Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

Written by Harold Schechter

Narrated by Braden Wright

Harold Schechter, Amazon Charts bestselling author of Hell’s Princess, unearths a nearly forgotten true crime of obsession and revenge, and one of the first—and worst—mass murders in American history.

In 1927, while the majority of the township of Bath, Michigan, was celebrating a new primary school—one of the most modern in the Midwest—Andrew P. Kehoe had other plans. The local farmer and school board treasurer was educated, respected, and an accommodating neighbor and friend. But behind his ordinary demeanor was a narcissistic sadist seething with rage, resentment, and paranoia. On May 18 he detonated a set of rigged explosives with the sole purpose of destroying the school and everyone in it. Thirty-eight children and six adults were murdered that morning, culminating in the deadliest school massacre in US history.

Maniac is Harold Schechter’s gripping, definitive, exhaustively researched chronicle of a town forced to comprehend unprecedented carnage and the triggering of a “human time bomb” whose act of apocalyptic violence would foreshadow the terrors of the current age.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Mar 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781713527015

Harold Schechter

Harold Schechter is a professor of American literature and culture. Renowned for his true-crime writing, he is the author of the nonfiction books Fatal, Fiend, Bestial, Deviant, Deranged, Depraved, and The Serial Killer Files. He lives in New York State. For more information, visit www.haroldschechter.com.

Reviews for Maniac

[Kristen (kc) Snow-White · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fascinating! I never expected such an interesting history lesson when deciding to give this audio book my time. Putting the horrific details if this mass murder and those that have followed aside, there is a lot of illuminating anecdotes from the time period. I won't put any "spoilers" out there, but while the Bath massacre is basically obscure, there were many references to individuals and events that are anything but, obscure. Hitler is mentioned and the reason for his inclusion is very unexpected. Margaret (Mags) the mother of eugenics, I mean the founder of Pkanned Parenthood -- same thing -- William Kellogg, the Battle Creek Cereal Founder, president (during the Progressive Era), and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes all make suprising appearances. As does Charles Lindbergh, for the first flight across the Atlantic.

It's a good book! I think "Hell's Princess" is next!

[Anna · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A surprisingly dry, monotonous, unemotive narrative about an embittered man blowing up children. Nicely read but very padded out.

[Haley Boisjolie · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting story- writing was a bit redundant and somewhat boring

[Paul “Jaarg” M · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Introduced to schechter by LPotL. Hail yourselves people! - P

[Virginia Halvorson · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book is not what you think. As the name suggests it should be about the Bath disaster. Well, there is a little about the Bath disaster, but there is more about what else was happening around the world. There is a lot of other crimes that happened before the Bath disaster and even more about the tragedies that happened after. If you like history’s crime then this is a good book. Oh

[Amanda celar · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thought it a most interesting account and listened to the entire presentation in one go!

[fitrun77 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A hard read for me, as I am a teacher. Any human will feel the pain. I’ve started praying for these people. Some families lost all of their children. This happened in 1927.

[Kayla Okarski · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

There are two racial slurs in the first 90 seconds.

[mstrust · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Here's one I'd never heard of before.In 1927, in a town outside Lansing, Michigan, a failed farmer and politician named Andrew Kehoe blew up a school, killing more than three dozen people, mostly children. No one had realized that Kehoe had been breaking into the school at night and setting up timer controlled bombs throughout the tunnels under the school. The bombs contained enough dynamite to wipe out the whole town. The bombs that went off (not all of them did) caused a wing of the two-story school to collapse. Kehoe's particular target was the school's young principal, as Kehoe believed it was the principal's demands for better educational equipment and his salary that caused Kehoe's financial problems. After the school collapsed, Kehoe arrived on the scene to find that the principal was alive, so he murdered the man and committed suicide on the scene, making it clear who was responsible for the carnage. Police later found that Kehoe had already murdered his wife and horses, and rigged his home to explode. He even put a bomb in the hen house, because the chickens were supposed to die too.The author explores other major news stories of the day, the most significant being Lindbergh's Transatlantic flight, which are the reason this story got so little attention outside Michigan at the time.

[kimd66 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"Maniac" is a book about one of the 1st school mass murders.While the actual event is the integral topic of the book, much of the content is devoted to the historical accounting of other murderous personalities. The book goes so far as to give a quite detailed account of Lindbergh's famous flight. In order to justify the large amount of time covering Lindy, we are later told that the media coverage of the Bath Massacre was minute compared to that of the 1st transatlantic flight. Seems more like something to fill the pages.In any event, I learned alot about how history has handled evil doers, or as pointed out by Schechter angry, white, narcissistic men.I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

[nancyadair-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

We had not lived in Lansing, MI very long before people referred to the Bath school bombing. I had never heard of Bath, MI or the school bombing. But the history was legend in Lansing.In 1927 a farmer blew up the new consolidated Bath school, that had 250 children inside. At the same time, his own house and farm buildings blew up. He had murdered his wife and placed her body in one of the farm buildings. He drove to the school to see the carnage and when the Superintendent of Schools came to his car to talk, the farmer set off an explosion in his car, killing them both and killing and harming bystanders.Forty-four funerals. Nearly the entire Fifth Grade class was dead. Lansing doctors said it was as bad as anything they saw in WWI.Andrew Kehoe's wife inherited a farm in Bath, MI. They moved in and Kehoe became a good neighbor, involved in the community. When crop values fell he was broke. He focused on the taxes for the newly built school as the cause of his ruin.Kehoe had an "inventive genius" and exceptional mechanical skills. But a closed head injury may have caused a personality change. He killed his sister's cat. He was seen abusing animals by Bath neighbors and friends. But few suspected he was capable of such evil.Kehoe collected his explosives. In plain sight, he entered the school where he set up a system of explosives. He remained unemotional and detached even knowing what he was going to do.Schechter shares the stories of people who heard the explosion and raced to the scene. He narrates the desperate struggle to find the survivors and the awful sight of blasted bodies.Lansing was fifteen miles away. Victims were taken to the hospitals there, and first responders from Lansing and surrounding communities flocked to help at Bath.Kehoe had planned his own demise, taking with him the school superintendent.When Schecter first introduced Charles Lindbergh into the story I was confused. I learned that his historic flight dwarfed the story of the Bath School disaster. It faded into memory as new, lurid murder stories took over the headlines. We do have short attention spans.Schechter sets the crime in context of the history of mass murderers and serial killers. It was interesting to learn that Kehoe purchased the explosives legally; after WWI, new markets were needed and they were promoted for farm use. A post-war drop in crop profits impacted farmers.Kehoe's horrific crime of terrorism shocked the rural community of Bath, Michigan, and still appalls today.I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

[pomo58 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer by Harold Schechter is a wonderful example of how true crime books can accomplish so much more than just recount a crime. Many true crime readers are interested primarily in the crime, in the bizarre pleasure we get from reading the details of a horrific incident. Such a reader will be pleased with this account as we are walked through the background and the incident. Schechter does a phenomenal job of presenting the killer, Kehoe, in a way that gives us a glimpse of both the public facade and the internal, private monster. Again, the best of the genre do this to some extent and this is one of the best.Perhaps where Schechter excels and sets himself apart is in his ability to connect the crime to aspects of society, both contemporaneous to the crime and into present day. He begins in his introduction painting the larger societal and historical picture into which he then fills in the details of this particular crime.I highly recommend this to true crime readers as well as readers who enjoy thinking about how and why so many events disappear from our collective memories while others, often no more heinous, leave a long term mark. The reader gets the excitement expected with true crime along with some analysis about what makes such a crime more or less memorable.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.