The Bath School disaster is the name given to three bombings in Bath Township, Michigan, on May 18, 1927, which killed 38 elementary school children, two teachers, and four other adults; at least 58 people were injured. The perpetrator died of suicide in one of the explosions as well. Most of the victims were children in the second to sixth grades (7–14 years of age[1]) attending the Bath Consolidated School. Their deaths constitute the deadliest mass murder in a school in United States history.
The bomber was the school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe, 55, who had opposed construction of the consolidated school in the early 1920s as it required increased property taxes. His wife was ill with tuberculosis and he was financially stressed, as he had stopped making mortgage payments and was under pressure for foreclosure. For a year, he carried out steps in a plan to destroy the school by explosives.
Some time between May 16 and the morning of May 18, Kehoe murdered his wife by beating her to death. On the morning of May 18 about 8:45, Kehoe exploded incendiary devices in his farm buildings and house, setting them on fire.
Almost simultaneously, an explosion devastated the north wing of the school building, killing many schoolchildren. Kehoe had used a timed detonator to ignite dynamite and hundreds of pounds of pyrotol, which he had secretly planted inside the school over the course of many months. As rescuers gathered at the school, Kehoe drove up, stopped, and used his Winchester rifle to detonate dynamite inside his shrapnel-filled truck, killing himself, the school superintendent, and several others, as well as injuring more bystanders. During rescue efforts at the school, searchers discovered an additional 500 pounds (230 kg) of unexploded dynamite and pyrotol planted throughout the basement of the south wing. Kehoe had apparently intended to blow up and destroy the whole school. Investigators later said that if he had sold unused farm equipment and material at his farm, he could have gained enough money to pay his mortgage.
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