From the Tomb with Cadoom: The Static Files: Michigan's Murderous Mystique

THE STATIC FILES return with another recovered archive.
During preparations for the final recovery process, a collection of fragmented files resurfaced. Separated by decades, motives, locations, and circumstances, each file reveals a darker chapter from Michigan's history.
In Static File 002: Michigan's Murderous Mystique, we examine the Bath School Disaster, the Robison Family Murders, Detroit's infamous Purple Gang, the secretive Black Legion, and the forgotten legacy of Coral Watts.
What connects these stories?
Perhaps nothing.
Or perhaps more than we realize.
Presented through the recovered archive format of The Static Files, this episode explores true crime, dark history, organized crime, serial murder, secret societies, and unsolved questions while searching for patterns hidden beneath the surface.
Archive Status: Recovered.
Recovery Status: 97%.
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The static is out of control. I have to tame it before it takes over. This one, however, is important. This one ties directly to the finale. Just like last week. But it's evil. It's the murderous dark cloud that sits over Michigan. The Bath School disaster. Robison family murders. The Black Legion or the Forgotten Predator, Coral Watts. Michigan has had a palpable evil undertone for decades. These are the files that didn't fit in the Kadumed Triangle that still need talked about. These are the static files. Michigan's Murderous Mystique. Good Wednesday evening and welcome to From the Tomb with Kadoom. I am Kadum, and today we're going a little dark on you all. Today we have some files that didn't quite fit the pattern of the finale. That the static still finds crucial to showing the pattern behind the Kadum triangle. The events and groups that were listed in the intro are the subjects. The static is the teacher. So let's learn about four, and hopefully this time I can really mean it when I say the finale is next week. I may just have to break down and build an actual PC in the near future instead of using a laptop. Maybe the static could be more controlled. Who knows? For now, let's get into it. The Bath School disaster of May 18, 1927 remains the deadliest school attack in U.S. history, and is widely regarded as the top mass casualty event in Michigan's history. Forty-five people were killed, including the perpetrator, and 58 were injured. It was the deadliest single incident in Michigan history, surpassing all other known mass casualty events in the state in terms of total fatalities. The attack occurred in a small rural township of about 300 residents, making the death toll proportionally even more devastating. Beyond Michigan, it is considered the deadliest school massacre in U.S. history and marks the eleventh deadliest in the world. The Bath School disaster was a series of violent attacks perpetrated by Andrew Kehoe upon the Bath Consolidated School in Bath Township, Michigan, United States, on May 18, 1927. That morning, the school treasurer of Bath Township detonated explosives he had previously planted underneath the school building, offing thirty-eight people. As rescue efforts began, Keho drove to the school in a truck filled with explosives and shrabel where he detonated it, offing himself and four more people. Earlier the same day, he had also destroyed his farmstead after having offed his wife, Nellie Price, Keho. At the time of the bombing, Bath Township was a civil township of 300 adults located ten miles northeast of Lansing. Today, Bath Charter Township covers 31 square miles within Clinton County. Keogh was actually born less than an hour from my hometown in Tecumseh, Michigan, on February 1, 1872. After high school, he attended Michigan State University in East Lansing for electrical engineering. Shortly after that, he moved to St. Louis for work, for several years, until at some point he fell into semiconsciousness or a coma for a period of several weeks before returning to the family farm. On September 17, 1911, as his stepmother attempted to light the oil stove, it exploded and set her on fire. Kiho threw water on her, which exacerbated the flames due to it being an oil fire. The injuries were fatal, and she succumbed to them the next day. Some of Kiho's later neighbors believe he caused the incident. He married Ellen Price in 1912 at the age of forty. Kiho was said to be dependable and always helpful to his neighbors at the time, but also started a reputation of being impatient and violent as well by offing a neighbor's dog that came on to his property and annoyed him by barking, and getting violent with a horse, and tell it succumbed to its injuries when it didn't perform to its expectations. He also had a reputation for frugality and was voted to the school board in 1924. Kehow was considered difficult, often voting against the rest of the board, wanting his own way and arguing with the township's financial authorities. He protested that they paid too much in taxes and tried to have the valuation of his property reduced to lower his tax burden. In June 1926, Kehoe was notified that the widow of his wife's uncle, who held the mortgage on his property, had begun foreclosure proceedings. Following the disaster, the sheriff who had served the foreclosure notice reported that Keho had muttered, if it hadn't been for that $300 school tax, I might have paid off this mortgage. Mrs. Price, the mortgage holder, also reported that Kehoe had stated, If I can't live in that house, no one else will, when she had mentioned foreclosure to him. Kehoe was appointed in 1925 as temporary town clerk, but was defeated in the April 5th, 1926 election for that office. The public rejection by the community angered him. This defeat may have triggered Kehoe's desire for revenge. Kehoe's neighbor, A. McCullen, noted that Kehoe had stopped working on his farm altogether for most of the preceding year and had speculated that Kehoe was planning to self-harm. Kehoe had given him one of his horses about April of 1927, but McMullen returned it for this reason. It was discovered later that Kehoe had cut all of his wire fences as part of his preparations to destroy his farm, ruining young shade trees and cutting his grapevine plants before returning them to their stumps. He gathered lumber and other materials and put them in the tool shed, which he later destroyed with a device. At the time of the incident, Nellie Keho had become chronically ill with what resembled tuberculosis, for there was no effective treatment or cure at the time. Her frequent hospital stays may have contributed to the family's debt. Kiho had ceased mortgage and homeowners insurance payments months earlier, and they believed this was the final trigger that caused this disaster. The American Red Cross set up Operations Center at the Crumb Drugstore and took the lead in providing aid and comfort to the victims. The Lansing Red Cross headquarters stayed open until 1130 that day, that night, to answer phone calls, update the list of the deceased and injured, and provide information and planning services for the following day. The local community responded generously as reported at the time by the Associated Press. A sympathetic public assured the rehabilitation of the stricken community. Aid was tendered freely in the hope that the grief of those who lost loved ones might even be slightly mitigated. People from across the world expressed sympathy to the towns and families in the community of Bath Township, including letters from some Italian school children, a fifth grade class was writing to the students. Vehicles from outlying areas and surrounding states descended upon Bath Township by the thousands. Over a hundred thousand vehicles passed through on Saturday alone. Some residents regarded this as an unwarranted intrusion into their time of grief, but most accepted it as a show of sympathy and support from surrounding communities. School resumed on September 5, 1927, and for the 1927 to 1928 school year was held in the community hall, township hall, and two retail buildings. Most of the surviving students returned. The board appointed O. M. Brandt of Luther, Michigan to succeed Hyuk, spelled H U Y C K as superintendent. Lansing architect Warren Holmes donated construction plans and the school board approved the contracts for a new building on September 14th. On September 15th, U.S. Senator James Cousins presented his personal check for $75,000, equivalent to $1,390,086 in 2025, to the Bath Construction Fund to help build the new school. A memorial statue in 1928 was developed entitled Girl with a Cat. The Bath School Museum in the school district's middle school contains many items connected with this disaster, including that statue. In 1975, the Cousins Building was demolished and the site was redeveloped as the James Cousins Memorial Park, dedicated to the victims. A Michigan State historical marker was installed at the park in 1991 by the Michigan Historical Commission. In 2002, a bronze plaque bearing the names of those killed in the disaster was placed on a large stone near the entrance of the park. On November 3, 2008, the town announced that tombstones had been donated for Emily and Robert Burmont, the last victims whose graves remained unmarked. A documentary was released on the disaster in 2011, and May 18, 2017, the disaster's 90th anniversary was marked with a panel discussion at the Bath Middle School. On May 1, 2022, week short of the disaster's 95th anniversary, Irene Dunham, the last Bath School student from the time of the disaster, passed away at age 114. The disaster is regarded by some as an act of terrorism. Arnie Bernstein, author of Bath Massacre, America's First School Bombing, said that it resonates powerfully for modern readers and reminds us that domestic terrorism and mass offings are sadly not just a product of our times. The Robison family offings, also known as the Goodhart Offings, are an unsolved mass offing which occurred in the secluded resort area of Goodhart, Michigan on June 25, 1968. The victims were a vacationing upper middle class family from Lathrop Village who were shot and offed inside their Lake Michigan holiday cottage, with two of the decedents bludgeoned with a hammer. Their bodies remained undiscovered until July 22nd, following an exhaustive investigation by the Michigan State Police and the Emmett County Sheriff's Office. Initial investigations were completed in December of 1969 with ample circumstantial evidence indicating that the perpetrator was a senior employee of Richard Robison's named Joseph Raymond Scolero III, who had engaged in embezzlement, which his employer is known to have discovered and begun investigating shortly before his offing. Emmett County prosecutors initially determined insufficient evidence existed to successfully prosecute Scolero, who offed himself in March of '73 at age thirty-four, reportedly upon hearing of his likely impending indictment for the offings following the reopening of the case and discovery of his further physical evidence, attesting to his guilt. He remains the sole and prime suspect in the murder. At the time of their commission and discovery, the Robeson family offings were considered the worst case of mass offing in Michigan history. Officially, the case remains open. Richard Robison was born in Wayne County, Michigan, in November of 1925. He met his fiancee, Shirley Fulton, in the mid-40s while they both attended college. The couple got married in 1947 and had four children: Richard Jr., Gary, Randall, and Susan. Robison had founded and operated a small advertisement agency named R. C. Robison and Associates in the mid-50s. The firm strategized advertisement campaigns for businesses with the Detroit region. He also worked as a commercial artist, executive, and publisher for Impresario magazine, which focused on cultural issues such as the arts, theatricals, and music, and was also based within his one-story Southfield office. The markedly wealthy family owned a private Learjet and lived in the affluent Detroit suburb of Lathrop Village. By 1968, Richard Jr. was in Eastern Michigan University. Gary was a student at Southfield Lathrop High School. Randall was a middle school student, and Susan described as a pony mad child, a first grade student. The family regularly attended church services, and neither parent drank, smoked, or gambled. Investigators would later determine that the most likely time that the family was offed was in the early evening of June 25th, 1968. The offings evidently began when the assailant was outside the property as five twenty-two caliber rifle rounds went through the back window of the Somerset cottage at Richard Robison Sr. as he sat in a chair. A single footprint outside the door would lead investigators to conclude that one person had committed the offings, and this individual had most likely closed all the curtains to the cottage and crudely attempted to cover the holes in the window from his initial salvo with a piece of cardboard before turning on the heating within the property and locking the door to the premises before leaving the scene. They were found by the owner and caretaker of the resort Chauncey Bliss following a complaint from a neighbor of the family of a pungent odor emanating from the cottage. She had noted while playing a card game with friends on the grounds of her property some 150 feet away from the Robeson cottage that afternoon. Bliss found both doors to the property locked. He pried open the molding to gain entry in the cottage, only to discover the scene. Bliss notified authorities, and the time lapse between the offings and their discovery, in addition to the perpetrator turning on the heat, had resulted in advanced decomp destroying any potential evidence. Investigators rapidly determined that the offings were premeditated and most likely committed by an individual or individuals known to one or more of the family. Although an expensive ring belonging to Shirley was missing, no money or other items of value had been taken from the victims, thus discounting robbery as a motive. Furthermore, Shirley Robison was nude from the waist down. No family member had been assaulted that way, and her body had most likely been posed in this manner to deceive investigators into believe that motive existed behind the offings. All individuals whom the Robesons were known to have encountered within nine days they had spent at Goodhart were eliminated from the inquiry, and theories pertaining to potential family links to organized crime circles were also discounted. Investigators presented their 700-page case report to the jurisdictional prosecution on December 17th, 1969. This implicated Joseph Scolero as the sole perpetrator of the crime with ample circumstantial evidence, attesting to his guilt and concluding he had the means, motive, and opportunity to commit the crime. The following month it was ruled that it was not sufficient evidence and they did not bring formal charges against Scolero, and that is when Scolero went ahead and offed himself. These offings remain one of the most remembered crimes in the state's history because the combined rarity, brutality, and unsolved mystery in a setting that was otherwise idyllic. The victims, Richard and Shirley Robison and their four children, were an upper middle class family from Lathrop Village. It happened in a secluded Lake Michigan cottage. It shattered the image of up north being safe, and the fact that all six were in a single coordinated attack, with some victims also bludgeoned, made it one of the worst mass offings in Michigan's history. The offings also happened in a small tight-knit resort community where neighbors knew each other. The discovery of the bodies on 22nd of 1968 was so gruesome that the cottage had to be demolished. The shock was compounded by the fact that the family had been seen out and about just days before, and the attack was committed by someone they trusted. Then the suspect died with the secret. He had been linked to the offings through evidence, including suspected embezzlement. However, there was nothing significant enough to charge him that left the case officially unsolved, fueling speculation, keeping it in the public eye for decades. It's also been recounted in books, local media, and community discussions with survivors and descendants, sharing their memories. It's a combination of family tragedy, betrayal, and unsolved justice that has made it a local legend. Some organizations operated publicly, others operated in the shadows. Let's talk about Black Legion. Black Legion was a violent white supremacist, terrorist vigilante organization that operated primarily in Michigan, especially in the Detroit area, Flint, and Pontiac during the Great Depression. It was notorious for bombings, floggings, and up to fifty suspected offings. The roots? They were formed around 1933 as a radical, secretive offshoot of a certain white supremacist organization. It was largely made up of white, native-born Protestant men who migrated from the South to work in Michigan's auto factories. It's said that members were fiercely anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-communist, and anti-black. They were deeply threatened by immigration and early labor unions. At its peak in Michigan, the group boasted an estimated membership in the tens of thousands, including some local politicians and law enforcement. The recruits were often lured to secret meetings, forced at gunpoint to swear a blood oath of secrecy and threatened with death if they tried to leave. The Legion operated in shadowy, loosely connected bands that targeted labor organizers, minorities, and political opponents. They are also widely believed to have been responsible for the burning of the East Lansing home of Malcolm X's parents in 1929. The turning point in May of 1936 was when the Legion kidnapped and offed Charles Poole, a federal Works Progress Administration organizer and Catholic. One of their participating members, Dayton Dean, confessed to the offing and exposed the group's inner workings to the authorities. This led to a massive, sweeping investigation by the Wayne County prosecutor. Over thirty members, including several Highland Park police officers, firemen, a city councilman, were convicted of offing and conspiracy receiving life sentences. The organization quickly disbanded following the intense public and legal scrutiny, which I think we can all be thankful for to this day. Now some names become part of American folklore, while others fade despite leaving behind devastating consequences. Carl Eugene Watts was born November 7, 1953, and was eventually dubbed the Sunday morning slasher. He offed numerous women and girls between 1974 and 1982. He is suspected of being the most prolific serial killer in United States history. He died of prostate cancer while serving two life sentences without parole in Michigan prison. Watts officially confessed to the offings of thirteen women, but later claimed he had offed 40 women and also implied that there were more than 80 victims in total. He would not confess outright to having committed these offings, however, because he did not want to be seen as a quote mass murderer. Police consider Watts a suspect in 90 unsolved offings, and he is now suspected to have offed more than 100. Watts' parents were both natives of Cole Wood, West Virginia. His father had been transferred to Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas at the time of Carl's birth, and three days after he was born, they returned to West Virginia. When Watts was less than two, his parents divorced, and in 1962, his mother married a McKenna. And moved to Inkster, Michigan. Watts, his mother, and sister all visited his grandparents regularly, and that is where he adopted the name Coral due to the southern pronunciation and love for the area. When he was eight, he and his sister contracted meningitis that almost offed him. Some journalists claim his body temperatures got so high it caused brain damage. Family members noticed the change in his personality following his illness too, saying he moved to being a bashful, quiet, and introverted person. Watts' performance at school worsened, resulting in being held back one grade, and he also started having violent dreams about battling off and offing the wicked spirits of women, which interrupted his sleep cycle. On June 29th, 1969, while delivering newspapers on his route, Watts knocked on the apartment door of 26-year-old Joan Gave, savagely assaulted her when she answered the door, and then continued on his route as if nothing had happened. Gave immediately contacted authorities who apprehended Watts as his home, and he was ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment at the Lafayette Clinic in Detroit. During an evaluation, when asked if his dreams disturbed him, Watts replied, No, I feel better after I have one and claimed that they were not nightmares because he enjoyed them. Watts was revealed to have a mild intellectual disability with an intelligence quotient of 75 and to have a delusional thought process and no evidence of psychosis. However, a police officer interrogating Watts after his arrest later stated that he appeared to be very, very intelligent, with an excellent memory. Watts was discharged from the Lafayette Clinic on his 16th birthday and visited the facility nine more times for outpatient care throughout the ensuing years. During his time in various mental institutions, he was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. Watts graduated from high school in 73 at the age of 19 and was given a football scholarship to Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, despite his subpar grades and sporadic drug use after his release. After just three months, he was expelled from Lane College after being charged with stalking and assaulting women and receiving minor leg injuries. The fact that many people at Lane College thought Watts was a suspect in the violent offing of a female student, even though there wasn't evidence to hold him accountable for the crime was another factor in his dismissal. Watts briefly resided in Houston, Texas following his expulsion, then spent a year working as a mechanic for a Detroit wheel manufacturer. In 1974, when Watts enrolled in Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, a string of heinous assaults on attacks in women started to occur. His victims ranged between the ages of fourteen and forty-four. Watts offed dozens of women between 1974 and 1982, and despite the scale of his offings, he was not discovered for almost eight years. Even with the advent of DNA testing, it is still nearly impossible to connect them because he rarely performed any personal acts on his victims. His crimes were not thought to be personally motivated after being diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and attempting self-offing with a length of cord at the Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital. Watts was moved to the Center for Forensic Psychiatry in Michigan. Watts entered a no-contest plea at his trial for the assault and battery of Kinizaki and Williams and was sentenced to a year in county jail. Watts then returned to Inkster after being released in 1976 and moved in with his mother and stepfather. In 79, he impregnated Dolores Howard, a childhood friend, resulting in the birth of Nikisha Watts. Watts and Howard soon split and he wed Valeria Goodwill not long after. Goodwill claimed that shortly after their wedding, Watts started behaving oddly. Watts kept moving the furniture around the house, using knives to chop up houseplants, broke candles and melted them into the table, and dumped trash all over the floor. Five women were attacked and oft in the Detroit region over the course of a year by a perpetrator who was dubbed by the Ann Arbor newspapers as the Sunday morning slasher. Watts had fallen under scrutiny from Michigan homicide investigators. A task force was organized in July of 1980 to probe the Sunday slashings, and Watts was placed under sporadic surveillance. A November court order permitted officers to plant a homing device on his car. And then on November 15th, in the early morning, two police officers on patrol in the vicinity of Main Street in Ann Arbor. Suspicious man in a car following a woman who was walking home. She attempted to hide in a doorway after realizing she was being followed in the hopes that her stalker would lose her. Watts was detained by police after they pulled him over for having outdated license plates and a suspended license. Upon examining his car, police discovered a package containing wood filing equipment and a few screwdrivers. Their most important discovery, however, was a dictionary belonging to Huff, which had the phrase, Rebecca is a lover, carved into the cover. It was insufficient proof, though, to hold him responsible for her offing. And Watts relocated to Columbus, Texas in the spring of '81. After a number of incidents in Texas, Watts was sentenced to the agreed sixty years in 1982. However, shortly after he began serving time, the Texas Court of Appeals ruled that he had not been informed that the bathtub and water he attempted to off somebody in were considered a deadly weapon. The ruling reclassified him as a nonviolent felon, making him eligible for early release. Then, in 2004, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox went on national television asking for anyone to come forward with information in order to try to convict Watts of murder to ensure he was not released. Joseph Foy of Westland, Michigan came forward to say that he had seen a man fitting Watts' description off Helen Dutcher, a 36-year-old woman, on December 1st, 1979. Foy identified Watts by his eyes, which he described as being evil and devoid of emotion. Although Watts had immunity from prosecution for the 13 offings he had admitted to in Texas, he had no immunity agreement in Michigan. Before his 2004 trial, law enforcement officials asked the trial judge to allow the Texas confessions into evidence in which he agreed. Watts was promptly charged with the offing of Helen Dutcher. A Michigan jury convicted him on November 17, 2004, after hearing eyewitness testimony from Joseph Foy. On December 7th, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Two days later, authorities in Michigan started making moves to try him for the murder of Western Michigan University student, Gloria Steele. Closing arguments concluded on that case July 26th. The following day, the jury returned a guilty verdict. Watts was sentenced to another life sentence with a parole on September 13th. He was incarcerated at Maximum Security Prison in Ionia, Michigan, and he passed away of prostate cancer on September 21, 2007 in a Jackson, Michigan hospital. Four files, four locations, four different forms of darkness, a school tragedy, family massacre, secret societies, and serial murder. Different stories, different motives. Yet they all left behind the same things. Fear, loss, questions, memories. Throughout the series we've explored mysteries, legends, disappearances, crimes, and the unexplained. Many of those investigations happened here, not because darkness belongs to Michigan, but because darkness belongs to humanity. The whole time we have reviewed and transcribed these files, another pattern continued to emerge, one that appears repeatedly throughout the archive. A pattern we have spent months investigating, but not enough to fully reveal. And that closes this static file. Let me know what you thought or what you learned on any of the Kadum's social medias. We even have an actual Buzz Sprout site where you can send fan mail if you want it private. Please, please follow and help grow all the Kadum's social medias. The triangle file finale will mark the beginning of phase two of Kadumed. This phase will be when the full plan starts to reveal over time. There truly are huge things coming here. They aren't just focused on my individual success. That is just a tool for what I'm trying to accomplish with Kadumed overall. Stay tuned on the socials. The codex will start leaking soon. Everyone has a tomb. And we can all escape them. Keep it twisted. And escape your tomb. Until we crack mine all the way open in the finale next week. Have a good night.