{"id":201416,"date":"2021-03-13T17:14:13","date_gmt":"2021-03-13T14:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-farmer-andrew-kehoe-became-us-first-mass-murderer\/"},"modified":"2021-03-13T17:14:13","modified_gmt":"2021-03-13T14:14:13","slug":"how-farmer-andrew-kehoe-became-us-first-mass-murderer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-farmer-andrew-kehoe-became-us-first-mass-murderer\/","title":{"rendered":"#How farmer Andrew Kehoe became US’ first mass murderer"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#How farmer Andrew Kehoe became US’ first mass murderer<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

Berenice Sterling was a first-grade teacher in Bath, Mich., in 1927 when she asked school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe for a favor. Sterling wanted to have some fun with her students on the final day of school, so she wondered if the class could picnic in a shady grove of trees on Kehoe\u2019s farm that Wednesday, May 18.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kehoe agreed, but he urged Sterling\u2019s class not to wait till that date. Instead, he said, they should have their picnic \u201cright away.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Asked after May 18 why he thought Kehoe had made that suggestion, Bath resident Monty Ellsworth gave a stark reply:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose he wanted the children to have a little fun before he killed them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The full story of Kehoe \u2014 who went from first trying to control a school\u2019s budget to finally just blowing the whole building up, killing 44 people in a fit of rage \u2014 is revealed in \u201cManiac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer<\/a>\u201d (Little A), out now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Andrew Philip Kehoe was born in Clinton County, Mich., in 1872, the first boy after six girls. Considered \u201cspecial\u201d and \u201centhroned as the long-sought male heir\u201d to the family\u2019s farm, writes author Harold Schechter, Kehoe treasured his exalted position in the family hierarchy, eventually coming to believe he could do no wrong. In later life, Kehoe\u2019s egotism led to a \u201cpathologically inflated sense of his own significance and a corresponding contempt\u201d for anyone who dared to disagree, Schechter writes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Andrew
Andrew Kehoe was the heir to the family\u2019s farm and eventually came to believe he could do no wrong. <\/figcaption>
Alamy<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An intelligent youngster and \u201cinveterate tinkerer\u201d whose electrical inventions were frequently put to good use on the family farm, he was \u201cat the head of his physics class\u201d and later allegedly attended Michigan State Agricultural College in East Lansing, majoring in electrical engineering. Though no records exist for his university education, it is known that he worked in Iowa hanging power lines and as an electrician for a St. Louis park.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When he moved back to the family\u2019s Michigan homestead in the early 1900s, Kehoe\u2019s bona fides as an electrician were well-established.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But his mental health was shaky. He freely admitted, for example, to killing his stepsister\u2019s cat, plus he nonchalantly confessed to gunning down a neighbor\u2019s \u201cnuisance\u201d of a dog.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Neither did Kehoe show any mercy to his own livestock, becoming so enraged over one horse\u2019s bad attitude \u2014 \u201che didn\u2019t pull!\u201d Kehoe said \u2014 that he beat the steed into a lifeless submission.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Facing
Facing bankruptcy, Kehoe was furious about the town\u2019s yearly school tax of $150 (or $2,300 per annum today). So he\u00a0blew up the newly constructed school, killing 44 people.<\/figcaption>
Bettmann Archive<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhen I got through with the animal,\u201d Kehoe flatly told a fellow farmer, \u201che was dead.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in 1911, Kehoe\u2019s stepmother died young in a fiery kitchen explosion. No one suspected her stepson for the deadly conflagration at the time, but later, after he became known as \u201cThe Mad Butcher of Bath,\u201d some wondered if she had been his first human victim.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There were other red flags that suggested Kehoe\u2019s sanity was slipping. Although he worked as a farmer, he dressed as a banker. While his neighbors tended their crops in dirty coveralls, the haughty Kehoe plowed and tilled his acres and rode his rumbling tractor through his dusty fields while sporting full business attire.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Plummeting crop prices meant many American farmers suffered in the 1920s, including and Kehoe was no exception. By mid-decade he was years behind on mortgage payments for his Bath farm, and his ailing wife\u2019s hospital bills for the headaches, coughing fits and weight loss she believed were tuberculosis made the couple\u2019s financial situation all theeven more untenable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Kehoe
Kehoe also killed his wife and then burned down his farm. He made sure his animals\u2019 legs were tied together so they couldn\u2019t run away.<\/figcaption>
Bettmann Archive<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When talk in town began of constructing a new school \u2014 with its corresponding costs \u2014 the childless, fifty-something Kehoe strenuously objected.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll be taxed into the poor house!\u201d he lamented to Monty Ellsworth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bath nonetheless voted to go forward with construction. So, in a bid to limit the spending, Kehoe ran for school board.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

I suppose he wanted the children to have a little fun before he killed them.<\/p>\n

Bath resident Monty Ellsworth on why Andrew Kehoe let children play on his farmland before blowing up their school<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

He was elected treasurer in 1924, but trying to control the school\u2019s purse strings brought Kehoe into direct conflict with the man who would become his greatest enemy: superintendent Emory Huyck.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Huyck was a World War I veteran, a recent graduate of Michigan State and a man comfortable \u201casserting his authority.\u201d Beloved by the local citizenry, Huyck helped the Bath Consolidated School earn state and federal accreditation and continually strove to improve its status and expand its offerings. That, however, led to a yearly tax assessment for Andrew Kehoe of $150 (or $2,300 per annum today).\u00a0<\/p>\n

The two men, Schechter writes, \u201copenly loathed one another.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kehoe found Huyck a smug know-it-all and tried to ban him from board meetings. Lacking the votes to pull off that petty maneuver, he used his position as treasurer to cut the superintendent\u2019s annual raise and reduce his vacation. Kehoe also \u201cforgot\u201d to give Huyck his paycheck nearly every week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Kehoe
Kehoe drove to the bombed school, found his enemy, superintendent Emory Huyck, and detonated his car, killing both.<\/figcaption>
Bettmann Archive<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Meanwhile, Kehoe\u2019s own life was fast falling apart. His wife\u2019s hospital bills accrued and his missed mortgage payments continued to mount. In a \u201cmortifying\u201d blow, Kehoe suffered the twin indignities of losing local elections for town clerk and justice of the peace. When he was served a foreclosure notice on his property in 1926, he was losing everything \u2014 and he knew where to place the blame:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it hadn\u2019t been for that school tax, I might have paid off the mortgage,\u201d he said to the process server.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Facing bankruptcy, Kehoe spent his last years planning revenge on the town he believed had done him wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First, he accumulated hundreds of pounds of dynamite and pyrotol (a surplus munition left over from World War I that was made available to American farmers for agricultural purposes). Then he used his status as board treasurer and unofficial handyman to creep around the bowels of the Bath Consolidated School every night, wrapp<\/a>ing a thousand pounds of bombs in wire mesh and plastering them into the ceiling of the building\u2019s basement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Kehoe
Investigators found this final message on the charred remains of Kehoe\u2019s farm.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He used electrical wires to link the explosives to hot-shot batteries and connected the whole device to a timing mechanism set to detonate on the morning of May 18, 1927.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That day, at his farm just a couple miles from the school, Kehoe first killed his sickly wife with a violent blow to the head. Afterwards, he lined the buildings on his property with \u201cenough dynamite to blow up the county,\u201d which he planned to set off right after the school went up. He even tied together the legs of his animals to ensure none could escape the impending inferno.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then, at 9:45 a.m., exactly as Kehoe planned, the Bath Consolidated School blew up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fortunately, not all the explosives were triggered, and due to either faulty wiring or weak batteries, less than half of the bombs detonated. Though \u201conly\u201d half the building came down, 38 students and six\u2009adults were ultimately killed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Dean
Dean Sweet Sr. wipes tears from his eyes during the 75th Memorial of the Bath School Disaster in Bath in 2002. Sweet, Class of 1933, was a survivor of the tragedy.<\/figcaption>
Lansing State Journal-USA TODAY<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kehoe\u2019s explosion led to the \u201cbiggest murder of children on a US campus ever,\u201d Schechter writes \u2014 a sick record that remains to this day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Kehoe wanted to ensure that his nemesis, superintendent Huyck, did not survive the day. He drove to the smoking rubble that was once the Bath Consolidated School and saw Huyck cradling the body of a dead child. Kehoe waved the superintendent over to his truck, and there, the men argued briefly before the \u201ctax-crazed dynamite fiend\u201d discharged the bombs he had jerry-rigged on to his vehicle, blasting both men to kingdom come.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Their bodies, bystanders said, were \u201cvirtually shredded.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
\"Maniac<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Even so, the residents of Bath didn\u2019t immedia<\/a>tely peg Kehoe as the bomber. No one had ever suspected the \u201cbest neighbor you could ask for\u201d was capable of any such crime.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, the next day, a deputy sheriff looking for Kehoe\u2019s missing wife found the \u201cblackened remains\u201d of her body. A stack of unpaid hospital bills had been placed atop her corpse. And the charred skeletons of the farm\u2019s two horses were discovered in the ashes of a barn, exactly where The Mad Butcher of Bath had bound them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Suddenly, it was clear to all that Kehoe was a deranged murderer, though he left no suicide note or detailed letter giving the reasons for his evil deeds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instead, a painted sign nailed to a fencepost on the remains of his farm offered his final, chilling words.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It said: \u201cCriminals are made, not born.\u201d\u00a0\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#How farmer Andrew Kehoe became US’ first mass murderer” Berenice Sterling was a first-grade teacher in Bath, Mich., in 1927 when she asked school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe for a favor. Sterling wanted to have some fun with her students on the final day of school, so she wondered if the class could picnic in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":201417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/03\/Making-of-a-Manic-Andrew-Kehoe.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[14580,70595,77275],"class_list":["post-201416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-children","tag-murders","tag-serial-killers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}