Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing by Arnie Bernstein

used in road construction or by farmers in removing old tree stumps.
    High-test gasoline as a possible cause of the school explosion was no longer under consideration. 23

    Gertie Burnett felt the bricks pressing down on her body. From below, she could feel someone thumping her back, over and over, maybe using trapped legs to kick out of the rubble. It was too much for one child to handle.
    Stop kicking, she implored the person beneath her.
    Eventually the thumping stopped.
    Gertie never knew who was beneath her. When the kicking ended, she thought, that person is dead. 24
    Desperate mothers combed the killing zone, pulling at the rubble, tugging heavy wooden beams, trying to lift chunks of concrete and plaster, frantically searching for their children. 25

    In the midst of the chaos, one man snuck through the crowd to the smoking remains of Kehoe’s truck. He reached into the ruined cab, clipped himself a piece of intestine dripping off the steering column, and put his precious souvenir in a jar. The unknown ghoul disappeared as quickly as he arrived, artifact in hand. 26

    Albert Detluff stood over a bloody mass, a terrible hunk of blood and bone and hair bearing some likeness to a human body.
    The remains wore a shredded but still recognizable checkered coat. Detluff knew at once he’d found what was left of Superintendent Emory E. Huyck’s body. 27

    Within an opening in the rubble, some fourteen feet below, was an opening that resembled the mouth of a cave. Within it were children, trapped and unable to climb out.
    Mr. Fiora, one of the schoolteachers, didn’t hesitate. He jumped into the cave, dug his way through, soothed the crying children as he freed them, and handed them up to the outstretched arms of rescuers just within reach.
    Fiora’s search went deeper into the cave. 28

    Assistant Chief Lieutenant Lyle W. Morse, one of the top men in Michigan’s Secret Service Division, arrived with his assistant, Detective William Watkins, at 10:20 a.m. (Despite the same name, this Secret Service was not affiliated with the federal agency; rather, it was a bureau within Michigan’s Department of Public Safety.) Like many others, Morse’s original hunch after receiving word of the disaster was that the cause of the catastrophe was an exploded boiler. When he and Watkins got to the scene word was rife: Kehoe had blown himself up. Morse quickly realized that this was no mechanical accident. He went looking for the school janitor. When Morse got to Frank Smith’s house, Leone Smith told him about Kehoe’s remains, bankbook, and driver’s license. The documents, she said, were now safe with Sheriff Fox.
    D. B. Huffman approached Morse and identified himself as the express agent who had taken care of Kehoe’s package earlier that morning. He asked Morse if he had any idea as to who had dynamited Bath Consolidated.
    Although nothing was official (“At that time we didn’t know dynamite was used,” he later told the inquest), 29 Morse said that Andrew Kehoe evidently was behind the explosion. Huffman detailed his encounter with Kehoe and the box sent to Clyde Smith, the school’s insurance man. Lane, who also was at the Smith home, said he’d get in touch with the intended recipient of Kehoe’s package. 30

    From the grassy knoll where dead children still lay in cold repose, the temporary morgue grew larger. Sheets covered the dust-and-blood-encrusted bodies silently across the grass. From beneath the shrouds, feetpoked here and there. All that could be seen were the soles of shoes, some worn paper thin. Other shoes sagged, too big for the feet they covered. It was clear that some of the children went to school in hand-me-down footwear. 31
     
    Nellie Cushman, desperate to find Ralph, peered under the sheets. Body after body. Her boy was not there. 32
    Other parents nervously peeked beneath the bloodied sheets of the temporary morgue, looking through the corpses, praying they would not find what they were looking