Speaker 1: Judy was boring. Hello, then Judy discovered Chumbucasino dot com.
Speaker 2: It's my little escape.
Speaker 1: Now Judy is the life of the party.
Speaker 2: Oh baby, mama is bringing home the bacon.
Speaker 1: WHOA, take it easy, Judy, jump the chumba life. That's
Speaker 1: for everybody. So go to Chumpacasino dot com and play
Speaker 1: over one hundred casino style games. Join today and play
Speaker 1: for free for your chance to redeem some serious prices.
Speaker 1: Jump Chumpacasino dot com. No burgas necessary weight, We're go
Speaker 1: hit at my mom eight team loss terms and condition to play.
Speaker 2: Se website for details.
Speaker 3: Hello, it is Ryan and we could all use an
Speaker 3: extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we? Just to
Speaker 3: make up for things like sitting in traffic, doing the dishes,
Speaker 3: counting or steps, you know, all the mundane stuff. That
Speaker 3: is why I'm such a big fan of Chumba Casino.
Speaker 3: Chumpbuck Casino has all your favorite social casino style games
Speaker 3: you can play for free anytime anywhere with daily bonuses.
Speaker 3: That's you brighten your day, Lowe actually a lot, so
Speaker 3: sign up now at chumbuck Casino dot com. That's chumbuck
Speaker 3: Casino dot com.
Speaker 2: No'll purg necessary Dvoid where everybody lost in terms of
Speaker 2: its eating one.
Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Geese, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 4: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski. Brands are spending more
Speaker 4: on e commerce advertising due to projected rising online sales.
Speaker 4: If you're in charge of hiring for your business, these
Speaker 4: pivots have made your job even more challenging, especially if
Speaker 4: you have to hire for brand new rules. Thankfully, there's
Speaker 4: one place you can always count on to making hiring
Speaker 4: faster and easier. ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. When you
Speaker 4: post a job on ZipRecruiter, it gets sent to over
Speaker 4: one hundred top job boards with one click. Then Ziprecruiter's
Speaker 4: powerful technology finds people with the right skills and experience
Speaker 4: for your job and actively invites these people to apply.
Speaker 4: It's no wonder that four out of five employers who
Speaker 4: post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.
Speaker 5: See for yourself. Right now. You can try ZipRecruiter for
Speaker 5: free at ZipRecruiter dot com, slash murder. That's ZipRecruiter dot
Speaker 5: com slash m r der. Let zip recruiter take finding
Speaker 5: qualified candidates off your plate so you can focus on
Speaker 5: growing your business. Go to ZipRecruiter dot com, slash murder,
Speaker 5: zip recruiter the Smartest way to hire. Harold Scheckter Amazon
Speaker 5: Charts best selling author of Hell's Princess Unearthed, a nearly
Speaker 5: forgotten true crime of obsession and revenge and one of
Speaker 5: the first and worst mass murders in American history. In
Speaker 5: nineteen twenty seven, while the majority of the township of Bath, Michigan,
Speaker 5: was celebrating a new primary school, one of the most
Speaker 5: modern in the Midwest, Andrew P. Kehoe had other plans.
Speaker 5: The local farmer and school board treasurer, was educated, respected,
Speaker 5: and an accommodating neighbor and friend, but behind his ordinary
Speaker 5: demeanor was a narcissistic sadist seething with rage, resentment, and paranoia.
Speaker 5: On May eighteenth, he detonated a set of rigged explosives
Speaker 5: with the sole purpose of destroying the school and everyone
Speaker 5: in it. Thirty eight children and six adults were murdered
Speaker 5: that morning, culminating in the deadliest school massacre in US history.
Speaker 5: Maniac is Harold Scheckter's gripping, definitive, exhaustively researched chronicle of
Speaker 5: a town forced to comprehend unprecedented carnage and the triggering
Speaker 5: of a human time bomb whose act of apocalyptic violence
Speaker 5: would foreshadow the terrors of the current age. The book
Speaker 5: that we're featuring this evening is Maniac, the Bath School
Speaker 5: Disaster and the Birth of the Modern mass Killer, with
Speaker 5: my special guest, journalist and author and historian Harold Scheckter.
Speaker 5: Harold is going to connect with us very very shortly.
Speaker 5: I just want to let people know that this book
Speaker 5: was released. Maniac was released on March ninth, so we
Speaker 5: have the privilege of speaking to Harold Scheckter, the author.
Speaker 5: And Harold Scheckter is an American true crime historian and
Speaker 5: the author of some of the biggest true crime classics
Speaker 5: in history, including The Mad Sculptor, Hell's Princess, Man Eater, Derange, Depraved, Deviant,
Speaker 5: and the list goes on. More than twenty five true
Speaker 5: crime books among his his historic writing. He is scheduled
Speaker 5: for many interviews today and so we are just waiting
Speaker 5: for him to call in and connect, which should be
Speaker 5: very very shortly. This book, Maniac is available obviously in Kindle,
Speaker 5: hardcover and audiobook. And Harold Scheckter is one of my
Speaker 5: favorite guests because the books that he writes and the
Speaker 5: type of writing is he is incomparable. Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 5: welcome Harold Scheckter to the program. Thank you so much
Speaker 5: for this interview. Harold Scheckter.
Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate being on again.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much. It's always a great pleasure.
Speaker 2: As you write you.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Thank you so much. As a history in
Speaker 5: an American true crime, you spend a lot of time
Speaker 5: reading old newspapers in archives, on microfilm and online. What
Speaker 5: book of yours were you working on when you read
Speaker 5: on July seventh, nineteen oh two fort Wayne Daily News
Speaker 5: issue And what story was that and what special interest?
Speaker 5: And why.
Speaker 2: You know I have to say that, you know, I've
Speaker 2: written so many books and researched so many books. You
Speaker 2: have to give me a little more of a clue
Speaker 2: because there are so many newspapers that I come across.
Speaker 2: As you were just indicating that I don't actually remember,
Speaker 2: tell me What's what happened on that date?
Speaker 5: Well, you were working on the Hell's Princess about Belgunnis
Speaker 5: out and yeah, yeah, yes, And so you're working on
Speaker 5: that book, and then you read about this many stories,
Speaker 5: but including the one about this bath school disaster.
Speaker 2: Yes, but the bath school I guess the reason for
Speaker 2: my confusion a bit is that the bath School disaster
Speaker 2: actually occurred twenty five years after that date. It occurred
Speaker 2: in May nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 5: So yes, And.
Speaker 2: It actually wasn't while I was researching my book on
Speaker 2: Bell Gunnis that I first encountered it. But before that,
Speaker 2: when I did a book called Psycho USA, Famous American
Speaker 2: Killers You Never Heard Of, which was a book, as
Speaker 2: a subtitle suggests about crimes that were very, very sensational
Speaker 2: in their own day, often received national, even international sometimes
Speaker 2: media coverage, but somehow lapsed into total obscurity. And it
Speaker 2: was while doing that book that I first encountered and
Speaker 2: wrote one of the entries on the Bath School disaster.
Speaker 5: Right now, in preparation for this in this introduction, you
Speaker 5: talk about several high profile duels before this time, and
Speaker 5: also you discussed the vain principle of personal honor in
Speaker 5: some of this as well, and tell us what you
Speaker 5: found in your research, and of course this will have
Speaker 5: some relation to this incredible story.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the things that has did me for
Speaker 2: a long time as a historian of American crime is
Speaker 2: the whole question of why certain crimes become these big sensations,
Speaker 2: and other equally and sometimes more heinous crimes, you know,
Speaker 2: don't really get that much attention or disappear almost instantly
Speaker 2: from the news. You know. One thing that I have
Speaker 2: discovered in my researcher reading old newspapers from various times
Speaker 2: in different places, you know, is that you can open
Speaker 2: up any newspaper from any day, in any time, any year,
Speaker 2: in any place in this country and come across terrible
Speaker 2: murders that happened right But again, only a handful, you know,
Speaker 2: become these media sensations. So I believe what you are referring.
Speaker 2: So in my introduction to my new book Maniac, about
Speaker 2: the Best school disaster, you know, I discussed that issue,
Speaker 2: and one of the one of the conclusions I came
Speaker 2: to is that there are certain crimes that speak to
Speaker 2: issues of the moment, you know, that are matters of
Speaker 2: widespread concern or anxiety. So the dueling thing that you
Speaker 2: refer to. One of the examples I given the introduction
Speaker 2: to my book had to do with the subject of
Speaker 2: an earlier book of mine called Killer Cult, which was
Speaker 2: a murder committed in the eighteen forties, I think eighteen
Speaker 2: forty or eighteen forty one by John Colt, who was
Speaker 2: the brother of the famous inventor of the revolving pistol,
Speaker 2: and that became a big, big newspaper sensation of the time.
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons for that, I speculated, was
Speaker 2: that it touched on an issue that was a matter
Speaker 2: of concern and then which was the whole practice of
Speaker 2: resolving despite dueling. So yeah, I gave that as an example.
Speaker 2: I gave other examples the interest, the incredible obsessive attention
Speaker 2: that was paid to the leopoldovoge Thriller killing of nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty four, you know, really touched a nerve with a
Speaker 2: public that was very, very concerned about the moral breakdown
Speaker 2: of what they call the flaming youth of the jazz age.
Speaker 2: So yeah. So it was in that context that I
Speaker 2: mentioned the dueling stuff.
Speaker 5: Let's get to Clinton County, Michigan, in the area where
Speaker 5: this story originates and the key Hose and you write
Speaker 5: about that they came from Ireland during the Great Famine
Speaker 5: of eighteen forty seven and tell us where they settle.
Speaker 5: Then you talk about the father of Philip and tell
Speaker 5: us about Phillips his father, and about the birth of
Speaker 5: Andrew and his status in that family after waiting for
Speaker 5: a son for so many years.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, the key Hose fill up. They were
Speaker 2: kind of epitomes of what people think of as you know,
Speaker 2: this kind of immigrant American dream type family you say,
Speaker 2: came over here during the Great Family is millions millions
Speaker 2: of their countrymen did. They ultimately emigrated to Michigan where
Speaker 2: land was cheap and plentiful. Uh. He became a very
Speaker 2: very successful farmer and a pillar of the community. We're
Speaker 2: talking about an area of Wisconsin, not too far away
Speaker 2: from what became the capital of the state, Lansing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And you know, gave birth to a bunch of children,
Speaker 2: all of whom were girls. Andrew was the first son.
Speaker 2: So you know, of course isn't true as is true
Speaker 2: I think in many immigrant families. You know, he enjoyed
Speaker 2: a special status uh in the in the family, which
Speaker 2: one of the things about writing about notorious killers from
Speaker 2: the past. Is that until they become notorious killers. Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, they totally obscure pretty much nonentities, I mean
Speaker 2: in the law as far as the larger world is concerned, right,
Speaker 2: you know, So there's so there's very little information, uh
Speaker 2: that can be gleaned about their backgrounds. A lot of
Speaker 2: it is speculative. A lot of stories that begin to
Speaker 2: circulate about their pasts or are told after they've committed
Speaker 2: these horrible crimes, and you know, are colored by you know,
Speaker 2: the knowledge of their capacity for evil or just invented.
Speaker 2: So we don't know a huge amount about Andrew's background.
Speaker 2: We do know that from an early age he was
Speaker 2: very mechanically inclined and fascinated by electricity, you know, supposedly,
Speaker 2: and again this is probably at least somewhat apocryphal, maybe entirely,
Speaker 2: you know, as a child, would invent these gadgets, you know,
Speaker 2: that were presumably labor saving farming devices. Yeah, but we don't,
Speaker 2: you know, we don't know a heck of a lot
Speaker 2: about it. I mean, he did go off to college,
Speaker 2: although he doesn't seem to have graduated. He did have
Speaker 2: several jobs that related to electrical engineering and ultimately, at
Speaker 2: a somewhat advanced age for the time, he got married
Speaker 2: to a woman from a very prominent local family and
Speaker 2: became a farmer.
Speaker 5: You talk about his father had married and when Andrew
Speaker 5: was eighteen, his mother died. There was a long progressive illness,
Speaker 5: and so Andrew remained at his father's side assisting in
Speaker 5: the farm work, as you say, in the livestock breeding.
Speaker 5: His father and continued with that, and then Philip took
Speaker 5: another wife, and eventually he took another wife much later.
Speaker 5: Maybe he can tell us about an event that maybe
Speaker 5: forebode the future involving this much younger stepmother and when
Speaker 5: ed Andrew had moved back to the farm with his
Speaker 5: father and the stepmother.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well again, that's one of those events that took
Speaker 2: on a very sinister cast in light of the atrocity
Speaker 2: that Kiho ultimately was responsible for. So again it's a
Speaker 2: little hard to know, uh, you know what really when happened.
Speaker 2: I mean, what we do know is that at the time, uh,
Speaker 2: gasoline fueled ovens had been were being marketed around the
Speaker 2: country as a kind of date of the art cooking
Speaker 2: device that would save housewives. The trouble of getting up
Speaker 2: early in the morning and you know, starting a wood
Speaker 2: fire and their oven. You know, there are wood stoves,
Speaker 2: you know, these were devices that had a little you know,
Speaker 2: a little fuel tank above the stove, you know, which
Speaker 2: held gasoline that would be fed into a stove. So
Speaker 2: needless to say, you know there, you know, they were
Speaker 2: very dangerous and there are all these stories about these
Speaker 2: horrible gas explosions and you know, people being killed, are
Speaker 2: horribly injured, and that appears, and that's what happened with
Speaker 2: Keto's stepmother. Now, the story that again gained circulation much
Speaker 2: much later in the wake of Pebo's crime, you know,
Speaker 2: is that you know, he came to the house and
Speaker 2: saw that she was in flames, and he basically did nothing.
Speaker 2: You know. One writer claimed he just stood there and
Speaker 2: watched her burn. Again, it's very very hard to know
Speaker 2: how much credence to uh, you know, to give that
Speaker 2: that account.
Speaker 5: M hm, yeah, I understand what you're saying. In retrospect,
Speaker 5: everything seems to fall in place, and there was all
Speaker 5: these signs. But obviously if there were never any of
Speaker 5: this event, we would never hear any of those these
Speaker 5: signs you talk about.
Speaker 2: Again, you know, I am saying that, but I'm also
Speaker 2: saying that might not have been a sign because it
Speaker 2: actually might not have happened. In other words, his mother
Speaker 2: definitely died. His stepmother definitely died in an explosion from
Speaker 2: a gasoline stove. But whether you know, Keio just stood
Speaker 2: there and watched her burned to death, you know, that
Speaker 2: is a very open question.
Speaker 5: Though certainly, certainly on May fourteenth, you write that nineteen twelve,
Speaker 5: eight months after stepmother Francis's death, Andrew took a wife.
Speaker 5: And this is Ellen Agnes Price, or they called her Nelly,
Speaker 5: and her dad had served as Lancing's chief of police
Speaker 5: at one time and president of Lancing Auto body Company.
Speaker 5: So tell us a little bit about this relationship with uh,
Speaker 5: with Nelly and the relationship that he had with the parents.
Speaker 5: What was the There was some ties with the parents
Speaker 5: in terms of their home. Tell us about that, Well.
Speaker 2: I mean, Nelly came from a you know, a very
Speaker 2: prominent local family. Uh, and uh, you know she she
Speaker 2: and Andrew again married what, as I said, for the time,
Speaker 2: would have been regarded as I mean, she would have
Speaker 2: been I can't remember exact age, but essentially, again, given
Speaker 2: the age we live in, or they lived in uh
Speaker 2: would have been regarded as an old maid pretty much. Uh.
Speaker 2: She she had through her uncle. Uh, they were able
Speaker 2: to purchase uh well when her when her uncle, who
Speaker 2: owned a great deal of property around the farming community
Speaker 2: of Bath, died, they were able. Andrew is able and
Speaker 2: Nelly to purchase from his estate a very large flourishing farm,
Speaker 2: which is where they ultimately settled. And it was Nelly's
Speaker 2: relatives who basically owned the mortgage that Keiho had taken
Speaker 2: out on the farm because they were in charge of
Speaker 2: they were the executors of the estate.
Speaker 5: Right now. At the same time you write about Andrew
Speaker 5: at this time, he seemed like an unusually clever and
Speaker 5: capable and accommodating fellow that was always ready to lend
Speaker 5: a hand and ask for nothing in return, especially when
Speaker 5: he was willing to put his mechanical skills to use
Speaker 5: to benefit his neighbors.
Speaker 2: Yes now, well, yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead, yes sorry,
Speaker 2: go ahead? Yeah now.
Speaker 5: You talked about Lee Hoo becoming integrated into the into
Speaker 5: the community, into the social life. At this time with
Speaker 5: his personality, despite anything that people would say otherwise, he
Speaker 5: still was enjoying playing card games with other couples. But
Speaker 5: there were things that people did notice at that time.
Speaker 5: Not to say that there were you know, deal breakers
Speaker 5: not having friends, but you write that some of the
Speaker 5: things that people noticed at that time very very unusual.
Speaker 5: Tell us some of the things that friends noticed, you know,
Speaker 5: the card game, but also how he he he addressed
Speaker 5: while working in the fields.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Keeho would dress like a bank or really when
Speaker 2: he when he went out to work. You know, obviously
Speaker 2: all these other farmers were in coveralls and so on
Speaker 2: and so forth, and you know, Andrew would go out
Speaker 2: in a suit. He was very very very meticulous, perhaps
Speaker 2: you know, to an excessive degree. I mean probably, you know,
Speaker 2: it's very possible a modern psychologist would diagnose him as O. C. D.
Speaker 2: You know. And and and it extended again to these
Speaker 2: card games that he and his wife would be part of,
Speaker 2: you know, because he was very very rigid in terms
Speaker 2: of everybody following the rules very very precisely and exactly.
Speaker 2: You know, so there was something very well, there was
Speaker 2: something slightly tyrannical about him again, something very very very rigid.
Speaker 2: You know, people like that are often keeping, sometimes without
Speaker 2: their own knowledge, a very very tight lid on all
Speaker 2: kinds of threatening and disruptive impulses, which, in Keyho's case,
Speaker 2: sometimes broke through. I mean again, these were stories that
Speaker 2: were told only later on. But apparently at one point
Speaker 2: he killed a neighbor's puppy who had wandered onto his property,
Speaker 2: and at another time apparently beat a recalcitrant horse to death.
Speaker 2: So you know, underlying, you know, this is a very
Speaker 2: very you know, adherence to rigid social behavior. There were
Speaker 2: these very dark and apparently sadistic impulses.
Speaker 5: Mm hm, Now there was you right there. Farm bureaus
Speaker 5: were were popping up and forming throughout the country, cooperative
Speaker 5: organizations devoted to promoting the practical and economic interests of
Speaker 5: local farmers. And when this National Farm Bureau was founded
Speaker 5: in nineteen nineteen, Andrew volunteered to head its drive for membership.
Speaker 5: And you write a couple of years later, in nineteen
Speaker 5: twenty one, he's elected to the board of directors directors
Speaker 5: of its Bath of its Bath Township unit. Tell us
Speaker 5: about his stay in this position.
Speaker 2: Well, it's it's you know, again, this only a limited
Speaker 2: amount that we know about it. Keiho again, in various
Speaker 2: parts of his life, want to exert you know, it's
Speaker 2: related to what we were just talking about before. He was,
Speaker 2: to an extent what we would now call a control freak,
Speaker 2: and he had very strong and rigid opinions about things
Speaker 2: and a very very powerful sense that his way was
Speaker 2: the right way and did not easily brook any kind
Speaker 2: of opposition and would develop, as it turned out, you know,
Speaker 2: very very extreme grudges against people who opposed him. So
Speaker 2: it's not exactly clear what led him to leave that post,
Speaker 2: to quit the Farm Bureau post, but it's easy enough
Speaker 2: to imagine. You know, there was something along those lines.
Speaker 5: You talk about them among the various reformist crusades of
Speaker 5: eighteen ninety to nineteen twenty in America called the Progressive Era,
Speaker 5: was a movement to overall the badly outdated school systems
Speaker 5: in rural districts throughout the Midwest. And you talked about
Speaker 5: the difference in you know, children going to country in
Speaker 5: country towns being schooled as opposed to people in the
Speaker 5: big cities. So there was this reform going on. How
Speaker 5: did what did it manifest itself in terms of for
Speaker 5: Bath itself, and what did Andrew feel about this this
Speaker 5: move towards consolidating a school and building a new school.
Speaker 5: What did he think about this along with others? Was
Speaker 5: there why were there some resistance to this?
Speaker 2: Well, what you're referring to is this movement which occurred
Speaker 2: in regional areas throughout the country, sorry, rural areas throughout
Speaker 2: the country, to do a way with the old one
Speaker 2: room schoolhouse system and to replace those schools with what
Speaker 2: they can called modern consolidated schools, where the students in
Speaker 2: the community would all be educated from elementary up through
Speaker 2: high school. And you know, part of the rationalepha that
Speaker 2: was that there were a lot of farm people who
Speaker 2: felt that their children were not being educated in the
Speaker 2: way that city kids were, and that was leaving them
Speaker 2: at a disadvantage in terms of their future in a
Speaker 2: rapidly modernizing world. But there were other people in the
Speaker 2: community who opposed these consolidated schools because, you know, there
Speaker 2: were a big expense they would be paid for by
Speaker 2: increases in their taxes, and they felt that, you know,
Speaker 2: the old little red school houses were fine for them.
Speaker 2: And since they assumed that their you know, their kids
Speaker 2: are going to just grew up to be farmers or
Speaker 2: farm wise, you know, they had no need for a
Speaker 2: fancy education. So in Bath, as in many other communities
Speaker 2: across the country, there was a debate over whether they
Speaker 2: should invest in this new consolidated school, and ultimately the
Speaker 2: people who were for it prevailed. Keyho was among the opponents,
Speaker 2: largely because he resented having additional property taxes, particularly since
Speaker 2: he and Nelly had no children. Once the school was
Speaker 2: erected and became, you know, really the pride of the community,
Speaker 2: Keyhoe made sure to get himself appointed as school board
Speaker 2: treasurer so that he could keep you know, tightrain on
Speaker 2: school expenditures and so on.
Speaker 4: Mm hm.
Speaker 5: Who was the superintendent of this new consolidated school and
Speaker 5: what was what was his character?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 2: Seemingly well superintendent was a young man, excuse me, a
Speaker 2: young man named Emery Hoike, a college graduate and you know,
Speaker 2: very very devoted educator who was determined, uh to bring
Speaker 2: the educational standards of the new school up, you know,
Speaker 2: to as high a level as possible, which he succeeded
Speaker 2: in doing in very short order. The school had to
Speaker 2: be accredited by the state, and under Hike's leadership it
Speaker 2: did so very very quickly. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: Andrew Keyhoe developed this incredible antipathy toward Hoyke, partly because
Speaker 2: he felt that Hoyke was spending money a little too
Speaker 2: freely to improve the school. But also, you know, Keyhoe
Speaker 2: couldn't really tolerate another man being in competition with him
Speaker 2: in any position of power, so.
Speaker 5: That his animosity, let's use is an opportunity, yes, for
Speaker 5: a second, loss, opportunity for a second to stop for
Speaker 5: these messages.
Speaker 1: Okay, Round two.
Speaker 4: Name something that's not boring.
Speaker 2: Laundry, a book club, computer solitaire.
Speaker 6: Huh oh, sorry, we were looking for Chumbuck Casino Chum.
Speaker 6: That's right, Chumbuck Casino dot com as over one hundred
Speaker 6: casino style games joined today and the play for free
Speaker 6: for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. Chum, chumbucasino
Speaker 6: dot com. Believe the eighty plus start the condition of
Speaker 6: the blue website details.
Speaker 5: Now, you talked about the animosity towards Emery Hoyke and
Speaker 5: Andrew Keyhole. But Andrew Keyhole is still involved in civic
Speaker 5: civic politics in the community, and he wants to be
Speaker 5: involved with this school board. But you write about the
Speaker 5: Great War as you call it, and the fortunes of
Speaker 5: area farmers initially as a result of this Great War
Speaker 5: and then the turnaround, the drastic turnaround for farmers, including
Speaker 5: Andrew Keehole.
Speaker 2: Well, the Great War is not more uncoinage. You know.
Speaker 2: Of course we now know as World War One, but
Speaker 2: that's a time it occurred. Nobody knew there was going
Speaker 2: to be a World War two, so they weren't calling
Speaker 2: it World War One. It was just known as the
Speaker 2: Great War. Yeah. That was one of the interesting things
Speaker 2: that I discovered in researching the book was that, as
Speaker 2: I think I said, the depression, you know, which we
Speaker 2: always think about is in beginning with a stock market
Speaker 2: crash in nineteen twenty nine, happened much earlier for a
Speaker 2: lot of American farmers because during the Great War, the
Speaker 2: years of the Great War, you know, their livelihoods were
Speaker 2: flourishing because there were no very few crops that could
Speaker 2: be grown in war torn Europe, so they were shipping
Speaker 2: all these you know, all these crops overseas and making
Speaker 2: a lot of money. You know, a lot of them
Speaker 2: took loans to acquire more farming machinery and expand their property.
Speaker 2: But once the war was over and those countries were
Speaker 2: covered and got back to producing their own crops, the
Speaker 2: US market plunge, and a lot of those farmers you know,
Speaker 2: again suffered this pre depression depression, and you know, one
Speaker 2: of theo was one of those. Keyho was one of
Speaker 2: the reasons that his finances started to plunge so precipitously.
Speaker 5: M you talk about that he was had an assessment
Speaker 5: and it was twelve dollars and twenty six cents per
Speaker 5: one thousand dollars of property valuation. In Keyho's case, that
Speaker 5: was roughly one hundred and fifty per year or twenty
Speaker 5: three hundred dollars today. And so he was very angered
Speaker 5: by this assessment, wasn't he especially considered his attitude, but
Speaker 5: also considering his financial situation.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and again that was the tax levy to
Speaker 2: pay for the new school. You know. Ultimately, Keiho, you know,
Speaker 2: who is obviously undergoing this extreme psychological breakdown, you know,
Speaker 2: began to believe that if it hadn't been for those
Speaker 2: increased property taxes to pay for the school, you know,
Speaker 2: he never would have found himself in the extreme financial
Speaker 2: peril that he was in. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Now he has this ongoing war with Emory Hoyke, but
Speaker 5: he still believes that he can get a place on
Speaker 5: the board, and so there's an there's another election. What
Speaker 5: happens in that election.
Speaker 2: Well, there were a couple of elections that you know,
Speaker 2: he was hoping to win and you know, as turned out, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, he lost them, you know, and both were blows.
Speaker 2: You know, suff from a malady that his characteristic of
Speaker 2: many mass murderers that psychologists call malignant narcissism.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: And when he lost these elections, they were these unbearable
Speaker 2: blows to his narcissism. And of course, you know, he
Speaker 2: blamed his fellow townspeople for the clicking them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you talk about the the couple things that he
Speaker 5: didn't get re elected treasurer. And then he assumed in
Speaker 5: a position of a woman that was had a year
Speaker 5: left and then he thought he would be able to
Speaker 5: retain that position, but he didn't. But there was an
Speaker 5: incident where there was a swarm of bees that plagued
Speaker 5: the school and Keho had volunteered to fix and the
Speaker 5: fixed up the situation and he got rid of the
Speaker 5: bees because they were impressed with this handling of the situation.
Speaker 5: What did the board authorize him, you say, unofficially to do?
Speaker 5: What did he unofficially become for the school.
Speaker 2: Well, he became an unofficial handyman, you know who is called.
Speaker 2: You know, throughout his life in bath Keyhoe, you know,
Speaker 2: especially before he descended into madness. You know, he was
Speaker 2: always willing to lend a hand to a neighbor to
Speaker 2: fix a mechanical problem if they had encountered and so, yeah,
Speaker 2: he was you know, he did have this mechanical skill
Speaker 2: and this electric skill, and yeah, so he was authorized
Speaker 2: to become a kind of unofficial handyman, which allowed him
Speaker 2: pretty much twenty four to seven access to the school.
Speaker 2: And one of the things, of course, was he was
Speaker 2: able to familiarize himself with the uh, you know, with
Speaker 2: the structure of the school, when all the inderworkings of
Speaker 2: the school and you know the lower you know, the
Speaker 2: basement of the school, and all the nooks and crannies
Speaker 2: of the school. You know, that knowledge, of course ended
Speaker 2: up being used for an incredibly malicious purpose. But you know,
Speaker 2: his his uh, his uh accessibility to the school, you know,
Speaker 2: gave him all this knowledge.
Speaker 5: Mm hmmm. You went about the Great War in the
Speaker 5: US chemical industry turning out billions of tons of high
Speaker 5: explosives for the Allies in the war, but since the
Speaker 5: armyist uh there was still government with vast stockpile of
Speaker 5: surplus explosives, so that the Department Agriculture came up with
Speaker 5: a plan. What what what's this plan? And we'll just
Speaker 5: tell us about Piratel.
Speaker 2: Well, Pirtol was a low grade form of dynamite manufactured
Speaker 2: by the government and sold to farmers using all of
Speaker 2: this surplus explosives that had been manufactured for the you know,
Speaker 2: for the for the armaments of the Great War that
Speaker 2: had been left over after the armistice, and farmers were allowed,
Speaker 2: every farmer was allowed to acquire I believe five hundred
Speaker 2: pounds of this. You know, it looked exactly like dynamite,
Speaker 2: although it had you know, a slightly smaller amount of TNT.
Speaker 2: But it was being sold to farmers so that they
Speaker 2: could clear their fields of tree stumps and boulders and
Speaker 2: so on. And you know, Keiho was easily able to
Speaker 2: acquire hundreds of pounds of this, which you don't supplemented
Speaker 2: by buying other sticks of dynamite. So you know, he
Speaker 2: was stockpiling all this explosives. But you know, again that
Speaker 2: would raise eyebrows today, but at the time, you know,
Speaker 2: it didn't set off any alarms because again a lot
Speaker 2: of farmers were buying it in Pyratol, I mean so
Speaker 2: many that they eventually ran out.
Speaker 5: Of it, you right though. Then fall nineteen twenty five,
Speaker 5: Kio asked a neighbor for a ride to Jackson, nearby
Speaker 5: town to get boxes pirate tool. He got five hundred
Speaker 5: pounds at that time and stored it in his barn.
Speaker 5: You also write that Nelly's relatives that were good enough
Speaker 5: to have this mortgage, he hadn't paid this mortgage in years,
Speaker 5: and so they were getting fed up. What was there?
Speaker 5: What was their attitude and what were they trying to
Speaker 5: do in terms of this property?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean they were trying to get paid.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know one point for example, Uh, Nelly was supposed
Speaker 2: to come into a legacy payment of five hundred dollars,
Speaker 2: but instead of sending her a check, uh, the lawyer
Speaker 2: for the estate applied it, you know, to this growing unpaid,
Speaker 2: unpaid mortgage, you know, which Keyhoe was incredibly outraged by
Speaker 2: and finally sued to get it back. You know, But
Speaker 2: Nelly's relatives, you know, they were very very forbearing. Again
Speaker 2: Keyhoe seethed with resentment over their mistreatment of him. But
Speaker 2: you know, when you look at the facts, I mean
Speaker 2: they were very, very tolerant of him.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: But it was also he was signed again.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm sorry, sorry, And in November you right go ahead, sorry, No,
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 2: That whole episode was just a sign of the extent
Speaker 2: to which Keyho's financial situation, you know, is going, you know,
Speaker 2: so rapidly downhill.
Speaker 5: You write in November twenty six he didn't have a vehicle,
Speaker 5: but after purchasing his own pickup truck, he drove to
Speaker 5: Lansing and bought two boxes of dynamite and blasting caps.
Speaker 5: In this book, Maniac, you include the story of Charles
Speaker 5: Lindbergh and his how he changed the course of aviation history.
Speaker 5: But also why is Charles Lindberg an important figure or
Speaker 5: a figure that you included in this book? What was
Speaker 5: it about Charles Lindberg and his story?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, one of the things I struggled a little
Speaker 2: death in writing a book was exactly how to deal
Speaker 2: with the Lindberg angle. And you know, at a certain
Speaker 2: point in the book, maybe halfway through, maybe a little less,
Speaker 2: I suddenly introduced Charles Lindberg and to go through his
Speaker 2: early life and his early experiences a daredevil aviator in
Speaker 2: a barnstormer, in a airmail carrier, and kind of leading
Speaker 2: up to where he first gets the idea that he
Speaker 2: might be able to accomplish this feat which would become
Speaker 2: a very big thing, namely making the first NonStop solo
Speaker 2: flight across the Atlantic. And the way the book is
Speaker 2: constructed is you don't really discover why I've introduced Lindbergh
Speaker 2: until much much later in the book. What I am
Speaker 2: hoping that, you know, readers when they get to that
Speaker 2: reveal will kind of understand that the earlier stuff about
Speaker 2: Lindbergh was not some weird digression, but that there's an
Speaker 2: actual payoff which I'm happy to discuss now, but I
Speaker 2: think would be better discussed a little later on.
Speaker 5: Yes, let's talk about now that. Do you have this
Speaker 5: incident where on January twenty seventh, there's a couple of
Speaker 5: neighbors are talking and Jobs Light and Harry Cushman, and
Speaker 5: they talked about hearing an explosion New Year's night, and
Speaker 5: so Slight bumps into Keyho and asks him if he
Speaker 5: had set off any explosives around midnight? Yeah, because he would, Yeah,
Speaker 5: And what did. What did these people think that he
Speaker 5: had set off these explosions for? What was the reason
Speaker 5: for it?
Speaker 2: He well, he just assumed, you know, it was some
Speaker 2: kind of New Year's Eve celebration thing.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: Keyho admitted that, you know, he said he had fashioned
Speaker 2: a kind of a crude timing device from an alarm
Speaker 2: clock and set it to go off at twelve o'clock. So,
Speaker 2: you know, they wrote it off. Again. They knew Keiho
Speaker 2: like to play around with these electric and mechanical inventions
Speaker 2: of his, so they just assumed this was one of
Speaker 2: his ways of ushering in the new year.
Speaker 5: For all the his superiority he claimed in agricultural practices
Speaker 5: and all his sophisticated farm equipment, nobody really knew the
Speaker 5: significance of what they saw at the time. But what
Speaker 5: did they What did they witness in terms of the
Speaker 5: crops in the field of Andrew Kiel.
Speaker 2: Well, they just began to notice that, you know, some
Speaker 2: for some weird reason, he had begun to neglect all
Speaker 2: his farming duties, and you know the farm was basically
Speaker 2: you know, going to ruin mm hmm.
Speaker 5: One other things mentioned is that people had a hard
Speaker 5: time starting the cars in the twenties. So as a result,
Speaker 5: they went and purchased something what is that device that
Speaker 5: they purchased, and for the purpose of helping them get
Speaker 5: their car.
Speaker 2: Started, they purchased what they would call hot shot batteries,
Speaker 2: which would help you know, spark the engine as opposed to, well,
Speaker 2: we still often had to use hand cranks, but supplemented
Speaker 2: by these hot shot batteries, you know, made the process
Speaker 2: of starting the car much easier. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, Kiho was buying dynamite, he was buying these
Speaker 2: hot shot batteries. He was fashioning detonating devices out of
Speaker 2: alarm clocks. You know, he was doing all this. You know,
Speaker 2: his farm was going to waste, His finances, you know,
Speaker 2: were you know, in tatters. His wife was increasingly being
Speaker 2: hospitalized with illness. But you know, none of you know,
Speaker 2: the neighbors, various neighbors noticed all these things, you know,
Speaker 2: but none of them, individually or really even taken together,
Speaker 2: were enough to again wave any kind of red flags.
Speaker 2: You know, they could all be explained away in you know,
Speaker 2: relative you know and understandable terms.
Speaker 5: You have a person in first week of May, in
Speaker 5: the middle of the night, two am missus Hall is
Speaker 5: awakened by a sound of a motor and she notices
Speaker 5: a Ford pickup closer in front of the steps of
Speaker 5: the school. What does she see a man doing near
Speaker 5: that school at two am?
Speaker 2: Well, she sees him carrying these crates into the school,
Speaker 2: you know, which struck her as a little unusual, particularly
Speaker 2: since she assumed that for some reason that there were
Speaker 2: crates of potatoes. I mean, she couldn't really explain to
Speaker 2: herself why anybody would be carrying bushels of potatoes into
Speaker 2: the school at two o'clock in the morning. And we
Speaker 2: don't exactly know what explanation she gave herself, you know.
Speaker 2: But of course, however bizarre it seemed, you know, she
Speaker 2: could never have expected what was or suspected what was
Speaker 2: going on, you right.
Speaker 5: Also, in sometime in early May, Frank Smith, the janitor,
Speaker 5: noticed a trap door gaining access to the crawl space
Speaker 5: beneath a new part of the building had been left open,
Speaker 5: and he had been working down there repairing a leak.
Speaker 5: He just thought he had forgotten, but a week later
Speaker 5: he saw it open again. Why did he not? What
Speaker 5: was there no concern for him? Why did why did
Speaker 5: he think this was not something that he go off
Speaker 5: concern to him.
Speaker 2: Well, he just assumed, well he specifically assumed for some reason,
Speaker 2: Emery Hoyke, the superintendent, you know, some you know who
Speaker 2: one of whose concerns was the maintenance of the building,
Speaker 2: had gone down there. You know, again coming across an
Speaker 2: open trap door, you know, would not necessarily because for
Speaker 2: any great alarm. Uh you know, I mean it's easy
Speaker 2: to imagine that that he just assumed he forgot to
Speaker 2: you know, he forgot to close it a couple of times,
Speaker 2: or again, you know, just assume that somebody was a
Speaker 2: perfectly legitimate reason for going down there, like Emery hoy
Speaker 2: had gone down there. You know. One of the interesting
Speaker 2: aspects of you know, cases like this is in retrospect,
Speaker 2: things seem uh it's like, why didn't I see that?
Speaker 2: Why didn't I notice that?
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: But but at the time, you know, again, Keijo buying dynamite,
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of well, the fact that they
Speaker 2: had dynamite for sale of this hardware store, you know,
Speaker 2: his assignment people buying dynamite. You know, the fact that
Speaker 2: he sets them off at midnight New Year's Eve. You know, Oh,
Speaker 2: well that's just Andrew. Yeah, you know, showing off his
Speaker 2: ability to you know, create a little timer out of
Speaker 2: an alarm clock. You know, somebody's carrying some crates into
Speaker 2: the school at night. That's a little odd, but you know,
Speaker 2: got to be some explanation.
Speaker 5: So yeah, nothing put together. You talked about Nelly being
Speaker 5: released from the hospital in early May, and she had
Speaker 5: gone to her sister Elizabeth to recuperate in Lansing. It
Speaker 5: was a two week stay. On May sixteenth, after there
Speaker 5: was a arm he finally fetched her. But the very
Speaker 5: next evening, Elizabeth called to check on her sister. Yeah,
Speaker 5: what what did There was no answer, but what did
Speaker 5: and Andrew called shortly after? What What did Andrews say
Speaker 5: about his about Elizabeth's sister?
Speaker 2: Uh, He's explained that she was going over to visit
Speaker 2: some friends whose name was Voss the Ost, and that
Speaker 2: he was going to go be picking her up soon.
Speaker 2: Her her her Nellie's sisters had never hurt, were unaware
Speaker 2: that she had had friends named Boss. But again, you know,
Speaker 2: they didn't attach any particular significance to it.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm. Now let's get to Uh, there was a
Speaker 5: bunch of precipitating events and again in retrospect. People you
Speaker 5: know now know the significance of some of the things
Speaker 5: that he said. There was a a school teacher that
Speaker 5: had called Andrew and said, we'd like to come to
Speaker 5: your grove on your property for a little picnic with
Speaker 5: the children. And because of this May nineteenth, he said,
Speaker 5: well you best not come on May nineteenth. I think
Speaker 5: he's going to come on May seventeenth and get it
Speaker 5: done as soon as you can. So there was events
Speaker 5: like that. So now the day of May seventeenth, take
Speaker 5: us to that day and Andrew Keiho and the school itself,
Speaker 5: and he has a friend named Derlof and so please
Speaker 5: take us to that day and the events of the
Speaker 5: early morning and what happens at the Bath school that morning.
Speaker 5: And also in preparation you talk about this is the
Speaker 5: graduation day. Not all of the students are taking the exams,
Speaker 5: but you can tell us how many people were in
Speaker 5: that school and the situation in terms of Hoike and
Speaker 5: the exams themselves.
Speaker 2: Well, it was the last day of school May eighteenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty seven. It was a day that key Hoo
Speaker 2: knew that pretty much all the students would be assembled
Speaker 2: in the school. Keyhoe had run into another school board
Speaker 2: member named Debtlow, who had been asked to come over
Speaker 2: to the school to take a look at who had
Speaker 2: an auto repair. It was a blacksmith, but you know,
Speaker 2: with the advent of Ford's Model, t had become an
Speaker 2: auto mechanic. Was asked to come over to the school
Speaker 2: to take a look at some problem with the water
Speaker 2: pump in the basement. He ran into Keyhole on the way,
Speaker 2: you know, seemed a little weirdly nervous and asked keyhow
Speaker 2: if you wanted to come along. You know, he knew
Speaker 2: Keyho's mechanical skill. Yeah, Keyhos seemed reluctant to do it,
Speaker 2: and probably, you know, very soon disappeared from the scene.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah. On the book, you know, based on various
Speaker 2: first hands accounts that I was able to get hold of,
Speaker 2: I tried to recreate the events of the day from
Speaker 2: various points of view.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, the students assembled. Some of the students were
Speaker 2: in their classrooms having stories read to them, you know,
Speaker 2: in the lower grades by their teachers. Other students were
Speaker 2: taking their final exams. Students had been exempted from the
Speaker 2: final exams because of their superior grades. But then you know,
Speaker 2: somewhere out in the school yard. There were some older boys,
Speaker 2: you know, chucking around a baseball. You know, it was
Speaker 2: it was just kind of what seemed to be a nice,
Speaker 2: idyllic last day of school. And you know, then at
Speaker 2: at nine thirty exactly the explosion happened, and the key
Speaker 2: Hoe as it ultimately emerged. You know, the man who
Speaker 2: had been supposedly carrying crates of potatoes into the school
Speaker 2: was Andrew Keyhoe. And he wasn't carrying crates of potato.
Speaker 2: He had been carrying boxes of dynamite. He'd spent weeks
Speaker 2: rigging the basement of the school with all of the
Speaker 2: dynamite and pirate hall that he had purchased, one hundred
Speaker 2: pounds of it. He had made these crude timing devices
Speaker 2: and set them to go off at nine thirty in
Speaker 2: the morning on the last day of school, when he
Speaker 2: felt sure he would be able to kill as many
Speaker 2: children as possible. And you know, at nine thirty the
Speaker 2: detonators went off. But fortunately nobody knows exactly why. But
Speaker 2: there's apparently some faulty wiring or a short circuit. Much
Speaker 2: of the explosives did not detonate. If everything that Keiho
Speaker 2: had planted there had gone off, he would have essentially
Speaker 2: wiped out an entire generation of school children in that community,
Speaker 2: right children, But he did. But one entire wing of
Speaker 2: the school did explode, and you know, and of course
Speaker 2: Debt Loth and other parents who had kids in the school,
Speaker 2: you know, immediately ran frantically to the scene, you know,
Speaker 2: and we're confronted with this sight of horrific devastation. I
Speaker 2: say in my book, it looked like, you know, you
Speaker 2: see pictures of it, looks like, you know, one of
Speaker 2: these devastated European towns that had been destroyed by artillery,
Speaker 2: you know, just piles and piles of rubble with dead
Speaker 2: and dying and shrieking children buried inside of it. And
Speaker 2: everybody started frantically, you know, trying to dig through the rubble. Meanwhile, Kehoe,
Speaker 2: who was at his farm at the time the explosion
Speaker 2: went off, had loaded up his Ford pickup truck with
Speaker 2: more explosives and shrapnel and drove down to the school
Speaker 2: and called Emery Hyke, his nemesis, and a couple of
Speaker 2: other people over to the over to the truck. Exactly
Speaker 2: what happened then is not known. Different eyewitnesses gave slightly
Speaker 2: different accounts, but whether he had a rifle that he
Speaker 2: fired into the truck or pulled some kind of switch, whatever,
Speaker 2: he detonated. He detonated his truck and killed himself, killed Hoyke,
Speaker 2: killed a couple, you know, some other bystanders. The thing
Speaker 2: about the Bad School disaster is that, you know, it
Speaker 2: turned out to be the deadliest school massacre again in
Speaker 2: US history, And you know, the worst case of domestic
Speaker 2: terrorism before Tim McVay, and you know, the first and
Speaker 2: only suicide car bombing dis counting you know the recent
Speaker 2: one in Nashville which didn't claim any victims except you know,
Speaker 2: the guy who said law So you know it was
Speaker 2: this unprecedented, horrific crime.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, they also found eventually Nelly lashed to a
Speaker 5: hogcart and burned alive or set on fire, and so
Speaker 5: that was solved that mystery. You say that this story
Speaker 5: again will introduce Charles Lindberg. Why was this story not
Speaker 5: we made national news? You say for a week it
Speaker 5: had that phenomena of the weak attention. But yeah, tell
Speaker 5: us about Charles Limberg and that story and what happened
Speaker 5: to the Bath School disaster story?
Speaker 2: For years yeah, well it wasn't even a week, so yes,
Speaker 2: you know, imediately with the bas School disaster was an
Speaker 2: enormous nationwide frontage story. In fact, it even made international headlines.
Speaker 2: Adam Hitler sent a letter of condolence, wow to yeah to,
Speaker 2: to Franklin Franklin Sorry to Franklin Roosevelt the President expressing
Speaker 2: his condolences. But three days later, Lindberg completed his world
Speaker 2: changing solo flight across the Atlantic, which at the time
Speaker 2: was as momentous an event as the moon landing forty
Speaker 2: years later, and it completely displaced every other news story
Speaker 2: from the papers, and the day after the Bath School
Speaker 2: disaster the New York Time, the disaster was the lead
Speaker 2: story on the front page of the New York Times.
Speaker 2: Three days later, the New York Times devoted the entirety
Speaker 2: of its first five pages to Linnberg and his flight.
Speaker 2: And you know, all of their news was either relegated
Speaker 2: to the back pages or completely omitted, including the Bath
Speaker 2: School disaster. So that was one major reason why this
Speaker 2: horrific crime was so completely relegated to obscurity.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about since nineteen ninety nine and Columbine
Speaker 5: that all kinds of other future school shootings that journalists rediscovered,
Speaker 5: and the story resurfaced about Bath School massacre in reference
Speaker 5: to these school shootings of horrific school shootings. So the
Speaker 5: story did come back into public awareness, it.
Speaker 2: Well, to some extent. I mean, you know, if you
Speaker 2: ask most people about the Bath School massacre, you know,
Speaker 2: they will get you kind of blankly, I think. I mean,
Speaker 2: I've spoken to a lot of people who grew up
Speaker 2: in Michigan who never even you know, never even heard
Speaker 2: of it. So but yes, you're right. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: every time in the recent past one of these horrific
Speaker 2: school shootings occurs, or very truly every time, you know,
Speaker 2: newspapers will very commonly run stories about the worst school
Speaker 2: massacres in US history, you know, ranking them of course
Speaker 2: by number of victims, and the Bath School massacre, which
Speaker 2: claimed the lives of thirty eight school children and six adults,
Speaker 2: ultimately is always listed as number one. But again, you know,
Speaker 2: it hasn't really managed to, you know, to restore this story,
Speaker 2: you know, the story of Keiho and the Bath School
Speaker 2: disaster to the position that I you know, think it
Speaker 2: holds in the annals of crimes. You know, also, as
Speaker 2: I think I might have said, you know, all through
Speaker 2: the twentieth century, there are all these crimes of the century,
Speaker 2: you know, Leopoldo Lode and the Lindburgh kidnapping up through
Speaker 2: OJ And by the time I finished the book, you know,
Speaker 2: I really come to believe, and I still believe, that
Speaker 2: the Bascuchol disaster is the single worst American crime of
Speaker 2: the twentieth century.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, And thanks to you, now we have the official
Speaker 5: story of Maniac, the baschool disaster, and the birth of
Speaker 5: the modern mass killer, which you say is replaced they've
Speaker 5: ever popular serial killer now in the public's imagination. Tell
Speaker 5: us above if you have a website or a Facebook
Speaker 5: page for people to take a look at this book.
Speaker 5: Before I let you go.
Speaker 2: There is a website, Haroldcheckter dot com. There is a
Speaker 2: Facebook page. I have to say, somewhat embarrassedly, I myself
Speaker 2: never go on it, but it is maintained for me
Speaker 2: and anybody who needs to contact me. I do receive
Speaker 2: messages on that page, and I'm always careful to answer them.
Speaker 2: So yeah, you know, those are those are two spots
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 5: Great. Thank you very much, Harold for Maniac, the birth,
Speaker 5: the bath School disaster, and the birth of the modern
Speaker 5: mass killer. Thank you so much for this interview. Harold Scheckter,
Speaker 5: nice speaking with you. Have a great night, thank.
Speaker 2: You, good speaking with you.
Speaker 5: Good night, thank you.