Hi and welcome to Serial Sisters, a podcast where my sister and I tell each other true crime stories. I'm Kristen. And I'm Devana. And this week Devana has a story for me.
So this week I'm going to tell you the story of Marvin Heemier, which is also known as the Killdozer. Oh I know this one! I thought you might but I wasn't sure. I like this one.
I heard a few articles about it but I don't think that I've heard a podcast cover it. I don't think I have either. I just saw something. I think on Facebook maybe.
Okay yeah. So I got information from a cracked article by Robert Evans and Wikipedia. So on June 4th 2004, Marvin Heemier, a welder and businessman who ran a muffler shop in Granby, Colorado, drove an armored bulldozer through the wall of his former business. He then made his way to the concrete plant, the town hall, the office of the local newspaper, and I'll explain his motives a little bit later.
Yeah. The home of a former mayor and a hardware store as well as a few other buildings. The attack lasted two hours and seven minutes and damaged 13 buildings. It also knocked out natural gas service to the town hall and the concrete plant damaged a truck and destroyed part of the utility service center.
Damn. So now to tell you how this all started. Marvin Heemier was born on October 28th 1951 in South Dakota and he lived in Grand Lake, Colorado, which was about 16 miles outside of Granby. He had lived in the town 10 years before the incident.
His friends stated that he had no relatives in the area. Another friend of Heemier described him as like a whole person and stated that he would bend over backwards for anyone. But there were also reports from a customer of his mother's shop that he had threatened to man after the customer refused to pay for a disputed month to repair. In 1992, Heemier purchased two acres of land from the Resolution Trust Corporation, the federal agency organized to handle the assets of failed savings and loan associations.
He purchased the land to build a mother shop and subsequently agreed to sell the land to Cody Doshyff, I think is how you say his name, to build a concrete batch plant, which was called Mountain Park Concrete. The gree price was $250,000. According to Cody's wife, Heemier changed his mind, increased the price to $370,000 and later demanded a deal worth approximately $1 million. Jesus.
Yeah, so a little bit off the rails right there. So also in the early 90s, Heemier got involved in the campaign to legalize gambling in the city and even launched his own newspaper to promote it. The town's newspaper had come out against the measure, which was eventually voted down, which is important later. In 2001, Granby's Zoni Commission and Trustee has approved the construction of the concrete plant.
Heemier attempted to appeal the decision that was unsuccessful. He claimed that the construction blocked access to his shop and he had bought the bulldozer to create a new road to his shop, but permission for that was denied. He was fined $200, $2,500 by the town council and a city judge for various violations, including not being hooked up to the sewer line. He had initially been unable to connect to the new sewer line as a line ran some 60 feet away from his property and the city expected him to pay nearly $80,000, the cost of laying the connector.
So that doesn't really sound like fun at all. But what I gather from this is that he was just illegally dumping sewage. And so after the concrete plant was built, the city council denied him the easement necessary to join the new line underneath the plant. And at this point, Heemier was forced to sell his shop.
Enter the killdozer. The bulldozer was a modified cotton mowed D335A, which I don't really know what that means, but that's what it was. It was fitted with makeshift armor plating covering the cabin, engine and parts of the track. In places the armor was over one foot thick, consisting of 5,000 pounds per square inch concrete, quick right concrete mix sandwiched between sheets of tool steel to make a composite armor.
For visibility, the bulldozer was fitted with several video cameras linked to two monitors mounted on the dashboard. And the cameras were protected on the outside by three inch shields of clear bullet-craft Lexan. Compressed air nozzles were fitted to blow dust away from the camera. So like he really fucking thought it out.
The suit was thorough. So there was also an onboard fan and an air conditioner to keep my eye cool while he smashed into buildings. Which I was like, that would be comfortable, right? Right?
So he had made what you're gonna be doing it for three hours. So you're like, I don't want to be sweating my ass off. So he had made three gun ports fitted for a 50 caliber rifle, a 308 semi-automatic rifle and a 22 LR rifle, all fitted with a three inch thick steel plate. And he apparently had no intention of leaving the cabin once entering it.
People also said that he had welded himself inside the bulldozer, but that really couldn't be verified. Yeah. Authorities initially speculated that he may have used a homemade crane, which was later found in his garage, to lower the armor hull over the dozer and himself. He took about a year and a half to prepare.
And in his notes he wrote, it is interesting to observe that I was never caught. This was a part-time project over a one and a half year time period. He was also surprised when several men who had visited the shed late the previous year had not noticed the modified bulldozer, especially with a 2,000 pound lift fully exposed. On the day of the rampage, Leo Pichocki, investing in a sergeant of the Grand County Sheriff's Office was off duty.
He was in his driveway working on a car when he heard gunshots and sirens and radio traffic about someone destroying buildings, which like, I don't even know what I would think at that point. Right. He was trying buildings like gunshots is one thing. So after arriving on the scene, he started recording video because it's not something that he was trained for.
No, he was trained for that. What the fuck do I do? I just stepped into an action movie. What the fuck is happening?
So Patrick Brower was at work at the local newspaper when the killdozer came to kill Doze's office. And most of the staff had evacuated because who the fuck wants to fast face a massive tank? Yes, I'm worth it. But Brower and one of his coworkers stayed behind to cover the rampage.
Brower was quoted as saying, suddenly the bulldozer goes in front of our office, makes a sharp right turn, and I watched the front wall of our office crumbles only 10 feet away from my very body. Jesus, that's so scary. He says, I was inside the building when he hit it. I like to tell people that if I had tripped, I might have died, but luckily I didn't trip and we quickly ran off the back door.
So fuck, I cannot even imagine. No, that's so scary. I don't even know why you'd say unless I'm the owner, you're not paying me enough to stay through that. But though, my commitment to journalism is not that high.
And of course, this wasn't a random target on He-Miers part of Brower worked at the newspaper that had come out against the gambling measure. And Brower next heard gunshots. The whole cops hit it 200 times without much annoying the tank or the man inside. Patrick says that they attempted and failed to knock the bulldozer over with other bulldozers, which like, that is just the funniest part to me.
Oh my gosh. It's just like a monster truck that they know. Like, you're just fucking playing a chicken. And he said, it just knocked them out of the way like they were nothing.
Yeah. Another officer tried throwing a flash bang into the vehicle's exhaust. And this is the best part. At one point, under Sheriff Glen trainer climbed a top bulldozer and wrote it like a Bronco Buster trying to figure out a way to get a bullet inside the dragon, which was his direct quote.
That's just funny. Oh gosh. But like, and he was forced to jump off to avoid being hit by debris. But he just fucking tries to.
I'm all right. Oh my God. Local authorities in the Colorado state patrol feared that they were running out of options in terms of firepower and that he might have soon turned against civilians in Grandby. Governor Bill Owens allegedly considered authorizing the National Guard to use either an Apache attack helicopter equipped with a javelin anti tank missile to destroy the bulldozer.
Jesus. And later, he says that he never considered that. But yeah, Grant White is a veteran SWAT officer and SWAT trainer who along with his team were called to the same that day. And a little note about Grant, he was one of the first officers on the scene during the Columbine shooting just five years earlier.
So he's seen some shit. Yeah, he drove his team to Grant a Grammy. But whenever they had planned to get a chance to put into action, the radiator on he mires vehicle blue and got stuck as it destroyed one last building. And at this point, he might have pulled out a 357 caliber handgun and shot himself in the head.
Which like, okay, Grant White is does not consider Marvin Heemeyer a hero, although some do and we'll talk about that in a minute. But he does say that one guy building such a thing was nothing short of phenomenal. Yeah, he was in charge of cracking open the bulldozer after the rampage ended. After consulting with an expert on what exactly kind of charge he would take to open up the tank, they bring one up and detonated it.
But it only made a small dent. That's it. Jesus Christ. It survived two more blasts before crew simply settled in to cut their way in using blow torches, which took hours.
Yeah, no shit. Oh my God. White is maintained that the tank hadn't broken down. The damage could have continued until he might have ran out of gas or structures to flatten.
Which like, imagine he was like, I guess I did them all and done. Yeah. Just sitting there in like an empty town, everything's just fucking gone. He's like, yeah, I did it.
Uh huh. Fuck yeah, go me. He said later, there are probably a handful of people in the world who could have come up with something like this. Will we ever see it again in our lifetime?
Probably not. Which I was like, don't speak too soon, buddy. Copy caps exist. Right.
Now that it's been done once, it can be done exactly now that it's publicized to when you like explained all the things he did to modify the bulldozer. But because we live in the age of irony, he might have the rampage were soon turned into memes. Yeah. There's a video footage of the killdozer said to Hulk Hogan's theme song.
Chan art with some tasteful Confederate flags add to the front of the bulldozer. That's fine. And while he might have never expressed any sympathies for the cause of the Confederacy that we know of, people quickly turn him into a mythological figure who stood up for whatever cause they projected onto him. Which like, that's the problem with vigilantes.
They figured the guy built a goddamn tank. He must have had a good reason. Patrick Brower, the journalist mentioned earlier, chocolate story as it spread. It was front page news across the country and around the world.
He noted when the term quill does are started popping up that killdozer is actually a movie that came out in the 70s. A very can be low quality B budget movie about a bulldozer that becomes possessed by an alien spirit. Like, now I got to look at that movie. The internet of course decided that he might was a hero.
He was on that as of the week, a popular image or gallery and a viral Facebook post. His origin story on that as of the week said he was just trying to make a living for himself running a small mother repair shop. Unfortunately, he was also in the business of getting really fucked over by everyone in town, ranging from the paper boy to the ass hats and city hall who would compromise with him on some crazy fucking whacking zoning issues he was trying to work out. Like fuck off.
And most of the positive coverage of this case quote selections of he mires audio manifesto, which like of course this asshole had a manifesto. They all fuck right. So the quote is you meddled in my business and took a what I deserve away. We took advantage of my good nature.
And another thing you should learn is that when you visit evil upon someone, be assured it will revisit you. And that is what is happening. Let's just go fuck yourself asshole. Defenders of he my content that he had made a point of not hurting anybody during the event, but others have different views.
I mean, you did almost squish that didn't the opposite exactly. And the sheriff's department argued that the fact that no one was injured was not doing good at 10 as much as a good luck. So remember that he had installed two rifles and firing ports inside the bulldozer and he had actually fired 15 bullets from the rifle at power transformers and propane tanks. Yeah, that can explode.
Yeah. And there's a quote that says have these tanks ruptured and exploded anyone with win within a half one half mile of the explosion could have been in danger of the sheriff's department said. And 12 police officers are residents of a senior citizens complex were within that range. So we could have caused so much more destruction.
The sheriff's department also asserted that he mire had fired bullets at Cody Dogeff when Dogeff tried to stop the assault on his concrete plant by using a wheel tractor scraper, which was posted by he by his bulldozer. Later, he might also fired on two state patrol officers before they had fired at him. Nice. The sheriff's department also noted that 11 of the 13 buildings that he mire bulldozed were occupied until moments before the destruction.
Mm hmm. At the town library, for example, which was attached to the town hall, a children's program was in progress before the incident began, which like thank God, none of those children were injured. Right. But it did in addition to the writings that he left on the wall of his shed, he mire recorded a number of audio tapes explaining his motivation for the attack.
He nailed these twoies brother in South Dakota, shortly before stepping into the bulldozer. The brother turned the tapes over to the FBI, who in turn sent them to the Grand County Sheriff's department. The tapes released on August 31st, 2004 and are about 2.5 hours in length. The last recording was made 13 days before the rampage.
And that two and a half hours, who wants to listen about asshole for two and a half hours. Who wants to listen to anyone for two and a half? That's true. That's a long time.
Investigators later found he mires handwritten list of targets. According to the police included the buildings he destroyed, the local Catholic Church, which was not damaged, and the names of various people who had cited against him had passed disputes. Notes found by investigators after the incident indicated that the primary motivation for his plan was to stop the concrete plant for being built near his shop. Of course, the notes indicated that he held grudges over the zoning approval.
He said, I was always willing to be reasonable until I had to be unreasonable. Sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things, which like, yeah, but I don't think building a bulldozer in attacking an entire town is just considered unreasonable. It's more like homicidal. But the fact that the public was so eager to turn he mire into a hero probably says less about him and more about our hilariously low standards for heroism.
Yeah. And that is the bocker story of Marvin he mire and the killdozer. I mean, I can totally see it both ways. I mean, I did get he got up.
He did get put up. He got totally screwed over. It's the movie falling down basically. Yeah, like people, I mean, you can look at it both ways.
It's a dude that got pushed too far and he took revenge on everyone or to do the just lost his shit and was nazzled. Everyone's the hero of his own story. I just think this one is particularly interesting because of course he was a white man and it's like, yeah, I don't know if his fees into that like, Oh, I'm a white man, I'm entitled to all of this stuff. And then if I don't get it, well, then I'm gonna just tell everyone to go fuck off.
Yeah, like that part is what really just pisses me off. It's like people have bullshit like this done to them all the time. And it's not like they go and fuck it bulldozer the time down. But yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I totally see those guys. I do. He's angry for sure. He feels I do just have to admire his ingenuity in creating the damn thing.
Oh, for sure. Fuck yeah, there's no way that I could even imagine coming up with that way to begin with and just to make it so fucking indestructible. I know everything has just blowtorch it open. Oh my God.
Yeah, that story is always kind of like, please, it's like weird. It's like I'm drawn to it and then I'm like, what a prick, but I've almost done this one actually. I was afraid because I was like, I wonder if she would do it too. I'm just waiting for the day when we do the same one.
I know. Thanks for listening. You can email us at serialsisters at outlook.com or follow us on Instagram and Twitter at serial sisters. Bye.