[???] KILLED 43 SLEW WIFE FIRST, [ACCIDENT?] SAVED 150 FROM DEATH FATE'S WHIM FOILS PLOT TO SACRIFICE ALL PUPILS Short Circuit in Wiring Used by Maniac to Fire Dynamite in School Spoils Plans VILLAGE SHATTERED BY TRAGEDY Once Brilliant Scholar Crushes Wife's Life Out Before Wreaking Full Vengeance (By The Associated Press) Bath, Mich., Mayu 19. - The first victim of the madman who blew up the district school here yesterday, killing 43 and injuring 44, was his wife. This was established today following a search at the maniac's farm. Portions of the woman's body were found in the ashes of one of the outbuildings blown up by the crazed farmer prior to dynamiting the school. The woman's skull was crushed, leading to the belief he had killed her before casting her body into the building to be burned. Fear that his wife would divulge his plans is believed by investigators to have driven Kehoe to the decision to kill her. They say she could not have helped but know that the farmhouse was wired in every part and the wires attached to dynamite. Andrew Kehoe, aged 45, perpetrator of the tragedy which has taken one-fourth of the children of this village as victims, also is among the dead. Only a whim of fate or accident prevented destruction of the entire village. RDB note: or the mercy and grace of God, which also kept the 9/11 results from being worse than they were :^( Mined School Basement Investigation showed that Kehoe had carefully mined the basement, installing an elaborate system of electrical wiring connected with a time clock. His plans seemingly called for destruction of the entire structure, with its more than 260 pupils and instead one of the wires he so carefully installed became short circuited and the electric impulse failed to complete its course. It was this failure that prevented the killing of more than 150 more pupils in another part of the building. Once known as a man of brilliance in the community, Kehoe's mind had been diverted to schemes of revenge against the school board because of anger over a school tax levied against him. Kehoe was a member of the board. 37 Victims Were Pupils Of the 43 who were killed, 37 were pupils in the school. Of the families of the community, there was none who had not lost a child or relative or friend by the fiendish handiwork of Kehoe, who set the death dealing blast while under the delusion that school officials were conspiring to ruin him. Parents whose daily ritual it was to hustle the youngsters from bed and scrub their grubby faces for school today were engaged in the sad duty of making funeral preparations for their loved ones. Community Funeral Planned Tentative plans call for a group funeral for the 36 children killed, with separate services for the five elder victims. Kehoe, who conceived the work of destruction, was a graduate of Michigan State College and had been a leader in the community affairs since settling here several years ago. He was looked upon as a sort of a sage here because of his superior schooling and extraordinary intelligence. Recently his demeanor suddenly changed, according to residents, and he showed signs of a persecutory complex. The comparatively trivial school tax levied against him was ruining him financially, he told acquaintances and he became morose. Officials of the school board, of which he was a member were called upon and [derided] for the tax levy. He engaged in controversy with the members on every occasion and suddenly his attacks ceased. In the interlude, it was believed by officials, he arrived upon the scheme of destroying the school and its occupants, the result of the dictates of his sick brain. Blast Stops Clocks The first blast in the school building came at 9:43 a.m., only a few minutes after classes had been assembled. The time had been fixed definitely because all of the clocks in the wrecked wing stopped at that minute. The second came in Kehoe's automobile in front of the school about 30 minutes later. Kehoe was sitting in the car. Emory E. Huyck, superintendent of the schools was talking with him, one foot on the running board. Glenn O. Smith, village postmaster and Nelson McFarran, an aged man, were standing on the side walk a few feet away. Suddenly a terrific blast came from the machine. The bodies of Kehoe and Huyck were blown to bits. McFarren was killed outright and Smith so badly injured that he died in a hospital shortly after. Kehoe's car was torn to pieces. The rear wheels and differential were hurled across the road. Frame Wrapped Round Pole Part of the framework was wrapped about a telephone pole 15 rods down the road and on the other side. There are two versions of the explosion in Kehoe's car. One was that he fired a rifle into a load of powder in the tonneau; another that he set off the blast by touching a button in an electric circuit while sitting in the car. No one actually saw the explosion. Besides Kehoe, Huyck, Smith and McFarran, the other adult killed was Hazel Wetherbee, an instructor. A state investigation was under way today to determine whether Kehoe was alone in the crime, and also the source of the large quantity of explosive. According to Charles Lane, state fire marshal, the electrical wiring leading to the dynamite and powder charges planted in the school building [were] so well done that he was not sure it could have been installed by one person. Enough unexploded dynamite and powder was found to fill a small truck and Lane expressed doubt that Kehoe could have gone into the schoolhouse, night after night, with small quantities of the explosive, as would have been necessary, had he been unaided. Building Reported O.K. About an hour before the blast, Kehoe, with Bert Detluff, village blacksmith, and a member of the school board inspected the building and reported everything all right. The dynamite had been cleverly concealed in the floors. Frank Smith, janitor of the building, declared Kehoe seemed anxious to "get away from there". Neither Smith nor Detluff was injured. The equipment with which Kehoe apparently had planted the explosive in the basement ceiling of the school consisted of six lengths of eaves through pipe, three bamboo fishing rods and four windmill rods. Such equipment was removed from the basement of the undamaged wing of the school. Prior to the explosion Kehoe had set fire to his farmhouse and outbuildings which were burned to the ground and he even destroyed the trees on the place. On the fence of the place was found a sign which read. "Criminals are born, not made." RDB note: it was the other way around... Planned for Months The amount of work and planning involved in the series of explosions at the Kehoe farm and the school indicates a design that required weeks if not months in preparation. Mr. and Mrs. David Harte, who live across the road from the Kehoe farm, believe the plot had been afoot for months and that it explains the fact that Kehoe had done no work on his farm this spring. For at least 10 days, Harte says, Kehoe had had been busy about his farm buildings, stringing twisted pairs of wires to every part of them. Monday they saw him carrying straw into the tool shed, a building where there is no use for straw. When he found opportunity to wire the basement of the school building and plant his hundreds of pounds of gunpowder and dynamite no one is able to guess. The work was carefully done, some of the connections being soldered. It would taken all of one night. That he was not in the building Tuesday night is considered certain. There was a Parent-Teachers Association meeting then, and it is thought that he would have been observed had he been in the building. Lead Wires to Spark Plugs By yesterday morning all his plans were carried out. His farm buildings were covered with hundreds of feet of wires leading to spark plugs that had been inserted at the top of cans nearly filled with gasoline. An investigation was begun today by state police and the state fire marshal to determine if Kehoe had accomplices. Admitting such a possibility to be slight the officials, however, held it would have been difficult for one man to do the wiring and plant the explosive. Village Itself Nearly Wiped Out Except for a short circuit probably the entire village with its 250 residents might have been wiped out. More than 500 pounds of dynamite and several sacks of gunpowder were found under a portion of the building that remained standing. A short circuit prevented the explosion of this huge charge. State Fire Marshal Charles Lane stated that if Kehoe was unassisted he must have worked weeks to install the explosive and the elaborate wiring system. Because of the expert way in which wires were soldered and the dynamite was tamped in prations, and even the school eaves pipes, it was thought that possibly more than one person took part in the work. About 90 children were in the section of the building that suffered the brunt of the explosion. As the bodies were removed from the wreckage they were placed in a temporary morgue set up in the school yard while ambulances carried the injured to hospitals in Lansing, 10 miles away. Miss Bernice Sterling, first grade teacher, said the children in her charge were playing in the room when the explosion occurred. Bodies Hurled Against The Wall "I saw the bodies of my children hurled against the walls or through windows. Then I don't remember much what happened. The explosion stunned me and I could not do much until help came." Mis Evelyn Paul, another teacher, declared the explosion "an awful crash". "Ceilings of the upper floors crashed down on the lower floors", she said. Clare Gales, aged 12, described between sobs how he was hurled through a rear window in the school room where he was sitting. State police probing tthough the ruins of the structure found several unexploded charges of dynamite concealed under boxes and in corners. [some text not copied] Lansing, widow of Mrs. Kehoe's uncle. Sheriff Fox, who served the foreclosure notice, declared Kehoe at the time said: "If it hadn't been for that $300 schoo1 tax, I might have paid off this mortgage." Mrs. Price said that when she mentioned foreclosure to Kehoe he declared: "Well, if I can't live in that house no one else will." All the little victims of the school blast were pupils of the third, fourth. fifth and sixth grades. They ranged in age from 6 to 14. Explosion Like Quake Bernice Sterling, first grade teacher, described the explosion as like a terrible earthquake. Most of her pupils escaped unhurt. They had just started marching around the room for morning exercise when the explosion rocked the building. "It seemed as though the floor went up several feet", she said. "After the first shock I thought for a moment I was blind. When it came the air seemed to be full of children and flying desks and books. Children were tossed high in the air; some were catapulted out of the building." Outside the scene was one of horror and confusion. Children were hurled through windows and over crumbling walls to light in the school yard, dead. The bodies were laid out in long rows on the grass. Only their feet showed. Mostly they were shabby feet, with soles worn through shoes sizes too large, seemingly handed down from father to son. Scenes Heartrending Mothers, flushed from bending over kitchen stoves, rushed to the scene when they heard the blast. Those who had children in the school ran frantically up and down the line of childish feet. A scream, and one would seize a limp form and hug it to her breast. Some of them, half-crazed by the tragedy, clasped their dead children in their arms and ran home. Scattered around the yard were the forms of injured children. Mothers whose love overcame their judgment carried many of them to their homes, not realizing that every available physician from nearby towns was at the school, and medical attention at home impossible. Ambulances drove up and loaded in bodies to take them to the improvised morgue in the town hall. Women who had not found their children streamed down the dusty road after them. Debris 10 feet deep remains in the basement of the shattered portion of the school today. It is being searched thoroughly searchers hoping that other bodies will not be revealed. Inquests are to be held Monday. Red Cross Reaches Town Red Cross workers arrived from Lansing and St. Johns to map out a campaign of relief for families hardest hit by the disaster while other state agencies continued an investigation into the possibility that Kehoe had assistance in the consummation of his fiendish plot. Stephen Brice, plumbing and heating contractor of Toledo, who rushed here from East Lansing where he was working on a new building for MIchigan State College, reported that he found a quantity of pyrotol, a war salvage explosive distributed to farmers by the government, secreted in a niche above the coal bin in the basement of the school here. In another part of the basement state police found a gasoline container so fitted that the expansion of the gas would force the vapor through a tube to a spark gap where it could have been exploded by pressing the button of an electrical current. In event of the failure of his dynamite plant, investigators said they believed Kehoe planned to set off the gasoline and burn the building. An alarm clock was found under the floor of the left wing of the building. Investigators were not certain today whether the clock was designed as a timing device or whether the electrical circuit was connected by touching a button outside the building. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MANIAC GAVE GRIM ADVICE ON PICNIC Bath, Mich., May 19 (I.N.C.) - A madman's last gloatings before he blew up the district school here yesterday were related today by Bernice Sterling, kindergarten teacher. She had planned a picnic for today for her little pupils providing use of woods owned by Andrew Kehoe, the madman could be obtained. The teacher's request for the use of the woods, made of Kehoe early in the day, was met with this answer: "If you are going to have a picnic you would best have it right away." A few minutes later the school was blown up.