January 11, 2024 • 35 mins
In this episode, Deborah and Corey discuss the story of Marvin Heemeyer, also known as the Killdozer. Marvin, a disgruntled business owner, took matters into his own hands after his local government approved the rezoning of his business district. He spent months modifying a bulldozer, equipping it with weapons and armor. Marvin then went on a rampage, destroying multiple buildings in his town. Despite his actions, some locals saw him as a hero standing up against an oppressive government. The rampage ended when Marvin took his own life. The conversation discusses the story of Marvin Heemeyer's rampage and the reasons behind it. It explores the perception of Heemeyer as a folk hero and the destruction he caused. The conversation also delves into the actions of the government and their greed, leading to Heemeyer's desperation. It highlights the corruption in local government and the importance of being aware and involved in one's community.
Takeaways
- Marvin Heemeyer, also known as the Killdozer, was a disgruntled business owner who took revenge on his local government.
- He spent months modifying a bulldozer, equipping it with weapons and armor.
- Marvin went on a rampage, destroying multiple buildings in his town, but no one was hurt.
- Despite his actions, some locals saw him as a hero standing up against an oppressive government. Marvin Heemeyer's rampage was a result of his frustration with the government and their actions against him.
- Heemeyer was seen as a folk hero by some members of the community who believed he was standing up against those who wronged him.
- The government's greed and abuse of power played a significant role in pushing Heemeyer to the edge.
- The conversation emphasizes the importance of being aware of and involved in one's community, as well as getting to know one's neighbors.
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Intro & Extro Music: Undersea World by Dragonov
Teachable Moments Music: Untold Story by Ballian De Moulle
REFERENCES:
Granby bulldozer rampage revisited, ten years later – The Denver Post
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi everyone, this is Deb from Dying to be Found.
(00:03):
Before we get started, I just wanted to say that episodes contain disturbing discussions on harmful acts and crimes against animals and or humankind.
Recordings are not intended for young or sensitive audiences due to the content nature of this podcast.
Listener discretion is strongly advised.
(00:34):
Hi everyone, welcome back to Dying to be Found where I get together with some of my family members to talk true crime.
Today, Cory, my crime fighting son is here to help me out so that can only mean one thing.
Well, two things. One, you get a cop's point of view on criminal behavior.
And two, Cory, you've been roped into something I like to call a jailhouse rock.
(00:58):
So I hope you're prepared for that today.
Is that something that's going to bring me back to the jail days?
Absolutely. You've given us a couple stories and I like them.
So I figured that'd be a really good thing for you to just kind of start us out with.
How about that?
I don't have a story prepared at all.
OK, I will come back to you because I wanted to give a shout out to one of our listeners.
If you've listened to enough episodes, you know that I teach during the day and podcast at night.
(01:22):
I had reached out to Cory to a parent just before winter break.
And during our discussion, she threw in that she loves this podcast.
So, Stacey, thank you so much for your kind words.
It's always great to get listener feedback.
Cory, I'm going to come back to you.
You're pretty awesome as well.
I won't throw you out to the birds.
But how about that jailhouse story?
(01:44):
That's all the time I got.
Give me a minute. I got to it's been years, so I'm trying to think of.
OK, how about this?
Tell us about that video you sent me.
Oh, it was just a it was an alarm call.
Somebody's alarm went off at their house.
I want to go check it out.
And down here where we're at, we have these freaking spiders are invasive.
(02:07):
They make these giant webs and they're black and yellow.
They're everywhere.
And I go to reach up to knock on their door and I just feel web all over my entire body.
And I freaked out and it was all on ring camera.
And I didn't see that there was a ring camera at the time.
So I was just trying to get out of there.
And I'm walking away from the front door because obviously they don't use the front door.
(02:29):
Some people use the side door.
I was like, OK, I'll go check the other doors, because if there was a burglar,
they would have they would have hit that way before I did.
They would have been freaked out for a runaway, too.
So I was walking away, going to the other doors.
And I'm thinking, man, I hope there wasn't a ring camera there.
And then a couple of hours later, my captain, he used to be my lieutenant on the road.
And now he's the captain over in the jail.
(02:49):
And he sends me this video and said, hey, I know the people that live here.
And they sent me this video of you just absolutely losing your marbles
when you hit that spider web.
God, it was so embarrassing.
I don't know anybody out there who, unless you're an enthusiast
to have a tarantula in your aquarium in your bedroom, you know,
there are people that do that, exotic animals.
But me personally, no.
(03:10):
Yeah, we had a pretty bad.
It wasn't as bad this year as it was last year.
We were on a track one time.
We were tracking somebody in the woods and they're not too bad deep in the woods.
But right at the beginning of the woods, there's a lot of them because, you know,
there's not a whole lot of insects flying around as much in the actual woods.
And I walked right into one and I made a little bit more noise than I should have
because we're trying to be quiet.
(03:31):
I wouldn't say that it's a fear, but I had no idea that you didn't like spiders like that.
Yeah, I can't stand them.
It's gotten better over the years since I'm around them so much more.
And I know that I'm so much bigger than them.
So it's gotten better, but I still I truly don't like them.
Once I feel that web on me, I'm going to be nervous that it's on me for the rest of the day.
For sure. OK, well, guess what?
(03:53):
I'm going to tell our listeners another little sweet little story about you.
When you were a toddler, do you remember that you had a fascination
with construction vehicles? Yes.
What did you like about them?
I thought they were big and yellow and cool.
And I remember I was called a beep beep because I didn't know the name of any of them.
Yes. Anytime that we would see heavy machinery on the road or in a book,
(04:14):
that's exactly what you would say.
You would do the beep beep sound. Yeah.
That was so cute. Yeah. Cool.
Because after whatever I worked on that farm, I got to actually work
on all that kind of stuff, too. So it's a fun job to do.
Childhood dreams come true.
Yeah, it's a fun job to do. I enjoy doing it.
I like working with heavy machinery.
Tell me the difference between a bulldozer and a front end loader.
The bulldozer is more so for grading.
(04:36):
It's got a big blade on it.
It's not so much of a bucket.
You can't pick dirt up with it.
You're just grading out the land, leveling it out, basically.
And the front end loaders for moving dirt.
OK, so the bulldozer grades. Yep.
And the front end loader has a big it's got a big bucket,
kind of like an excavator, you know, the big thing with the arm.
OK, I got you.
(04:56):
So that's for digging a hole. Yes.
And you're going to put all that dirt in a pile.
And then that front end loader is going to take all that dirt
and move it from one location to another, which is usually like a dump truck.
OK, got you. Well, thanks for that.
I appreciate that.
Because if you've not figured it out yet, you gave me this idea.
We're going to be talking about Marvin Heemeyer.
(05:17):
Oh, is this the killdozer? It's the killdozer.
Yes. I love this.
I was wondering once you brought up the.
You know, I always start out with a question to kind of get us in the mind frame.
I was wondering if you're going to figure it out.
Yeah, I started. I started wondering once he brought up the front end loader.
I was like in the bulldozer.
I was like, oh, man, I hope this is the killdozer.
(05:38):
Yeah, for our listeners, we don't always talk about high profile stories here,
but we do leave our content open to interpretation of true crime.
Today, we're going to be talking about a man who really got ticked off
at his local government and took action on his own terms. Yeah.
How do you think about the story? How did I think about it?
(05:59):
You told me, I think during one of our podcasts you had mentioned it.
I think I sent you the video on it. You did.
Pretty cool story, right?
It's a very interesting story, to say the least.
Absolutely. So hang with me, because we're going to talk about Marvin first.
And it's a good story.
Marvin was 52 years old and owned a muffler shop in Granby, Colorado.
(06:21):
Which is a town about 85 miles or 137 kilometers northwest of Denver.
According to the U.S. Census, Granby had a population of
two thousand twenty nine people way back in 2022.
So, you know, that number was much smaller in 2004 when this story takes place.
(06:41):
Marvin was 6'4". He weighed 230 pounds.
So he was considered a pretty big guy.
And he was known around town to be somewhat unpleasant,
which, Corey, I'm actually putting a little mildly here.
He was straight up angry.
And apparently he threw tantrums regularly.
I was hoping that this story was going to be along the lines of a local hero
(07:05):
standing up for justice for those who had been wronged.
But apparently Marvin was straight up just a jerk.
And to me, that was a little disappointing here.
Yeah, yeah, you don't like to hear that kind of stuff.
I mean, obviously what he did does show that he did have some anger issues.
He was pushed, but, you know, it's not the right response.
(07:26):
Well, apparently Marvin Heemeyer held a long standing grudge
against his local government after they approved the rezoning of his business district
to allow a concrete company to set up shop behind his small one man operation.
OK, pause. Do you see something wrong with that?
What's wrong with putting a concrete company next to your business?
(07:48):
Don't you think it might actually pull business in for you?
Yeah, but rezoning is probably going to bring more taxes, I would think.
Oh, yes, that's true.
Well, several years earlier in 1992, the city of Granby offered Marvin $250,000 US dollars
for his two acre parcel of land.
(08:08):
Marvin had bought that plot for only $42,000 just three years before in 1989.
So obviously he could walk away with a pretty decent profit here, right?
Yeah, but if I had a house that I worked hard for, I might not necessarily want to sell it right off the bat.
I mean, only having it for three years.
I don't know. Me personally, if I could turn a profit like that, I'd give it up pretty quickly.
(08:32):
Yeah, I mean, it depends on the property and what type of what kind of land it is and whatnot,
what kind of infrastructure you have there.
But I mean, getting a business started for only three years and then you have to get a new place and basically build back up.
I get that. I mean, there's two sides of it.
Well, in today's currency query, Marvin would have been given the equivalence of $547,000.
(08:56):
Would that change your mind?
That'd be tough to pass up.
Well, he initially agreed but backed out of the deal because he thought that he should get more.
Okay, so he's getting a little bit greedy here.
According to his calculations, Marvin should have gotten every bit as much of $375,000 for his two acre property.
(09:17):
And that, Corey, is $803,000 today.
Yep, picking up and moving tomorrow. Let's go.
Well, that's his calculations now because that's what he felt like he needed to get for the property.
But we know that hindsight's 2020 because after and I'm going to put this in air quotes,
the incident that I'm going to be talking about, Marvin should have taken the original offer.
(09:40):
However, city officials speculate that he deliberately upped his asking price just to make them mad and back out of the deal, which they did.
Yeah, that seems pretty reasonable.
Yep, Marvin apparently disgruntled due to the concrete plant being zoned right next door to his small business, took matters into his own hand.
(10:01):
Marvin felt that due to the inevitable, this would be a good time to begin modifying a 13 foot bulldozer that he owned.
He equipped it with a bulletproof cab and on June 4th, 2004, he started the engine and made his way through town.
But before I go on, Corey, I want to describe this bulldozer or we'll call it the Killdozer as it's best known as.
(10:26):
Did you know that there's a movie, by the way, called the Killdozer?
I actually didn't know that.
Have you seen it?
I have not.
Yeah, I remember staying at home when I was a child.
I used to get strep throat all the time and I would literally be home on the couch suffering.
I will just say the word suffering for a couple of weeks.
And there was one time I do remember watching a movie.
(10:48):
It was probably in the 70s.
And yeah, it was the Killdozer just a B rated movie probably I would call it.
Yeah, go look at that up when you have a chance.
I've had some inspiration might have absolutely.
Well, during the modification phase of this Killdozer,
he Meyer had mounted several cameras on the outside of the vehicle and three video monitors inside the cab so that he could keep a bird's eye view on what was going on around him.
(11:18):
Remember now this is probably a bulletproof cab.
So he didn't really have a clear line of vision.
And I'm kind of imagining.
Have you been inside a tank before?
I have. So what his setup was was he had I think he had a couple layers of steel on the outside of the cab basically actually the lighting the entire dozer.
(11:39):
And then his way of seeing was with cameras and they had portholes for the rifle.
I don't know if I want to if I'm jumping but yeah, he was all of his visibility was through cameras and in 2004, you know, not great camera footage.
So I'm sure that was pretty tough to see what you're doing.
Well, he had installed a 50 caliber gun on the front of the bulldozer plus two more semi-automatic rifles inside the cab that he positioned into those two portals that you had mentioned.
(12:07):
So think of an armed vehicle like you would see where when people drop off money at the bank and you've got those little portholes Marvin went on to take necessary precautions to protect the Killdozer hydraulic system.
That was ingenious thinking about that in the forefront here.
He surrounded the hydraulics with soldered armor.
(12:28):
He reinforced the cab with one quarter to one half inch metal plates plus a foot of concrete set between them.
He also installed a hinge door on the top of the bulldozer, which again, I'm kind of envisioning a tank.
Okay, so a few things here to put in perspective the 50 caliber rifle.
If you don't know guns, that's a very big round.
(12:52):
Typically for deer hunting, you're going to use like a 308 a 50 cal can go through an engine block.
That's quote unquote what it's built for, but you know, not necessarily in warfare.
And then with the hinge top door, he set it to where it could not be opened from the outside.
You could only open it from the inside.
So there was absolutely no way to get inside that vehicle.
How did he get inside?
(13:13):
He just didn't close it until he was ready to.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he had it set up to where, you know, there's basically just no door handle or anything to open that hinge door.
So once you get in, you can only open it from the inside like the locking mechanism and everything is on the inside.
Interesting. Wow.
You know a lot about this.
Oh, yeah.
You should be telling me this story, Corey.
(13:35):
On the morning of June 4th, Marvin climbed inside the killdozer,
obviously closed the hatch, started the engine and crept his way around at five miles per hour or eight kilometers per hour.
He crept around town until he reached a metal wall of the building where he had been building his killdozer,
(13:56):
then promptly pushed through the building to get outside and on his way for a leisurely morning drive at five miles an hour.
Just your morning stroll.
Well, he immediately directed his route towards the concrete plant right next door and bulldozed his way into the building.
Now imagine this site of what happened next, Corey.
(14:18):
Can you imagine waking up, getting ready for the day, drinking your coffee,
then going to work and all of a sudden a killdozer breaks through your building?
God, I'm terrified.
I think that first building was somebody involved in the local government.
I don't know if we went over it, but there was a lot more to the story as far as like them trying to buy his property.
(14:41):
The city continued to put taxes on him.
They were kind of forcing him to put in certain water lines and I'd have to go back and do more research on it.
But there was a lot of taxation.
That's really what pushed him.
It wasn't so much they just wanted to buy the property.
They were just hitting with fines over and over and over again,
stuff that he could not afford and just continuing to handle hammer down on him.
(15:05):
That's kind of what pushed him over to the edge.
Wow, to be honest, I did not read in the articles that I read for this.
It's going to be very one sided with the articles.
Kind of have to look around.
But that video I sent you a while back actually talks about it.
Like I said before, I don't condone what he did.
I think it was a little over the top, but he was truly pushed over and abused by his local government.
(15:28):
That's one of the things of taking matters in your own hands, but I don't know.
He went about it the wrong way, but there are other ways to do it.
At the end of the day, it's a story about a man that wanted to be left alone and was just pressured by his local government.
Okay, see, that's what I find fascinating.
That's why I have your perspective here because I had not heard.
Did you learn about him in any of your trainings?
(15:51):
No, I kind of just stumbled upon it.
I started getting into there was a YouTube channel that I found that does really good many documentaries.
And that was just a story on there that I thought was really cool.
All right. Well, let's talk about the concrete plant owner here.
He happened to be on the premises that morning.
He witnessed what happened and immediately jumped into his front loader to try to fend off Marvin.
(16:15):
But he was no match for that kill dozer.
I'm just kind of backing up here.
I don't know how fast a front end loader goes.
Oh, yeah. Front end loader is going to go quicker than maybe probably around up to 20.
Wow. Okay. Interesting.
Okay. I'm just kind of wondering how Marvin got the upper edge here because he carried on his way to destroy two more buildings close by,
(16:38):
but not before deliberately running over a police SUV.
Now, don't worry.
Nobody got hurt. But what would you do if you saw your police vehicle getting demolished?
It depends on if I'm inside of it or not.
But if you saw that coming at you, yeah, you'd be getting out real fast.
Yeah, I think one of the buildings was a bank maybe.
(17:02):
And then the other one, I think it may have been just some guy I didn't like.
Let's not forget about the concrete plant owner here because he was still in hot pursuit with his front end loader.
And then, of course, by this time, Cory, the helicopters are now flying overhead.
It's on the news. So it's getting a lot of publicity now.
(17:22):
But let's get back to that law enforcement's SUV.
Marvin had caught sight of two Colorado state troopers on his television screen inside the Killdozer.
They were parked near a concrete wall, probably just kind of keeping an eye on what was happening, probably trying to figure out what to do next.
I'm sure that they were having a little conversation on anticipating the moves that Marvin was making along his path.
(17:50):
Well, Marvin made a beeline towards the concrete wall with every intention of attempting to kill those two officers.
The troopers, along with several officers who were on the scene by this time, attempted to fire at Marvin in his Killdozer.
But remember, he had all that reinforcement with those steel plates, the concrete bricks.
(18:11):
And you can pretty much guess that it was bulletproof.
So he put a lot of thought into this before he actually got out on the road.
Oh, yeah. He put every thought of it. I mean, it took months to do it.
And by this point, law enforcement had snipers set up and they're probably only going to have a 308 at most, which isn't going to penetrate that steel.
There's no way. I'm pretty sure it was steel, then concrete, then steel as his armor.
(18:32):
So you're not getting through that.
Well, during this time frame, Corey Marvin became quite bored with the scene because this is where he begins making his way through town.
And now you had mentioned that he had demolished a couple of buildings along the way.
The total of buildings that he destroyed was 13.
Eleven were occupied when he attacked.
(18:53):
And I will say that no one got hurt during his rampage, but there was one death involved.
And I will mention that in just a little bit.
Marvin's next target was the local propane store.
He had made his way over to that place of business.
Remember now five miles an hour.
And he fired his 50 caliber Browning semi-automatic rifle at a propane tank sitting outside of that business.
(19:18):
Okay.
So, Corey, I just want to kind of pause here for just a moment.
I realize Americans love their guns.
But why would an ordinary citizen have one of these?
I mean, was it just for the sole purpose of this task that he is on today or?
Personally, if I had a 50 cal, it's just something cool to show my friends.
(19:39):
I mean, there's nothing, there's no real world situation.
I'm going to realistically need a 50 caliber rifle.
The only legitimate thing, like if the country fell apart and, you know, we're all out Civil War.
But even then, 50 caliber rifle is not something I'm going to want to tote around because one, it's almost impossible to suppress.
Two, it's very, very heavy.
(20:00):
Three, the rounds are very, very heavy and expensive and hard to get.
It's just not a reasonable weapon.
So it's probably something he got for himself to, you know, feel proud of and show off to his buddies and turned into his favorite weapon of choice.
Well, once he aimed the weapon at the propane tank, he then aimed his weapons at a nearby electrical transformer, hoping that between those in the propane tank that he would create an explosion.
(20:27):
But that didn't happen.
Even though he shot a total of 15 rounds between the transformers and the propane tank, nothing happened.
He just had that aim.
Of course, you know, he's inside that little tiny cab with probably the quality of those cameras was not so good.
And plus his vision was probably not as well.
Yeah, it's going to be tough to fire a 50 caliber round in that thing because there's you're sitting in a single cab and a dozer.
(20:55):
You're not going to be able to get a stable shooting platform and low visibility.
And it's a big gun with a lot of recoil and heavy.
So he's he's not going to hit anything he's trying to hit unless it's a giant propane tank.
You can hit that.
So he's not finished yet, Corey.
The next stop on his list was the local hardware store.
He went ahead and demolished that building.
(21:17):
But this is where he gets stuck in the process.
This seems to be the end of the road for him, literally, because after two hours and seven minutes,
authorities heard a muffled shot inside the killdozer cab and there was no more activity after that.
So, Corey, this was definitely the end of the road.
Muffler shop employees later told the Denver Post that not once did they ever see Marvin working on his killdozer during working hours.
(21:45):
They said they often came to work early and left late, so clearly Marvin had a late night hobby
and likely made it very clear that no one was able to enter that big metal building where he had kept his killdozer for a period of time.
And at some point, Marvin had sold that building to another business owner in town.
(22:06):
They had made an agreement that Marvin could lease a certain area for storage.
Of course, this is where he would have spent his time after hours welding together what we know as the killdozer.
OK, so backtracking a little bit.
The reason why he had shot himself at that point is because when he hit that hardware store, he had actually gotten the dozer stuck and could not move it.
(22:30):
He worked for however long to get that thing out.
It was just done.
And then he did shoot himself because I assume he was like, you know what job well done.
I did what I needed to do.
And then with the storage, yeah, he was so he'd work his regular business hours and then late at night,
he would stay up all throughout the night building that thing and hiding it from everybody that worked there.
So no one knew who was there.
No one had any clue.
(22:51):
So clearly, I mean, if you're working your all day work and then you're just going all throughout the night, you have lost your marbles and you are dedicated to what you're doing.
Absolutely. And to he was very, very clear that absolutely nobody could step foot into that space.
Yeah. And he actually left a voice recording of himself in his building for whatever they end up getting a warrant to search his area.
(23:14):
And he left a voice recording of himself explaining that he was pushed to the edge by the government that he felt that he was abused and he needed to stand up for himself
and that he had full intentions of just committing as much damage as he possibly could.
I don't think he intended to truly kill anybody, but he certainly wanted to get his own.
Well, one of the things that I think as far as his timeline and why he decided on that June date of execution,
(23:38):
we'll call it the lease on the storage space was about to expire on June 1st.
Plus, the building had been up for sale.
So he was going to be exposed rather quickly if the sale went through knowing that these timelines were approaching.
Marvin had set a date to wreak havoc on town.
Of course, that was four days after these dates.
(23:58):
So he was actually given 10 days to vacate the premises.
And this is when he decided to take everything into his own hands.
I mean, he worked for months on that thing.
So he knew he had a timeline and he got done when he needed to get done.
Well, let's talk about the buildings that Marvin destroyed.
He was very intentional on which buildings he planned to attack around town because I believe that Marvin spent at least one year modifying that killdozer.
(24:25):
So he had plenty of time to plot.
Many of the buildings that Marvin destroyed housed local government officials who helped draft that final zoning decision to have that concrete plant built next door to his muffler shop.
And then again, Corey, you also said that there were taxes involved in things like that.
So, yeah, forced water lines and everything stuff that he didn't necessarily need.
(24:49):
Nothing that he would have been prepared for if he had just bought that property three years beforehand.
Right. Correct.
All these things should have if they really wanted these things done, they should have been done prior to him buying the property.
Sure. Well, one of the buildings destroyed belonged to an 82 year old widow whose husband had been on the planning commission.
Her husband had died three years before this incident.
(25:10):
Another building was a local library where a children's program was underway as Marvin made his way over there.
Now, no one was hurt.
But I'm sure word got out very quickly that there was a killdozer in town, so they evacuated quickly when they heard that the killdozer was on its way to the library.
After Marvin destroyed the widow's home in the library, he went on to killdoze several other buildings that the widow owned, including an excavating business that her family ran right behind her property.
(25:42):
According to town officials, best estimates, it took Marvin more than a year to build his killdozer, but it only took him 127 minutes to do seven million dollars worth of damage to the town.
So he got what he wanted to do.
He did his job.
He sure did.
Well, once everything came to a halt and Marvin got his killdozer stuck, it took the SWAT team an hour, three explosives and a blowtorch to make their way into the cabin.
(26:12):
This is where they found Marvin dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
And even though everything has settled down, SWAT members felt that they still needed to continue with caution because obviously they were not sure what Marvin could have done for any last minute tricks up his sleeve like a booby trap.
Thankfully, Corey, that did not happen.
(26:33):
But given his mindset, I'm really kind of surprised that Marvin didn't try to do something like that.
Yeah, I agree.
I don't think he really wanted to actually hurt anybody.
I think he just wanted to cause as much damage as he had lost and more.
Yeah.
Well, during the search inside the killdozer, police found a list of the buildings that Marvin had planned to target that day.
Although he did not name anyone in particular as a direct target, Marvin did make mention of a few business owners plus the local mayor.
(27:01):
So I'm going to give you a couple different angles of public opinions here.
Many local residents hailed Marvin Heemeyer as a local hero for going after the town council.
After all, Corey, he didn't hurt anybody during his two hour rampage.
Never mind that he shot at a total of 12 police officers and tried to run to them over.
(27:22):
Yeah, that's not a great look.
The general public also considered Marvin Heemeyer as to be a folk hero here because he was playing V for Vendetta.
Have you ever seen that movie?
I have.
Like I mentioned before, although no one was hurt on Marvin's rampage,
he did manage to destroy 13 buildings and seven million dollars worth of damage around town.
(27:42):
And the only death here was that Marvin Heemeyer, age 52, a known jerk in the community, but apparently a local folk hero.
And that is the story of the real life killdozer, not the cheesy 1970s movie that I watched when I was a kid.
So a couple of things, like I said, it wasn't just about them trying to buy the property.
(28:05):
So there was a big and powerful family within that community.
If you don't think that they exist in your community, they do.
They own just about everything.
They were trying to buy his property.
He denied the initial offer.
So they wanted not just the concrete area, but his too, because they really wanted to expand.
He didn't want to give it up.
So he was getting with the city council and the mayor and everybody and they did everything they could.
(28:27):
They taxed them, they find him, they made him put in a, I think,
I'm pretty sure it was a water line that should have been there before he even brought the property if they really truly wanted it there.
Something he couldn't afford.
He ended up, I think, doing as much as he could and they were still having issues with it.
So they continue to find him more and more and more.
This guy truly got pushed to the edge.
(28:48):
I don't condone what he did, but they screwed him over pretty bad.
Yeah.
And you obviously know a lot about this story, which is cool because I'm asking you questions.
So are you saying that the local government was simply looking for more ways to kind of get him to vacate the property?
And that's why they wanted him to put the water lines in.
(29:09):
Yes, they were trying to force his hand.
Okay.
And then when something didn't work, they tried something else.
Yeah, he ended up going bankrupt.
Yeah, he was several thousand dollars in debt because of it.
And they were forcing his hand because he denied that initial offer and he wasn't budging.
They said, okay, we'll do every single thing that we can to screw you over and get you out of there.
We're taking that property and we're more rich and powerful than you are because he's just one guy.
(29:33):
I don't think he was married.
I don't think he had a whole lot of friends.
It's just him getting screwed over.
Aw.
It was the wrong thing to do by the government.
It was abusive.
It was corrupt.
It was evil.
Yeah.
I don't blame him for getting pushed to the edge that he was pushed to.
Again, I don't think it was the right move.
I think it was erratic and eccentric, but they truly pushed him over the edge and people are nice until they're not.
(29:55):
What could he have done instead?
Nothing.
He couldn't have done anything.
They put him in so much debt and vulnerability.
The only thing he could have done is take that initial offer.
Other than that, he couldn't have done anything.
So do you think at some point that he could have, even though he was asking for more money,
then why wouldn't the government have gone ahead and given him what he was asking for?
(30:17):
Because the government gets very greedy with their money.
Your local government probably has a lot more money than you realize and they are very, very stingy with it.
And they're more than happy to put it in pockets.
There is corruption at the absolute lowest level.
It's probably worse in your local community because there's less people to really check on them.
There is a lot of corruption.
So just it's very good to be a part of your community.
(30:37):
Be go to your local city council meetings.
It's a good idea to be a part of things because if you're not, then they're going to do things behind your back in a heartbeat.
It's impressive that you know that much about your local governments, honey.
I'm well, I mean, you're still living in the town that you grew up in.
And I was like, I had no idea there was all this going on in this town that I thought was a safe community.
(31:00):
Yeah. And I worked for my local government.
I had a buddy run for office in the town over and he's running because he saw a lot of corruption and abuse.
And he was fighting to do something about it, standing up for his community.
He's one of the most patriotic guys I know.
And he was screwed over.
They kept trying to find them.
They made a bunch of false police reports on them, slandering them online.
(31:23):
It was it was so messy.
These people have been in power for years and years and years.
And they've all got their hands in the money jar and refusing to give over the books.
It's just God, it was a mess.
And obviously he lost the election.
And yeah, I watched his mental state deteriorate.
It was getting to him.
I mean, that guy just loves his family and his community and he just got slandered.
(31:46):
And it was I felt bad for him.
It messed with his head.
It messed with his head a whole lot.
Oh, yeah, that's a shame.
Okay.
Well, Corey, that is the story that you have been waiting for this entire year.
Did I give you enough time for the jailhouse rocks?
Yeah, I was too invested in this.
I didn't have time to think about it because as you're talking, I'm just remembering more and more facts about this about this story.
(32:08):
Okay.
Yeah, I'm actually impressed that you knew so much about this one because I knew nothing.
So thanks for that.
Yeah, it's a very important story.
It should have gotten more coverage than it did.
Yeah, because I don't remember this one at all.
Yeah, it took me until a year or two to find about it.
Now, I was telling some people at work that I was about to do this story and they knew exactly what I was talking about already.
(32:29):
So I guess it just depends on where you're at in your life and what you're doing on what stories that are memorable to you.
Yeah.
So what's your teachable moment for today?
Well, Cory, you know, I just moved into a new neighborhood here and my teachable moment is to get to know your neighbors.
Besides the fact that Marvin Heemeyer was considered a jerk around town.
(32:51):
I really didn't get a good idea of what he was like.
Otherwise, you had mentioned you didn't think he was married.
Did he have kids?
Was he liked amongst his own family members?
Because you know, just because you're related to somebody,
doesn't mean you like them.
Was he a recluse?
I have so many questions about who Marvin Heemeyer was beyond being a grumpy business owner.
(33:15):
And my teachable moment here is you need to take notice of who your neighbors are regardless on if they interact with you or not.
Again, I just moved into a new neighborhood myself and I have made it my purpose to go and at least speak with the people that are living around me,
which they seem very nice.
When people move in, they reach out to welcome new neighbors or at least they used to because they certainly don't do that anymore.
(33:40):
Not that I need to know everybody's business around me, but it's a neighborly thing to do.
Plus, you might always see something that is truly off and you might want to maintain a weary eye of something that you just might want to just kind of keep in the back of your mind.
So that's my teachable moment.
I agree with that.
Just get involved with your community.
(34:01):
Be a part of your community.
Keep a close eye on your neighbors.
Keep a close eye on your government and reach out.
You never know what people are going through because this guy was clearly going through a hard time.
And like you said, I don't know if he was close to his family.
So I don't know if he had somebody to talk to.
So sometimes at the end of the day, that's all you need is somebody to talk to.
So be part of community.
Be part of your family.
Keep an eye out.
Yeah, absolutely.
(34:21):
I love that.
Well, Cory, thanks for hanging out with your mom today.
We would love to receive feedback from our listeners on this storyline or any of our other episodes.
Be sure to DM us on Instagram and look in the show notes to find our Linktree account,
which gives you more information about this podcast.
Until next time, talk to you soon.
(34:42):
See you.
Thanks for listening to Dying to be Found.
Before we go, we would love for you to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform.
Be sure to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest at Dying to be Found.
You can access our website, email, social media, and storyline request form by clicking on our Linktree account found in our show notes.
(35:05):
If you like our episodes, consider buying us a coffee at buymeacoffee.com slash Dying to be Found,
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Feel free to message us on Instagram and let us know how we're doing.
With that, be sure to check us out every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi everyone, this is Deb from Dying to be Found.
(00:03):
Before we get started, I just wanted to say that episodes contain disturbing discussions on harmful acts and crimes against animals and or humankind.
Recordings are not intended for young or sensitive audiences due to the content nature of this podcast.
Listener discretion is strongly advised.
(00:34):
Hi everyone, welcome back to Dying to be Found where I get together with some of my family members to talk true crime.
Today, Cory, my crime fighting son is here to help me out so that can only mean one thing.
Well, two things. One, you get a cop's point of view on criminal behavior.
And two, Cory, you've been roped into something I like to call a jailhouse rock.
(00:58):
So I hope you're prepared for that today.
Is that something that's going to bring me back to the jail days?
Absolutely. You've given us a couple stories and I like them.
So I figured that'd be a really good thing for you to just kind of start us out with.
How about that?
I don't have a story prepared at all.
OK, I will come back to you because I wanted to give a shout out to one of our listeners.
If you've listened to enough episodes, you know that I teach during the day and podcast at night.
(01:22):
I had reached out to Cory to a parent just before winter break.
And during our discussion, she threw in that she loves this podcast.
So, Stacey, thank you so much for your kind words.
It's always great to get listener feedback.
Cory, I'm going to come back to you.
You're pretty awesome as well.
I won't throw you out to the birds.
But how about that jailhouse story?
(01:44):
That's all the time I got.
Give me a minute. I got to it's been years, so I'm trying to think of.
OK, how about this?
Tell us about that video you sent me.
Oh, it was just a it was an alarm call.
Somebody's alarm went off at their house.
I want to go check it out.
And down here where we're at, we have these freaking spiders are invasive.
(02:07):
They make these giant webs and they're black and yellow.
They're everywhere.
And I go to reach up to knock on their door and I just feel web all over my entire body.
And I freaked out and it was all on ring camera.
And I didn't see that there was a ring camera at the time.
So I was just trying to get out of there.
And I'm walking away from the front door because obviously they don't use the front door.
(02:29):
Some people use the side door.
I was like, OK, I'll go check the other doors, because if there was a burglar,
they would have they would have hit that way before I did.
They would have been freaked out for a runaway, too.
So I was walking away, going to the other doors.
And I'm thinking, man, I hope there wasn't a ring camera there.
And then a couple of hours later, my captain, he used to be my lieutenant on the road.
And now he's the captain over in the jail.
(02:49):
And he sends me this video and said, hey, I know the people that live here.
And they sent me this video of you just absolutely losing your marbles
when you hit that spider web.
God, it was so embarrassing.
I don't know anybody out there who, unless you're an enthusiast
to have a tarantula in your aquarium in your bedroom, you know,
there are people that do that, exotic animals.
But me personally, no.
(03:10):
Yeah, we had a pretty bad.
It wasn't as bad this year as it was last year.
We were on a track one time.
We were tracking somebody in the woods and they're not too bad deep in the woods.
But right at the beginning of the woods, there's a lot of them because, you know,
there's not a whole lot of insects flying around as much in the actual woods.
And I walked right into one and I made a little bit more noise than I should have
because we're trying to be quiet.
(03:31):
I wouldn't say that it's a fear, but I had no idea that you didn't like spiders like that.
Yeah, I can't stand them.
It's gotten better over the years since I'm around them so much more.
And I know that I'm so much bigger than them.
So it's gotten better, but I still I truly don't like them.
Once I feel that web on me, I'm going to be nervous that it's on me for the rest of the day.
For sure. OK, well, guess what?
(03:53):
I'm going to tell our listeners another little sweet little story about you.
When you were a toddler, do you remember that you had a fascination
with construction vehicles? Yes.
What did you like about them?
I thought they were big and yellow and cool.
And I remember I was called a beep beep because I didn't know the name of any of them.
Yes. Anytime that we would see heavy machinery on the road or in a book,
(04:14):
that's exactly what you would say.
You would do the beep beep sound. Yeah.
That was so cute. Yeah. Cool.
Because after whatever I worked on that farm, I got to actually work
on all that kind of stuff, too. So it's a fun job to do.
Childhood dreams come true.
Yeah, it's a fun job to do. I enjoy doing it.
I like working with heavy machinery.
Tell me the difference between a bulldozer and a front end loader.
The bulldozer is more so for grading.
(04:36):
It's got a big blade on it.
It's not so much of a bucket.
You can't pick dirt up with it.
You're just grading out the land, leveling it out, basically.
And the front end loaders for moving dirt.
OK, so the bulldozer grades. Yep.
And the front end loader has a big it's got a big bucket,
kind of like an excavator, you know, the big thing with the arm.
OK, I got you.
(04:56):
So that's for digging a hole. Yes.
And you're going to put all that dirt in a pile.
And then that front end loader is going to take all that dirt
and move it from one location to another, which is usually like a dump truck.
OK, got you. Well, thanks for that.
I appreciate that.
Because if you've not figured it out yet, you gave me this idea.
We're going to be talking about Marvin Heemeyer.
(05:17):
Oh, is this the killdozer? It's the killdozer.
Yes. I love this.
I was wondering once you brought up the.
You know, I always start out with a question to kind of get us in the mind frame.
I was wondering if you're going to figure it out.
Yeah, I started. I started wondering once he brought up the front end loader.
I was like in the bulldozer.
I was like, oh, man, I hope this is the killdozer.
(05:38):
Yeah, for our listeners, we don't always talk about high profile stories here,
but we do leave our content open to interpretation of true crime.
Today, we're going to be talking about a man who really got ticked off
at his local government and took action on his own terms. Yeah.
How do you think about the story? How did I think about it?
(05:59):
You told me, I think during one of our podcasts you had mentioned it.
I think I sent you the video on it. You did.
Pretty cool story, right?
It's a very interesting story, to say the least.
Absolutely. So hang with me, because we're going to talk about Marvin first.
And it's a good story.
Marvin was 52 years old and owned a muffler shop in Granby, Colorado.
(06:21):
Which is a town about 85 miles or 137 kilometers northwest of Denver.
According to the U.S. Census, Granby had a population of
two thousand twenty nine people way back in 2022.
So, you know, that number was much smaller in 2004 when this story takes place.
(06:41):
Marvin was 6'4". He weighed 230 pounds.
So he was considered a pretty big guy.
And he was known around town to be somewhat unpleasant,
which, Corey, I'm actually putting a little mildly here.
He was straight up angry.
And apparently he threw tantrums regularly.
I was hoping that this story was going to be along the lines of a local hero
(07:05):
standing up for justice for those who had been wronged.
But apparently Marvin was straight up just a jerk.
And to me, that was a little disappointing here.
Yeah, yeah, you don't like to hear that kind of stuff.
I mean, obviously what he did does show that he did have some anger issues.
He was pushed, but, you know, it's not the right response.
(07:26):
Well, apparently Marvin Heemeyer held a long standing grudge
against his local government after they approved the rezoning of his business district
to allow a concrete company to set up shop behind his small one man operation.
OK, pause. Do you see something wrong with that?
What's wrong with putting a concrete company next to your business?
(07:48):
Don't you think it might actually pull business in for you?
Yeah, but rezoning is probably going to bring more taxes, I would think.
Oh, yes, that's true.
Well, several years earlier in 1992, the city of Granby offered Marvin $250,000 US dollars
for his two acre parcel of land.
(08:08):
Marvin had bought that plot for only $42,000 just three years before in 1989.
So obviously he could walk away with a pretty decent profit here, right?
Yeah, but if I had a house that I worked hard for, I might not necessarily want to sell it right off the bat.
I mean, only having it for three years.
I don't know. Me personally, if I could turn a profit like that, I'd give it up pretty quickly.
(08:32):
Yeah, I mean, it depends on the property and what type of what kind of land it is and whatnot,
what kind of infrastructure you have there.
But I mean, getting a business started for only three years and then you have to get a new place and basically build back up.
I get that. I mean, there's two sides of it.
Well, in today's currency query, Marvin would have been given the equivalence of $547,000.
(08:56):
Would that change your mind?
That'd be tough to pass up.
Well, he initially agreed but backed out of the deal because he thought that he should get more.
Okay, so he's getting a little bit greedy here.
According to his calculations, Marvin should have gotten every bit as much of $375,000 for his two acre property.
(09:17):
And that, Corey, is $803,000 today.
Yep, picking up and moving tomorrow. Let's go.
Well, that's his calculations now because that's what he felt like he needed to get for the property.
But we know that hindsight's 2020 because after and I'm going to put this in air quotes,
the incident that I'm going to be talking about, Marvin should have taken the original offer.
(09:40):
However, city officials speculate that he deliberately upped his asking price just to make them mad and back out of the deal, which they did.
Yeah, that seems pretty reasonable.
Yep, Marvin apparently disgruntled due to the concrete plant being zoned right next door to his small business, took matters into his own hand.
(10:01):
Marvin felt that due to the inevitable, this would be a good time to begin modifying a 13 foot bulldozer that he owned.
He equipped it with a bulletproof cab and on June 4th, 2004, he started the engine and made his way through town.
But before I go on, Corey, I want to describe this bulldozer or we'll call it the Killdozer as it's best known as.
(10:26):
Did you know that there's a movie, by the way, called the Killdozer?
I actually didn't know that.
Have you seen it?
I have not.
Yeah, I remember staying at home when I was a child.
I used to get strep throat all the time and I would literally be home on the couch suffering.
I will just say the word suffering for a couple of weeks.
And there was one time I do remember watching a movie.
(10:48):
It was probably in the 70s.
And yeah, it was the Killdozer just a B rated movie probably I would call it.
Yeah, go look at that up when you have a chance.
I've had some inspiration might have absolutely.
Well, during the modification phase of this Killdozer,
he Meyer had mounted several cameras on the outside of the vehicle and three video monitors inside the cab so that he could keep a bird's eye view on what was going on around him.
(11:18):
Remember now this is probably a bulletproof cab.
So he didn't really have a clear line of vision.
And I'm kind of imagining.
Have you been inside a tank before?
I have. So what his setup was was he had I think he had a couple layers of steel on the outside of the cab basically actually the lighting the entire dozer.
(11:39):
And then his way of seeing was with cameras and they had portholes for the rifle.
I don't know if I want to if I'm jumping but yeah, he was all of his visibility was through cameras and in 2004, you know, not great camera footage.
So I'm sure that was pretty tough to see what you're doing.
Well, he had installed a 50 caliber gun on the front of the bulldozer plus two more semi-automatic rifles inside the cab that he positioned into those two portals that you had mentioned.
(12:07):
So think of an armed vehicle like you would see where when people drop off money at the bank and you've got those little portholes Marvin went on to take necessary precautions to protect the Killdozer hydraulic system.
That was ingenious thinking about that in the forefront here.
He surrounded the hydraulics with soldered armor.
(12:28):
He reinforced the cab with one quarter to one half inch metal plates plus a foot of concrete set between them.
He also installed a hinge door on the top of the bulldozer, which again, I'm kind of envisioning a tank.
Okay, so a few things here to put in perspective the 50 caliber rifle.
If you don't know guns, that's a very big round.
(12:52):
Typically for deer hunting, you're going to use like a 308 a 50 cal can go through an engine block.
That's quote unquote what it's built for, but you know, not necessarily in warfare.
And then with the hinge top door, he set it to where it could not be opened from the outside.
You could only open it from the inside.
So there was absolutely no way to get inside that vehicle.
How did he get inside?
(13:13):
He just didn't close it until he was ready to.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he had it set up to where, you know, there's basically just no door handle or anything to open that hinge door.
So once you get in, you can only open it from the inside like the locking mechanism and everything is on the inside.
Interesting. Wow.
You know a lot about this.
Oh, yeah.
You should be telling me this story, Corey.
(13:35):
On the morning of June 4th, Marvin climbed inside the killdozer,
obviously closed the hatch, started the engine and crept his way around at five miles per hour or eight kilometers per hour.
He crept around town until he reached a metal wall of the building where he had been building his killdozer,
(13:56):
then promptly pushed through the building to get outside and on his way for a leisurely morning drive at five miles an hour.
Just your morning stroll.
Well, he immediately directed his route towards the concrete plant right next door and bulldozed his way into the building.
Now imagine this site of what happened next, Corey.
(14:18):
Can you imagine waking up, getting ready for the day, drinking your coffee,
then going to work and all of a sudden a killdozer breaks through your building?
God, I'm terrified.
I think that first building was somebody involved in the local government.
I don't know if we went over it, but there was a lot more to the story as far as like them trying to buy his property.
(14:41):
The city continued to put taxes on him.
They were kind of forcing him to put in certain water lines and I'd have to go back and do more research on it.
But there was a lot of taxation.
That's really what pushed him.
It wasn't so much they just wanted to buy the property.
They were just hitting with fines over and over and over again,
stuff that he could not afford and just continuing to handle hammer down on him.
(15:05):
That's kind of what pushed him over to the edge.
Wow, to be honest, I did not read in the articles that I read for this.
It's going to be very one sided with the articles.
Kind of have to look around.
But that video I sent you a while back actually talks about it.
Like I said before, I don't condone what he did.
I think it was a little over the top, but he was truly pushed over and abused by his local government.
(15:28):
That's one of the things of taking matters in your own hands, but I don't know.
He went about it the wrong way, but there are other ways to do it.
At the end of the day, it's a story about a man that wanted to be left alone and was just pressured by his local government.
Okay, see, that's what I find fascinating.
That's why I have your perspective here because I had not heard.
Did you learn about him in any of your trainings?
(15:51):
No, I kind of just stumbled upon it.
I started getting into there was a YouTube channel that I found that does really good many documentaries.
And that was just a story on there that I thought was really cool.
All right. Well, let's talk about the concrete plant owner here.
He happened to be on the premises that morning.
He witnessed what happened and immediately jumped into his front loader to try to fend off Marvin.
(16:15):
But he was no match for that kill dozer.
I'm just kind of backing up here.
I don't know how fast a front end loader goes.
Oh, yeah. Front end loader is going to go quicker than maybe probably around up to 20.
Wow. Okay. Interesting.
Okay. I'm just kind of wondering how Marvin got the upper edge here because he carried on his way to destroy two more buildings close by,
(16:38):
but not before deliberately running over a police SUV.
Now, don't worry.
Nobody got hurt. But what would you do if you saw your police vehicle getting demolished?
It depends on if I'm inside of it or not.
But if you saw that coming at you, yeah, you'd be getting out real fast.
Yeah, I think one of the buildings was a bank maybe.
(17:02):
And then the other one, I think it may have been just some guy I didn't like.
Let's not forget about the concrete plant owner here because he was still in hot pursuit with his front end loader.
And then, of course, by this time, Cory, the helicopters are now flying overhead.
It's on the news. So it's getting a lot of publicity now.
(17:22):
But let's get back to that law enforcement's SUV.
Marvin had caught sight of two Colorado state troopers on his television screen inside the Killdozer.
They were parked near a concrete wall, probably just kind of keeping an eye on what was happening, probably trying to figure out what to do next.
I'm sure that they were having a little conversation on anticipating the moves that Marvin was making along his path.
(17:50):
Well, Marvin made a beeline towards the concrete wall with every intention of attempting to kill those two officers.
The troopers, along with several officers who were on the scene by this time, attempted to fire at Marvin in his Killdozer.
But remember, he had all that reinforcement with those steel plates, the concrete bricks.
(18:11):
And you can pretty much guess that it was bulletproof.
So he put a lot of thought into this before he actually got out on the road.
Oh, yeah. He put every thought of it. I mean, it took months to do it.
And by this point, law enforcement had snipers set up and they're probably only going to have a 308 at most, which isn't going to penetrate that steel.
There's no way. I'm pretty sure it was steel, then concrete, then steel as his armor.
(18:32):
So you're not getting through that.
Well, during this time frame, Corey Marvin became quite bored with the scene because this is where he begins making his way through town.
And now you had mentioned that he had demolished a couple of buildings along the way.
The total of buildings that he destroyed was 13.
Eleven were occupied when he attacked.
(18:53):
And I will say that no one got hurt during his rampage, but there was one death involved.
And I will mention that in just a little bit.
Marvin's next target was the local propane store.
He had made his way over to that place of business.
Remember now five miles an hour.
And he fired his 50 caliber Browning semi-automatic rifle at a propane tank sitting outside of that business.
(19:18):
Okay.
So, Corey, I just want to kind of pause here for just a moment.
I realize Americans love their guns.
But why would an ordinary citizen have one of these?
I mean, was it just for the sole purpose of this task that he is on today or?
Personally, if I had a 50 cal, it's just something cool to show my friends.
(19:39):
I mean, there's nothing, there's no real world situation.
I'm going to realistically need a 50 caliber rifle.
The only legitimate thing, like if the country fell apart and, you know, we're all out Civil War.
But even then, 50 caliber rifle is not something I'm going to want to tote around because one, it's almost impossible to suppress.
Two, it's very, very heavy.
(20:00):
Three, the rounds are very, very heavy and expensive and hard to get.
It's just not a reasonable weapon.
So it's probably something he got for himself to, you know, feel proud of and show off to his buddies and turned into his favorite weapon of choice.
Well, once he aimed the weapon at the propane tank, he then aimed his weapons at a nearby electrical transformer, hoping that between those in the propane tank that he would create an explosion.
(20:27):
But that didn't happen.
Even though he shot a total of 15 rounds between the transformers and the propane tank, nothing happened.
He just had that aim.
Of course, you know, he's inside that little tiny cab with probably the quality of those cameras was not so good.
And plus his vision was probably not as well.
Yeah, it's going to be tough to fire a 50 caliber round in that thing because there's you're sitting in a single cab and a dozer.
(20:55):
You're not going to be able to get a stable shooting platform and low visibility.
And it's a big gun with a lot of recoil and heavy.
So he's he's not going to hit anything he's trying to hit unless it's a giant propane tank.
You can hit that.
So he's not finished yet, Corey.
The next stop on his list was the local hardware store.
He went ahead and demolished that building.
(21:17):
But this is where he gets stuck in the process.
This seems to be the end of the road for him, literally, because after two hours and seven minutes,
authorities heard a muffled shot inside the killdozer cab and there was no more activity after that.
So, Corey, this was definitely the end of the road.
Muffler shop employees later told the Denver Post that not once did they ever see Marvin working on his killdozer during working hours.
(21:45):
They said they often came to work early and left late, so clearly Marvin had a late night hobby
and likely made it very clear that no one was able to enter that big metal building where he had kept his killdozer for a period of time.
And at some point, Marvin had sold that building to another business owner in town.
(22:06):
They had made an agreement that Marvin could lease a certain area for storage.
Of course, this is where he would have spent his time after hours welding together what we know as the killdozer.
OK, so backtracking a little bit.
The reason why he had shot himself at that point is because when he hit that hardware store, he had actually gotten the dozer stuck and could not move it.
(22:30):
He worked for however long to get that thing out.
It was just done.
And then he did shoot himself because I assume he was like, you know what job well done.
I did what I needed to do.
And then with the storage, yeah, he was so he'd work his regular business hours and then late at night,
he would stay up all throughout the night building that thing and hiding it from everybody that worked there.
So no one knew who was there.
No one had any clue.
(22:51):
So clearly, I mean, if you're working your all day work and then you're just going all throughout the night, you have lost your marbles and you are dedicated to what you're doing.
Absolutely. And to he was very, very clear that absolutely nobody could step foot into that space.
Yeah. And he actually left a voice recording of himself in his building for whatever they end up getting a warrant to search his area.
(23:14):
And he left a voice recording of himself explaining that he was pushed to the edge by the government that he felt that he was abused and he needed to stand up for himself
and that he had full intentions of just committing as much damage as he possibly could.
I don't think he intended to truly kill anybody, but he certainly wanted to get his own.
Well, one of the things that I think as far as his timeline and why he decided on that June date of execution,
(23:38):
we'll call it the lease on the storage space was about to expire on June 1st.
Plus, the building had been up for sale.
So he was going to be exposed rather quickly if the sale went through knowing that these timelines were approaching.
Marvin had set a date to wreak havoc on town.
Of course, that was four days after these dates.
(23:58):
So he was actually given 10 days to vacate the premises.
And this is when he decided to take everything into his own hands.
I mean, he worked for months on that thing.
So he knew he had a timeline and he got done when he needed to get done.
Well, let's talk about the buildings that Marvin destroyed.
He was very intentional on which buildings he planned to attack around town because I believe that Marvin spent at least one year modifying that killdozer.
(24:25):
So he had plenty of time to plot.
Many of the buildings that Marvin destroyed housed local government officials who helped draft that final zoning decision to have that concrete plant built next door to his muffler shop.
And then again, Corey, you also said that there were taxes involved in things like that.
So, yeah, forced water lines and everything stuff that he didn't necessarily need.
(24:49):
Nothing that he would have been prepared for if he had just bought that property three years beforehand.
Right. Correct.
All these things should have if they really wanted these things done, they should have been done prior to him buying the property.
Sure. Well, one of the buildings destroyed belonged to an 82 year old widow whose husband had been on the planning commission.
Her husband had died three years before this incident.
(25:10):
Another building was a local library where a children's program was underway as Marvin made his way over there.
Now, no one was hurt.
But I'm sure word got out very quickly that there was a killdozer in town, so they evacuated quickly when they heard that the killdozer was on its way to the library.
After Marvin destroyed the widow's home in the library, he went on to killdoze several other buildings that the widow owned, including an excavating business that her family ran right behind her property.
(25:42):
According to town officials, best estimates, it took Marvin more than a year to build his killdozer, but it only took him 127 minutes to do seven million dollars worth of damage to the town.
So he got what he wanted to do.
He did his job.
He sure did.
Well, once everything came to a halt and Marvin got his killdozer stuck, it took the SWAT team an hour, three explosives and a blowtorch to make their way into the cabin.
(26:12):
This is where they found Marvin dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
And even though everything has settled down, SWAT members felt that they still needed to continue with caution because obviously they were not sure what Marvin could have done for any last minute tricks up his sleeve like a booby trap.
Thankfully, Corey, that did not happen.
(26:33):
But given his mindset, I'm really kind of surprised that Marvin didn't try to do something like that.
Yeah, I agree.
I don't think he really wanted to actually hurt anybody.
I think he just wanted to cause as much damage as he had lost and more.
Yeah.
Well, during the search inside the killdozer, police found a list of the buildings that Marvin had planned to target that day.
Although he did not name anyone in particular as a direct target, Marvin did make mention of a few business owners plus the local mayor.
(27:01):
So I'm going to give you a couple different angles of public opinions here.
Many local residents hailed Marvin Heemeyer as a local hero for going after the town council.
After all, Corey, he didn't hurt anybody during his two hour rampage.
Never mind that he shot at a total of 12 police officers and tried to run to them over.
(27:22):
Yeah, that's not a great look.
The general public also considered Marvin Heemeyer as to be a folk hero here because he was playing V for Vendetta.
Have you ever seen that movie?
I have.
Like I mentioned before, although no one was hurt on Marvin's rampage,
he did manage to destroy 13 buildings and seven million dollars worth of damage around town.
(27:42):
And the only death here was that Marvin Heemeyer, age 52, a known jerk in the community, but apparently a local folk hero.
And that is the story of the real life killdozer, not the cheesy 1970s movie that I watched when I was a kid.
So a couple of things, like I said, it wasn't just about them trying to buy the property.
(28:05):
So there was a big and powerful family within that community.
If you don't think that they exist in your community, they do.
They own just about everything.
They were trying to buy his property.
He denied the initial offer.
So they wanted not just the concrete area, but his too, because they really wanted to expand.
He didn't want to give it up.
So he was getting with the city council and the mayor and everybody and they did everything they could.
(28:27):
They taxed them, they find him, they made him put in a, I think,
I'm pretty sure it was a water line that should have been there before he even brought the property if they really truly wanted it there.
Something he couldn't afford.
He ended up, I think, doing as much as he could and they were still having issues with it.
So they continue to find him more and more and more.
This guy truly got pushed to the edge.
(28:48):
I don't condone what he did, but they screwed him over pretty bad.
Yeah.
And you obviously know a lot about this story, which is cool because I'm asking you questions.
So are you saying that the local government was simply looking for more ways to kind of get him to vacate the property?
And that's why they wanted him to put the water lines in.
(29:09):
Yes, they were trying to force his hand.
Okay.
And then when something didn't work, they tried something else.
Yeah, he ended up going bankrupt.
Yeah, he was several thousand dollars in debt because of it.
And they were forcing his hand because he denied that initial offer and he wasn't budging.
They said, okay, we'll do every single thing that we can to screw you over and get you out of there.
We're taking that property and we're more rich and powerful than you are because he's just one guy.
(29:33):
I don't think he was married.
I don't think he had a whole lot of friends.
It's just him getting screwed over.
Aw.
It was the wrong thing to do by the government.
It was abusive.
It was corrupt.
It was evil.
Yeah.
I don't blame him for getting pushed to the edge that he was pushed to.
Again, I don't think it was the right move.
I think it was erratic and eccentric, but they truly pushed him over the edge and people are nice until they're not.
(29:55):
What could he have done instead?
Nothing.
He couldn't have done anything.
They put him in so much debt and vulnerability.
The only thing he could have done is take that initial offer.
Other than that, he couldn't have done anything.
So do you think at some point that he could have, even though he was asking for more money,
then why wouldn't the government have gone ahead and given him what he was asking for?
(30:17):
Because the government gets very greedy with their money.
Your local government probably has a lot more money than you realize and they are very, very stingy with it.
And they're more than happy to put it in pockets.
There is corruption at the absolute lowest level.
It's probably worse in your local community because there's less people to really check on them.
There is a lot of corruption.
So just it's very good to be a part of your community.
(30:37):
Be go to your local city council meetings.
It's a good idea to be a part of things because if you're not, then they're going to do things behind your back in a heartbeat.
It's impressive that you know that much about your local governments, honey.
I'm well, I mean, you're still living in the town that you grew up in.
And I was like, I had no idea there was all this going on in this town that I thought was a safe community.
(31:00):
Yeah. And I worked for my local government.
I had a buddy run for office in the town over and he's running because he saw a lot of corruption and abuse.
And he was fighting to do something about it, standing up for his community.
He's one of the most patriotic guys I know.
And he was screwed over.
They kept trying to find them.
They made a bunch of false police reports on them, slandering them online.
(31:23):
It was it was so messy.
These people have been in power for years and years and years.
And they've all got their hands in the money jar and refusing to give over the books.
It's just God, it was a mess.
And obviously he lost the election.
And yeah, I watched his mental state deteriorate.
It was getting to him.
I mean, that guy just loves his family and his community and he just got slandered.
(31:46):
And it was I felt bad for him.
It messed with his head.
It messed with his head a whole lot.
Oh, yeah, that's a shame.
Okay.
Well, Corey, that is the story that you have been waiting for this entire year.
Did I give you enough time for the jailhouse rocks?
Yeah, I was too invested in this.
I didn't have time to think about it because as you're talking, I'm just remembering more and more facts about this about this story.
(32:08):
Okay.
Yeah, I'm actually impressed that you knew so much about this one because I knew nothing.
So thanks for that.
Yeah, it's a very important story.
It should have gotten more coverage than it did.
Yeah, because I don't remember this one at all.
Yeah, it took me until a year or two to find about it.
Now, I was telling some people at work that I was about to do this story and they knew exactly what I was talking about already.
(32:29):
So I guess it just depends on where you're at in your life and what you're doing on what stories that are memorable to you.
Yeah.
So what's your teachable moment for today?
Well, Cory, you know, I just moved into a new neighborhood here and my teachable moment is to get to know your neighbors.
Besides the fact that Marvin Heemeyer was considered a jerk around town.
(32:51):
I really didn't get a good idea of what he was like.
Otherwise, you had mentioned you didn't think he was married.
Did he have kids?
Was he liked amongst his own family members?
Because you know, just because you're related to somebody,
doesn't mean you like them.
Was he a recluse?
I have so many questions about who Marvin Heemeyer was beyond being a grumpy business owner.
(33:15):
And my teachable moment here is you need to take notice of who your neighbors are regardless on if they interact with you or not.
Again, I just moved into a new neighborhood myself and I have made it my purpose to go and at least speak with the people that are living around me,
which they seem very nice.
When people move in, they reach out to welcome new neighbors or at least they used to because they certainly don't do that anymore.
(33:40):
Not that I need to know everybody's business around me, but it's a neighborly thing to do.
Plus, you might always see something that is truly off and you might want to maintain a weary eye of something that you just might want to just kind of keep in the back of your mind.
So that's my teachable moment.
I agree with that.
Just get involved with your community.
(34:01):
Be a part of your community.
Keep a close eye on your neighbors.
Keep a close eye on your government and reach out.
You never know what people are going through because this guy was clearly going through a hard time.
And like you said, I don't know if he was close to his family.
So I don't know if he had somebody to talk to.
So sometimes at the end of the day, that's all you need is somebody to talk to.
So be part of community.
Be part of your family.
Keep an eye out.
Yeah, absolutely.
(34:21):
I love that.
Well, Cory, thanks for hanging out with your mom today.
We would love to receive feedback from our listeners on this storyline or any of our other episodes.
Be sure to DM us on Instagram and look in the show notes to find our Linktree account,
which gives you more information about this podcast.
Until next time, talk to you soon.
(34:42):
See you.
Thanks for listening to Dying to be Found.
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(35:05):
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