The deadliest mass murder at a U.S. elementary school occurred in Bath Township, Michigan, in 1927. Andrew Kehoe, a 55-year-old school board treasurer and farmer, was supposedly angry about his financial troubles and his defeat in an election for township clerk. On May 18, 1927, Kehoe used timed detonators to trigger several incendiary devices he had planted inside Bath Consolidated School. The resulting explosion destroyed much of the school and claimed the lives of 43 people, including 38 children. Kehoe took his own life by detonating dynamite in his truck. Prior to the bombing, Kehoe had killed his wife and set off incendiary devices at his farm, destroying his home and all the buildings. In the aftermath, investigators found a wooden sign Kehoe had apparently wired to a fence on his farm that read, "Criminals are made, not born."