The Bath School disaster was a series of violent attacks perpetrated by Andrew Kehoe upon the Bath Consolidated School in Bath Township, Michigan, United States, on May 18, 1927. That morning, Kehoe, the school treasurer of Bath Township, detonated explosives he had previously planted underneath the school building, killing 38 people. As rescue efforts began, Kehoe drove to the school in a truck filled with explosives and shrapnel, where he detonated it, killing himself and four others. Earlier the same day, he had also destroyed his farmstead with explosives after having murdered his wife, Nellie Price Kehoe.
Kehoe, who was Bath's school board treasurer, was angered by increased taxes and being defeated in the April 5, 1926 election for Bath township clerk. It was thought by locals that he had planned revenge following his defeat. Kehoe had a reputation as a difficult man, both on the school board and in his personal life. In addition, he was notified in June 1926 that his mortgage was soon to be foreclosed. For much of the next year, Kehoe purchased explosives and secretly hid them on his property and under the school.
During the rescue and recovery efforts, searchers discovered a further 500 pounds (230 kg) of explosives under the south wing of the school that had been set to detonate simultaneously with the initial explosion. With this discovery, it was determined that Kehoe's intention was to destroy the entire school and everyone in it. The Bath School disaster remains the deadliest school attack in United States history.
Background
Bath Township
At the time of the bombing, Bath Township was a civil township of 300 adult residents located 10 miles (16 km) northeast of the city of Lansing in the U.S. state of Michigan. The present-day municipality of Bath Charter Township covers 31 square miles (80 km2) and the small unincorporated village of Bath is within its borders. The township itself lies within Clinton County, Michigan, an area of about 566 square miles (1,470 km2).
In the early 1920s, the area was primarily agricultural. After years of debate, Bath Township voters approved the creation of a consolidated school district in 1922, along with an increase in township property taxes to fund a new school. When the school opened, 236 students were enrolled from grade 1 to grade 12. The school's creation was controversial, but in Bath resident Monty Ellsworth's opinion consolidated schools had great advantages over the smaller rural schools they replaced. All landowners within the township area were required to pay higher ad valorem property taxes.
Perpetrator
Andrew Philip Kehoe was born in Tecumseh, Michigan on February 1, 1872 into a family of 13 children and attended the local high school. After graduating, he studied electrical engineering at Michigan State College in East Lansing and moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he worked as an electrician for several years. At some point during this period, Kehoe suffered a head injury in a fall and was semiconscious or in a coma for a period of several weeks. He later returned to Michigan and his father's farm.
After his mother's death, Kehoe's father married a much younger widow, Frances Wilder, and a daughter was born. On September 17, 1911, as his stepmother attempted to light the family's oil stove, it exploded and set her on fire. Kehoe threw a bucket of water on her, but as the fire was oil-based, the water spread the flames more rapidly and her body was engulfed with fire. The injuries were fatal and she died the next day. Some of Kehoe's later neighbors in Bath Township believed that he had caused the stove explosion.
Kehoe married Ellen "Nellie" Price in 1912 at the age of 40. Seven years later, they moved to a farm outside Bath Township. Kehoe was said to be dependable, doing favors and volunteer work for his neighbors. He was also described as notoriously impatient. For example, he had shot and killed a neighbor's dog that had come on his property and annoyed him by barking. He had also beaten one of his horses to death when it did not perform to his expectations.
Kehoe had a reputation for frugality and was elected in 1924 as a trustee on the school board for three years and treasurer for one year. He argued strongly for lower taxes, and later superintendent of the board M. W. Keyes said that he "fought the expenditure of money for the most necessary equipment". Kehoe was considered difficult, often voting against the rest of the board, wanting his own way and arguing with the township's financial authorities. He protested that he paid too much in taxes and tried to have the valuation of his property reduced to lower his tax burden.
In 1922, the Bath Township school tax was $12.26 for every $1,000 valuation of a property, with the valuation on Kehoe's farm being $10,000 (equivalent to $192,346 in 2025). In 1923, the school board raised the tax to $18.80 per $1,000 valuation and in 1926 the taxes increased to $19.80. This meant that Kehoe's tax liability increased from $122.60 in 1922 (equivalent to $2,358 in 2025) to $198.00 in 1926 (equivalent to $3,601 in 2025). In June 1926, Kehoe was notified that the widow of his wife's uncle, who held the mortgage on his property, had begun foreclosure proceedings. Following the disaster, the sheriff who had served the foreclosure notice reported that Kehoe had muttered, "If it hadn't been for that $300 school tax I might have paid off this mortgage". Mrs. Price, the mortgage holder, also reported that Kehoe had stated, "If I can't live in that house, no one else will" when she had mentioned foreclosure to him.
Kehoe was appointed in 1925 as temporary town clerk, but he was defeated in the April 5, 1926 election for that office. This public rejection by the community angered him. This defeat may have triggered Kehoe's desire for murderous revenge, using the bombings to destroy the Bath Consolidated School and kill the community's children and many of its members. In Bath Massacre – America's First School Bombing, Arnie Bernstein cites Robert D. Hare's Psychopathy Checklist and writes that Kehoe "fits the profile all too well". Carnegie Mellon University professor Mary Ellen O'Toole has stated that Kehoe could be described as an "injustice collector", someone who obsessively collects perceived slights along with their personal misfortunes, building feelings of persecution until they feel forced to act violently.
Kehoe's neighbor A. McMullen noted that Kehoe had stopped working on his farm altogether for most of the preceding year, and he had speculated that Kehoe was planning suicide. Kehoe had given him one of his horses about April 1927, but McMullen returned it for this reason. It was discovered later that Kehoe had cut all of his wire fences as part of his preparations to destroy his farm, girdling young shade trees to kill them and cutting his grapevine plants before returning them to their stumps to hide the damage. He gathered lumber and other materials and put them in the tool shed, which he later destroyed with an incendiary bomb.
By the time of the bombing, Nellie Kehoe had become chronically ill with what resembled tuberculosis, for which there was no effective treatment or cure at the time. Her frequent hospital stays may have contributed to the family's debt. Kehoe had ceased mortgage and homeowner's insurance payments months earlier.
Purchase and planting of explosives
There is no clear indication of when Kehoe had the idea of massacring the schoolchildren and townspeople, but Ellsworth, who was a neighbor, thought that he conceived his plan after being defeated in the 1926 clerk election. The consensus of the townspeople was that he had worked on his plan at least since the previous August. Bath School Board member M. W. Keyes was quoted by The New York Times:
I have no doubt that he made his plans last Fall [1926] to blow up the school ... He was an experienced electrician and the board employed him in November to make some repairs on the school lighting system. He had ample opportunity then to plant the explosives and lay the wires for touching it off.
Kehoe had free access to the school building during the summer vacation of 1926. From mid-1926, he began buying more than a ton of pyrotol, an incendiary explosive used by farmers in that era for excavation and burning debris. In November 1926 he drove to Lansing and bought two boxes of dynamite at a sporting goods store. Dynamite was also commonly used on farms, so his purchase of small amounts of explosives at different stores and on different dates did not raise any suspicions. Neighbors reported hearing explosions on the farm, with one calling him "the dynamite farmer".
After the disaster it was reported that Michigan State Police investigators had discovered that a considerable amount of dynamite had been stolen from a bridge construction site and that Kehoe was suspected of the theft. Investigators also recovered a container of gasoline, rigged with a tube, in the school's basement; investigators speculated that Kehoe had planned that the gasoline fumes would ignite from a spark, scattering burning gasoline throughout the basement. In the undamaged section of the school it was found that Kehoe had concealed the explosives in six lengths of eavestrough pipe, three bamboo fishing rods and what were described as "windmill rods" that were placed in the basement ceiling.
Kehoe purchased a .30-caliber Winchester bolt-action rifle in December 1926, according to the testimony of Lieutenant Lyle Morse, a Michigan State Police investigator with the Department of Public Safety.
Further preparations
Prior to the day of the disaster, Kehoe had loaded the back seat of his truck with metal debris capable of producing shrapnel during an explosion. He also bought a new set of tires for his truck to avoid breaking down when transporting the explosives. He made many trips to Lansing for more explosives, as well as to the school, the township, and his house. Ida Hall, who lived in a house next to the school, saw activity around the building on different nights during May. Early one morning after midnight she saw a man carrying objects inside. She also saw vehicles around the building several times late at night. Hall mentioned these events to a relative but they were never reported to police.
Nellie was discharged from Lansing's St. Lawrence Hospital on May 16, and was murdered by her husband some time between her release and the bombings two days later. Kehoe put her body in a wheelbarrow at the rear of the farm's chicken coop, where it was found in a heavily charred condition after the farm explosions and fire. Piled around the cart were silverware and a metal cash box. The ashes of several banknotes could be seen through a slit in the cash box. Kehoe placed and wired homemade pyrotol incendiary devices in the house and throughout the farm buildings.
Day of the disaster
Farm bombs
At approximately 8:45 a.m. on Wednesday, May 18, Kehoe detonated the devices in his house and farm buildings, causing some debris to fly into a neighbor's poultry brooding house. Neighbors noticed the fire, and volunteers rushed to the scene.
O. H. Bush and several other men crawled through a broken window of the farmhouse in search of survivors. When they found no one in the house, they salvaged what furniture they could before the fire spread into the living room. Bush discovered dynamite in the corner; he picked up an armful of explosives and handed it to one of the men. As Kehoe left the burning property in his Ford truck, he stopped to tell those fighting the fire that they should get to the school and then drove off.
North wing explosion
Classes at Bath Consolidated School began at 8:30 a.m. Kehoe had set an alarm clock in the basement of the school's north wing which detonated the dynamite and pyrotol he had hidden there at about 8:45 a.m. Rescuers heading to the scene of the Kehoe farm fire heard the explosion at the school building and turned back in that direction. Parents within the rural community rushed to the school. The school building resembled a war zone, with 38 people killed in the initial explosion, mostly children.
Eyewitnesses and survivors were interviewed afterwards by newspaper reporters. First-grade teacher Bernice Sterling told an Associated Press reporter that the explosion was like an earthquake:
... the air seemed to be full of children and flying desks and books. Children were tossed high in the air, some were catapulted out of the building
Eyewitness Robert Gates said the scene was pure chaos at the school:
Mother after mother came running into the school yard, and demanded information about her child and, on seeing the lifeless form lying on the lawn, sobbed and swooned ... In no time more than 100 men at work tearing away the debris of the school, and nearly as many women were frantically pawing over the timber and broken bricks for traces of their children. I saw more than one woman lift clusters of bricks held together by mortar heavier than the average man could have handled without a crowbar.
Ellsworth recounted:
I saw one mother, Mrs. Eugene Hart, sitting on the bank a short distance from the school with a little dead girl on each side of her and holding a little boy, Percy, who died a short time after they got him to the hospital. This was about the time Kehoe blew his car up in the street, severely wounding Perry, the oldest child of Mr. and Mrs. Hart".