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Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
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Speaker 3: Good Evening. The new edition of this misgan notable book
Speaker 3: includes a new introduction and stories from interviews with two
Speaker 3: additional survivors, Rna Gates Colter and Ralph Witchell, which took
Speaker 3: place after the first edition was published in two thousand
Speaker 3: and nine. On May eighteenth, nineteen twenty seven, the small
Speaker 3: town of Bath, Michigan, was forever changed when Andrew Kehoe
Speaker 3: set off a cache of explosives concealed in the basement
Speaker 3: of the local school. Thirty eight children and six adults
Speaker 3: were dead, among them Keyho, who had literally blown himself
Speaker 3: to bits by setting off a dynamite charge in his car.
Speaker 3: The next day, on Keyho's farm, what was left of
Speaker 3: his wife burned beyond recognition. After Keyho set his property
Speaker 3: in buildings ablaze, was found tied to a hand cart,
Speaker 3: her skull crushed. With seemingly endless stories of school violence
Speaker 3: and suicide bombers filling today's headlines, Bath Massacre serves as
Speaker 3: a reminder that terrorism and large scale murder are nothing new.
Speaker 3: The book they were featuring this evening is Bath Massacre,
Speaker 3: new edition, America's first school bombing, with my special guest,
Speaker 3: journalist and author Arnie Bernstein. Welcome back to the program,
Speaker 3: and thank you so much for this interview. Arnie Bernstein,
Speaker 3: Thank you for.
Speaker 2: Having me back.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, thank and congratulations on this new
Speaker 3: edition and always always timely considering all the school shootings
Speaker 3: and mass shootings at schools. Let's talk about as you
Speaker 3: do in the introduction you had originally in your two
Speaker 3: thousand and nine release of this book, Bath Massacre, you
Speaker 3: had four of the survivors that you were able to
Speaker 3: interview for the book. In this new edition. Tell us
Speaker 3: about what is in the new edition.
Speaker 2: Well after the original came out, I was contacted by
Speaker 2: a couple of other survivors, Ralph Witchell, who at the
Speaker 2: time lived in Nebraska, and we're in a Gates culter.
Speaker 2: She was Murna Gates when she was at school who
Speaker 2: lived in Windsor, Canada. They both have since passed. She
Speaker 2: lived to I think one hundred and one and he
Speaker 2: lived to ninety three, and which I find interesting because
Speaker 2: a lot of the survivors lived the ripe old ages too.
Speaker 2: Josephine Cushman lived to one hundred, a few others. In fact,
Speaker 2: there's another one, Irene, I mean Dunham. There's another Irene
Speaker 2: Dunham who is just turned one hundred and fourteen. Believe
Speaker 2: it or not, she's one of the oldest people in
Speaker 2: the world. Absolute delight too. But in any event, both
Speaker 2: Rna and Ralph contacted me independently of each other, and
Speaker 2: I interviewed them just for the record, you know, just
Speaker 2: so that we would have their stories on the record.
Speaker 2: And I gave the CDs of those interviews to the
Speaker 2: Bath School Museum for their archives. And I always had
Speaker 2: in the back of my mind that someday I would
Speaker 2: return to the book and time was ripe, and I
Speaker 2: took the material I got from them, which was considerable, considerable,
Speaker 2: and it gave shade to some of the stories. It
Speaker 2: filled out some of the stories that I had, and
Speaker 2: it also gave me new stories, new elements that I
Speaker 2: think really deepened the book and gives a larger picture
Speaker 2: of what happened on that terrible day.
Speaker 3: You included early on in the book A Horrible Moments,
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, or A horrible week. December fourteenth, twenty twelve, Connecticut,
Speaker 3: Sandy Hook Elementary School. What happened in regards to Bath massacre,
Speaker 3: this book and the twenty twelve Newton, Connecticut Sandy Hook shooting.
Speaker 2: That was a day. That was a day. One of
Speaker 2: the first things I did actually was called a friend
Speaker 2: of mine in Bath who's one of the museum committee members,
Speaker 2: and I said, this looks really bad. This looks really bad,
Speaker 2: and this looks really a lot like Bath. And I thought,
Speaker 2: so after the you know, the oh my god, horror
Speaker 2: moment realizing that was happened, I thought, I think I'm
Speaker 2: going to be busy, which is unfortunately what happened. I
Speaker 2: got a lot of calls that week from radio stations
Speaker 2: and TV that wanted me on to talk about it,
Speaker 2: and I but what really hit home. I had a
Speaker 2: friend in Connecticut who was a minister, and I emailed her,
Speaker 2: I said, do you know what's going on? I didn't
Speaker 2: know where she was in relation to it, and she said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I lived five miles from there. I've been ministering to
Speaker 2: some of the families, and I was in the firehouse
Speaker 2: when they told them that their kids weren't coming home.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And it was like one of those moments where you,
Speaker 2: just like I said in the new introduction, God doesn't
Speaker 2: roll dice with the universes, Einstein said, for some reason,
Speaker 2: I was the fulcrum of these two terrible, terrible things.
Speaker 2: And so I talked to my friends in Bath. I said, look,
Speaker 2: you guys know better than anyone how this feels. Maybe
Speaker 2: you can send a letter to the people in Newtown.
Speaker 2: And they wrote a beautiful letter and sent it via
Speaker 2: my friend and it was published actually in the local
Speaker 2: Newton paper. And my friend wrote a letter back on
Speaker 2: behalf of Newton, you know, saying thank you, thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you, And it was profound. There was now every
Speaker 2: spring in May, actually at the like this Saturday, closest
Speaker 2: to the commemoration of the bombing, they have a luncheon
Speaker 2: from It's called the school Reunion luncheon, and they honored
Speaker 2: the fiftieth graduating class, you know, at the at the
Speaker 2: luncheon at that year, Sandy Hook was weighing on everybody's mind,
Speaker 2: and every every speaker who got up said something about
Speaker 2: Sandy Hook, myself included. And the two letters were read,
Speaker 2: and there were survivors too in the audience too, and
Speaker 2: it was it was a moment.
Speaker 1: I mean it was.
Speaker 2: There was not a dry eye in the houses. The
Speaker 2: cliche goes, but it was. It was one of the
Speaker 2: most moving moments of my life. That was honored to
Speaker 2: be a part of. It was my you know, I
Speaker 2: it's one of those moments where you wonder, you realize
Speaker 2: there's some you know, sometimes you realize, you know, I
Speaker 2: don't want to get all ethereal or anything, but sometimes
Speaker 2: you wonder why you're here. And I think that was
Speaker 2: one of those moments where I realized maybe this was
Speaker 2: my purpose, was to connect these two communities.
Speaker 3: It was a day.
Speaker 2: It was a day, and it was and there's there's
Speaker 2: so many and I want to get to a far
Speaker 2: off Sandy Hook and Sandy Hook and Bath. But there
Speaker 2: were a lot of similarities, mostly that they lost a
Speaker 2: whole generation of children.
Speaker 3: You also talk about a brave teacher in both stories, yes,
Speaker 3: and in the Bath story, a new teacher, Hazel Weatherby
Speaker 3: and there was she was a new teacher, and heroically
Speaker 3: she was found up to her waist in bricks with
Speaker 3: the two children beside her. Before we get into you,
Speaker 3: you spoke to Josephine Cushman Vale. You interviewed her. She
Speaker 3: was in her mid nineties. Right at the time, she
Speaker 3: was fourteen, and her brother that was killed was seven
Speaker 3: years old, right, and you say she recalled everything with
Speaker 3: grizzly detail and two interviews with her. Let's get to,
Speaker 3: of course, the event May eighteenth, nineteen twenty seven. But let's,
Speaker 3: as you do once again, let's get to somehow trying
Speaker 3: to find out the why, because in this book you
Speaker 3: really do have the complete story of who this person
Speaker 3: was and really their development and what really happened to
Speaker 3: create this bath massacre. Talk about him growing up, his
Speaker 3: father and his early interests.
Speaker 2: Well, Andrew Keiho, he's an enigma. He is a very
Speaker 2: normal life, as it were. The why I'll get to
Speaker 2: that in a minute, such that I can he I
Speaker 2: believe is to come side. Don't remember off hand, but
Speaker 2: he grew up there. He was something of a boy
Speaker 2: genius with electricity, was always creating these little gadgets and
Speaker 2: things participated in the school plays, things like that regular guy.
Speaker 2: Then he went to Michigan State College now Michigan State
Speaker 2: University and Lansing studied electricity, which at the time, in
Speaker 2: the late eighteen hundreds early early nineteen hundreds, excuse me,
Speaker 2: was relatively new learning how to study that at the time.
Speaker 2: He met a woman named Nelly Price, and then he
Speaker 2: went out to further his studies at further his educational
Speaker 2: electricity at a school in Saint Louis. Now at some
Speaker 2: point we don't know exactly what happened, but he got
Speaker 2: zapped and fell and was in a coma for two weeks.
Speaker 2: Did this affect him? Who can tell it?
Speaker 3: Could?
Speaker 2: It may not have, There's just no way to know.
Speaker 2: Eventually he recovered. He worked his way around the Midwest,
Speaker 2: worked as a power alignsman in Iowa for a while,
Speaker 2: and then moved back to Michigan. And his mother had
Speaker 2: died and his father, who was an older man, had
Speaker 2: been married and his new wife friend was actually a
Speaker 2: couple of years older than Andrew, old enough to be
Speaker 2: a sister, not uncommon for the time, but Andrew deeply
Speaker 2: resented this, and in fact they had had a little
Speaker 2: girl who was his half sister. Now his father at
Speaker 2: that point was getting was older and needed the help
Speaker 2: of a couple of canes to get around the house. Now,
Speaker 2: one day friend Keho and again she and Andrew had
Speaker 2: a contentious relationship. She was going to light the oven
Speaker 2: it required. It was a gas stove. One counts as
Speaker 2: it was operated by gasoline and other says oil. Either way,
Speaker 2: it was petroleum based. And she lit the stove to
Speaker 2: turn it on and a woosh of flame came out
Speaker 2: and she was engulfed in flame. He was in the
Speaker 2: kitchen and he threw water on her. Now you don't,
Speaker 2: I mean everybody know, you don't throw a trollum fire.
Speaker 2: You don't throw water because petroleum spreads the fire. You
Speaker 2: throw a flour, baking powder or something like that to
Speaker 2: call the fire. Well, this only made the situation worse
Speaker 2: and they managed to get her into a bed. She
Speaker 2: was just horribly burned and in absolute agony. He and
Speaker 2: his little sister went next door. They didn't have a phone,
Speaker 2: the Keiho family, so he went next door and knocked
Speaker 2: on the door and said, could I use your phone? Friend,
Speaker 2: he's been burned. Made it sound like you know, a
Speaker 2: pot of boiling water, it'd fallen on her foot or something,
Speaker 2: and he said, oh, by the way, call a priest.
Speaker 2: And she lay in agony for a few more hours
Speaker 2: and then died. Now, the question this did not come
Speaker 2: up until years later. It was more or less forgotten,
Speaker 2: and came up years later after the bombing, of course,
Speaker 2: and people wondered did he do it. Well, he had
Speaker 2: the mechanical know how to do something like this, but
Speaker 2: did he do it? There's no way to know. Certainly
Speaker 2: his behavior was strange, you know, throwing water on her,
Speaker 2: you know, saying, oh, Frank, he's been burned. To a
Speaker 2: borrow the phone, called a priest. Very I mean, there
Speaker 2: was no sense of urgency.
Speaker 3: You said there was a motivation, Yeah, certainly a motivation,
Speaker 3: it seems seemingly a motivation with the with the estate
Speaker 3: his father was ailing. Yeah, now suddenly he has competition
Speaker 3: with a young bride and and a three year old exactly.
Speaker 2: But there's no way to know in the court of law,
Speaker 2: which just wouldn't stand up without you know, something.
Speaker 3: Like circumstantially, retrospectively, circumstances or substantially could have pulled it off.
Speaker 3: Certainly could have said it to go off. We just
Speaker 3: don't know, and the what would be deemed psychopathic response
Speaker 3: in light of the injury next door with the neighbor.
Speaker 3: Sure is again some circumstantial, not right actual evidence, but
Speaker 3: certainly yeah, a harbinger of things will say it could be.
Speaker 2: Yeah if I were, If I were, you know, I
Speaker 2: won't say that he did it. But if I were,
Speaker 2: off the record say and I'm not off the record
Speaker 2: if I were, if they were, got to say, yeah,
Speaker 2: he did it, But again, no way to know. After that,
Speaker 2: he eventually makes his way. He reintroduces himself to Nellie
Speaker 2: Price right, and they ended up getting married and moving
Speaker 2: to her childhood home in Bath. He buys it and
Speaker 2: they you know, it's a nice three story home too.
Speaker 2: And everybody remembers Nelly from when she was a child
Speaker 2: because she kind of grew up in that house. Her
Speaker 2: mother died and she had been raised by her uncle,
Speaker 2: who was well known in the area. He was a
Speaker 2: politician and a very well known man in the area.
Speaker 3: They had an opportunity to buy the home as a
Speaker 3: result of her uncle dying, so there was an agreement
Speaker 3: for him to put a down payment down and then
Speaker 3: terms of payment. They moved to this new eighty acres
Speaker 3: this land. What about those payments?
Speaker 2: He didn't make him I mean that simple. He stopped
Speaker 2: paying the mortgage. There was you know, there were various
Speaker 2: attempts to get him to pay the mortgage and he
Speaker 2: just refused. Now there was no danger of them to
Speaker 2: us seeing him out because the family owned owned the house,
Speaker 2: and he was paying off the mortgage to Nelly's family,
Speaker 2: So they never would have been kicked out of the house.
Speaker 2: They never would have were closed in. And did he
Speaker 2: know this in the back of his mind that that
Speaker 2: would have happened. I don't know. Possibly, but he just
Speaker 2: refused to pay his mortgage.
Speaker 3: You talk about his character though, and his father was
Speaker 3: a big influence in terms of his father hated taxation
Speaker 3: and had an idea that farmers should share in the
Speaker 3: wealth of their crops by managing them and maybe even
Speaker 3: holding them back in the market exactly. So he had
Speaker 3: some radical ideas. He was a well known figure in
Speaker 3: the area, and despite Andrew not starting off in that regard,
Speaker 3: he seemed to be influenced by his father and picked
Speaker 3: up some of the same messages and was involved in
Speaker 3: the same kind of discussions with farmers and these roles
Speaker 3: that cropped up, right pun intended, I guess regarding management
Speaker 3: of their farms.
Speaker 2: Exactly what both his father and you know, Andrew Kiho
Speaker 2: believe was that the farmer again, as you say, should
Speaker 2: control his product, and in doing so, he let his
Speaker 2: his farm go to seed. You know, pardon the pun
Speaker 2: on my part, but I mean he let the crops rot,
Speaker 2: and he thought, you know, his feeling was why should I,
Speaker 2: you know, why should I grow my crops and sell
Speaker 2: them when and everybody else can sell them if we stop,
Speaker 2: if we hold back, we can control our price and
Speaker 2: we can make more money. It's not a sound way
Speaker 2: to farm, but that's what was his that was his belief,
Speaker 2: and he told others that this is what you should do.
Speaker 3: Now you write about this interest in electricity morphs into
Speaker 3: him being sort of a go to guy expert on
Speaker 3: this new fledging electricity. But also he was a handyman,
Speaker 3: and he was also wanting to be involved in the
Speaker 3: school board. Right, So tell us about his involvement in
Speaker 3: the school board and just his behavior in that right right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, he had one of the most modern farms
Speaker 2: in the area. He had a steam powered tractor and
Speaker 2: which people are a guess powertractor, excuse me. And people were,
Speaker 2: you know, quite fascinated with all these technical things that
Speaker 2: he had on the farm that nobody else did. And
Speaker 2: he also, he felt and there was nothing crazy about this.
Speaker 2: Though he and Nelly didn't have children. He felt when
Speaker 2: they were building the new school, well, he paid taxes,
Speaker 2: and his feeling is that, you know, as a taxpayer,
Speaker 2: he should have say and so he ran for the
Speaker 2: school board. Nothing wrong with that, and he was elected
Speaker 2: treasurer of the school board. Now, he had a very
Speaker 2: contankerous relationship with Emery Hike, who was the superintendent, and
Speaker 2: they would often fight back and forth about what things cost.
Speaker 2: You know what. Andrew didn't want anything that was, you know,
Speaker 2: he felt was an unreasonable us. Things that were needed
Speaker 2: for the school, new desks, new books, art for the walls,
Speaker 2: a playground, equipment, stuff like that. Now, I've been in
Speaker 2: education for a long time and I've attended many, many
Speaker 2: school board meetings. There was nothing outlandish about this behavior.
Speaker 2: When I would friends of mine read the book, they said, well,
Speaker 2: you must have based their arguments on you know, this
Speaker 2: person in that person. I said, well, they certainly helped
Speaker 2: inform me of you know, there was nothing unusual about
Speaker 2: that kind of behavior. When things didn't go his way,
Speaker 2: he would often try to shut down the meetings. He
Speaker 2: would go to a journey the meeting didn't always work,
Speaker 2: but that was his feeling. I'm a taxpayer, I should
Speaker 2: be involved. And he and Emery Hike were just oil
Speaker 2: and water, and Hike often said, I think this guy
Speaker 2: is out to get me. He didn't know, of course
Speaker 2: how deep he was out to get him, but he
Speaker 2: felt that Andrew Killo was out to get him. Now.
Speaker 2: Andrew Killo, as you know I've said, was new electricity,
Speaker 2: was a handyman, excellent repairing things. So because he was
Speaker 2: a school trustee, they felt, you know, they would save
Speaker 2: money on you know, handyman, you know, hiring somebody to
Speaker 2: fix things. So he was given complete access to the
Speaker 2: school to fix things when something broke down, when the
Speaker 2: generator broke down, they didn't have electricity in Bath at
Speaker 2: this point, I like say, the Roaring twenties roared right
Speaker 2: pass Bath right, it was because they were just getting
Speaker 2: electricity actually the weak of the bombing and there was
Speaker 2: a generator and he would fix the generator. He had
Speaker 2: a generator on his farm too, one of the few
Speaker 2: people in town who had an electrical generator, but he
Speaker 2: would fix that. He would fix the boiler when it
Speaker 2: was broke. There was an incident where there were there
Speaker 2: was a beehive. Apparently some bees built a hive next
Speaker 2: to the furnace, and when it warmed up in the winter,
Speaker 2: the school was infested with bees. And they tried one thing,
Speaker 2: and then they tried another thing, and then they said, Andrew,
Speaker 2: can you do this? And he went down there and
Speaker 2: nobody knows what he did, but the infestation was gone.
Speaker 2: He stopped the bees. And interestingly, as an aside, the
Speaker 2: school's nickname today the team name is the Bees. And
Speaker 2: there was groomed. It was because of what happened with
Speaker 2: Kio finding the bees, but it was not that it
Speaker 2: was some kid. His father ran a beehive or something
Speaker 2: like that, and so he named suggests to name the bees.
Speaker 3: What when you talk about Keiho. At this time as well,
Speaker 3: there was some of the work that he would do
Speaker 3: on his father's farm was blowing up stumps and removing
Speaker 3: boulders and using dynamite. Further along in this story a
Speaker 3: little bit, we we talk about a year's eve in
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 2: Right and twenty six into twenty seven, Right. What was the.
Speaker 3: Situation in terms of the relationship with Nelly. What was
Speaker 3: her health like?
Speaker 2: Well, Nelly was Nellie was sick. She was often sick.
Speaker 2: She was often in and out of the hospital. She
Speaker 2: had some kind of lung issues, might have been tuberculosis,
Speaker 2: but she was she was thinned, she was constantly coughing.
Speaker 2: She was quiet, and he took care of her. They
Speaker 2: was you know, whenever they were at ten meetings or something,
Speaker 2: she would say next to him, and she was very quiet.
Speaker 2: She was quite dependent on him. As far as the dynamite.
Speaker 2: He was the go to guy in town for dynamite.
Speaker 2: And it sounds strange, but for the time, there was
Speaker 2: nothing wrong with it. There would if you had a stump,
Speaker 2: old tree stump in your field, or a giant boulder
Speaker 2: or something. You couldn't have a you know, your horse
Speaker 2: drag it out. You'd kill your horse, or you know,
Speaker 2: you'd wreck your automobile your truck trying to pull it out,
Speaker 2: so you would blow it up. And that was a
Speaker 2: dangerous proposition. You needed to know exactly how to wire
Speaker 2: the dynamite and where to stand in all these things,
Speaker 2: and he had this knowledge, so he was the go
Speaker 2: to guy for blowing up stumps. It was known as
Speaker 2: stump blasting. Today they used enormous grinders to get out
Speaker 2: stumps and boulders, but back then you just blew them
Speaker 2: up standard thing. People came to him all the time,
Speaker 2: you know, could you blow up a boulder? Here, blow
Speaker 2: up one. They're sure happy to do it. And he
Speaker 2: would often go to Lancing to pick up more dynamite
Speaker 2: and pyratol, which was a worst surplus World War One
Speaker 2: surplus explosive that was also common for the era. On
Speaker 2: New Year's twenty six and twenty seven, at midnight, there
Speaker 2: was enormous explosion at key Hoost Farm that people heard
Speaker 2: from miles around, and people you know asked, you know
Speaker 2: Nelly later, you know, when she was questioning about it,
Speaker 2: she said, oh, though, the boys just having some fun.
Speaker 2: What I think happened was he said it on a timer.
Speaker 2: It conceivably was the dress rehearsal. Obviously, what he did
Speaker 2: took a long time to plan and required exacting timers
Speaker 2: within the school, and because he was an electrical expert,
Speaker 2: you know, he was able to set timers you know,
Speaker 2: you want your dynamite to go off at midnight exactly
Speaker 2: if you're setting off, you know, things to celebrate the
Speaker 2: new year. So he set it on timers and set
Speaker 2: it off at you know, midnight on New Year's It
Speaker 2: conceivably was a dress rehearsal for what was going to
Speaker 2: happen in a few months.
Speaker 3: Let's use this as an opportunity, Arnie, to stop for
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Speaker 3: we were talking about this what you considered a dress
Speaker 3: rehearsal New Year's Eve nineteen twenty six, and in this
Speaker 3: after New Year's there was a couple people you mentioned,
Speaker 3: a guy named job Slight and another neighbor that realized
Speaker 3: that he had just blown off these explosives. In fact,
Speaker 3: the one neighbor was employed basically to go pick up
Speaker 3: some of these supplies, these explosives in je Accent and
Speaker 3: in Lansing at different times.
Speaker 5: What was the.
Speaker 3: We talk about this school board and he was a treasurer,
Speaker 3: but he had tried to attempted to make some moves
Speaker 3: and try to convince other people on that board of
Speaker 3: the kinds of things that he was interested in. Despite
Speaker 3: having this this major dispute with this superintendent Hike. But
Speaker 3: in terms of his success with this school board, where
Speaker 3: was he at in nineteen twenty six?
Speaker 2: He wanted to run for other offices in the area,
Speaker 2: just as the piece a couple of other offices. He
Speaker 2: was briefly appointed to an office when someone one woman
Speaker 2: who held the office and died. But when he ran
Speaker 2: for reelection, he didn't win. And so when the election
Speaker 2: was held at the town hall and he was he
Speaker 2: and his wife excuse me, at the town community center.
Speaker 2: His wife just sat there while it was clearly obviously
Speaker 2: he was not going to win, and didn't say anything
Speaker 2: about it, but so just went back to doing his duty.
Speaker 2: It apparently it had, you know, hopes of achieving some
Speaker 2: political power in the area, but it just was not
Speaker 2: meant to be. Unfortunately, you know, had he done, so
Speaker 2: who knows, you know, what would have happened, could have
Speaker 2: the story be different? Would it be telling this story today?
Speaker 2: Who knows?
Speaker 3: You talked about Nellie's deteriorating health, but also the idea
Speaker 3: that the Price of State wanted to negotiate some kind
Speaker 3: of payment plan and they were having a hard time
Speaker 3: even trying to get any kind of negotiation with Keyho.
Speaker 3: What was the status at that time and what happened
Speaker 3: in that period of time that may have affected Keyho
Speaker 3: and some of his decisions.
Speaker 2: Well, in fact, there was an inheritance that Nelly got
Speaker 2: and their attorney, you know, they had applied it to
Speaker 2: the mortgage given that there hadn't been any payments made
Speaker 2: now and Trew Kia was furious about this, and he
Speaker 2: and Nellie went to an attorney and a judge and
Speaker 2: you know, you didn't ask us, you should have done
Speaker 2: this first. And while it was agreed, yeah, that that
Speaker 2: was a wrong move and legally was a wrong move.
Speaker 2: It would be in the best interest to apply this
Speaker 2: money to the mortgage given how much they owed. Q
Speaker 2: absolutely refused and even though it was Nelly's money, because
Speaker 2: the inheritance was to her, he said no, we're not
Speaker 2: doing it, and she acquiesced to her husband and so
Speaker 2: they got the money, but they didn't apply it to
Speaker 2: the mortgage. It was just it seemed like he was
Speaker 2: spiraling out of control. He couldn't handle his personal life
Speaker 2: very well. He was he couldn't get reelected, he was
Speaker 2: letting his farm rot, he was not paying his mortgage,
Speaker 2: and there was clearly was something going on. On the
Speaker 2: other hand, he was able to maintain a veneer where
Speaker 2: people understood that, you know, Andrew was cantankerous and had
Speaker 2: some very odd things about him, and other times he
Speaker 2: was he was you know, he was a nice guy
Speaker 2: the children. In fact, Josephine Cushman, one of the survivors,
Speaker 2: said to me, he was always nice to us kids.
Speaker 2: Tipped his hat, you know, always, you know, be sure
Speaker 2: to study kids, and it was always very nice to them.
Speaker 3: There was a move by the family, though, to try
Speaker 3: to persuade him to negotiate. They really hadn't intended to
Speaker 3: do what this note threatened. So what was the threatening
Speaker 3: note and what happened with the one of the sisters
Speaker 3: boring them not.
Speaker 2: To do it right now? There was there was a
Speaker 2: the sheriff was going to foreclose, and foreclosure notice was
Speaker 2: sent out and one of the sisters. Nearly's sisters said, no,
Speaker 2: don't do it. She's in bad health. This really could
Speaker 2: break her. Please don't do it. And so they tried
Speaker 2: to stop this foreclosure notice from reaching the key host.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately this was the day where communications is not
Speaker 2: as wonderful and easy and quick as we have it today,
Speaker 2: and the courier did not get the message, and so
Speaker 2: Hero the foreclosure noticed to Kiyo Ko said, well, if
Speaker 2: it wasn't for the school, I would have been able
Speaker 2: to make I would have able to have been paid
Speaker 2: my mortgage. He felt that the school taxes were killing him, right,
Speaker 2: it was that. It's one of those you know, in
Speaker 2: retrospect you see how his thinking was. But at the
Speaker 2: time it was just like, why isn't he paying his mortgage?
Speaker 2: What is with this guy?
Speaker 3: Now? Nelly was in the hospital off and on and Lancing,
Speaker 3: and so he had gone into Lancing. Her sisters lived
Speaker 3: in Lancing, three of them, and so tell us what
Speaker 3: happens with taking her back to the home and then
Speaker 3: the phone call from the sisters finding out about her
Speaker 3: wealthare right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he picked up from the hospital and he said
Speaker 2: he was taking two friends in the area and that
Speaker 2: they were going to spend some time with them, and
Speaker 2: they said, oh, that sounds good and he says, yeah, well,
Speaker 2: we'll talk to you soon. That was the last they heard.
Speaker 2: They didn't speak to Nelly. That was the last they
Speaker 2: heard of Nelly though, And it turned out later that
Speaker 2: he did not go to those friends house because when
Speaker 2: after the bombing and Keyho's house was ablaze and Nelly
Speaker 2: was missing, the sisters called those friends and they said, no,
Speaker 2: he never came here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we mentioned one of these friends that had
Speaker 3: an automobile and it was really a good natured guy
Speaker 3: that would give people rides to Lancing, for example, and
Speaker 3: had done as I mentioned, some errands where he had
Speaker 3: picked up some supplies on behalf of Kiho, and Keho
Speaker 3: said it was regarding the school and repairs. What were
Speaker 3: some of the things that he was asked to pick
Speaker 3: up on a couple of these occasions, dynamite and blasting caps.
Speaker 2: Dynamite and blasting caps, and it was again ko is
Speaker 2: the go to guy for dynamite. It wasn't unusual. Nobody
Speaker 2: thought anything of it, although when they were driving back
Speaker 2: at that point, Ko did not have a car. He
Speaker 2: got himself a truck maybe the year before or the bombing,
Speaker 2: I can't re call off hand, but when his friend
Speaker 2: saw he was putting the blasting caps, he said, you
Speaker 2: hold those in your lap. We're going to keep the
Speaker 2: dynamite in the back, and you hold those blasting caps
Speaker 2: in your lap because one, you know, one bump and
Speaker 2: you know we're blown to Kingdom come and again, nothing
Speaker 2: unusual about that, That's the thing. It was also normal.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm sure people are thinking, my goodness sold
Speaker 2: this dynamite, but yeah, that was the way it was.
Speaker 2: And if anyone is a farming background, and I've talked
Speaker 2: to people who have had farming background, so they said, yeah,
Speaker 2: that was how my grandpa did it.
Speaker 3: You feature and well, the story features a janitor named Smith.
Speaker 3: Smith notices some odd things of weeks before and days before.
Speaker 3: What does he notice and then take us to that
Speaker 3: morning and how it is that Keyhole is asked to
Speaker 3: come to the school.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, what the what Smith had noticed was that
Speaker 2: there was a trap door in the basement and it
Speaker 2: was open, and he swore he had closed it and
Speaker 2: he couldn't figure out why it was open. So he
Speaker 2: just closed it up, and then he noticed that the
Speaker 2: lock on the basement door was broken. How it was broken,
Speaker 2: why it would be broken made no sense, but you know,
Speaker 2: they had to take it and get it fixed. This
Speaker 2: is not They couldn't get a locksmith in or something.
Speaker 2: So those those were unusual. He wouldn't have noticed that.
Speaker 2: All the wiring that Kiho had done, he wouldn't have
Speaker 2: noticed any of that. You wouldn't think to look for it.
Speaker 2: And it was a you know, it's a basement. It
Speaker 2: wasn't well lit or anything like that. It was later.
Speaker 2: I mean, Keiho must have been months planning this and
Speaker 2: setting everything up. It was intricate what he did. And
Speaker 2: because he had access to the school twenty four hours
Speaker 2: a day and everybody trusted him, there was no reason
Speaker 2: to think that he was doing you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: who can you know, fathom these things, And so he
Speaker 2: was spending his nights laying everything out in there setting
Speaker 2: you know, he ended up putting six hundred pounds of
Speaker 2: dynamite and pirratol in that basement. Only one hundred pounds
Speaker 2: went off under the north wing of the school, but
Speaker 2: also an elaborate electrical system with timers. There was gasoline
Speaker 2: soaked drugs for accelerants, things like that that thankfully did
Speaker 2: not work. Those were the kinds of things that he
Speaker 2: was doing all along. Now, that morning he mailed a
Speaker 2: package that the package later was We can go into
Speaker 2: that later with the package was, but it was an
Speaker 2: action an old dynamite box, believe it or not. And
Speaker 2: they didn't think anything of it at the time. And
Speaker 2: they saw him, they said, hey, there's something wrong with
Speaker 2: the boiler. Could you take a look. And he went
Speaker 2: in there and he was kind of agitated, right, and
Speaker 2: he kept looking at his watch and he said, you know,
Speaker 2: I really don't have the time for this, and he
Speaker 2: drove off. What's with the entry this morning? That was
Speaker 2: maybe forty five ministers So before the bomb went off.
Speaker 3: When the bomb went off, you talk about neighbors seeing hearing,
Speaker 3: and then there was the Keyhole farm, right, that wasn't
Speaker 3: too far away, and there was neighbors and witnessed it
Speaker 3: to that as well. So what was the first thing
Speaker 3: that was seen, as you do in the book tell
Speaker 3: us right.
Speaker 2: It was actually I mean, as I say, I think
Speaker 2: the New Year's Eve event was for the New Year's Eve,
Speaker 2: you know, explosions were just rehearsal. Both the school and
Speaker 2: the house went off pretty much simultaneously, right, and people
Speaker 2: didn't know what was going on. It was about eight
Speaker 2: thirty or so in the morning, and there was just
Speaker 2: this enormous explosion of the north wing of the school.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was supposed to be the whole school,
Speaker 2: but something must have happened, maybe there a short or
Speaker 2: wires got ripped or something, but only the north wing
Speaker 2: of the school went blue. It rose about four to
Speaker 2: six feet in the air, two stories, and then peck
Speaker 2: pancake down on top of itself. People didn't thought maybe
Speaker 2: the boiler had exploded. The sheriff in the area originally
Speaker 2: thought that maybe they had been using airplane fuel in
Speaker 2: the boiler. People had people known to do that right
Speaker 2: in the area. I need, yeah, it's almost it was
Speaker 2: a different era. And at the same time his farm started,
Speaker 2: you know, we just went a blaze and they were
Speaker 2: periodic explosions inside his house. They learned, of course he
Speaker 2: had laced it with dynamite and set off explosions things
Speaker 2: like that, you know, with electricity. So there were the
Speaker 2: people who were closer to his farm. We thought that
Speaker 2: the farm was a blaze. And then there were the
Speaker 2: people by the school who the school had exploded, and
Speaker 2: nobody was connecting the two. Nobody was you know, what
Speaker 2: do you mean the school it blew up? A Kio's
Speaker 2: Farmer's on fire? What do you mean Kio's Farmers on fire?
Speaker 2: The school has just blown up. You know, people thought
Speaker 2: it was a mistake, you know in some cases, and
Speaker 2: then you know, they realized something really awful was happening
Speaker 2: in town. You know, as it gradually they understood that
Speaker 2: these two things were going on simultaneously.
Speaker 3: Let's use this as opportunity to stop for a second
Speaker 3: for these messages.
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Speaker 2: Actually do I have to say?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 4: You do?
Speaker 1: In the car before my kid's pta meeting? Really? Yes,
Speaker 1: excuse me? What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky? I
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Speaker 3: Now you disbelief from everyone. I mean, they heard this explosion.
Speaker 3: Some people see the inferno. That is the farm itself,
Speaker 3: Keyhos Farm. There's a gunshot heard by a neighbor named
Speaker 3: Lulu sometime in the morning as well. Tell us what
Speaker 3: possibly the responses and by who first?
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, Lulu Heart was the Hearts lived across the
Speaker 2: street from there were a lot of people named Heart
Speaker 2: in town. Everybody kind of drove me crazy because there
Speaker 2: were Hearts with an E at the end and hearts
Speaker 2: without any at the end, and they were all branches
Speaker 2: the same family and that and that is bath. There's
Speaker 2: you know, people who have lived there for generations and
Speaker 2: you know they she saw his farm was a blaze,
Speaker 2: and her first reaction was he must have done it.
Speaker 2: She said, don't go over there. He said it. He
Speaker 2: must have said it himself. Now, being a farm community,
Speaker 2: they set off a bucket brigade trying to you know,
Speaker 2: stop stop the blaze. Meanwhile, the Heart farm there was
Speaker 2: you know, there were embers and they were afraid that
Speaker 2: the farm was going to go. You know, that the
Speaker 2: barn would set on fire. Unfortunately, there had been a
Speaker 2: rain the night before, so there was like a light
Speaker 2: layer of dew on top of the barn roof and
Speaker 2: that stopped the embers from from catching fire. The meanwhile,
Speaker 2: you know, people are coming to Kiyos and and to
Speaker 2: say it was on fire is to put it mildly.
Speaker 2: It was inferno. It was just thick with smoke and
Speaker 2: there was periodic booms from the dynamite he had inside
Speaker 2: the house, and people gathered at the sides saw his
Speaker 2: truck was disappeared into a cloud of smoke and then
Speaker 2: came out and he looked at them and he said, boys,
Speaker 2: your friend's of mine. You better get out of here.
Speaker 2: You better go down to the school. And it confuses
Speaker 2: what what what? What is going on here? And Keho
Speaker 2: started driving in the direction of the school.
Speaker 3: Now you have this incredible scene where the superintendent Hike
Speaker 3: is helping people. He's up on a roof at one
Speaker 3: point and telling people not to jump off, wait for
Speaker 3: the ladder. So he's involved in this desperate rescue mission.
Speaker 3: And then Keho arrives with his flatbed truck and they meet,
Speaker 3: their eyes meet, and he calls them over to the vehicle.
Speaker 3: Tell Us I describe this scene as you do in
Speaker 3: the book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Niki Kyo pulled up, you know, I mean Hike
Speaker 2: Super Hike was pretty much the marshaling the rescue effort,
Speaker 2: as well as participating in at dragging kids out, you know,
Speaker 2: taking the safety going back. He was telling the high
Speaker 2: school boys not to jump out the window, and they
Speaker 2: said they jumped anyway. They did on the list that
Speaker 2: day and it was probably a good thing they And
Speaker 2: when he Kio pulled up, he was driving out like
Speaker 2: a bat out of hell, and in fact, a couple
Speaker 2: of people had to jump out of the way before
Speaker 2: they so they wouldn't get hit by his truck. He
Speaker 2: pulled up and as much as he hated Kiho said,
Speaker 2: you know, he went up, he said, you know, he
Speaker 2: put his it was old fashioned truck. He put his
Speaker 2: foot on the running board and he put his hand
Speaker 2: on the window. Window was rolled down on the passenger side,
Speaker 2: and he said, we need your help. We need you
Speaker 2: to get ropes, we need to get ladders. We need
Speaker 2: to use your truck that way. And Keo looked at
Speaker 2: them and said, okay, I'll take you with me. And
Speaker 2: something clicked in in Hike's mind and he said, you
Speaker 2: know something about this, don't you. Now this story was
Speaker 2: told to me by one of the survivors. His sisters
Speaker 2: had seen this and seen the entire exchange that happened.
Speaker 2: So this is what happened, according to their eyewitness account,
Speaker 2: And there was an immense explosion. Keiho had packed the
Speaker 2: truck with a and he fired a gun into the
Speaker 2: charge of dynamite. It blew up the truck, blew himself up,
Speaker 2: blew hike up. He had packed the truck with nails
Speaker 2: and rusty cans things like that. It was shrapnel. It
Speaker 2: just spread out and killed a couple more people and
Speaker 2: I you know, injured many more. Now, one of the
Speaker 2: people I interviewed Irna Gates. She was a freshman in
Speaker 2: high school at the time. She was one of the
Speaker 2: new interviews I did. She uh was holding a trachea
Speaker 2: on a victim, a young child named Helen com I believe,
Speaker 2: and it's it's what she told me was more or
Speaker 2: less confirmed all that, not that I you know, it
Speaker 2: was from her perspective. Now, there was a nurse there
Speaker 2: and by the name of Crumb, and her husband was
Speaker 2: that was the local doctor and pharmacist, and so she
Speaker 2: was helping with the rescue effort. And this this girl,
Speaker 2: Helen Cobb, couldn't breathe, so they they had to put
Speaker 2: a trachea in her. And now they there wasn't time
Speaker 2: to get anything, you know, like a tube or anything
Speaker 2: like that. So what missus Scrum did was crack open
Speaker 2: a ballpoint pen and she took you know, fourteen year
Speaker 2: old Myrna and said, okay, here's what you do. Here's
Speaker 2: how you hold the you know, it's that not you know,
Speaker 2: incredible simple direction. It was just like quick and dirty.
Speaker 2: Here's what you got to do. Hold it so she
Speaker 2: can breathe. Yeah, And so Myrna was holding this traka
Speaker 2: so this this poor girl could breathe and stay alive.
Speaker 2: And Myrna told me she heard this enormous scream. It
Speaker 2: was just ghastly and that's and an enormous flash and boom.
Speaker 2: So you know that that was when Hike and you know,
Speaker 2: confronted Kyoh and realized what was going on. It was
Speaker 2: probably the scream and then the explosion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you right, again, not to be purposely graphic,
Speaker 3: but they looked for Kyo's body and found, as you write,
Speaker 3: a clump.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and with the proof were the proof of who.
Speaker 3: That person that clump was. Were two documents what were
Speaker 3: those documents?
Speaker 2: I believe one was his driver's license and I can't
Speaker 2: recall what the other one was off off the top
Speaker 2: of my head. But also his face was more or
Speaker 2: less intact and he was visually identified by someone too oka.
Speaker 2: But the you know, the certainly the the the driver's license.
Speaker 2: The other document confirmed it it was Keyhoe, but you
Speaker 2: could tell that it was Andrew Keijo, you know. And
Speaker 2: I want to get grizzly, and I certainly had to
Speaker 2: for the book. But yeah, you know, it was a
Speaker 2: grizzly scene. There's there's no you know, dancing around.
Speaker 3: That this is out of order. But they searched Keyhole
Speaker 3: Farm and found some dynamite. But who else did they
Speaker 3: find there?
Speaker 2: They found the remains of Nelly. Now nobody knew what,
Speaker 2: you know, there was a massive search for Nelly. The
Speaker 2: sisters were were terrified and were calling around and there
Speaker 2: was this massive search for Nellie. Nobody could find her.
Speaker 2: The next day, a couple of Michigan State Police there
Speaker 2: were guarding the place more or less decided to take
Speaker 2: a smoke break and uh, you know, went for a
Speaker 2: cigarette out back, and they saw this cart that people
Speaker 2: have been walking back and forth and back and forth,
Speaker 2: and there wasn't plain sight was this was a was
Speaker 2: this cart with a box on it, and inside were
Speaker 2: the remains of Nelly Kehoe, you know, burned beyond recognition
Speaker 2: and her I mean it was a gruesome sight, to
Speaker 2: be sure. And the skull was cracked. Now was it
Speaker 2: cracked because Keyhoe Bleuzeender, Well, there's also it could have
Speaker 2: cracked because of you know, the fire as well.
Speaker 3: There's no way to know.
Speaker 2: Did he kill her.
Speaker 3: We don't know. Likely he could have.
Speaker 2: He could have cracked her head and he could have
Speaker 2: strangled her, or she just could have died on him,
Speaker 2: We don't know. Or he could have just put her
Speaker 2: there alive, and you know, she could have burned to
Speaker 2: death for all we know. We just don't know what.
Speaker 2: On either side of her was a couple of strong boxes.
Speaker 2: One had like the family silverware and another head money
Speaker 2: and war bonds and a significant amount which probably could
Speaker 2: have really just sitting there in the house, could have
Speaker 2: gone for the mortgage. There was a considerable amount of money.
Speaker 2: Some of it was burned, of course, it was a
Speaker 2: terrible thing.
Speaker 3: We didn't talk about this and it's hard to even
Speaker 3: capture speaking about it. But this explosion took down this
Speaker 3: north wall, as you say, part of the school, just
Speaker 3: a part of the school, luckily. But so many people
Speaker 3: were trapped, so many children were trapped under and so
Speaker 3: there was a mad dash to try to lift up
Speaker 3: this wall. Somehow. They tried ropes, they tried the Priye
Speaker 3: bar type scenario. They but they went through the rubble. Parents, police,
Speaker 3: they called Lancing authorities and police and firefighters and people
Speaker 3: came to try to rescue children that were still in
Speaker 3: the rubble. Yes, and they were finding there was a
Speaker 3: fear that there was still dynamite and still active in there. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but you also write about you write about another phenomena.
Speaker 3: While the ambulances were pouring in and while the volunteers
Speaker 3: to help were pouring in, there was somebody another group
Speaker 3: pouring in as well, causing trouble on the on the roadways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was, it was awful. It was, you know,
Speaker 2: for lack of a better word, tourists, gawkers, ghouls, what
Speaker 2: have you. And they really came in to see what
Speaker 2: was going on, and they came for days on end,
Speaker 2: and in fact when they were holding funerals in the
Speaker 2: days that followed, people could not get around town to
Speaker 2: go to funerals. There was a couple of sisters who
Speaker 2: were known to sing at funerals. They had to be
Speaker 2: basically jump on the back of a motorcycle at a
Speaker 2: cop but driving place to place. Some funerals were held
Speaker 2: in houses you could not hear the service because there
Speaker 2: were so many people. Now beth Is essentially looks like
Speaker 2: it did in the nineteen twenties. A lot of the
Speaker 2: same buildings are still there. It doesn't have a stoplight.
Speaker 2: It's the quintessential small town in America. There's still no
Speaker 2: stoplight in downtown Bath. It's a four way stop sign.
Speaker 2: And I can't you know, if you have ten cars
Speaker 2: in Bath, it's a traffic jam. I cannot imagine fifty
Speaker 2: thousand people to send them into town. And this is
Speaker 2: before the interstate. It was unbelievable how many people came in,
Speaker 2: and some of them were really crude about it too.
Speaker 2: There was you know, one woman, you know, you know,
Speaker 2: yell Arica, Hey, where's the cemetery? I want to see it?
Speaker 2: And the woman that she called, so it's that way.
Speaker 2: I'm bearing two of my children there tomorrow. In another case,
Speaker 2: somebody just walked up to a door and said, I
Speaker 2: want to see the dead body. It's awful people, and
Speaker 2: the well Kyo's truck was sitting there, you know, before
Speaker 2: everything was cleared away on that morning, the morning of
Speaker 2: the explosion, after he'd blown himself up, somebody came in
Speaker 2: snipped off a piece of intestine that was lodged in
Speaker 2: the wheel, threw it in a jar, and ran off
Speaker 2: with a souvenir. I guess you could call it ghoulish, now,
Speaker 2: what's interesting to me. And people were would scoop up,
Speaker 2: you know, dirt from the farm and take bricks and
Speaker 2: things like that for you know, souvenirs. I mean, it
Speaker 2: sounds really awful. But in another case where children are killed,
Speaker 2: I had friends who grew up in the area where
Speaker 2: John Gacy killed those boys and told me that when
Speaker 2: his house was torn down, people came by with Mason
Speaker 2: Jarson were scooping up dirt. So there's some it's not new, No,
Speaker 2: it's not. Unfortunately, it's some strange and today you can
Speaker 2: sell it on eBay too. It's really awful, But that
Speaker 2: that that element existed then and it exists now. It's
Speaker 2: I don't understand it myself, but it was.
Speaker 3: It was packed.
Speaker 2: It was it was a terrible, terrible thing. People could
Speaker 2: not mourn properly because of all these people who are
Speaker 2: coming into town.
Speaker 3: You spoke to it, Josephine Cushman.
Speaker 2: Veil right, Josephine Cushman at the time, Claudevale and.
Speaker 3: Her younger brother Ralph was killed and you and and
Speaker 3: her story is you weave her story all the way.
Speaker 3: It's went right to the end. It was more profound
Speaker 3: just because of all the loss that she experienced, her
Speaker 3: family experience. Just tell us a little bit about her
Speaker 3: story and their loss. Family.
Speaker 2: Low, Yeah, I will say this right up front. I
Speaker 2: adored Josephine. I fell in love with her, and we
Speaker 2: had a mutual admiration society. We got to be really
Speaker 2: close as a result of all this. I interviewed her
Speaker 2: twice and she was telling me some really she was
Speaker 2: in her mid nineties at the time, and she was
Speaker 2: telling me these really graphic things about what her brother
Speaker 2: looked like when they found him with his you know,
Speaker 2: half his shin was gone, and you know, the body
Speaker 2: was just riddled with metal and things like that, and
Speaker 2: you know, I felt terrible. I said, Justphine, you don't
Speaker 2: have to tell me this stuff. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: it would be the book's loss. But you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: what's that compared to you know, you know, stop you know,
Speaker 2: not causing you know, do grief to you know, a
Speaker 2: woman who's at the end of her life. And she
Speaker 2: said to me, no, I want to know what. I
Speaker 2: want people to know what happened. And God bless her.
Speaker 2: She told me exactly what happened. Her mother saw a
Speaker 2: dog playing with something. She thought it was a glove
Speaker 2: and she said, no, mom, that's a hand. Josephine saw
Speaker 2: the worst of the worst that day, and she felt
Speaker 2: this terrible pain. She actually she was one of people
Speaker 2: hit by shrapnel too, and she had a really bad
Speaker 2: pain in her leg. But she didn't tell her parents
Speaker 2: because they were going through enough. They kept saying this,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, parents were going up and down.
Speaker 2: If you've seen this kid, if you've seen that kid,
Speaker 2: you know, if you've seen Ralph and there was they said, well,
Speaker 2: we saw Ralph, but he got out. But that was
Speaker 2: probably Ralph Witchell, who I ended up interviewing after the
Speaker 2: book came out, as I said, and eventually they found
Speaker 2: her and she that night she you know, when they
Speaker 2: finally went home and Ralph was dead. They finally went
Speaker 2: home and they all got in the same bed together,
Speaker 2: and Josephine said to me that she realized at that
Speaker 2: moment she's fourteenth. There her childhood was over. It was gone.
Speaker 2: And at one point she developed a terrible itch. She
Speaker 2: never told her parents about it, and she doesn't know
Speaker 2: what happened, but it was that day she got this
Speaker 2: awful itch that she couldn't you know, it was really agonizing,
Speaker 2: but she didn't say anything to her parents about it.
Speaker 3: You know what it was.
Speaker 2: Who knows? It could have been psychosomatic. For only know
Speaker 2: my response to physical response to the trauma that she
Speaker 2: was going through, because she certainly went through her share
Speaker 2: of trauma, and it was She was a very special
Speaker 2: woman and very It's funny I saw her. I would
Speaker 2: go up to bath every year for the annual luncheon,
Speaker 2: and when dad was there and she looked at me
Speaker 2: and she said, I'm going to live to be a
Speaker 2: hundred and she did, and she had about six weeks
Speaker 2: after she hit her one hundredth birthday, but God bless her.
Speaker 2: She made it to one hundred wonder wonderful lady and
Speaker 2: very upfront about what happened. She wanted people to know.
Speaker 2: She felt it was really important to bear witness. And
Speaker 2: at the end of the book, the way the book closes,
Speaker 2: it was the eightieth amoration of the bombing, which was
Speaker 2: at what had happened about six weeks beforehand was was
Speaker 2: the shooting at Virginia Tech. So it was wayne on
Speaker 2: her mind much more that year than other years. And
Speaker 2: she would always always leave tulips for her at her
Speaker 2: brother's grave. Now, there had been a tulip in front
Speaker 2: of the house that Ralph had always wanted. He kept
Speaker 2: saying his mother in morning, can we have that tulip?
Speaker 2: Can I have that tulip? And she know we have
Speaker 2: to let it grow there, And after he was killed,
Speaker 2: she said, you know what, let Ralph have his tulip.
Speaker 2: And they put the tulip in the coffin with him.
Speaker 2: And so every year Josephine would bring out red tulips
Speaker 2: to his grave every year for eighty years. And it's
Speaker 2: a tradition that can She was worried that nobody would
Speaker 2: the tradition would die out with her. But family and
Speaker 2: friends every year bring read tulips to Ralph's grave as
Speaker 2: long as and I do it myself. I mean there's
Speaker 2: just you know, I owe her that munch and you
Speaker 2: know it was a beautiful thing. I mean, she never
Speaker 2: forgot her brother.
Speaker 3: You say that and you give thanks to many people
Speaker 3: like young Alan. Sorry I can't remember her first name,
Speaker 3: but you say she was instrumental in getting her father.
Speaker 2: Oh, Michelle Allen, Oh, Michelle Allen. Yes, Angel, she's one
Speaker 2: of the she's one of the museum people. And she's
Speaker 2: actually the person I called the Morning of Sandy Hook
Speaker 2: too lovely, lovely person. Yeah. But when when her dad,
Speaker 2: when I interviewed her dad, her dad was in early
Speaker 2: stage at Wolzheimer's and you know, I mean he couldn't
Speaker 2: remember what you know, he had had for breakfast, you know,
Speaker 2: let alone where he was. But when we talked about
Speaker 2: that day, you know, we had to kind of tease
Speaker 2: it out of him. But he knew, you know, he
Speaker 2: knew exactly what had happened. You know, we you know,
Speaker 2: would approach him this way, that way to get the story.
Speaker 2: But he knew he didn't forget and his brother had
Speaker 2: been killed, and his brother was apparently quite a good
Speaker 2: ballplayer and was he was convinced that had his brother
Speaker 2: not killed, he would have made it to the majors.
Speaker 2: In fact, when I mentioned that the two eye witnesses
Speaker 2: who saw the confrontation between Qiho and Hike, that was
Speaker 2: actually Harropernett's sisters. Interesting, so he told me that story too.
Speaker 2: So you don't forget things like this. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 2: Alzheimer's is a terrible thing, but something like this is indelible.
Speaker 3: Tell us just a little bit briefly about the Bath
Speaker 3: Consolidated School Museum, and you say that they're the caretaker
Speaker 3: of memory. Yeah, tell us a little bit about the museum.
Speaker 2: Well, the school itself, most of it was your main standing.
Speaker 2: You know, only the north wing was was really destroyed.
Speaker 2: So they rebuilt the school and the school stayed in.
Speaker 2: It was you know, it was used up until the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies, so last about fifty sixty years. They when
Speaker 2: it was torn down, it was yeah, I mean eventually
Speaker 2: you know, I mean outlived its usefulness. It was built
Speaker 2: in the you know, the mid twenties, and by the
Speaker 2: late seventies it was just was it just wasn't it
Speaker 2: wasn't safety even be in the school. It was outmoded
Speaker 2: and you know, other things. So they decided to tear
Speaker 2: it down. And this was a controversial thing to tear
Speaker 2: down that school. It was like tearing down a cathedral.
Speaker 2: But they did it, and there was a lot of
Speaker 2: anger about it too. Some people thought should be turned
Speaker 2: to a you know, a nursing home or a library
Speaker 2: or something like that. But instead what they did was
Speaker 2: they took the space that was the school and it's
Speaker 2: been turned into a memorial park, Cousins Memorial Park, named
Speaker 2: after Senator Cousins, who helped finance the rebuilding of the school.
Speaker 2: And they kept the cupola that was on top of
Speaker 2: the school the original school. They put it in the
Speaker 2: center of the park at roughly the same geographical space
Speaker 2: it would have been, and it's really it's really a
Speaker 2: contemplated place. There's bricks lining the cupola with names of
Speaker 2: the victims, and there's a Michigan State Historical marker at
Speaker 2: the end of the of the park. And the method
Speaker 2: Is Church that was actually there on the day of
Speaker 2: you know, you know, there was the principle was actually
Speaker 2: in the Methodist Church rehearsing kids for graduation ceremonies at
Speaker 2: the time of the bombing. The Methodist Church is still
Speaker 2: there and there's posts and meant posts. You can see
Speaker 2: posts from the old school foundation poken to the lawn.
Speaker 2: But the new school was built and they decided to
Speaker 2: dedicate a wing of it to what happened that day.
Speaker 2: They didn't want to forget, and they so they created
Speaker 2: the Bath School Museum. It has a lot of artifacts
Speaker 2: of the day. There's the clock that is frozen in
Speaker 2: time at the time the bomb went off, the flag
Speaker 2: that was flying over the school that day, Pictures of
Speaker 2: you know, the school, of what it looked like of
Speaker 2: the also the key host in there. They don't they
Speaker 2: they don't hide anything. They don't hide who he was
Speaker 2: or what happened. And it's it's quite a place, you know,
Speaker 2: pictures of various graduating classes, things like that, pictures of victims.
Speaker 2: There's I don't know what you would call it, but
Speaker 2: there's like these giant hanging frames with articles, news articles
Speaker 2: and with reminiscences of survivors things like that, and they
Speaker 2: also have there's also something called the Girl with the Cat,
Speaker 2: which was a memorial statue that was made. It was
Speaker 2: money was raised for it by children throughout Michigan sending pennies.
Speaker 2: And it's a girl with a holding a cat. That's
Speaker 2: what I called Girl of Cat and it just represents
Speaker 2: hope and the children who were lost. And for years
Speaker 2: it stood in the foyer of the old school and
Speaker 2: now it's in a case inside the school museum. And
Speaker 2: they also have other things. It's it's not just the bombing.
Speaker 2: They have like various classes, you know, football, you know,
Speaker 2: they had examples of like band uniforms, things I got.
Speaker 2: They have what I got a big kick out of
Speaker 2: the the old you know, Dick and Jane readers, which
Speaker 2: is how I learned to read, believe it or not,
Speaker 2: And they had those in the museum. Do it I got.
Speaker 2: I got an enormous kick out of that. It's it's
Speaker 2: kind of a museum of bath schools as well as
Speaker 2: what happened that day. And it's quite a place.
Speaker 3: Now. Before I let you go, we mentioned you mentioned
Speaker 3: a person named Matt Martin and a documentary project. Can
Speaker 3: you tell us about Yeah, Matt.
Speaker 2: And I have known each other a long time. I
Speaker 2: started book in two thousand and five and at the
Speaker 2: same time he was. He's Lancing based filmmaker. He was
Speaker 2: starting a documentary on it, and he and I we've
Speaker 2: shared interviews, we've shared information. Over the years, we've gotten
Speaker 2: to be good friends as well. And he's close to
Speaker 2: finishing this film. It's called Forgotten. It's going to be
Speaker 2: a multi part documentary. It's got interviews with survivors, children
Speaker 2: and grandchildren, experts, including myself, and it's going to be
Speaker 2: re released, not sure when. And I've seen parts of it.
Speaker 2: It's wonderful, as to say, as we creations and the
Speaker 2: interviews really beautifully put together, really reverent in honoring the
Speaker 2: children who died, and at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: that's what matters. And that's what I hope, you know,
Speaker 2: I got across in my book. This isn't about anything
Speaker 2: else but kids who were killed. And that's the important
Speaker 2: thing to remember. And that's why at the end of
Speaker 2: my book I include the list of names of all
Speaker 2: the children who died and the adults as well who
Speaker 2: were killed. That's the most important thing I want people to,
Speaker 2: you know, take away from this. These aren't just you know,
Speaker 2: puppets from history, figures from history. These were real people.
Speaker 2: These were real kids, who were really killed and what
Speaker 2: we see today at things like Sandy Hook or Columbine
Speaker 2: or Marjorie Stoneman happened to Beth and you know, you
Speaker 2: can't forget that. It's you know, the persistence of memory
Speaker 2: is what keeps these kids alive.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I want to thank you very much Narnie Bernstein
Speaker 3: for coming on and talking about Bath Massacre, the New Edition,
Speaker 3: America's first school bombing. For people that might want to
Speaker 3: take a look at this, is there a Facebook page
Speaker 3: or a week Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, there's my website. I have information. It's www dot
Speaker 2: Arnie Bernstein dot com, all one word and there is
Speaker 2: a Facebook page for the book as well. So if
Speaker 2: you just you know, go to Facebook and type of
Speaker 2: Bathmask or google it or whatever. It's easy to find.
Speaker 2: And I'm always happy to talk to people if they
Speaker 2: want to email me, either through email or Facebook through
Speaker 2: my web page. Happy to talk to people.
Speaker 3: Great. Thank you so much, Arnie Bernstein, Bath Massacre the
Speaker 3: New Edition, America's first school bomb Thanks.
Speaker 2: For having me. Thanks for having me again, Dan, I'm
Speaker 2: always happy to tell this story.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: You have a great night YouTube.
Speaker 3: Take care,