Last night I stumbled onto a very strange account of one of the worst mass murders in United States history. I wasn't really looking for it, but a friend emailed me a link to a site which lists the worst crimes committed within each state. Naturally, as I'm living in Michigan, my curiosity led me to check out the "MOST NOTORIOUS MURDERS IN [MY] STATE."

Much to my surprise, I learned that the most notorious Michigan murder was also the most notorious mass murder in a school in U.S. history. (And until Timothy McVeigh struck at Oklahoma City, it was the worst terrorist incident in U.S. history). Called the Bath School Disaster, the mass murders of 45 people (with 58 wounded) were committed by a demented school board member who was upset about change:

The Bath School disaster is the name given to three bombings in Bath Township, Michigan, USA, on May 18, 1927, which killed 45 people (38 grade-schoolers and 7 adults) and injured at least 58. Most of the victims were children in the second to sixth grades (7-12 years of age) attending the Bath Consolidated School. Their deaths constitute the deadliest act of mass murder in a school in U.S. history. The perpetrator was school board member Andrew Kehoe, who was upset by a property tax that had been levied to fund the construction of the school building. He blamed the additional tax for financial hardships which led to foreclosure proceedings against his farm. These events apparently provoked Kehoe to plan his attack.

About a half hour after the explosion, Kehoe drove up to the school and saw Superintendent Huyck. Kehoe summoned the superintendent over to his vehicle. According to one eyewitness, when Huyck drew close, Kehoe pulled out his rifle and fired into the back seat. Whether by gunshot or otherwise, the dynamite in the vehicle ignited and the resulting explosion killed Kehoe, the superintendent, Postmaster Glenn O. Smith, and Smith's father-in-law Nelson McFarren, a retired farmer.[16] Cleo Claton, an eight-year-old second grader, had wandered out of the collapsed school building and was killed by the shrapnel from the exploding vehicle. Several others were injured as the shrapnel flew through the crowd.

Politically, the Bath School disaster is useless to any narrative. I guess if you really stretch it, it might be useful in scolding the right wing (and I suppose the lefties might call the deranged bomber an archetypal Tea Partier type), but the fact that it happened 83 years ago makes that argument ridiculous on its face. So does the fact that no one in the Tea Party movement would ever countenance -- much less commit -- mass murder of school children.

Yet the lingering question is motive. The man was facing foreclosure, and he blamed that on the new school, but it turned out that he had sufficient resources to pay the arrears.

On the morning of May 18, Kehoe first killed his wife and then set his farm buildings on fire. As fire fighters arrived at the farm, an explosion devastated the north wing of the school building, killing many of the people inside. Kehoe used a 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 started gathering at the school, Kehoe drove up, stopped, and detonated a bomb inside his shrapnel-filled vehicle, killing himself and the school superintendent, as well as killing and injuring several others. During the rescue efforts, searchers discovered an additional 500 pounds (230 kg) of unexploded dynamite and pyrotol planted throughout the basement of the school's south wing.

After the bombings investigators found a wooden sign wired to the farm's fence with Kehoe's last message, "CRIMINALS ARE MADE, NOT BORN," written on it.[4]

When they were done taking an inventory of the Kehoes' estate, investigators estimated that, prior to its destruction, the amount of unused equipment and materials on the farm could have easily paid off the Kehoes' mortgage.[5]

It's clear to me that the man was a thoroughly evil psychopath -- indefensible by any standard. Perhaps the new school was an excuse, and he didn't really need a motive, but instead found a convenient one.

However, saying that some people are evil is emotionally unsatisfying, and it doesn't fit the prevailing, overarching narrative agreed on by both "sides" in the Culture War that there is something inherently evil about society which causes people to commit atrocious crimes. Michael Moore and the John Lennon Imagine people think the problem is that we live in an evil, militaristic "gun culture," while the Robert Knight, Concerned Women for America types think sex, drugs, rock and roll, homos, abortion, and other coarse culture rot create a climate that makes these awful crimes inevitable.

But the idea that some people are just bad? That just goes nowhere, especially in the hyper-charged, traffic-driven political context.

Yet the fact remains that this awful crime -- in many ways the most gruesome mass murder event imaginable -- took place in a decent and upright small American community, and was committed by one of its elected leaders.

The undeniable fact of some people being inherently evil brings to mind a recent post by Dr. Helen about toxic children. She links a New York Times piece which Dr. Stuart Schneiderman cited as confirmation that good parents can have bad seeds -- i.e. "perfectly decent parents can produce toxic children." What I found refreshing about the article was to see that there are at least some parents who admit that they have toxic children. I can't count the number of times I have read news stories about appalling behavior by toxic teens quoting the parents who maintain that their children were good and did nothing wrong, that society was persecuting them, etc. This instills precisely the type of delusional narcissistic thinking which fueled the sick mind of the very toxic Andrew Kehoe.

If we assume a genetic component -- if we assume bad seeds are bad genes, if "perfectly decent parents can produce toxic children" -- wouldn't it also follow that perfectly toxic parents would produce toxic children in greater numbers than would perfectly decent parents? While that's worrisome in itself, it's also worrisome because of what well-meaning social engineers might do if they take this otherwise reasonable idea to extremes. If genetic determinism were ever to become a legal doctrine, then society might decide to lock people up not because they had done anything wrong, but because of their "bad genes." As ShrinkWrapped warned,

If all behavior is not just psychically determined but structurally determined, then no one is responsible for anything. The BP executives could no more avoid taking short cuts in the Gulf and their Regulators could no more avoid neglecting their duties than poor "Brian" could avoid raping and killing that 10 year old child. That way lies nihilism. At the same time, while smart lawyers work out ways to free people like Brian from the consequences of their actions, they are also setting the table for a form of institutionalized neurologically based totalitarianism. Once we have dispensed with free will and responsibility, then those who have "incorrect" or "dangerous" brain structures can only be locked up or otherwise removed from the body politic.

Evil as he was, Andrew Kehoe nonetheless has to be considered to have had free will. Our freedom depends on it.