Bio

Andrew Philip Kehoe was born on February 1, 1872, in Tecumseh, Michigan. He was one of 13 children. His parents were Philip Kehoe (1833–1915) and Mary (McGovern) Kehoe (1835–1890).

He went to Tecumseh High School and then studied electrical engineering at Michigan State College, which later became Michigan State University. At college he met Ellen "Nellie" Price, the daughter of a wealthy Lansing family.

After college Kehoe worked as an electrician, apparently in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1911 he had a severe head injury from a fall and was in a coma for two weeks.

Kehoe moved back to live with his father after the injury. His mother had died while he was away. His father had married Frances Wilder, whom Kehoe did not like. On September 17, 1911, Frances was badly burned when a stove exploded while she tried to light it. She later died from her injuries. Some people later said the stove had been tampered with.

In 1912 Kehoe married Nellie Price. In 1919 the couple bought a 185-acre farm outside the village of Bath for $12,000. Kehoe paid $6,000 in cash and took a $6,000 mortgage.

Neighbors described Kehoe as highly intelligent and very neat. They said he dressed carefully and often changed his shirt at midday. Neighbors also said he could be cruel to animals; one account said he once beat a horse to death. The Kehoes initially attended the local Catholic church, but Kehoe refused to pay the parish assessment and later kept his wife from going.

People who knew him said he liked mechanical tinkering more than farming. A neighbor, M. J. "Monty" Ellsworth, said Kehoe often tried new methods with his tractor and machinery and left work unfinished when his experiments failed. The tinkering kept him from prospering on the farm.

Recent analysis of his behavior has used the term "dangerous injustice collector" to describe someone who remembers slights and holds grudges for a long time.

Kehoe was elected treasurer of the Bath Consolidated School board in 1924. He pushed for lower taxes and often disagreed with other board members. He accused Superintendent Emory Huyck of financial mismanagement. Kehoe briefly served as Bath Township Clerk in 1925, but he lost the election for that position in the spring of 1926. Neighbors said he became angry after the defeat, and some noticed he stopped working on the farm. During these years, Nellie Kehoe was often ill with tuberculosis and had frequent hospital stays. By that time the couple had fallen behind on mortgage and insurance payments, and the mortgage lender had begun foreclosure proceedings.

Murder Story

Andrew Philip Kehoe was an American mass murderer who carried out the Bath School disaster on May 18, 1927. He detonated bombs at the Bath Consolidated School. Forty-five people were killed and fifty-eight were injured. Thirty-eight of the dead were children between the ages of 7 and 14. The event is the deadliest act of mass murder at a school in U.S. history.

Kehoe killed his wife sometime between May 16 and the morning of May 18. He moved her body to a farm building. He then set off incendiary devices in their house and around the farm, destroying the buildings.

Kehoe had secretly bought and planted dynamite and hundreds of pounds of pyrotol in the basements of both wings of the school over several months. A timed detonator ignited the explosives in the north wing. The explosion killed many students and some adults inside. A second 500 pounds of explosives in the south wing did not detonate.

When rescuers gathered at the school, Kehoe drove up in his truck. He struggled with Superintendent Emory Huyck. Kehoe then detonated dynamite stored in his shrapnel-filled truck. He and Huyck were killed. Several others were killed or wounded, including a boy who had survived the initial explosion.

Searchers later found the unexploded dynamite and pyrotol in the south wing. The explosives were connected to an alarm clock set to the same time as the other detonator. Investigators also found a wooden sign wired to Kehoe’s fence that read, "Criminals are made, not born."

After investigators took an inventory, they estimated that the sale of unused equipment and materials on the farm would have paid off the Kehoes’ mortgage. One of Kehoe’s sisters claimed his remains and had him buried without ceremony in an unmarked grave at Mount Rest Cemetery in St. Johns, Michigan. The Price family claimed Nellie Kehoe’s remains and buried her in Lansing under her maiden name.