it in his barn. You also write that Nelly's relatives that were good enough to have this mortgage, he hadn't paid this mortgage in years, and so they were getting fed up. What was there? What was their attitude and what were they trying to do in terms of this property?
Well, I mean they were trying to get paid.
Uh.
You know one point for example, Uh, Nelly was supposed to come into a legacy payment of five hundred dollars, but instead of sending her a check, uh, the lawyer for the estate applied it, you know, to this growing unpaid, unpaid mortgage, you know, which Keyhoe was incredibly outraged by and finally sued to get it back. You know, But Nelly's relatives, you know, they were very very forbearing. Again
Keyhoe seethed with resentment over their mistreatment of him. But you know, when you look at the facts, I mean they were very, very tolerant of him.
Mm hmm.
But it was also he was signed again.
Yeah, I'm sorry, sorry, And in November you right go ahead, sorry, No, I mean.
That whole episode was just a sign of the extent to which Keyho's financial situation, you know, is going, you know, so rapidly downhill.
You write in November twenty six he didn't have a vehicle, but after purchasing his own pickup truck, he drove to Lansing and bought two boxes of dynamite and blasting caps. In this book, Maniac, you include the story of Charles Lindbergh and his how he changed the course of aviation history. But also why is Charles Lindberg an important figure or a figure that you included in this book? What was it about Charles Lindberg and his story?
Yeah? Well, one of the things I struggled a little death in writing a book was exactly how to deal
with the Lindberg angle. And you know, at a certain point in the book, maybe halfway through, maybe a little less, I suddenly introduced Charles Lindberg and to go through his early life and his early experiences a daredevil aviator in a barnstormer, in a airmail carrier, and kind of leading up to where he first gets the idea that he might be able to accomplish this feat which would become a very big thing, namely making the first NonStop solo
flight across the Atlantic. And the way the book is constructed is you don't really discover why I've introduced Lindbergh until much much later in the book. What I am hoping that, you know, readers when they get to that reveal will kind of understand that the earlier stuff about Lindbergh was not some weird digression, but that there's an actual payoff which I'm happy to discuss now, but I think would be better discussed a little later on.
Yes, let's talk about now that. Do you have this incident where on January twenty seventh, there's a couple of neighbors are talking and Jobs Light and Harry Cushman, and they talked about hearing an explosion New Year's night, and so Slight bumps into Keyho and asks him if he had set off any explosives around midnight? Yeah, because he would, Yeah, And what did. What did these people think that he had set off these explosions for? What was the reason for it?
He well, he just assumed, you know, it was some kind of New Year's Eve celebration thing.
You know.
Keyho admitted that, you know, he said he had fashioned a kind of a crude timing device from an alarm clock and set it to go off at twelve o'clock. So, you know, they wrote it off. Again. They knew Keiho like to play around with these electric and mechanical inventions of his, so they just assumed this was one of his ways of ushering in the new year.
For all the his superiority he claimed in agricultural practices and all his sophisticated farm equipment, nobody really knew the significance of what they saw at the time. But what did they What did they witness in terms of the crops in the field of Andrew Kiel.
Well, they just began to notice that, you know, some for some weird reason, he had begun to neglect all his farming duties, and you know the farm was basically you know, going to ruin mm hmm.
One other things mentioned is that people had a hard time starting the cars in the twenties. So as a result, they went and purchased something what is that device that they purchased, and for the purpose of helping them get their car.
Started, they purchased what they would call hot shot batteries, which would help you know, spark the engine as opposed to, well, we still often had to use hand cranks, but supplemented by these hot shot batteries, you know, made the process of starting the car much easier. So yeah, I mean, you know, Kiho was buying dynamite, he was buying these hot shot batteries. He was fashioning detonating devices out of
alarm clocks. You know, he was doing all this. You know, his farm was going to waste, His finances, you know, were you know, in tatters. His wife was increasingly being hospitalized with illness. But you know, none of you know, the neighbors, various neighbors noticed all these things, you know, but none of them, individually or really even taken together, were enough to again wave any kind of red flags.
You know, they could all be explained away in you know, relative you know and understandable terms.
You have a person in first week of May, in the middle of the night, two am missus Hall is awakened by a sound of a motor and she notices a Ford pickup closer in front of the steps of the school. What does she see a man doing near that school at two am?
Well, she sees him carrying these crates into the school, you know, which struck her as a little unusual, particularly since she assumed that for some reason that there were crates of potatoes. I mean, she couldn't really explain to herself why anybody would be carrying bushels of potatoes into the school at two o'clock in the morning. And we don't exactly know what explanation she gave herself, you know.
But of course, however bizarre it seemed, you know, she could never have expected what was or suspected what was going on, you right.
Also, in sometime in early May, Frank Smith, the janitor, noticed a trap door gaining access to the crawl space beneath a new part of the building had been left open, and he had been working down there repairing a leak. He just thought he had forgotten, but a week later he saw it open again. Why did he not? What was there no concern for him? Why did why did he think this was not something that he go off concern to him.
Well, he just assumed, well he specifically assumed for some reason, Emery Hoyke, the superintendent, you know, some you know who one of whose concerns was the maintenance of the building, had gone down there. You know, again coming across an open trap door, you know, would not necessarily because for
any great alarm. Uh you know, I mean it's easy to imagine that that he just assumed he forgot to you know, he forgot to close it a couple of times, or again, you know, just assume that somebody was a perfectly legitimate reason for going down there, like Emery hoy had gone down there. You know. One of the interesting aspects of you know, cases like this is in retrospect, things seem uh it's like, why didn't I see that? Why didn't I notice that?
You know.
But but at the time, you know, again, Keijo buying dynamite, you know, a lot of well, the fact that they had dynamite for sale of this hardware store, you know, his assignment people buying dynamite. You know, the fact that he sets them off at midnight New Year's Eve. You know, Oh, well that's just Andrew. Yeah, you know, showing off his ability to you know, create a little timer out of an alarm clock. You know, somebody's carrying some crates into
the school at night. That's a little odd, but you know, got to be some explanation.
So yeah, nothing put together. You talked about Nelly being released from the hospital in early May, and she had gone to her sister Elizabeth to recuperate in Lansing. It was a two week stay. On May sixteenth, after there was a arm he finally fetched her. But the very next evening, Elizabeth called to check on her sister. Yeah, what what did There was no answer, but what did and Andrew called shortly after? What What did Andrews say about his about Elizabeth's sister?
Uh, He's explained that she was going over to visit some friends whose name was Voss the Ost, and that he was going to go be picking her up soon. Her her her Nellie's sisters had never hurt, were unaware that she had had friends named Boss. But again, you know, they didn't attach any particular significance to it.
Mm hmm. Now let's get to Uh, there was a bunch of precipitating events and again in retrospect. People you know now know the significance of some of the things that he said. There was a a school teacher that had called Andrew and said, we'd like to come to your grove on your property for a little picnic with the children. And because of this May nineteenth, he said, well you best not come on May nineteenth. I think he's going to come on May seventeenth and get it
done as soon as you can. So there was events like that. So now the day of May seventeenth, take us to that day and Andrew Keiho and the school itself, and he has a friend named Derlof and so please take us to that day and the events of the early morning and what happens at the Bath school that morning. And also in preparation you talk about this is the
graduation day. Not all of the students are taking the exams, but you can tell us how many people were in that school and the situation in terms of Hoike and the exams themselves.
Well, it was the last day of school May eighteenth, nineteen twenty seven. It was a day that key Hoo knew that pretty much all the students would be assembled in the school. Keyhoe had run into another school board member named Debtlow, who had been asked to come over to the school to take a look at who had an auto repair. It was a blacksmith, but you know, with the advent of Ford's Model, t had become an
auto mechanic. Was asked to come over to the school to take a look at some problem with the water pump in the basement. He ran into Keyhole on the way, you know, seemed a little weirdly nervous and asked keyhow if you wanted to come along. You know, he knew Keyho's mechanical skill. Yeah, Keyhos seemed reluctant to do it, and probably, you know, very soon disappeared from the scene.
Uh yeah. On the book, you know, based on various first hands accounts that I was able to get hold of, I tried to recreate the events of the day from various points of view.
Uh.
You know, the students assembled. Some of the students were in their classrooms having stories read to them, you know, in the lower grades by their teachers. Other students were taking their final exams. Students had been exempted from the final exams because of their superior grades. But then you know, somewhere out in the school yard. There were some older boys, you know, chucking around a baseball. You know, it was it was just kind of what seemed to be a nice,
idyllic last day of school. And you know, then at at nine thirty exactly the explosion happened, and the key Hoe as it ultimately emerged. You know, the man who had been supposedly carrying crates of potatoes into the school was Andrew Keyhoe. And he wasn't carrying crates of potato. He had been carrying boxes of dynamite. He'd spent weeks rigging the basement of the school with all of the dynamite and pirate hall that he had purchased, one hundred
pounds of it. He had made these crude timing devices and set them to go off at nine thirty in the morning on the last day of school, when he felt sure he would be able to kill as many children as possible. And you know, at nine thirty the detonators went off. But fortunately nobody knows exactly why. But there's apparently some faulty wiring or a short circuit. Much
of the explosives did not detonate. If everything that Keiho had planted there had gone off, he would have essentially wiped out an entire generation of school children in that community, right children, But he did. But one entire wing of the school did explode, and you know, and of course Debt Loth and other parents who had kids in the school, you know, immediately ran frantically to the scene, you know,
and we're confronted with this sight of horrific devastation. I say in my book, it looked like, you know, you see pictures of it, looks like, you know, one of these devastated European towns that had been destroyed by artillery, you know, just piles and piles of rubble with dead and dying and shrieking children buried inside of it. And
everybody started frantically, you know, trying to dig through the rubble. Meanwhile, Kehoe, who was at his farm at the time the explosion went off, had loaded up his Ford pickup truck with more explosives and shrapnel and drove down to the school and called Emery Hyke, his nemesis, and a couple of other people over to the over to the truck. Exactly
what happened then is not known. Different eyewitnesses gave slightly different accounts, but whether he had a rifle that he fired into the truck or pulled some kind of switch, whatever, he detonated. He detonated his truck and killed himself, killed Hoyke,
killed a couple, you know, some other bystanders. The thing about the Bad School disaster is that, you know, it turned out to be the deadliest school massacre again in US history, And you know, the worst case of domestic terrorism before Tim McVay, and you know, the first and only suicide car bombing dis counting you know the recent one in Nashville which didn't claim any victims except you know, the guy who said law So you know it was this unprecedented, horrific crime.
Well, yeah, they also found eventually Nelly lashed to a hogcart and burned alive or set on fire, and so that was solved that mystery. You say that this story again will introduce Charles Lindberg. Why was this story not we made national news? You say for a week it had that phenomena of the weak attention. But yeah, tell us about Charles Limberg and that story and what happened to the Bath School disaster story?
For years yeah, well it wasn't even a week, so yes, you know, imediately with the bas School disaster was an enormous nationwide frontage story. In fact, it even made international headlines. Adam Hitler sent a letter of condolence, wow to yeah to, to Franklin Franklin Sorry to Franklin Roosevelt the President expressing
his condolences. But three days later, Lindberg completed his world changing solo flight across the Atlantic, which at the time was as momentous an event as the moon landing forty years later, and it completely displaced every other news story from the papers, and the day after the Bath School disaster the New York Time, the disaster was the lead story on the front page of the New York Times.
Three days later, the New York Times devoted the entirety of its first five pages to Linnberg and his flight. And you know, all of their news was either relegated to the back pages or completely omitted, including the Bath School disaster. So that was one major reason why this horrific crime was so completely relegated to obscurity.
Now you talk about since nineteen ninety nine and Columbine that all kinds of other future school shootings that journalists rediscovered, and the story resurfaced about Bath School massacre in reference to these school shootings of horrific school shootings. So the story did come back into public awareness, it.
Well, to some extent. I mean, you know, if you ask most people about the Bath School massacre, you know, they will get you kind of blankly, I think. I mean, I've spoken to a lot of people who grew up in Michigan who never even you know, never even heard
of it. So but yes, you're right. I mean, you know, every time in the recent past one of these horrific school shootings occurs, or very truly every time, you know, newspapers will very commonly run stories about the worst school massacres in US history, you know, ranking them of course by number of victims, and the Bath School massacre, which claimed the lives of thirty eight school children and six adults,
ultimately is always listed as number one. But again, you know, it hasn't really managed to, you know, to restore this story, you know, the story of Keiho and the Bath School disaster to the position that I you know, think it
holds in the annals of crimes. You know, also, as I think I might have said, you know, all through the twentieth century, there are all these crimes of the century, you know, Leopoldo Lode and the Lindburgh kidnapping up through OJ And by the time I finished the book, you know, I really come to believe, and I still believe, that the Bascuchol disaster is the single worst American crime of the twentieth century.
Absolutely, And thanks to you, now we have the official story of Maniac, the baschool disaster, and the birth of the modern mass killer, which you say is replaced they've ever popular serial killer now in the public's imagination. Tell us above if you have a website or a Facebook page for people to take a look at this book. Before I let you go.
There is a website, Haroldcheckter dot com. There is a Facebook page. I have to say, somewhat embarrassedly, I myself never go on it, but it is maintained for me and anybody who needs to contact me. I do receive messages on that page, and I'm always careful to answer them. So yeah, you know, those are those are two spots for sure.
Great. Thank you very much, Harold for Maniac, the birth, the bath School disaster, and the birth of the modern mass killer. Thank you so much for this interview. Harold Scheckter, nice speaking with you. Have a great night, thank.
You, good speaking with you.
Good night, thank you.