The Bomb Was Only The Beginning

Howard Drenter

Howard Drenter lived at home with his parents.

He was twenty-eight years old, a Scott County farmer, and he’d never lived anywhere else. He worked the fields during the day and came back to the same house every night. People described him as reliable. A man who didn’t waste words or draw attention. He didn’t drink, fight, or have a record. If anything, he blended in.

For a while, he kept company with Edna Smith, a teacher at the Argo School. She was young, attractive, and well liked. Parents trusted her their children. She and Drenter had been seeing each other since the spring of 1925. Things appeared good. They talked, danced, and went to the movies.

Over time, the questions started. At first, they sounded casual, almost playful. Until they didn’t. Drenter wanted details. Names. He watched her every move, wanted to know who she spoke to, who walked her home, and who sat near her at school functions. Edna noticed it. So did her friends.

By January 1926, she’d had enough. She broke things off, but Drenter didn’t let go. He kept asking her out. He showed up. Sent messages through others. She kept refusing. Each time, the refusals seemed to harden him. He stopped sounding disappointed and started sounding offended. At some point, the requests turned into warnings.

“If you go out with other men,” he told her, “I’ll get even.” He didn’t say what that meant. He didn’t have to.

Edna went on with her life.

In February 1926, she began seeing Andrew Spies. By July, they were engaged. He drove her places, showed up when he said he would, and didn’t ask questions about where she went or who she was with.

That summer, letters began appearing.

Edna Smith

They were slipped through the door of the Argo school or tossed inside when no one was looking. One ended up wedged in a corner. The words were careful and indirect, never spelling out exactly what was being threatened. Each one ended the same way.

“The trio that never fails.” There was no signature. No hint about what it meant.

Edna turned the letters over to Sheriff Frank Martin. She was sure Drenter had written them, but couldn’t prove it. The sheriff kept the letters and made a note of them. Without a name, there wasn’t much more he could do.

Three days before Thanksgiving, the school held an evening entertainment.

More than a hundred people attended. Parents filled the benches. Children sang. The piano played. Coats lined the walls. It was a normal night, the kind small towns relied on to mark the seasons.

Andrew Spies drove Edna to the school. He parked his Ford coupe among the other cars and walked her inside. They took their seats as the program began.

Outside, the yard was quiet.

At some point during the entertainment, someone approached Spies’ car. No one noticed. No one heard anything. A bomb was placed inside the vehicle and left to wait.

It was homemade. A molasses tin filled with black powder, paper, and burlap. A piece of binding twine soaked in kerosene served as a fuse. Nothing fancy. Nothing complicated. It was built to do one thing.

Around nine o’clock, it detonated.

The explosion wrecked the Ford coupe. The doors were smashed. The top was blown clean off. Metal scattered across the ground. The gasoline tank was dented, but it didn’t ignite. Investigators said it was a stroke of luck that kept the car from erupting in flames. Only the engine survived without damage.

The remains of Andrew Spies' automobile

The blast was powerful enough to rock the schoolhouse. Windows shattered. Glass flew across the room. People screamed and rushed for the doors, convinced the building was about to come down.

Amazingly, no one was injured.

Sheriff Frank Martin arrested Howard Drenter at his parents’ house shortly afterward. Drenter didn’t resist or ask why. He didn’t explain. Just refused to talk.

He was charged with malicious destruction of property and threats to extort. He posted a $3,500 bond and was released.

Before letting him go, the sheriff and county attorney tried something unusual. They sent Edna Smith into Drenter’s jail cell, hoping the sight of her might push him into confessing.

It didn’t.

They talked for nearly an hour/ all he said was, “I’ll marry you today if you’ll have me.”

After his release, parents stopped sending their children home to school, worried another bomb might come. The sheriff stationed an armed guard at the school’s door, but it wasn’t enough. In early December, Edna was forced to quit teaching. With her gone, the kids returned.

The case went to trial the following April.

Drenter pleaded guilty. He was fined $1,200 and ordered to pay $300 for the damage to Spies’ car. He told the county attorney that he regretted what he’d done. He never intended to kill anyone. He just wanted revenge for Spies taking his girl.

Edna let it go and moved on.

On May 24, 1927, he called her. Then he called again. And again.

He told her to ditch everything. Visitors were coming. Then he accused her of failing to pay for damage to his automobile from two years earlier, when she’d run it into a post near Anamosa.

“You’d better pay me,” he said, “or I’ll make trouble for you. I mean business this time.”

Drenter was arrested once more. The charges were dropped in July. The court ruled that there was no specific threat in the conversations.

That was the end of the case.

No one died. No jail time followed. The school’s windows were replaced. The wrecked Ford was hauled away. Howard Drenter returned to his parents’ farm and the routines he’d never really left. Edna Smith never returned to the classroom.

Sometimes the damage doesn’t come from what explodes. It comes from what lingers, what follows, and what never quite lets go.