Andrew Philip Kehoe (February 1, 1872 – May 18, 1927) was an American mass murderer. Kehoe was a Michigan farmer who became disgruntled after losing an election to be the Bath Township Clerk. He murdered his wife and then detonated bombs at the Bath Consolidated School on May 18, 1927, resulting in the Bath School disaster in which 45 people were killed and 58 more people were injured. After the explosion had destroyed the school building, Kehoe detonated dynamite in his truck, killing himself and several other people and wounding more. He had earlier set off incendiary devices in his house and around his farm, destroying all the buildings. The event remains the deadliest act of mass murder at an American school.

Early life and education

Kehoe was born in Tecumseh, Michigan, among the younger of a family of 13 children. His parents were Philip Kehoe (1833–1915) and Mary (McGovern) Kehoe (1835–1890). He attended Tecumseh High School and Michigan State College (later Michigan State University), where he studied electrical engineering. There, he first met his future wife, Ellen "Nellie" Price, the daughter of a wealthy Lansing family. and was in a coma for two weeks.

Kehoe moved back in with his father after the injury. During Kehoe's time away his mother had died and his father had married Frances Wilder, whom Kehoe did not like.

Marriage and family

After his return to Michigan, in 1912 he married Nellie Price. In 1919 the couple bought a farm outside the village of Bath from Nellie's aunt for $12,000 (equivalent to $ in ). He paid $6,000 in cash and took out a $6,000 mortgage.

Bath School disaster

The Bath School disaster is the name given to a series of explosions perpetrated by Kehoe on May 18, 1927, in Bath Township, Michigan, which killed 45 people including Kehoe himself, and injured at least 58. Of the 44 directly attributed fatalities, thirty-eight were of children, all aged between 7 and 14 years of age (most under 12 years), attending the second to sixth grades at the Bath Consolidated School. The disaster remains the deadliest act of mass murder in a school in U.S. history.

Kehoe killed his wife sometime between May 16, when she returned home from a hospital stay, and the morning of May 18. He moved her body to a farm building before setting off incendiary explosions in their house and farm buildings. About the same time, he had arranged timed explosions in the new school building. The materials in the north wing exploded as planned, killing many students and some adults inside. Kehoe had set a timed detonator to ignite dynamite and hundreds of pounds of pyrotol at the school, which he had secretly bought and planted in the basement of both wings over the course of many months. The second of explosives in the south wing did not detonate, so that part of the school was not destroyed.

As rescuers started gathering at the school, Kehoe drove up and stopped his truck. During a struggle with Superintendent Huyck, Kehoe detonated dynamite stored inside his shrapnel-filled truck, killing himself and Huyck, as well as killing and injuring several others (among them a boy who had survived the initial bombing). During the rescue efforts, searchers discovered the additional of unexploded dynamite and pyrotol planted throughout the basement of the school's south wing. These explosives, connected to an alarm clock that was supposed to act as the detonator, had been set for the same time as the other explosion.

thumb|Sign on Andrew Kehoe's fence

After the bombings, investigators found a wooden sign wired to the farm's fence with Kehoe's last message, "Criminals are made, not born", stenciled on it. The Price family claimed Nellie's remains and had her body buried in Lansing, under her maiden name.

See also

  • List of school massacres by death toll

Notes

References

  • Complete Transcript of Coroner's Inquest into the death of Bath School Superintendent Emory Huyck (pages 1–350) & Findings (pages 1–2), online copy