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Speaker 2: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 2: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 2: written about them, Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 2: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 2: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 2: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 6: Good Evening. On May eighteenth, nineteen twenty seven, the small
Speaker 6: town of Bath, Michigan, was forever changed when Andrew Kiho
Speaker 6: set off the cachet of explosives concealed in the basement
Speaker 6: of the local school. Thirty eight children and six adults
Speaker 6: were dead, among them Kiho, who had literally blown himself
Speaker 6: to bits by setting off a dynamite charge in his car.
Speaker 6: The next day, on Keiho's farm, what was left of
Speaker 6: his wife burned beyond recognition. After Keiho set his property
Speaker 6: in buildings ablaze, was found tied to a hand cart,
Speaker 6: her skull crushed. With seemingly endless stories of school violence
Speaker 6: and suicide bombers filling today's headlines, Bath massacre serves as
Speaker 6: a reminder that terrorism and large scale murder are nothing new.
Speaker 6: A chilling and historic character study of the unfathomable suffering
Speaker 6: that desperation and fury, once unleashed inside a twisted mine,
Speaker 6: can reek on a small town. Contemporary mass murderers Timothy McVeigh,
Speaker 6: Columbines Dylan Klebold, and Virginia Tech's Sung Hu Cho can
Speaker 6: each trace their horrific genealogy of terror to one man,
Speaker 6: Bath school bomber Andrew Kehoe. The book that we're featuring
Speaker 6: this evening is Bath Massacre, America's first school bombing, with
Speaker 6: my special guest, journalist and author Arnie Bernstein. ownA Welcome
Speaker 6: to the program, journalist and author Arnie Bernstein, thank you
Speaker 6: for a greeting this interview. Hi, thank you, sorry for
Speaker 6: the delay, just getting onto the program a little bit late,
Speaker 6: had some problems connecting. Welcome to the program. And again,
Speaker 6: an amazing story I had no idea about. Let's get
Speaker 6: right into this. What brings you to this story? Without
Speaker 6: giving anything away, but what brought you to this project?
Speaker 6: Why was this a compelling story to undertake this big
Speaker 6: book project that you have, Bath Massacre. So tell us
Speaker 6: exactly how you came to be involved with this project.
Speaker 7: Well, I had been looking for a story to write about.
Speaker 7: I was looking for I'm a big fan of stories
Speaker 7: that have been kind of lost in the cracks of history,
Speaker 7: and basically was scouring the internet and you know, I
Speaker 7: like to site find a grave.
Speaker 6: I'm sure many of.
Speaker 7: Your listeners are familiar with it, right, trolling through that
Speaker 7: a little bit here, a little bit there, and then
Speaker 7: up came the Bath memorials, and I thought, what is
Speaker 7: this and started digging and digging and digging, and I
Speaker 7: realized this was a compelling crime. It had never been
Speaker 7: properly explored, and it was something I had to do.
Speaker 6: Now. You start off the book a little unusually unusual
Speaker 6: because it was a very linear this book really not
Speaker 6: like a lot of books, very creative and going back
Speaker 6: and forth from really to separate scenes, you know, very
Speaker 6: much like a movie esque. But it's pretty straightforward. But
Speaker 6: in the beginning, why do you choose the story that
Speaker 6: you do with sung? Who chose? And well, tell us
Speaker 6: about that story and obviously then I'll be an introduction
Speaker 6: of why you know you chose the story for this book.
Speaker 6: But tell us a little bit why you chose this
Speaker 6: story and tell us a little bit about the story
Speaker 6: that you did choose.
Speaker 7: To open up your book, Well, the Virginia Tech shooting
Speaker 7: happened in April of that year, and it was about
Speaker 7: a month before the eightieth commemoration of the school bombing.
Speaker 7: Now you have to keep in mind, this is something
Speaker 7: that every year when it comes around, it weighs heavy
Speaker 7: on this town. Bath is when you think the quintessential
Speaker 7: small Midwestern town, that's it. And it weighed heavy on them.
Speaker 7: And in talking with many of the people, they said
Speaker 7: when that happened, they felt it. And they feel these
Speaker 7: things much differently than you know, you or I might certainly,
Speaker 7: you know, most recently with Sandy Hook they I really
Speaker 7: felt it bad their Columbine certainly, even nine to eleven. Uh,
Speaker 7: you know, and reporters always contact them when these things happen.
Speaker 4: Sure you know you've been.
Speaker 7: Through this, how do you feel about this? And so
Speaker 7: you know, I mean, eighty is a you know, I mean,
Speaker 7: it's a significant year. Most of the survivors have passed
Speaker 7: and there but there's a few around and they, you know,
Speaker 7: I opened it with the two of them who have
Speaker 7: since passed by the way, and they felt it. They
Speaker 7: felt in a way that we can't even begin to understand.
Speaker 7: And because as they say, it was it was a
Speaker 7: decade marker it seemed like the right way to start it,
Speaker 7: and it was going certainly to the end too.
Speaker 6: Okay, without going too far into you know, originally the
Speaker 6: Virginia Tech massacre. But just and we'll see as we're
Speaker 6: talking about this story right away, but tell us about
Speaker 6: some of the just the real, real i would say,
Speaker 6: blatant similarities or the real found similarities before we go
Speaker 6: into this, you know, an apt introduction to oh, you
Speaker 6: think it only happens recently, and the right of fact
Speaker 6: of course this story which will surprise I think people
Speaker 6: that are used to being surprised, so.
Speaker 7: You know, and it's interesting, you know, you talk about
Speaker 7: the similarities because even more so with Sandy Hook were
Speaker 7: the similarities which really was quite profound on everyone there.
Speaker 7: But in essence, you know, there with what happened to
Speaker 7: Virginia Tech, he's you know, he initially killed somebody, he
Speaker 7: went and sent a message out to the world, and
Speaker 7: then he went and did the rest of his killing,
Speaker 7: which is more or less how the killer in Bath, Michigan, uh,
Speaker 7: Andrew Keyhoe did his work.
Speaker 6: Now, before we get into Andrew Keyhole, because he's not
Speaker 6: originally from Bath and she sees he moves to the area.
Speaker 6: So tell us about Bath, Michigan and really what it's
Speaker 6: about in its proximity to say Detroit or I know
Speaker 6: Lancing is near there. So tell us really how small
Speaker 6: this place really is and how you know, out of
Speaker 6: the way it really is and it's proximity to bigger
Speaker 6: places than we might all know about.
Speaker 7: Sure, Now, Bath in nineteen twenty seven, they're about i'd
Speaker 7: say maybe fifteen twenty miles outside of Lansing, Michigan, the
Speaker 7: capital of the state. But in nineteen twenty seven there's
Speaker 7: no interstate so they're pretty isolated. And in fact, they
Speaker 7: did not have electricity then. They were still stringing up.
Speaker 7: It was a relatively new thing that they were starting
Speaker 7: to string up. I like to say this was the
Speaker 7: town that the Roaring Twenties were right by. Although interesting
Speaker 7: fun fact, Capone actually had a little cottage outside of Bath.
Speaker 7: One of his cohorts had hold up in Lancing and
Speaker 7: was a fruit stand that was sort of a warehouse
Speaker 7: for a component when he was shipping liquor in Chicago.
Speaker 7: But you know, that's neither here nor there.
Speaker 4: But it was.
Speaker 7: It was small town America and still is. They still
Speaker 7: do not have a stoplight in Bath, and a lot
Speaker 7: of it looks like it looked in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 7: A lot of the same buildings are still there. It's
Speaker 7: it's as I said before, it's it's quinto quintessential small
Speaker 7: town America.
Speaker 6: And the Bath Collins Consolidated School itself as well. I
Speaker 6: mean we're talking, you know, previous to nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 6: So and we're talking a very small place and right,
Speaker 6: and it would magically happened construction of school.
Speaker 7: So yeah, they had it was a series of one
Speaker 7: room schoolhouses were in the area and they decided to
Speaker 7: consolidate them, and that's why it was called Bath Consolidated School. Now,
Speaker 7: there had been a high school building, but they wanted
Speaker 7: to incorporate all the grades, so they kind of took
Speaker 7: that building, built it in you know, the center of town,
Speaker 7: and it became kindergarten through senior year of high school.
Speaker 7: And that building was originally built in nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 7: so at the time of this of this bombing, the
Speaker 7: building was about five years old.
Speaker 6: Now, what was the population in Bath at that time? Oh,
Speaker 6: I god, I'm round.
Speaker 7: I'd like to tell you, but yeah, I would say
Speaker 7: maybe five hundred to seven hundred. But that's that's a
Speaker 7: guest demate on my party. Couldn't have it off the
Speaker 7: top of my head. But it's small, let's put it
Speaker 7: that way.
Speaker 6: Very small.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and then they again they don't have electricity.
Speaker 4: Keep that in mind.
Speaker 7: Some places had electricity, such as the school.
Speaker 6: But that was because they had a generator. Right now,
Speaker 6: some of the characters in this what maybe we'll get
Speaker 6: to Andrew Keyhole because he has you basically done an
Speaker 6: incredible amount of research in his background and who he
Speaker 6: was beforehand, and there is a way there's records about
Speaker 6: what his character really was like. So tell us about
Speaker 6: Andrew Keijo, where he came from and his wife Nelly,
Speaker 6: and tell us a little bit about who he was. Well,
Speaker 6: key Hoo came from a different town in Michigan.
Speaker 7: He lived outside. I can't remember the name of the
Speaker 7: town off hand. I'm sorry about that, but he lived
Speaker 7: in a different town. He and his father did not
Speaker 7: get along. There was kind of a give and take
Speaker 7: between the two men. Now, his mother passed away when
Speaker 7: Keyho was young, and Kiyo's father remarried married a woman
Speaker 7: who was in essence, maybe a couple of years older
Speaker 7: than Keiho himself. He was very angry with his father
Speaker 7: for marrying a woman that young, and it said she
Speaker 7: could have been his sister. And Keyhoe was a master electrician.
Speaker 7: He studied electricity and was, you know, it's something of
Speaker 7: a genius had it when it was still a new,
Speaker 7: relatively new thing.
Speaker 4: This was in like the round.
Speaker 7: Oh god, this is like the early nineteen hundreds were talking.
Speaker 7: So electricity was the new thing. And his father's wife, Francis,
Speaker 7: his father's new wife, Francis, they didn't get along either. Now,
Speaker 7: on September seventeenth of nineteen eleven, Francis was lighting the stove.
Speaker 7: The stove itself exploded. It was, you know, the old
Speaker 7: fashioned gas stove. Once by one account it was lit
Speaker 7: by oil. Another count was gasoline. And she was just
Speaker 7: engulfed in a ball of flame. Kehoe himself was the
Speaker 7: only one there. He came in. Now he threw water
Speaker 7: on her to stop it. Now, oil and water don't mix,
Speaker 7: causing the you know, it causes the flame to spread.
Speaker 7: You're supposed to throw baking powder things like that in
Speaker 7: that kitchen fire, things like that. Well he didn't, and
Speaker 7: it caused her brain burns to be even worse. Kehoe
Speaker 7: went to the house next door. They had a phone
Speaker 7: at the house next door, and he said, could I
Speaker 7: bire your phone friend? He's been burned, you know, like
Speaker 7: she dropped up, you know, a pot of hot water
Speaker 7: on her foot or something like that. And he said, oh,
Speaker 7: by the way, call the priest. They went back to
Speaker 7: the house. She hung on for a few more hours.
Speaker 6: But.
Speaker 7: Just in absolute agony. Now, Keyho, nobody knows how this
Speaker 7: thing started. But Keho had the knowledge on how to
Speaker 7: set things like this. He was an expert in explosives.
Speaker 7: Now that sounds a little odd, but keep in mind
Speaker 7: in this day and age, there was a thing called
Speaker 7: stump blasting for people don't know what that is. If
Speaker 7: you have a stump in your field, a stump, boulder,
Speaker 7: something like that, you need to blow it up.
Speaker 4: They could.
Speaker 7: You couldn't use your horse, it would kill your horse.
Speaker 4: Cars were relatively new, but it would rip your car
Speaker 4: to shreds. And they did him grinder in those days.
Speaker 6: They just blew him up.
Speaker 7: So Kehoon was an expert in this kind of stuff,
Speaker 7: and he was an expert in electricity even at this
Speaker 7: young age. And did he set off the fire the
Speaker 7: explosion in the stove, there's no way to know. On
Speaker 7: the other hand, his behavior was awfully strange, awfully strange
Speaker 7: on that day, and the way, you know, the way
Speaker 7: he said Franny got burned and call a priest, and
Speaker 7: very nonchalant about the whole thing, and the way, of
Speaker 7: course he threw water on her. He certainly would have
Speaker 7: been smart enough to know that you throw you know,
Speaker 7: baking powder or flour or something like that in a
Speaker 7: in a kitchen fire of such magnitude.
Speaker 6: So what was his father, What was his father's reaction
Speaker 6: in terms of father.
Speaker 7: And he had he had to he was using two
Speaker 7: canes basically, and he had slowly had to get through
Speaker 7: the house to get to his wife and his son,
Speaker 7: and he was in absolute agony, you know, psychologically over this,
Speaker 7: but there was nothing he could do. He was, you know,
Speaker 7: an elderly man and quite sick at the time.
Speaker 6: Was he suspicious of his son that there was something,
Speaker 6: there was foul play.
Speaker 7: There's no record of it. He could have been, but
Speaker 7: there's no record of it. Right, And again this is
Speaker 7: something he was never charged with anything. Nobody could prove anything,
Speaker 7: and at the time, nobody said anything. It was a
Speaker 7: terrible kitchen accident. It's one of those things in retrospect,
Speaker 7: when after the bad school bombing happened, people you know,
Speaker 7: heard about this and that, oh, maybe he had something
Speaker 7: to do with it. But it was something in his
Speaker 7: record in his past that not many people knew about
Speaker 7: it that came to light after the school bombing.
Speaker 6: Now, in terms of people that testify to his character,
Speaker 6: that were witnessed to his character, it wasn't like he
Speaker 6: wasn't well loved, but there were some peculiarities about this
Speaker 6: medling some things that he was very adamant about, and
Speaker 6: other things that he was so was somewhat odds. So
Speaker 6: maybe tell us a little bit about some of his
Speaker 6: you know, he had political he was interested in politics.
Speaker 6: He was interested in religion, or at least he was religious.
Speaker 7: So well, he was very anti religious. He was very
Speaker 7: anti religious man. When they came to collect for the
Speaker 7: Catholic church, he said the old church had burned down
Speaker 7: and they were coming to build a new one. He said, no,
Speaker 7: we don't want any money. We won't give anybody say that,
Speaker 7: so he did not This was before he moved to Bath. Now,
Speaker 7: when he moved to Bath with his wife, Nelly.
Speaker 4: We had married.
Speaker 7: Nelly's uncle was Lawrence Price, who was well known in
Speaker 7: the Bath area as a politician there. And they moved
Speaker 7: into a home in Bath on the outskirts of Bath,
Speaker 7: which was actually Nelly's childhood home. And Kio himself ran
Speaker 7: for school trustee and one and became a treasurer. And
Speaker 7: they had no children.
Speaker 4: But he felt that his tax.
Speaker 7: Money was going into the school, he should have a say,
Speaker 7: people in the area should have a say on it.
Speaker 7: Which is perfectly normal, you know, perfectly you know, understandable.
Speaker 7: He was a farmer. He would wear a suit and
Speaker 7: tie when he did his farming, which and people said
Speaker 7: that his toolshed was cleaner than some people's barns.
Speaker 4: It was, you know, remarkable.
Speaker 7: He would go to you know, the local they had
Speaker 7: like a local gathering hall, you know where they would
Speaker 7: have you know, dances and things like that, and he
Speaker 7: would go to the card games there and he would
Speaker 7: always you know, get into fights about the rules things
Speaker 7: like that. At the school board meetings, he would get
Speaker 7: into arguments about how money was being spent with the
Speaker 7: Emery Hike, who was the superintendent.
Speaker 4: Of the school.
Speaker 7: Now I've worked in education for many years I've been
Speaker 7: to school board meetings many times, and there was nothing
Speaker 7: unusual about this behavior. But to go with a you know,
Speaker 7: a cantankerous relationship between a school board member and you know,
Speaker 7: the person in charge of the school, you know, such
Speaker 7: as the superintendent. So he was and other people just
Speaker 7: thought he was just the nicest neighbor that could be.
Speaker 7: The children all loved him, they you know, one of
Speaker 7: the survivors said to me, he was the nicest man,
Speaker 7: always tipping his hat to children, things like that.
Speaker 6: So he was.
Speaker 7: He was a real dichotomy of a man. And but
Speaker 7: he could be the cranky neighbor or he could be
Speaker 7: the nice guy, depending on you know what day you
Speaker 7: ran into him, I suppose. But again, nothing unusual about this.
Speaker 6: What I thought was unusual was some of the like
Speaker 6: I say, he he was really stubborn in certain respects
Speaker 6: when he had something he really believed in. Tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about his mortgage. Yeah, how the bank reacted.
Speaker 7: Okay, Now he was The mortgage was actually in his
Speaker 7: wife's name because his wife's family owned the property, and
Speaker 7: he felt that the farmers could control if they controlled
Speaker 7: their crops, they could control you know, the prices so
Speaker 7: he let his farm go to seed and basically the
Speaker 7: crops just rotted. The land was rotting.
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Speaker 7: He did not pay his mortgage. He did not pay
Speaker 7: his mortgage for years. The bank tried to work out
Speaker 7: an arrangement with him, and he refused to pay. He
Speaker 7: was not going to be There was no way he's
Speaker 7: going to be kicked out. It was in his you know,
Speaker 7: his wife, his wife's name, and his wife was quite ill.
Speaker 7: She had some sort of lung disease, could have been tuberculosis,
Speaker 7: and they weren't about to throw them out, particularly with
Speaker 7: you know, with the power power of her uncle, you know,
Speaker 7: and her sisters as well. Nellie had two sisters. There
Speaker 7: was no way they were going to throw them out.
Speaker 7: But keyho Set often said that the taxes on the
Speaker 7: school were ruining him and that's why he was going broke,
Speaker 7: and he did not pay his mortgage for many years.
Speaker 7: And you know this, you know, led us to eventually,
Speaker 7: you know, the bombing.
Speaker 6: Now. The other thing that he was was he was
Speaker 6: sort of mechanically inclined. He had when he even moved
Speaker 6: to the area. He was kind of known as a
Speaker 6: progressive farmer. Guys were coming around looking at his machinery.
Speaker 7: Odds he was one the first one was attractor there,
Speaker 7: but he was he.
Speaker 6: Wasn't the first guy with a vehicle. So he didn't
Speaker 6: have a vehicle, but he had a modern machine, right.
Speaker 7: And they call it's funny because they called the machines
Speaker 7: in those days, they called cars machines. Eventually he got
Speaker 7: a truck, but he did not have a He didn't
Speaker 7: have a car for many years. Cars were still relatively
Speaker 7: new at that point too, and if he had one,
Speaker 7: it was it was, you know, something of a sign
Speaker 7: of a you know, a steam but you know, people
Speaker 7: were slowly, surely starting to get cars, and as I say,
Speaker 7: he eventually got one. He got a truck. But he
Speaker 7: had a tractor, and you know, people were impressed by him.
Speaker 7: And certainly he had this mechanical knowledge. As I say,
Speaker 7: he was trained as an electrician. He was a master
Speaker 7: electric and he had a generator at his house, so
Speaker 7: he had electricity and the school. Because he was on
Speaker 7: the school board, they had him work at the school,
Speaker 7: the electrical systems there and pretty much everything there, and
Speaker 7: he was sort of a general handyman. They had an
Speaker 7: incident where they were somehow bees had built up a
Speaker 7: nest next to the furnace and in the winter it
Speaker 7: heated up and the bees flew through the school and
Speaker 7: they tried and tried, they couldn't get it out.
Speaker 4: They asked, Kejo, can you do this?
Speaker 7: Nobody knows what he did, but somehow he was able
Speaker 7: to solve that problem, you know, and he fixed other
Speaker 7: things here and there. So he had twenty four hour
Speaker 7: access to the school, complete access, and nobody thought anything
Speaker 7: of it.
Speaker 6: Now this plays in there much later, you really, you know,
Speaker 6: it doesn't come out immediately at all but this parent
Speaker 6: teacher kind of meetings that were were to happen often,
Speaker 6: and he would be in arguments on those. How often
Speaker 6: were these meetings and when was the next meeting going
Speaker 6: to be in May?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 7: He was it was the school board meeting was on
Speaker 7: once a month, which is is you know, standard stock stuff,
Speaker 7: and there was going to be a meeting in a
Speaker 7: couple of days after the bombing.
Speaker 4: He was. He had, you know, a he.
Speaker 7: Timed everything beautifully. It's quite strange. When I was doing
Speaker 7: the research, I actually saw the books where of the
Speaker 7: school board meetings and the notes and there's his name,
Speaker 7: you know, signed and you know, saying you know, you know,
Speaker 7: you know, meeting adjourned, you know, next meeting May whatever,
Speaker 7: you know, a couple of days after you know what
Speaker 7: would be the bombing. At that point he knew what
Speaker 7: was going on, He knew what he was doing. It
Speaker 7: was you know, of course no one else did, but
Speaker 7: you know that he made so calm, cool, collective about
Speaker 7: the whole thing.
Speaker 6: Did he have any real close friends neighbors that they
Speaker 6: were real close to him that would say that later said, listen,
Speaker 6: I really I knew this guy as well as probably anybody,
Speaker 6: and and they testified. Obviously, people asked what was he
Speaker 6: like a few days before, a few weeks before, So
Speaker 6: what was the official from somebody close to him, a
Speaker 6: neighbor or a close friend, what was he like? Were
Speaker 6: there any differences in the days proceeding or week proceeding,
Speaker 6: Nothing terribly unusual. It's one of those cases where I mean,
Speaker 6: it was completely you know, nobody of course, nobody expected
Speaker 6: anything like this, certainly, but he was. He in fact,
Speaker 6: with his neighbor across the street, they had like they
Speaker 6: were practicing gun shooting. Everybody had guns, which was you know, standard,
Speaker 6: and he and his neighbor, you know, took some shots
Speaker 6: and he offered to buy the gun. And it did
Speaker 6: not you know, they couldn't come to terms.
Speaker 7: But you know, I mean again, nothing, absolutely nothing. Again,
Speaker 7: some people thought he was cranky, some people thought he
Speaker 7: was fine. Nothing unusual.
Speaker 6: Now, And you talked about stump blasting, you know, using
Speaker 6: dynamite and another substance to pirate t hall as well,
Speaker 6: just another way of having some explosions, and it wasn't
Speaker 6: maybe you can tell our audience it really wasn't. It
Speaker 6: was very common for people to have access to pirrat
Speaker 6: Hal and dynamite and do this blasting, wasn't it right?
Speaker 7: Pirate Hall was a World War One, uh explosive that
Speaker 7: was you know that was still around surplus war surtplus stuff.
Speaker 7: And he was the go to guy for dynamite in
Speaker 7: town because he was he knew how to set up
Speaker 7: a stump to blast, and there was you needed your
Speaker 7: stump blasted, you go to Keiho And there was nothing
Speaker 7: unusual about him having hundreds of thousands of sticks of
Speaker 7: dynamite in his barn, you know, sat and blasting caps
Speaker 7: things like that. That one of his neighbors they went
Speaker 7: out to Lansing to pick up more dynamite and drove
Speaker 7: it home in the neighbor's truck and put in Kyo's barn.
Speaker 6: He was also offering a couple of the farmers and
Speaker 6: his neighbors that if they needed any explosives, he had
Speaker 6: plenty then oh yeah, the one and there were you
Speaker 6: know the no ahead, sorry go ahead, no no, no
Speaker 6: go ahead. Now really really key element here is the
Speaker 6: relationship he had with this super Superintendent Elmore hayak Is at.
Speaker 7: The pronouncement, Emory hike Emery hike Man.
Speaker 6: Okay now so you can tell us. You know, he
Speaker 6: ran for politics and you know, for for office and
Speaker 6: basically got in and was involved than Bath politics. KYO.
Speaker 6: So what was his relationship with with Elmer Hire, with
Speaker 6: Emory Hike?
Speaker 7: Yeah, he was they were oil and water. They were
Speaker 7: just did not get along at all. He was convinced
Speaker 7: that Hike was spending money recklessly for the school. Hike
Speaker 7: was trying to make the school better. He was considered
Speaker 7: a model superintendent.
Speaker 4: But Keyho had.
Speaker 7: Everything down to the penny as far as you know,
Speaker 7: balancing the books.
Speaker 4: It was his role as treasure work.
Speaker 7: The two of them were constantly arguing, constantly fighting. If
Speaker 7: Keyho did not get his way, he would try to
Speaker 7: adjourn the meeting. He and at some point Hike said,
Speaker 7: I think this guy is out to get me. He
Speaker 7: said that to several people, said I think this guy
Speaker 7: is out to get me.
Speaker 4: In what warrior?
Speaker 1: Did?
Speaker 6: He think that there was so much unnecessary spending, in particular.
Speaker 7: Things that we take for granted in schools, new books, wallpaper,
Speaker 7: you know that well, but I mean just you know,
Speaker 7: spoosing up the classrooms, things like that, desks, things, anything
Speaker 7: that really costs money. Ko didn't want to do. He
Speaker 7: felt that they had to be responsible to the taxpayers
Speaker 7: and spend you know, judiciously and prudently, and he felt
Speaker 7: that Hike was taking a check book and running wild,
Speaker 7: which he was not. You know, they were reasonable expenses.
Speaker 6: Now in that in support of that were the Again
Speaker 6: the other taxpayers, as other council members, other trustees will say,
Speaker 6: other people that would you know, weigh in on this.
Speaker 6: Did they agree with Keyho or did they agree with Hike?
Speaker 7: It depended on the issue. It depended on the issue
Speaker 7: pretty much, you know. They you know, you pick your
Speaker 7: battles wisely. Ko did not pick his battles wisely, and
Speaker 7: so some of you in some you lose. And there
Speaker 7: were you know, which is standard for again, standard for
Speaker 7: school board stuff having been done many a school board.
Speaker 7: Meaning it's funny because my friends in education said to me, oh,
Speaker 7: you you must have modeled this after you know, you
Speaker 7: know such and such a person and another such a person.
Speaker 7: You know, that's what they sounded like, a SA. No,
Speaker 7: it's it's pretty normal apparently what.
Speaker 6: Went on there, right, Yeah, So nothing to indicate any
Speaker 6: kind of foreboding of anything to occur, certainly, and in
Speaker 6: terms of violence, he didn't have a violent past or
Speaker 6: predisposition or any behavior that would There was well, other
Speaker 6: than the incident in the past, which of course came
Speaker 6: out later with his stepmother, there was an incident where
Speaker 6: he shot a dog. There's different versions of the story.
Speaker 6: One he shot the dog, another one he poisoned the dog.
Speaker 6: It was the neighbor's dog across the street. And he
Speaker 6: readily admitted that he did it because he was tired
Speaker 6: of the dog running around his property and barking and
Speaker 6: yipping around. So that's probably the most unusual thing, and
Speaker 6: it certainly, I know, there's no defending it, but that
Speaker 6: was probably the most unusual thing. Another incident where he
Speaker 6: tried to sell a man a horse. The horse had
Speaker 6: one eye, and he came up with a bill of
Speaker 6: sale and told the guy, am, okay, here's your horse.
Speaker 6: The guy didn't want to buy the horse, but somehow
Speaker 6: Keio had come up.
Speaker 7: And said, okay, here it is, and here's your bill
Speaker 7: of sale. It was it was weird, strange behavior, you know,
Speaker 7: little things like that here and there that were a
Speaker 7: little bit you know, offbeat.
Speaker 6: Now, just prior to this, they have a janitor at
Speaker 6: the school itself and right, that janitor had noticed something
Speaker 6: amiss but really didn't chalk it up to anything. What
Speaker 6: happened and what was his reaction? And tell us about that?
Speaker 7: Yeah, he know what ko had done was then they
Speaker 7: figured this over the course of months, he had planted dynamite,
Speaker 7: six hundred pounds of dynamite beneath the school and wires
Speaker 7: and timers and things like that, and had carefully hidden
Speaker 7: it within the rafters. When they found it, you know,
Speaker 7: after the explosion, they were just it was mind boggling
Speaker 7: how he had carefully hidden everything. Now, the janitor of
Speaker 7: the school noticed that a trap door was open, and
Speaker 7: then a lock had been busted on a regular door.
Speaker 7: And but you know, it was nothing unusual. Maybe the
Speaker 7: wind blew that trap door open. Who knows, in retrospect
Speaker 7: it was probably Keho had you know, somehow gotten in
Speaker 7: that trap door and used it, or perhaps it busted
Speaker 7: a lock. On January first, it was going into December
Speaker 7: thirty first to January first, nineteen twenty seven, there was
Speaker 7: an enormous explosion at Keho's place. He said he was
Speaker 7: setting off fireworks for the New Year's but it was
Speaker 7: an annoying It wasn't like fireworks. It was a dynamite
Speaker 7: explosion of some sort. And his wife said, oh, the
Speaker 7: old boys just having some fun. In retrospect, it was
Speaker 7: probably a dress rehearsal to make sure the timers worked
Speaker 7: and things like that, because it was people heard the
Speaker 7: explosion for.
Speaker 4: Miles around it was. It was that intensive an explosion.
Speaker 6: How close was his property to the school itself.
Speaker 7: About two miles about two miles from the property, not
Speaker 7: far at all.
Speaker 6: Now, tell us about the day before, the day proceeding,
Speaker 6: and then we can talk about the day.
Speaker 7: Itself, normal day. But at that night there was a
Speaker 7: band rehearsal or something like. There was a little band
Speaker 7: contract going on. And one of the students, when he
Speaker 7: was leaving, he saw a man standing outside the school
Speaker 7: at night and he thought, oh, that's mister Keyhoe. And
Speaker 7: he was just standing there in front of the school.
Speaker 7: There was no board meeting or anything like that. He
Speaker 7: had no reason to be standing in front of the school,
Speaker 7: but he was just standing there by himself, quietly. And
Speaker 7: then the next day happened. What happened was the next morning,
Speaker 7: the janitor there was a problem with the furniture with
Speaker 7: the generator. The generator wasn't going on, and oh no,
Speaker 7: I'm sorry, excuse me. It was it was a problem
Speaker 7: with the boiler.
Speaker 4: The boiler wasn't going on.
Speaker 7: So they called Keyhoe and he came and he took
Speaker 7: a look at it, and he was getting quite agitated.
Speaker 7: It was about eight thirty or so in the morning.
Speaker 7: He was quite agitated, and he said, I've got to
Speaker 7: get going. I've got to get going, and he left.
Speaker 7: About eight forty five students were all in school. The
Speaker 7: suddenly the janitor and a handyman are thrown against the wall.
Speaker 7: They didn't know what was going on. Enormous explosion. People
Speaker 7: thought the boiler had blown up. The school was two stories,
Speaker 7: rose about maybe three to six feet in the air,
Speaker 7: and then pancake down, trapping people and trapping children. One
Speaker 7: wing of the school went up. Now they estimated maybe
Speaker 7: one hundred pounds of the dynamite had gone off. Kioid
Speaker 7: they estimated planted six hundred pounds of dynamite.
Speaker 4: Pirate tall.
Speaker 7: Why the other five hundred didn't go off? Maybe there
Speaker 7: was a short and the wire. Maybe the explosion ripped
Speaker 7: up one of the timers. Hard to say, but you know,
Speaker 7: for what it's worth, that was you know, the best
Speaker 7: you know thing that happened was not all of it
Speaker 7: went off. If it had all gone off, the town
Speaker 7: would have been wiped off the map. Six hundred pounds
Speaker 7: of dynamite is an enormous amount of dynamite. Now, simultaneously,
Speaker 7: when the school blew, there was across the street, the
Speaker 7: woman who lived across the street from Kyo in the
Speaker 7: farm across the street, heard a big bang and in mind,
Speaker 7: she said, that's key hose and she just felt that,
Speaker 7: and an enormous fire broke out a key hoose and
Speaker 7: just spread rapidly through his house and through a couple
Speaker 7: of his buildings, and it was the neighbors came to
Speaker 7: the fire to you know, his you know, they were
Speaker 7: going to form a bucket brigade or something help put
Speaker 7: out the fire. Kehoe emerged in his truck from this
Speaker 7: big plume of smoke, and he looked at the neighbors
Speaker 7: and he said, boys, you better get out of here.
Speaker 7: You better go down to the school. And he drove
Speaker 7: off to the school.
Speaker 4: And what is he talking about?
Speaker 7: They didn't know what he meant, but that was starting
Speaker 7: to come out. There'd been an explosion at the school
Speaker 7: and yet of course everybody in town either had a
Speaker 7: child or children there, or knew somebody who had children there.
Speaker 7: It was their estimated between about two hundred and seventy
Speaker 7: five children are in school that day. Tiho drives down
Speaker 7: to the school. Now the school is no As I said,
Speaker 7: people thought it was a boiler that had gone off,
Speaker 7: but it was just epic what was going on there,
Speaker 7: the enormous pancaking down of the roof onto the second floor,
Speaker 7: that there's this big pile of debris. There's no fire,
Speaker 7: but it is just debris. There's smoke, there's dust. They
Speaker 7: are pulling children out with their hands. They form a
Speaker 7: triage at what was the telephone office. There's a mortgage
Speaker 7: starting to form the front lawn and people are opening
Speaker 7: up their houses to as triage is temporary hospitals, things
Speaker 7: like that. A call there's one phone, you know, the
Speaker 7: phone exchange. They call out to ambulances and lancing, please
Speaker 7: get here. They're throwing kids into trucks, into anything they
Speaker 7: can get them to get to the hospitals. Keyo drives
Speaker 7: up and Hike sees him and he runs up to
Speaker 7: the truck and you know, at this point, you know
Speaker 7: our animosity. We need to save these kids, and he looks.
Speaker 7: He says, we need your truck. We need to get ropes,
Speaker 7: we need to get ladders, and Kia says, okay, I'll
Speaker 7: take you with me, and Hike just freezes and he says,
Speaker 7: you know something about this, don't you. At that point,
Speaker 7: Keyo takes a gun fires it into a cash of
Speaker 7: explosives he has in the cab of his truck, and
Speaker 7: he has packed the cab of his truck with nails,
Speaker 7: rusty bolts, hoe heads, things like that. It blows up,
Speaker 7: he blows up, he blows up. Hike with him. This
Speaker 7: stuff sprays out like shrapnel and kills other people as well.
Speaker 7: At the end of the day there were.
Speaker 4: Thirty eight children.
Speaker 7: Actually one child did later, but thirty eight children and
Speaker 7: six adults counting Keho and his wife, who I'll get
Speaker 7: to in a moment, were dead.
Speaker 4: Of course, when Keio blew.
Speaker 7: Up the truck, they realized it wasn't the boiler, but
Speaker 7: something horrible had happened and he was at the epicenter
Speaker 7: of it. Now his wife Nelly, as I said, it
Speaker 7: was a sickly woman people were looking for. They didn't
Speaker 7: know where she was She was found on the next
Speaker 7: day on the farm, her in a she was in
Speaker 7: a cart. She was burned beyond recognition. Her skull was cracked.
Speaker 7: They don't know if it conceivably the heat without getting
Speaker 7: disgusted in here, that the heat could have expanded the
Speaker 7: brain and cracked her skull, or he could have cracked it.
Speaker 7: Nobody knows if he killed her, if she was dead
Speaker 7: before he brought her out there. There's just simply no
Speaker 7: way to know. But next to her, on one side
Speaker 7: was a family strong box with like bonds and things
Speaker 7: like that in it. And on the other side was
Speaker 7: the jewel the excuse me not the jewel, the silverwar,
Speaker 7: the family silver War. It was almost ritualistic the way
Speaker 7: it had been placed about her, and as I say,
Speaker 7: she was burned beyond recognition.
Speaker 4: Now with this.
Speaker 6: Response, what I found interesting In nineteen twenty seven, in
Speaker 6: a very very small town, they've called for emergency for firefighters,
Speaker 6: and emergency the equivalent of an ambulance, I guess. And
Speaker 6: it's like sixteen minutes. So tell us about this herculean
Speaker 6: effort to be able to you know, first they make
Speaker 6: calls and realize there's no one to call there's no
Speaker 6: one to be able to offer assistance. How do they
Speaker 6: get people to you know, the incredible amount of manpower, doctors, nurses,
Speaker 6: how do they try to manage this? And tell us
Speaker 6: about that herculean effort.
Speaker 7: Well, they, of course, the hospitals, the calls came in
Speaker 7: and said there's been a massive explosion. They had children
Speaker 7: in the hallways, they had you know, it's like almost
Speaker 7: like you know, the things that we saw, you know,
Speaker 7: in a strange way, what we saw on nine to
Speaker 7: eleven with the you know, suddenly the hospitals opening up
Speaker 7: and you know, people in the hallways things like that.
Speaker 7: They didn't have the cranes or anything like that. They
Speaker 7: were literally using their hands to pull.
Speaker 4: Up the debris.
Speaker 7: They at one point were trying to get a telephone
Speaker 7: poll and work it as a lever to pull the
Speaker 7: roof off the school.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 7: It was a monumental effort. And you know, of course
Speaker 7: in the days later they were able to get in
Speaker 7: heavier equipment, but initially it was largely by hand and
Speaker 7: what you know, implements that they had, you know, available
Speaker 7: to them. At one point, one boy who was you know,
Speaker 7: badly injured. They were out of vehicles. So they threw
Speaker 7: them in the only vehicle that they could find, and
Speaker 7: that was a hearse, and the hearse brought this kid
Speaker 7: to the hospital and Lansing. It was it was remarkable
Speaker 7: what they had id you have this.
Speaker 6: This is a school that goes right through grade school
Speaker 6: up to high school. And when this ceiling fell or
Speaker 6: the roof fell, it so tell us what not to
Speaker 6: break it all down. But primarily this was afflicting the
Speaker 6: younger students, wasn't it right?
Speaker 7: It was it was the youngest students. It was the
Speaker 7: second graders and the kindergarten the third graders for second
Speaker 7: third graders were the ones who were killed. Now it
Speaker 7: was exam day, was final exam day, and students who
Speaker 7: had done well, the high school students didn't have to
Speaker 7: come in that day, and so some of them were playing,
Speaker 7: you know, catch on the front lawn. One of the
Speaker 7: fibers I spoke with said she was picking flowers in
Speaker 7: the you know, nearby, and she heard this enormous explosion.
Speaker 7: So not every kid was in the school necessarily at
Speaker 7: the time, and a lot of the high school kids too,
Speaker 7: who were inciting war studying for exams, they were able
Speaker 7: to get out and participate in the rescue as well.
Speaker 7: You know, people really, you know, rose to the occasion,
Speaker 7: you know, and you know, although you know, certainly the
Speaker 7: worst that happened, it brought out the best in everyone.
Speaker 6: It reminded me to the scenario, or at least the description.
Speaker 6: The only thing I could associate it with was nine
Speaker 6: to eleven, where you had this sort of rain of
Speaker 6: dust and dirt and smoke and silt. And that's sort
Speaker 6: of what I got from this, was this tell us
Speaker 6: about that sort of environment post the explosions.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I parents, you know, the children were covered in dust,
Speaker 7: you know, I describing the book as they were climbing
Speaker 7: out of the debris like dust covered moles. And the
Speaker 7: dust was thick throughout the area and inside the school itself.
Speaker 7: Some of the children who survived said they couldn't see
Speaker 7: anything because the dust was so thick. One child saw
Speaker 7: a beam of light through maybe a dime sized hole.
Speaker 7: Had no idea how we had gotten in that position,
Speaker 7: but it was, you know, just a tiny beam of
Speaker 7: light to all this thick, thick dust, and inside of course.
Speaker 4: Was just horrible womage. There was one that.
Speaker 7: Teacher, she was wedged in she couldn't move her head.
Speaker 4: There was a boy above her. She realized that.
Speaker 7: The boy's eyes were opened, and she realized the child
Speaker 7: was dead and his face was inches from hers. She
Speaker 7: couldn't do anything. She couldn't move, she couldn't get out.
Speaker 7: The only thing she could do to avoid the boy's
Speaker 7: death there was just keep her eyes closed. Other children were,
Speaker 7: you know, trapped in you know, different ways. One teacher,
Speaker 7: Hazel Weatherby, she was the second grade teacher, and she
Speaker 7: reminds me very much of Vicky DeSoto, who stood up
Speaker 7: and when that madman came into Sandy Hook and started
Speaker 7: firing away. In a way, she reminds me very much
Speaker 7: of Hazel, because what miss Weatherby did when they found her,
Speaker 7: she was barely alive, and she had a child in
Speaker 7: each arm. It was like her teacher instincts that kicked in,
Speaker 7: and she must have reached out to grab the two
Speaker 7: children and pulled them towards her, And when the rescuers came,
Speaker 7: she gave the children over. The children, of course, unfortunately,
Speaker 7: had died. But after the rescuers had the children, she
Speaker 7: died herself. She was barely hanging out to life, but
Speaker 7: she wanted, you know, her teacher instincts kicked in. She
Speaker 7: wanted to make sure her students were safe.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Now how did they manage? Was there any was
Speaker 6: there a call and a response to more medical help
Speaker 6: or how did they deal with all these victims in
Speaker 6: a small hospital that certainly wasn't built for that kind
Speaker 6: of number of victims or number of people needing attention?
Speaker 6: So how did they deal with them?
Speaker 7: It was it was almost like you know when we
Speaker 7: think of like a mass unit or something like that.
Speaker 7: They had to do you know, quick and dirty. You know,
Speaker 7: there was so many you know, they had to choose
Speaker 7: which victim was hurt, you know, the worst, who needed
Speaker 7: the most help at the moment. One person they saw
Speaker 7: I was a teacher who did die. The nursery called.
Speaker 7: She looked at the woman and said that poor woman
Speaker 7: is blown apart and there was nothing they could do
Speaker 7: for her. It was, you know, as horrible as seen
Speaker 7: as you can imagine. And they, you know, they did
Speaker 7: what they had to do, but you think, you know,
Speaker 7: they could only save you know, so many children. One
Speaker 7: child did hang on, but she ended up dying in
Speaker 7: her injuries.
Speaker 6: A few months later, there was a boy that also
Speaker 6: was in a coma.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but.
Speaker 7: His heart was they thought he was gonna they thought
Speaker 7: he was gonna die. Yeah, they didn't you know, they
Speaker 7: didn't know his sister was. They wouldn't tell the sister
Speaker 7: or anything. She was just terrified. But his they thought
Speaker 7: he was going to die. And his heart was just
Speaker 7: like pounding so hard that the bed was shaking. And
Speaker 7: eventually they gave him whiskey to help keep him under control.
Speaker 7: Whiskey of course being illegal because prohibition, but someone had it,
Speaker 7: of course, and it did the trick, and it stopped
Speaker 7: his heart from pounding so hard for the rest of
Speaker 7: his life, though he had trapannel in his is.
Speaker 4: And you know, I'm kids.
Speaker 7: I mean, they suffered one you know, they had broken
Speaker 7: you know, one man at a twisted angle.
Speaker 4: All of his life.
Speaker 7: Certainly they had you know, the post traumatic stress disorder
Speaker 7: as well. One woman told me she remembered her grandmother thunderstorm.
Speaker 7: He was an enormous thunderstorm was rolling through a town
Speaker 7: and she was just completely freaking out. And they realized
Speaker 7: it was because of the sounds, the explosions there was.
Speaker 7: I spoke with the school. Eventually itself, it was rebuilt,
Speaker 7: but it was torn down in the in the in
Speaker 7: the seventies, and uh I spoke with a woman who
Speaker 7: was a who had gone to the you know, the
Speaker 7: new school, and they had there was a bomb scare
Speaker 7: and periodically some really sick people would call in and
Speaker 7: with bomb scares to the school and they were all
Speaker 7: hustled out, and she said her teacher was crying. She
Speaker 7: couldn't understand why her teacher was crying. And she found
Speaker 7: out later that many years later when she was reading
Speaker 7: this Tachu's obituary, that the woman had been a survivor
Speaker 7: of the bombing and probably was relivingated in her mind
Speaker 7: when this is happening. So the effects were long, both
Speaker 7: physically and psychologically.
Speaker 6: Let's go backwards though here because one of the things
Speaker 6: I found most profound, and this is not the first
Speaker 6: time I've been surprised, but I was again even more
Speaker 6: surprised from this because as soon as you think you've
Speaker 6: you've seen it all, then I read this. So was
Speaker 6: the public's response and the media's response. So tell us
Speaker 6: first about the media. How big was this story? How
Speaker 6: did the media respond in terms of descending on this town,
Speaker 6: just to kind of illustrate that eighty five years ago,
Speaker 6: how was the media eighty five years ago. So first
Speaker 6: tell us about the media response, and then you can
Speaker 6: tell us about even more profound public response.
Speaker 7: Oh yes, well, the media certainly came in. It was
Speaker 7: it was newspapers. Radio was in its infancy. So there
Speaker 7: were newsreel reporters who did come in. They flew in.
Speaker 7: They you know, there's actually if you look on YouTube,
Speaker 7: you can see a shot of the of an airplane
Speaker 7: flying over the school. They so there were news photographers,
Speaker 7: the papers inundated the place and bo What's really interesting,
Speaker 7: this happened in May of nineteen twenty seven, three days
Speaker 7: after the bombing. There was a guy named Charles Lindberg
Speaker 7: who took off from New York and flew to Paris
Speaker 7: and gone completely. It was an international story what had
Speaker 7: happened in Bath gone. Everybody wanted to read about Lucky Lindy,
Speaker 7: and it dominated the newspapers in a way. I think
Speaker 7: it was probably the best thing that could have happened, because,
Speaker 7: I mean, today we're we see what happened in Paris
Speaker 7: with the big media, you know, NonStop, and certainly in
Speaker 7: Sandy Hook it was non stop media. I think it
Speaker 7: really helped Bath. You know, heal such as you can
Speaker 7: heal from something like that, to be left alone, at
Speaker 7: least by the media. But Nick, keep in mind, I said,
Speaker 7: this is the quintessential small town. Not many people, no
Speaker 7: stoplights there was. This is previous to the interstate. They
Speaker 7: estimated fifty thousand people descended they wanted to see the sights.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 7: I mean, twenty cars in Bath is a traffic jam,
Speaker 7: but I can't even imagine all the people coming in.
Speaker 7: They people couldn't go to the funerals. They had to
Speaker 7: There were a pair of sisters who would sing, you know,
Speaker 7: at funerals. They had to take them by police motorcycle
Speaker 7: from place to place because they couldn't get through. Traffic
Speaker 7: was so loud that people could not hear what was
Speaker 7: going on in the funeral. They would hold the funerals
Speaker 7: in the living room, the parlor or things like that.
Speaker 7: They couldn't hear because there were so many people outside.
Speaker 7: One person, you know, said Hey, where's the cemetery where
Speaker 7: they're going.
Speaker 4: To bury these children?
Speaker 7: And said, oh, it's up that way. We're bearing my
Speaker 7: son there. Later another house, somebody knocked on the door
Speaker 7: and said they wanted to see the dead body. Can
Speaker 7: you imagine that it's just as horrible as horrible can be.
Speaker 7: I still find it hard to comprehend. First of all,
Speaker 7: the numbers of people who came in. I mean, this
Speaker 7: is a teeny tiny town and it's just swamped with
Speaker 7: tens of you know, I mean literally hundreds of tourists.
Speaker 4: You know, for lack of a better word, walkers, you know, ghoules.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 7: They were you know, picking up you know, dirt from
Speaker 7: the keyhole place in Mason jars, things like that, taking bricks,
Speaker 7: things like that.
Speaker 4: They didn't get it.
Speaker 7: They might be dynamites two in the ground, which was
Speaker 7: really odd. And they continued well into the summer. People
Speaker 7: have he coming in and seeing the sights as it were.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's really shameful behavior. And what I found so
Speaker 6: surprising was it wasn't, you know, wasn't spurned on by
Speaker 6: the media by a hungry, sort of voracious media, was
Speaker 6: just by the people themselves. And I was very surprised
Speaker 6: by that behavior. Knocking on people's doors. It was beyond
Speaker 6: cross and unfeeling. And again it was from small town
Speaker 6: people as well. It's not like they came from the
Speaker 6: big city looking at people like they're in a zoo.
Speaker 6: It was people that should have been able to be
Speaker 6: able to relate, but incredible sort of behavior.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I still can't. I still can't fathom. And every
Speaker 7: time I'm in Bath, i'man there, you know, once or
Speaker 7: twice a year, as they say, you know, if there's
Speaker 7: ten twenty cars, it's a traffic jam. I cannot imagine.
Speaker 7: I mean, they had to close down part of the road,
Speaker 7: the roads leaning into from Lansing leading into Bath because
Speaker 7: they were then they would the state police had to
Speaker 7: come in and they had to turn people back.
Speaker 4: They said, go, don't.
Speaker 7: Stop it because the cars were there was traffic jams.
Speaker 7: It was incredible, incredible that people would would do this.
Speaker 7: And you know, I still can't, as I say, is
Speaker 7: I still can't fathom the numbers.
Speaker 6: Now the big thing in this book, and you know,
Speaker 6: I don't want to be a spoiler here, but because
Speaker 6: you really unfold this much later, which I appreciated and
Speaker 6: I think the reader would as well. In that why
Speaker 6: would Keyhole kill these children? We alluded to the meeting,
Speaker 6: the teacher parent meeting and his dissatisfaction at this. Superintendent
Speaker 6: Hyak height right, and basically at least we see the motive,
Speaker 6: but the motive to kill innocent children where he had
Speaker 6: no seemingly no argument with them. And then later much
Speaker 6: later in the book, you talk about somebody's talking about
Speaker 6: a mechanic named McConnell. So at least in terms of
Speaker 6: the investigation, if you don't want to give that, you
Speaker 6: don't want to give that away in terms of the
Speaker 6: investigation after this bombing to what possibly could have motivated
Speaker 6: this man, tell us about that, and also you can
Speaker 6: tell us about Sidney Howell, the unfortunate person that, yes,
Speaker 6: Sidney decided made stick up for him.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Now, at the.
Speaker 7: At the edge of Keyho's farm, they found a sign
Speaker 7: and said killers are made, not born. You know, they
Speaker 7: made me do it, you know, is a nice way
Speaker 7: of putting it. And again that was like like Choe
Speaker 7: when he at at Virginia Tech when he was you know,
Speaker 7: we all saw those horrible videos where he said, you
Speaker 7: made me do this.
Speaker 4: It wasn't me, you made me do this.
Speaker 7: Killers are made, not born. And you know, in a sense,
Speaker 7: the most frustrating thing I think about this is there
Speaker 7: is no why, you know, I mean, the mythology is
Speaker 7: that Keyho blew up the school because he was upset
Speaker 7: about the taxes. You don't blow up a school full
Speaker 7: of children because you're upset about your taxes. You blow
Speaker 7: up a school full of children. And I mean it
Speaker 7: certainly took months in planning this and executing it, and
Speaker 7: you know, taking the care to do it. It was
Speaker 7: clearly well thought plan and you know, certainly in his
Speaker 7: house to go off. At the same time, as I said,
Speaker 7: the man was a master and electrician and a master
Speaker 7: in dynamite and explosives, you know it. The frustrating thing
Speaker 7: about this is there's no why. You know, we reach
Speaker 7: for why. The rational mind wants to know why, why
Speaker 7: would somebody do.
Speaker 4: Something like this?
Speaker 7: And in the case of Andrew Killo, the why was
Speaker 7: blown up with him. You know, poor Sydney Ow or
Speaker 7: Sidney Owl was a friend of his and could not
Speaker 7: wrap his mind around Qihow having done this.
Speaker 4: And you know what they had.
Speaker 7: They held an inquest a few days about a week afterwards.
Speaker 7: The inquest was in theory to find out why he
Speaker 7: had murdered Hike. That's how it was looked at, why
Speaker 7: he murdered Hiked. But the reality, if you read the
Speaker 7: inquest it's available online, is there trying to find out everything,
Speaker 7: what happened, what led up to it. It's it's more
Speaker 7: or less an autopsy of the day's events. And Sidney
Speaker 7: Howell just couldn't wrap his mind around that Kyo, a
Speaker 7: man he thought he knew, had done such a thing.
Speaker 7: So when throughout the summer is people were coming to
Speaker 7: the farm, you know, looking around Kiyo's place. Well, he
Speaker 7: got up one day and said, Andrew Killo was a
Speaker 7: fine man and you know, couldn't have done something like this.
Speaker 7: And somebody, you know, people were in justs furious with
Speaker 7: him for this, and you know, the sheriff you know
Speaker 7: in town said hey, you know, watch your mouth. You know,
Speaker 7: you know, you know you got freedom of speech, you know,
Speaker 7: watch your mouth. But he couldn't stop defending his friend, you.
Speaker 4: Know, Keho.
Speaker 7: So one day at the farm, he gets up and
Speaker 7: he starts making this speech and somebody leaps out of
Speaker 7: the crowd and wraps his hands around you know, poor
Speaker 7: Sidney Howll's thrown and you know, you know, could have
Speaker 7: joked him to death, pulled the man off him. It
Speaker 7: was his son had been you know, in the school
Speaker 7: when the bomb had gone off, and how was in
Speaker 7: his car stopped on a railroad track some time later
Speaker 7: and he was the train hit the car and he
Speaker 7: was killed. Probable suicide, but hard to say. There was
Speaker 7: no I know anything, but it's conceivable.
Speaker 4: He just you know.
Speaker 7: And I've actually met his granddaughter and she and I
Speaker 7: had some very interesting and talks.
Speaker 6: About this as well. What's interesting too is that a
Speaker 6: gentleman named Monty Elms basically writes a book and he's
Speaker 6: not really he's not an author. This is his first
Speaker 6: foray into that. So tell us a little bit about
Speaker 6: him and his book.
Speaker 7: Well, he was the guy who lived across the street
Speaker 7: from keyhow as I mentioned, you know, there was a
Speaker 7: he had you know, done some shooting with you know,
Speaker 7: with the guy who lived across the street from him.
Speaker 7: The week before well that was Matty Ellsworth and his
Speaker 7: people were coming in to town. He more or less
Speaker 7: self published this book and it was about how the
Speaker 7: uh you know, it was the stories of all the
Speaker 7: children who died and their photos and some history of
Speaker 7: the school. And this is where the story of Keiho,
Speaker 7: you know, then the stepmother who was you know, blown up,
Speaker 7: This is where it first came to light.
Speaker 4: And he.
Speaker 7: So this booklet was created. Basically people were coming in
Speaker 7: and it was sold almost you know, in a sort
Speaker 7: of macabwey as a souvenir booklet. And it's a useful document, certainly.
Speaker 7: And I don't think he meant any ill will by
Speaker 7: creating this document by any means. I mean, he used
Speaker 7: his own money to do it. And one of the
Speaker 7: survivors told me that, you know, he and you know
Speaker 7: the other boys in town, they would go and they'd
Speaker 7: sell them, and then they'd run back to mister Ellsworth's
Speaker 7: get more.
Speaker 4: Copies and go sell somewhere.
Speaker 7: And it's actually you can buy a facsimile of it too,
Speaker 7: and it's and it's it's also you know if Ecximbli
Speaker 7: is also available on the internet, and it's if you
Speaker 7: do a Google search. It's an interesting little booklet. It's
Speaker 7: an interesting time capsule of the time. And it was
Speaker 7: the first book. There was another book that came out.
Speaker 7: The author actually recently died. Grant Parker came out about
Speaker 7: twenty five years ago. But my book is came out
Speaker 7: about four five years ago.
Speaker 6: Right, some interesting stories as well. While I still have
Speaker 6: this one fresh in my mind, as the pennies collected
Speaker 6: and the Girl and the Cat. Maybe you could tell
Speaker 6: us that because it's really this is a sad story.
Speaker 6: But I mean, overall this book, but there are some
Speaker 6: little bright spots of.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sort of girl in the cat statue. Yeah.
Speaker 7: They wanted to have a memorial to these children. It's
Speaker 7: always been a struggle how do you memorialize this? And
Speaker 7: it took many, many decades really to figure out how
Speaker 7: to build a memorial to this. And one of the
Speaker 7: things that they did was they created a statue. It
Speaker 7: was a girl maybe ten years old holding a cat,
Speaker 7: and it was just representative of the children who had died.
Speaker 7: And for many years it was in front of the
Speaker 7: it stood in front of the school. As to say,
Speaker 7: they rebuilt the school.
Speaker 4: The senator, the.
Speaker 7: Cousin senator, Yeah, cousins, he Jim's cousins.
Speaker 4: Cousins.
Speaker 7: Excuse me, was he gave the money to rebuild the
Speaker 7: school and was called the Cousin's School after that, And
Speaker 7: so it stood in the hallway in the school there
Speaker 7: for many many years until the school itself, as I say,
Speaker 7: was torn down in the seventies. The uh but now
Speaker 7: in the middle school, they in the middle school which
Speaker 7: is actually across the street from where the former school
Speaker 7: site was.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 7: They have a museum, the UH School Museum, where they
Speaker 7: have artifacts of the day and photographs, the flag that
Speaker 7: was flying over the school that day, the clock that's
Speaker 7: frozen in time, various pictures, things like that, and the
Speaker 7: girl in the cats statue was there, and the woman
Speaker 7: whose father uh. You know, children from all over Michigan
Speaker 7: and actually all over the country, you know, and in
Speaker 7: fact some of the world. They sent pennies to raise
Speaker 7: the money to have the statue created, and it was
Speaker 7: it was children from all over saying, you know, these
Speaker 7: are you know, we want to be part of this.
Speaker 7: We you know, we feel we want to do something,
Speaker 7: you know, And it's a it's a lovely statue. It's
Speaker 7: a lovely memorial to these children. Now, the side of
Speaker 7: the school itself is you know, as they say, the
Speaker 7: school is torn down. It's become a park and it's
Speaker 7: in the center of the park is a is the
Speaker 7: cupola that stood uh there was on top of the
Speaker 7: school building. If you ever look at photographs you can
Speaker 7: see on the Internet of the of the cupola on
Speaker 7: top of the school. It stands approximately in the same
Speaker 7: space that it would have in the park where it
Speaker 7: would have been on the school and there's some you know,
Speaker 7: memorial markers around, and there's a bricks with all the
Speaker 7: victims names surrounding this cupola. It's a small, quiet memorial and.
Speaker 4: It's it's a profound space and a sacred space.
Speaker 7: I've been there many times and it never I always
Speaker 7: always moves me.
Speaker 4: Every time I'm there.
Speaker 7: You feel something very deep. You're you feel you're almost
Speaker 7: like on you know, hallowed ground when you are there.
Speaker 7: And the cemetery is a a few miles from there,
Speaker 7: not very far, and seventeen of the children are buried
Speaker 7: there as well as some of the adults who are
Speaker 7: killed that day.
Speaker 4: And it's it's it's quite a place. It's quite something
Speaker 4: to see.
Speaker 6: Now. Officially, this Andrew Keijo is not really thought of
Speaker 6: in any kind of compassionate terms or understanding any kind
Speaker 6: of terms or juicy was mentally ill. What is was
Speaker 6: his official status then now.
Speaker 4: And always a murderer, a madman, a psychopath.
Speaker 6: But you know, it is what it is.
Speaker 7: He is the I mean, it's the it's one of
Speaker 7: those stories, as I said at the beginning, forgotten in history.
Speaker 7: This is the first school killing of massive scale in
Speaker 7: the United States. And you know, it's still the deadliest.
Speaker 7: Anyone wants to break that record, but it is still
Speaker 7: the deadliest school killing in the history of the United States.
Speaker 4: And uh, it's you know, it's a lot of as
Speaker 4: it is.
Speaker 7: Sandy Hook unfolded in a similar way too. As I say,
Speaker 7: the example of uh, Hazel weatherby the teacher in Bath
Speaker 7: and Vicki DeSoto, the teacher at Sandy Hook, him killing
Speaker 7: his mother, uh killing his wife, there's a lot of parallels.
Speaker 6: It was.
Speaker 7: They felt that really hard in Bath. I can promise
Speaker 7: you they felt it very hard at Bath when Sandy
Speaker 7: Hook happened, and it was by a strange coincidence. And
Speaker 7: I have said, this is where when Einstein says, you know,
Speaker 7: God doesn't real nice with the universe, I truly believe that.
Speaker 7: I have a friend who's a minister in Connecticut, and
Speaker 7: I emailed her, said, you know what's going on? Well, yeah,
Speaker 7: she knew what was going on because she just a
Speaker 7: couple of miles from Sandy Hook, and she had been
Speaker 7: in the firehouse when the children were killed, or when
Speaker 7: the parents told them that the children were coming back.
Speaker 7: And I called my friends in Bath. I said, my god,
Speaker 7: we have this incredible moment. You guys know exactly what
Speaker 7: they're going through. And I said, yeah, you're right. And
Speaker 7: the people of Bath sent the letter to the people
Speaker 7: of Sandy Hook and saying we understand, we know, and
Speaker 7: we are with you. And they sent a letter back
Speaker 7: and it's it was.
Speaker 4: I was there.
Speaker 7: They always have a lunch and like a reunion thing
Speaker 7: that they do every year in May, for like the
Speaker 7: fiftieth you know, the fiftieth class reunion.
Speaker 6: You know, our is honor right, but.
Speaker 7: They always, they always, you know, say something about what
Speaker 7: happened to It's always on the Saturday closest to the
Speaker 7: bombing commemoration. I don't like using the word anniversary. To me,
Speaker 7: anniversary is happy, so I always say commemoration. And at
Speaker 7: the the year after Sandy Hook a couple of years
Speaker 7: ago now they read both of the letters and it
Speaker 7: was it was one of those moments I will never
Speaker 7: forget it. It was. It was profound. And the people,
Speaker 7: the people in that room.
Speaker 4: You know, the children of survivors. Most of the survivors
Speaker 4: are gone.
Speaker 7: And I got to be very tight actually with a
Speaker 7: woman who is more or less the star of the
Speaker 7: book that's what I called her, and she thought that
Speaker 7: was very funny. But her brother had been killed and
Speaker 7: she and people can read the book and find out
Speaker 7: the connection there. But she and I got to be
Speaker 7: pretty tight towards the.
Speaker 6: End of her life.
Speaker 7: And I still miss josephe She died a couple of
Speaker 7: years ago, but it was after Sandy Hook when those
Speaker 7: two letters were read at that school reunion. Was was
Speaker 7: some moment in my life I will never forget.
Speaker 6: Yes, that's Josephine, is what you're talking about, right right.
Speaker 7: Josephine Cushman Vale was, and she told me she was.
Speaker 7: When I interviewed her, she was in her nineties and
Speaker 7: she lived to be one hundred and passed away shortly
Speaker 7: after one hundredth birthday.
Speaker 4: I interviewed. She was about ninety four to ninety five
Speaker 4: when I interviewed her, and she was.
Speaker 7: Telling me some of the most I mean, there's no
Speaker 7: way to describe it other than gory. I mean these
Speaker 7: things were gory, unflinching things. I didn't want to upset her.
Speaker 7: You know, she's ninety four old you and I want
Speaker 7: to upset her. I said, you know, you don't have
Speaker 7: to tell me this stuff. Even though I wanted the information.
Speaker 7: You don't have to tell me this stuff, and she said, no,
Speaker 7: people have to know. I'm not going to be here forever,
Speaker 7: and I want people to know what happened. She didn't
Speaker 7: want it to be forgotten. She didn't want her brother
Speaker 7: to be forgotten. Her brother Ralph was you know, seven
Speaker 7: years old when he was killed, and she did not
Speaker 7: want him to be forgotten. She was fourteen when he
Speaker 7: was killed and did not want any of this to
Speaker 7: be forgotten.
Speaker 4: And it is.
Speaker 7: She told me some of the and some of the
Speaker 7: most graphic stuff in the book was what she had
Speaker 7: told me some eighty years later.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it is quite graphic, and you you draw
Speaker 6: the reader into that as well. The other thing is
Speaker 6: there is some there is some of these stories that
Speaker 6: are really quite interesting. Like the coma we talked about
Speaker 6: the boy in a coma. Well, that boy eventually was told, well,
Speaker 6: you got to stay in the house and don't challenge
Speaker 6: yourself or anything, and he said, I'm going outside and
Speaker 6: that's it, and they went okay, and he lived along
Speaker 6: and healthy lives. Basically he was still pulling shrapnel out
Speaker 6: of his scalp.
Speaker 7: But you know, oh yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, even
Speaker 7: you know, when he became an older man too, see Pete,
Speaker 7: there were the purple scars and you know it was
Speaker 7: the shrapnel in his head. But yeah, no, he refused.
Speaker 7: He simply rebelled. He didn't want to sit inside and
Speaker 7: knit with his sister. He wanted to do what little
Speaker 7: boys do and and blessus already did it and wash
Speaker 7: and lived a long, healthy life. Yeah, because I interviewed
Speaker 7: one of the he was in the early stages of
Speaker 7: Alzheimer's when I interviewed him. But you asked him about
Speaker 7: that day and he knew, he knew. He might not
Speaker 7: have known, you know, what he was, you know where
Speaker 7: he was, you know, from moment to moment, but you
Speaker 7: asked him about that day, he knew, he knew exactly
Speaker 7: what was going on.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's fascinating too. Really, that's something he could never forget,
Speaker 6: even though he's forgetting everything else.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, wow, Yeah.
Speaker 6: It is amazing too that you had access to these
Speaker 6: older people that still had their faculties about them and
Speaker 6: can with very very vivid memories. There's a lot of
Speaker 6: access thanks to mister elswere Ellsworth's book, which is very interesting.
Speaker 6: Some of the stuff he had in that book was
Speaker 6: quite fascinating. The photos that you filed for this as well,
Speaker 6: and some of the other just really interesting stories of
Speaker 6: people being dug out of the rubble and just kid
Speaker 6: just ran off. They dug about yeah okay.
Speaker 7: Yeah, in fact, yeah, he picked up his chair and ran.
Speaker 4: He was kindergarten.
Speaker 7: He picked up his chair and he read all the
Speaker 7: way home. And that chair now, actually the family later
Speaker 7: donated it to the museum. You know, many years later.
Speaker 7: It just basically sat in the attic.
Speaker 6: You know, they didn't know what to do with it.
Speaker 7: And that's one of the and it's it's in the
Speaker 7: it's in the school museum.
Speaker 6: Now, yeah, there's there wasn't too many bright spots in
Speaker 6: that day because everybody was affected because even if your
Speaker 6: child you found okay, they weren't hurt and they weren't killed,
Speaker 6: because as many people hurt and very seriously hurt as
Speaker 6: well too, both you know, you know, not the shrapnel
Speaker 6: and hips and broken arms.
Speaker 7: And it's something that that happened to me. I was
Speaker 7: at the I was a book I was at the
Speaker 7: Grand Rapids, Michigan. I was at the book festival there.
Speaker 7: Now there's a story when when Keeo blew up his cab,
Speaker 7: the cap of his truck, the strapla flew out. One
Speaker 7: woman was hit in the head and she ended up
Speaker 7: losing an eye. And she's holding her baby, and she
Speaker 7: had her wits about her. She did not drop the baby.
Speaker 7: She hung on to that kid for dear life, even
Speaker 7: though she'd been hit in the face and as they say,
Speaker 7: lost and I was gravely injured. And a woman came
Speaker 7: up to me, She's an elderly woman, came up.
Speaker 4: To me and said, I was the baby in your book,
Speaker 4: and I yeah, I knocked me over with a feather.
Speaker 7: That was one of those moments that she showed me
Speaker 7: a picture of her mother. Mother always would turn her
Speaker 7: face away from the camera so that you couldn't see,
Speaker 7: you know, the way she had lost her eye.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And also too, you have some great photos like
Speaker 6: the car, the truck itself that really is And again,
Speaker 6: this is such a profound moment that you have that
Speaker 6: interaction with Hike and with Keyho and the truck and
Speaker 6: the grounds right there, his property, like I said, a
Speaker 6: couple of miles away, smoke rising from and from his property,
Speaker 6: and people not at that, you know, really not knowing
Speaker 6: what was going on. But you know, Hike At a
Speaker 6: little too late found out, Yeah, this is this is
Speaker 6: what it really is, and that's why he's here. He'd
Speaker 6: wave to a couple people full he was very nonchalant,
Speaker 6: wasn't he. He's he was in this murderous campaign rampage,
Speaker 6: and he was waving to people like he stopped going on,
Speaker 6: just had to a young girl and let it cross
Speaker 6: the street.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, clearly an unhinged mind. And we've basically
Speaker 7: we've given your listeners a bare bones version of the story.
Speaker 4: It's there's so much absolute in the book.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Absolutely. Now I I want to ask to what
Speaker 6: does Bath look like because it seemed to be obviously
Speaker 6: it's a very resilient group of people in this community
Speaker 6: that would make a community thrive or just not. Yeah,
Speaker 6: so what does Bath look like? You know, in twenty
Speaker 6: ten or so, what does it look like now? Not
Speaker 6: that different?
Speaker 7: Some of the old houses are still there, you know,
Speaker 7: they electricity.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 7: Obviously there's new school buildings and things like that, but
Speaker 7: it you know, there's still the old downtown such as
Speaker 7: it was. A lot of those buildings are still standing.
Speaker 7: What was the Blacksmith shop because they're still blacksmiths. Then
Speaker 7: is still there? What was the community hall is still standing?
Speaker 4: You know it.
Speaker 7: You know people have told me that you know they
Speaker 7: have there's cracks in there, you know, in the foundations
Speaker 7: and things there of homes that you know, or in
Speaker 7: the roofs or something of their homes that you know
Speaker 7: are definitely because of the of the bombing itself. It
Speaker 7: doesn't look that much different then. As I say, it's
Speaker 7: the quintessential small town America. When you think small midwestern town,
Speaker 7: that's it. And they don't have it. They don't have
Speaker 7: a stoplight, it's it's a fur way stop sign is
Speaker 7: the center of town. It's you know, finest kind too.
Speaker 7: I mean just the people there are just wonderful, wonderful people,
Speaker 7: but this thing is a shadow that that hangs over them.
Speaker 7: You can't ever fully recover for something like this, and
Speaker 7: it's a generational thing. There's you know the people now
Speaker 7: or you know their parents, you know, people down their
Speaker 7: fifties sixties, you know their parents were you know, in it,
Speaker 7: or their grandparents, you know, things like that. I think
Speaker 7: there's maybe one or two survivors left.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure.
Speaker 7: I interviewed four for the book, and they've all since
Speaker 7: passed away. I know there's there's one woman who she's
Speaker 7: got and I think like one hundred and four now.
Speaker 4: Bless her art's still you know active.
Speaker 7: You wouldn't even know it. She's you know, fantastic, really
Speaker 7: great shape. But I think there's maybe that I'm aware of.
Speaker 7: There's maybe two or three survivors left of that day.
Speaker 6: Well, well, it's an incredible tale, and like you say,
Speaker 6: we've only really scratched the surface. And I mean, it
Speaker 6: really is amazing how you've compiled everything and brought the
Speaker 6: reader really in to this uh you know, very important
Speaker 6: historical moment and very again very lots of parallels with
Speaker 6: what's going on now where instead of serial killing being
Speaker 6: all the rage, it's now my murder, and you know,
Speaker 6: and these kinds of things too, very very you know,
Speaker 6: you can't killing kids in a school and blowing up,
Speaker 6: you know, that's I mean, there isn't much more. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I know, there can't be any more heinous a crime.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I know. And we today it's we're in a
Speaker 7: strange way. I hate saying this, but it's almost like
Speaker 7: you know, I mean, certainly when Sandy Hook happened when
Speaker 7: you know, they not again, you know, and it's almost like,
Speaker 7: in a strange way, we're almost you know, used to
Speaker 7: these things happening, as awful as they are, you know,
Speaker 7: when the thing happened last year with that kid in
Speaker 7: Washington State is not again and yet again. And but
Speaker 7: people don't you know, realize that, you know, in Bath,
Speaker 7: Michigan in May of nineteen twenty seven is the first
Speaker 7: one and still you know, not you know, worse, but
Speaker 7: certainly still the deadlist that everyone is the worst one
Speaker 7: killing children in the school. Is I nothing more horrible
Speaker 7: I can think of? And this is still you know,
Speaker 7: the deadliest.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely, Well. I want to thank you for bringing
Speaker 6: this book to you know, the public's attention as well,
Speaker 6: and thank you for this interview so we can talk.
Speaker 7: And our interest. They can go to my website Arnie
Speaker 7: Bernstein dot com and books available on Amazon, certainly.
Speaker 6: And how about Facebook? Do you do that at all?
Speaker 6: You're interesting in that, Yes I am.
Speaker 7: If people want to, and there's actually a page for
Speaker 7: the book on Facebook as well, they can you know,
Speaker 7: contact me on Facebook or look for the Bathmasteracre page
Speaker 7: on Facebook as well. Absolutely, certainly happy to talk with
Speaker 7: people if they want to contact me.
Speaker 6: And you have some other books as well. This is
Speaker 6: not your first, Oh.
Speaker 1: No, no no.
Speaker 7: My most recent one is Swastika Nation Fitzkoon and the
Speaker 7: Rise and Fall of the German American Bond. It's about
Speaker 7: the pro Nazi movement that swept America in the nineteen
Speaker 7: thirties and people who.
Speaker 4: Beat them up.
Speaker 7: In a wild get it's completely different, wild guest of characters,
Speaker 7: you know, the crazy Nazi at the center of it,
Speaker 7: and Walter Winchell and Mayer Lansky and Edward g. Robinson
Speaker 7: and Dewey and Laguardi and a whole bunch of other
Speaker 7: fun gil. It's it's quite different, but.
Speaker 4: Just as good, I think.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, well I want to talk with the author.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, you got to be shameless, so right, it's not
Speaker 5: so shameless, Absolutely, it's just right. Well, anyway, I want
Speaker 5: to thank you very much for coming on Arnie and
Speaker 5: talking about bath massacre, America's first school bombing. I'm sure
Speaker 5: we'll be talking again soon, So thank you very much
Speaker 5: for this interview and.
Speaker 7: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 5: Okay, take care, thank you, good night, Good