Killdozer- How a Crazy Man, Marvin Heemeyer, Destroyed a Town

01-02-24

Episode Transcription

Made by robots for robots. Only read if you’re werid.

All right, all right, put the clown down, man? What's up? Leave that? Put the clown down? In all right? Okay, hey man, have you ever heard of oh wait, happy to Okay? Is that when this episode comes out January third? Great? Yeah, well no January second. Oh that means it's getting closer to my show in Berlin mayor February or in of course. Hold on, hold on, I don't know how to say this. I don't know how to say this place in Idaho. Oh no, I got I got you, I got you, I got Okay, I'm gonna show it up your show. No, I'm looking up your schedule. You don't need to tell me. What's the date? April thirteenth. April thirteenth, Holy Count's way out there. Uh right now, it's getting closer. Cord to Allen, Yeah, Court Cord cor Day, Allen cord Day, Allen Cord Allen. I don't know how to say that cordline. It's probably a Chortlaine chortal. You think it's Chortaline, Yeah, that oe you are chorta laine c o e U r e. Oh No, it's not any c o E you are. That's chored. I think it's chore, cow chore, Dalen Idaho. I think April thirteenth. Yeah, Merlin's Cordoline tord Yeah. Anyways, hey man, have you ever heard of Marvin he Meyer? Marvin he Meyer? Yeah. I don't know if we're saying that one right either, but that's all right, we'll run it. It's Marvin h. C O. E you are e e y e are okay, Marvin he Meyer. You might know him by his uh more infamous title. Uh okay, killdozer. This is not like a typical front loader. This is a beef Boy bulldozer. Beef boy. This is a beef Boy bulldozer. So they were like reinforced so that way they could run trees over, oh gees. Not like big trees, but like trees. I understand there's a reinforced concrete bulldozer hitting your building. I don't know how that could be more clear things I learned last night. I'm sorry. Have you ever heard of him? Murder? No? Okay, kill dozer? Yeah technically no, what does he technically know? Killo sounds like a monster truck. It's more about attempted murderer. Okay, that's actual more attempt all right, So we're We're not like a true crime podcast. We're true almost crime. Yeah, we're dipping our heat. We're in our toes in true crime, the way he dipped his toes and murder fully commit make it okay? But he tried? All right, So this is an attempted murder story. Yes, well, who's the killing allegedly? Allegedly we don't know for sure. If he try to kill somebody with a bulldozer, we don't know. It's allegedly he didn't, though, but it depends who you ask if he tried or not. We don't know for sure. Okay, let's just with a bulldozer. Yeah, let's just tell the story. Oh wait, but before we do, I got these energy drinks today from a guy. There's no way I'm putting that in my body now. He told me from a guy. He said, what do you do? Man? I told him what I do and he's like, that's cool. And I was like, what do you do man? And he's like he's like oh. He's like he's like, I'm just trying not to work too much. And I was like, oh yeah, and I was like and he's like, can you set the scene of where you met this guy? Is this on the street car? I can't. This guy goes, hey, man, now this was at uh Tropical Smoothie Cafe. I was eating lunch and he this is not better. He came up to me. Dropical Smoothie Cafe is the street car of cafe. He came up to me and he asked me about my tattoos. And so we talked about my tattoos. Dude, that's how that's a that's a cult. That's how people are are roping you into MLMs. This is an mL Yeah, so tattoos they do that. He invites you to his house. Yeah, look at look at the logo on the bottom corner. Yeah. Second, he said it. He told me, He told me, Yeah, he told me. A guy offered him a couple of these and he said, oh my gosh, these are the best thing I've ever tasted my life. So, if you're unfamiliar, Amway targets people with tattoos for some reason. This needs a way to start a conversation. But they they will invite you over. You'll think you made a new friend. They're very personable. And then you'll go to their house and they'll have like a whiteboard in their freaking living room and everyone's in business casual attire, and they'll just run you through the pitch. This happen and to me, but it wasn't like at a house. It was that I had known in high school. Was there a topic close? This was okay. It was a guy I knew in high school who we were living in Springfield, and he was like driving from Saint Louis to Oklahoma or whatever. He said, hey, man, I'm passing through Springfield. Let's grab coffee and catch up. And I was like, oh, sure, man, I said, well you start you stopping in Springfield long? I mean it's like it's like a Tuesday night. Yeah. And he's like, no, man, I was passing through tonight and it's already like eight pm. And I was like okay, I said, well sure, he goes yeah, man, that isn't mudhouse downtown open late. Let's just stop there. Let's meet there at like eleven Oh no. And I was like eleven okay, And you know we're we're living at that house. We were staying up till one in the morning anywhere. That's college. So I was like sure, man. So I met him there at eleven pm. Eleven makes me PM. That makes me literally want to make myself throw up. Like if someone invites me to that, I walk in and I go, how even going long? Okay, that's what I do with don't invite me to something, especially at eleven at eleven pm? Yeah. Yeah, So I go to Mudhouse and he starts talking about how his new job is great, and I was like, that's really cool man. He's like, yeah, man, I'm just really hustling out here. And it's an amway pitch at eleven PM on a Tuesday for me I have not talked to in several years. Did you buy in? Now? I threw up all over him. I did exactly what you wanted me to. You learned well. But anyways, Yeah, so this guy, this guy comes up because I love your tattoos, which immediately is like, okay, we talked for a minute. He had tattoos too. I don't want to want I was going to ask which one you wanted to talk for a minute about tattoos. He had a couple of twos. Tell me about what this meant or whatever, and he asked me what mine meant and I said, no, yeah, are you looking at the B twelve? Why is there that much B twelve in here? There's that's the B twelve on twelve bro. I mean like Celsius has a lot of B twelve. I thought this has almost seven times the amount of BE twelve, which is a nutrient that your body can't. Like really, yeah, it's not necessarily for Celsius to have it in there. Yeah it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, yeah, after this will go work out. This is like freaking. This is like opening the Vitamin Sea gummies and eating all of the whole thing. We might see the hat man if we drink this how much caffeine? No, But then then so we talk a little bit about work or whatever, and he and anyways he is, And then the conversation ends with the person from Trouble Smooth Cafe. Oh, it's only one hundred and fourteen milli creams of caffeine, So I mean it's not terrible. Yeah, not terrible. I mean the conversation ends with the person who works there, Tony, walking up and handing him the food because he's a door dasher. Uh. And then so he's like he's like, I'm gonna take this delivery. There is around your pyramid scheme while you're door dashing. That's at the time I met Brian Reaganash. Yeah, no, So I met Brian Reagan at fifty fourth Street. I walk in. He's at a table and I was like, Brian Reagan and we're sitting there chatting. He's very nice and because he had just he's with his manager and they had just done the comedy Club and I was like, I'm a comedian, you know, I was a big fan. You know. We're chitting there chatting or whatever, and he goes, you know, how's comedy going. And I was like, well, I'm I'm doors right now, so pretty good. So, Brian, if you see this, I don't door dasher anymore. I used to be a door dasher who did stand up, you know, and now I'm a stand up who does door dash. Also sell and I have so good also sell things on nanty he said, he said, he's but anyway, so he goes out, jumps his car. I thought he's gone. I go back to watch my video and eating my chicken pesto and he comes back in and he comes back in with these cans and he's like he's like, he's like, hey man, my dasher could wait the person whose food I have, it's gonna they're gonna get it cold because you are going to get these cold all right, They're gonna get some cold ones and you're gonna get yeah, he said, he said, these ones are on me. I hope to see you around. I don't know why it's called excess uh yeah, and he well, it's because of the excess beat. Well there, but yeah, he said, if you're listening and you're like doing the amway thing, I want you to know, I mean full offense, you're he might be the dumbest person they've ever met. He told me. He said, he said, you want to know the best part about these And I was like what He's like, can get them on Amazon, can't get my Walmart. You can only get them from me. And I was like, Oh, that is the best part because I don't know your name and I have no way of contacting you, and I just got to order a lot of door dash and hopes that you're my Dash the desert. Oh thank god. I have spending seven thousand dollars on Hawaiian bros. And bro I got hooked on that hit me with that beat twelve. Let's try them. I hope it's awful. I can taste the be twelve that tastes I taste it. I literally taste the Bee twelve. I mean it does taste like cherry cola, Like, just like cherry cola. How many of these I gotta sell to get a helicopter? I think it says in the claimer on the side he told me he said he went straight to the top. He didn't. He didn't talk to the guy who first gave it to him. He said, I went straight to the board. Six people up there. I'll talk about the guys on the board. I mean, I guess that's the way you gotta do it. If you're in a pyramid scheme, you realize it's a pyramid scheme. You gotta jump, you gotta jump, jump up, and then all of a sudden, like the person who's trying to put you in their downstream, they're in your downstream, and you're like, yeah, thank you so much for doing that. Yeah, thanks appreciate it. Hey, you gotta respect the hustle. Yeah I don't, but you're you gotta. I guess you're supposed to respect them. We're supposed to respect the hustle. I don't so here's to you. What was his name? That's right. I know that your marketing skills were awful. You're really bad at this, hey, and you're gonna fail. But this is pretty tasty, I will admit I do. I'm not against it. I hope I hope this hits. In the middle of this episode, Jane and I are going to go and to I've already had too Celsius today. I don't know how much more B twelve I can take. All right, anyway, so let's talk about barbone. Let's I mean, let's put the Amway logo, can we put here? Let's do a you know we win as well. This podcast is brought to you by Amway. If you want these energy drinks, you're gonna have to find that random door dasher and leave some of Missouri in Blue Springs, Missouri. Maybe just order as much as you can until he shows up. He's out there whenever, whenever they ring the doorbell, just be like, hey, you do Amway and uh And if you would like to flush the money down the toilet, you can go to Amway dot com, sign up, buy a lot of products, give him away for free while you're door dashing and I'm sorry. I'm really trashing this thing. There's there's got to be somebody who listens listened to our podcast who does amway. Yeah, that's fine. I mean it's not a bad drink. I'm kind of enjoying it. Zero sugar, lots of b vitamins, Uncommon Goods dot com. You can't get this. I can't get this there. Okay. So Marvin he Meyer, I'm trying to find a picture of this that I can show you. And you'll understand what I mean by that in a minute. I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to give me a spin on this carpet. It's just so good. I going to sacrifice that beat. Well, I've got to get all this beat twelve. So Marvin his Fred they they had had their eyes. You should show me a picture. Yeah you want to see Marv. Yeah this is Marv he Meyer. I understand what you show me that. Yeah, you know what, he's got a really hot hairline. That's some alpha male, alpha male. So him and him and his him and his friend. They've been eyeing this property in Granby, Colorado this year. This is a good parcel of land. They want that shop on the land, right, Okay, they want to open up, and they weren't sure. They just wanted to invest in that maybe a muffler shop, maybe a welding shop, maybe a car shop, maybe rented out. They don't know sure, So they've been eyeing it. They go the approach the owner, and the owner is like, yeah, you can buy it for one hundred and ten thousand dollars. And this is in nineteen ninety one, and we think that's overpriced. Yeah. They're like nah, and so they wait and then they find out it goes into foreclosure auction. So ninety one, they go up to this foreclosure auction and they said, top line, we want to spend on this sixty five thousand, so if it if it passes that, we won't take it. If it's under that, we'll take it. So they go in. There's one hundred and fifty properties in the Granby area that are in a part of this auction, and so it's going through property after property. Him and his friend are sitting there watching it all happen. This property comes up and they're like, okay, this is our one, this is our bid. They bid forty one dollar. Sure, no, yeah, it goes up. First bid is thirty five k, and so they say one hundred and ten dollars. Looks around the room and like, that guy can't do that. That guy's the owner. He's not allowed to be he's not allowed. Why I want it, please, give it to please? He said, you didn't pay last time. Yeah, but if I'm going to do it now, if I buy now, I can reset reset. They're like, you should pay that one hundred and ten thousand dollars on fixing your voice, you muppet. They really bullied the guy. It's a loophole. The bank still want you to know this secret. The banks don't want you to know these three secrets. One, all right, go ahead. One buy your property back at the auction, and then they can't do anything about it. It's twos. Two you can't give this property from anybody else. You can only get it for me. And three if you talk like this, they have to listen to what you say. They can't tell you to shut up, and if they do, they're breaking I couldn't do it. I was trying to tell you shut up. I Could's against the law. You can't do it. No, So the guy up front beds thirty five thousand, and he's like, he's like, oh, we're gonna Marv. He's like, Oh, we're gonna get this for under what we want, Okay, So he raises it to forty and then the other guy down front stands up on his chair, really escalates the situation. Sure looks back at Marv and then says forty five, and so Marv Marv is like, all right, forty six. No, he goes he goes fifty, which he should have said forty six. He's jumping. They're jumping too high, they're jumping too much. Yeah, So they jump to fifty and then the guy looks at him and he's like, sits down, and Marv gets the property for fifty thousand dollars. The whole auction ends, and the guy up front walks up to him and just choose him out. In front of everyone in this auction house is a guy by the name of Cody do Chef, and Cody he is. He owns a concrete plant in town, and I guess he just wanted to expand his operation to the first place, but he didn't want to spend more than forty five thousand apparently. Yeah, and so he choose out Marv and they kind of get into it and he's like, He's like, dare you take that property out from under me? Like I've been wanting that. I was talking to the owner about picking that up when it came to auction. I've told everyone I wanted there. I wanted it. I wanted it. I want the land, you say her, Yeah, I want the land. The land is sounds like it might be about something else, you know. I think I think you're what else is Tommy Matt about is Cody? I know? But it was a that's a callback to our show. What we have a show? What is this? All right? I remember anything? I was cut off from the beat twelve. I don't remember that bit? Cody? Cody? Can we leave? In the part of this episode where Alex wanted to bail, yeah, I didn't want to bail. I was here the whole time. Seemed like you wanted to bail. Now I've been here for all twenty seven minutes. Hey, thanks for being part of this episode. If you want to he help us do more of this, you want to help us grow our show. One of the easiest and best ways to do that is to join our Patreon it's a way for your financial to support this show, and you get a lot in return. You get access to our discord channel, you get bonus content that comes out, you get exclusive merchandise, and like live Zoom hangouts where we're both just hanging out eating pizza, just getting to know each other. The biggest thing is is we want to know you more as an individual and as a friend. So thanks for supporting our show. If you don't support us financially, we're not pressed about it. We're not like mad, but I'll find you. So text till in the six six eight sixty six to keep yourself from being found, all right, because if you don't, I will want you down. So Cody, Cody and him kind of get into it, but it's like whatever. They the whole thing happens, and Marve blocks away being like, man, that guy sucks, but whatever, Like we got the property, so go to the property and they start kind of scheming plan on what they're going to do with it. Yeah, they really, let's let's paint the building. That just says Cody sucks. Cody sucks, but like a really good page job, like the PA job good. This isn't just like Cody sucks. Sucks. This is this is like freaking this NFL stadium. Yeah, it's beautiful. I wanted to light up at night. It lights up when you drive by. It's got motion sensors. And Cody sucks. You put a little you put a little n f C tag on Cody's car, right, so it only lights up drives no one else and it's so bright and due. He thinks he's crazy because he tells other people go drive by, it'll turn nothing, nothing. When he drives by, it turns off every time. Now you're in his head. You're really going to ruin his life because you're taking his land and potentially someone's taking his wife. You know what I'm saying. We think it seems like he's got some kind of issue going on. Else is happening here, So what do they want to with it? So he uh, pretty much immediately the city contacts him and was like, hey, thanks for buying that property, Glad you got it. Huh, by the way, I can't have it, they said, by the way. So the last owner, the previous owner was in a lot of trouble with us. I know, you get to be a trouble because this is your property. Now, it's your problem now. And so what had happened was, uh, the previous owner, instead of hooking up to the sewer main, uh from that building, he decided to put in a septic tank. But instead of installing a septic tank, he took a concrete mixer truck and took the mixer part and buried it underground and just ran a hose to it. And that was his septic tank. And they were like, that's not allowed, and now it's yours. And since it's on your property, so they're like, yeah, not only can you not use that anymore, but we need you to run a sewer line out to the sewer. The problem with that is the sewermain. How much does it cost to do that? Well, typically the sewer remain's in the street, and so it costs a few thousand dollars to just dig it out and then run it to the street and hook it up to the The problem is with the way this property is laid out. The sewermain is not on the street in front of his It's on the next block over, So they have to go underneath the street. They have to go from this property underneath the street and then underneath the other set of properties and into the sewer. So he got it quoted and it was going to be eighteen thousand dollars to run this new sewer main And they said, also, by the way, you need to talk your neighbors into letting you put an easement in a maintenance'sment in, because that's also required required and you're the one who would be using it, so you have to no one, And they don't say that before you buy the property. No, And they were like, they were like, so, yeah, you need to. This feels like my apartment complex, not the one I live in now. Yeah, it's pretty great, the old one. When I say my apartment complex, you know who I'm free talking about. So Marv is like, well, this is jacked up and I don't want to do that. And he's like, he's like, can you just sell the property? He's like, he calls Cody. He's like, hey, Cody, Cody, I got an idea. Hey for so he says, he says, no, that's ridiculous. I got a septic tank. I've got a solution. I'm going to do that instead. You guys are just stupid, which is a really good course of action to take with the government. It works out really well for them, so he goes He actually gets into a legal battle with the city over this, but he plans to continue using the septic tank, and so in the meantime he's like, he's like, I can't operate a normal business out of it. But he's like, I can't go get the zoned as a boat rental property. And so he splits the unit into three units, puts a big garage door and a normal cycle core, and then he rents it out and pretty immediately gets three people to rent it out, put their boat in, and keep it over there through the winters and stuff like that. And he's like, that cover my mortgage payment on it, or loan payment whatever. He got probably a mortgage, and I was good and while I argued with the city about what was going to happen with my sectic line, okay. And so this became a big issue, and he started to feel like the government was like a good, good old boys club, you know, like the local government, the local government. This town is not like a this is not a big town. Yeah, this is a town of like I don't know, hold on, I'm pulling up the population. Uh, it doesn't even say here. Oh wait two thousand. Okay, So it's like like Mount Vernon size yeah, and uh and it's like a little mountain Mount Vernon. But yeah, it's a little mountain town. US a mountain town where of the mountaineers. Don't name name a mountain near Mount Vernon, you idiot. Yeah, it's not a mountain town. I would to be honest with you. Man, you're wrong. It's a suburb. And told you we started on the summer thing. Uh so uh, he starts getting did you finish this holy count? Not even halfway through mine? Uh? Probert? Can you can you make me blow? Thank you? Crobert? Thanks? Crab crab all right, crab daddy crab dust. Anyway, did we did we call him Crobert in an episode? I was thinking that this morning. I don't know he knows about that. That's his name. You're right, sorryse he knows his name, all right. So, uh, Marv is now in this longgoing dispute with the city council and he feels he feels as though I'm crying right now, all right, Okay, So he feels as though the city council is a group of people who are. Uh, they have a stranglehold on the town because they are because they've lived there the whole life. Like there's there's this one family that owns a construction company. The sons are now running the construction. Yeah. The only reason they're still there is because their grandfather bought like half the land and in the town. And you know, it was there before anybody else. And there's still not a lot of people there. You know. It's that kind of a small town politics, you know. Uh. And he's getting very frustrated dealing with all of it. Finally ends up just saying, forget it, I'm not putting up a muffler shop. Turns that property into a muffler shop, and as I'm using the septic tank, it's fine, it's not a big deal. You can you can deal with it. And so he does this from ninety two until two thousand and three, running eleven years. Yeah, running the muffler business out of there. He's a welder, develops a great reputation as a welder in town. Everyone's like, if you need something welded, he's your guy. This is the guy. He's the only guy in town. But he's also the best guy in town. The guy mysteriously died. It's kind of crazy in a welding accident. Yeah, in a welding They say his body's never been found. I will say a serial killer with a welding mask. Though. It's very scary. So he's he opens up his welding company. He starts doing welds. He is an avid snowmobiler and he develops he builds like this crew snowmobilers that goes out all the time and snowmobiles around town. Not around town, but around like the around around the mountain, around the actual mountain that was there, because it's a real mountain town. Yea, the snowmobiling around. But it's like this is like a snowmobile crew. Like sometimes it's like five or six people that go out, but it was Larkboards of seventy would go out and snowmobile together. And he made these bumpers for everyone snowmobiles. And so he would hook these bumpers on them, which they called it bumpers, but he hooked an extra bumper on them so they were like reinforced so that way they could run trees over. Oh, not like big trees, but like trees. I understand, and just I wasn't thinking they were taken out. You know, I'm not dumb. You know, at least two of them died because they are dumb. You know. They're like, I can hear trees with this, get trees with this thing. Yeah, I bet we can hit each other. Second, when I got my wife or jeep, and she was like, now I can run over parking curbs. And I said, why is it the first thing you said? Thank you? Yet you said, oh my god, I can't wait to hit a lot of curve run stuff over. And so he's he's getting more and more frustrated with the city. I'm getting frustrated with this continually, uh, continually taking him into city council meetings and disagree arguing with him over to the septic thing. And finally two thousand and three, they slap him with a fine, okay for not setting up the tank. And the fine was one hundred dollars a week for the entire period he's been there. So it's a few dollars, yeah, of a fine. And so he had a he actually he wrote this, he wrote the fine and uh, he like did this thing on the check where he put like to the establishment or something like that, like something like this guy really and gave it to them and then they shipped it back and they were like, this check's invalid, and they're like, you have to do it right, and he was like, I forget you guys. So he had to rewrite the check. So him and the town have a bad relationship. That's point number one. Point number two. He opens up this muffler shop, is running the muffler shop, and in ninety nine Cody do Chef it's like, it's time to expand my my concrete batch department or whatever, and so he buys a parcel of land right next door to his muffler shop and is trying to get it zoned to be a concrete batch sure center. Marv thought that this was not okay for a couple of reasons. One, he hates Cody hate him. Two, he thought that the zoning didn't make sense because there's on the other side of the street there's a bunch of hotels, and then on the other side behind him is a neighborhood. And so he said that if they're mixing and making concrete right there, there's going to be a bunch of pollution and noise right there, and he said that's not right for zoning. You can't put it there. And so he started arguing with the city council put him and the city council already have a terribor relationship like this guy again. Yeah, and so he starts going to all the public hearings about it, trying to shoot it down and ends up delaying the I think am I getting into public hearings? Yeah? Yeah, just going, just going, I mean, like what else am I doing? I mean, do you think that's a good usage your time though? Yeah, I mean, like just to go observe and be involved in my local government. Yeah, you know, it sounds like it sounds like when people do that. It does sound like it actually, like, you know, it's beneficial and things happen as a result. I've heard a lot of people in the new neighborhood I live in. Uh, it's pretty great. I think it's going to be pretty good. Uh because it's Montrose up near. And so the Mantros Christmas Parade ends with Santa and a helicopter I'm not joking. Why it's over and there's a car running the parade route with a spotlight. Yeah, that is just shining up on Santa hanging out of a helicopter. That's pretty sick, you know. I mean it's a real person hanging out of a helicopter. That's pretty cool. And so that's the kind of neighborhood I don't. I don't live in that neighborhood. Yes, I mean we do this for you live next to this. Is you're watching my job, you tell me what you think I live. Uh and uh yeah, but interesting, pretty cool. So I'm gonna go to there. You're going to try to be Sanda next year, is what you're saying. Yeah, I'm gonna try to get out to get some inroads and so much. Right now, I'm like, hey, that guy's getting old. So he starts arguing against them in the city council. Yeah, and he actually does delay, Like he brings up some pretty valid points about the knowing about the pollution and so like it does delay things and it forces them to figure some stuff out with the new concrete plant before they can open it. But they do figure it all out, and then the city was like, yeah, now you can do this, and so he opens it up. He builds it, and while they were in construction, he calls Cody, calls Marv and then an opportunity to kind of like let it all through the bridge. Yeah, he calls him and he said, Hey, we're in the middle of construction right now. And he's like, now is the best time. He's like, you guys want to run a Superman through here, Like we can add that on you just cover the cost of labor. And he's like, and all actually is I knew you were on the side of the city, he says. He says, I'll actually go ahead and just throw the easement in and I'll cover that. And so like a really generous offer. Okay, Marv just hangs up on him, doesn't even respond, just hangs up on him. And so that was a that was a really generous offer. Honestly, Yeah, just hangs up on it. All you do is take that Cody sucks thing down. Yeah. All you gotta do is like I I'm not gonna lie. It's blinding me. Every time I drive by. It kind of sucks. Yeah. I gave I actually my son, I he he has my car now. I gave it to him. He just turned sixteen. Yeah, and now every time he drives by, Honestly, it's on his route to school, just sees Cody sucks and you actually changed it and it says your dad sucks. That's so it's pretty Rude's very rude. And the D doesn't light up anymore? Is it your dad or your ad? Your ad sucks? Your ad sucks? And he's just like weird marketing over here. By that, I was thinking of Cody the D and the Cody didn't light up anymore. Just a coy sucksy sucks your dad. You're a sucks. Uh You're like what what You're a sucks sucks? So Cody. So this whole thing, his relationship with Cody's getting more and more strained. His relation the city council is getting more and more strained. Item two atom three. There is a local paper. And when he opened up his muffler shop, the local paper the photographer swung by the the muffler shop and was like, hey, uh, what do you say about like doing a free ad in the paper, like just to be like, hey, we got a new a new business in town. If you guys need any muffler repairs, this is your guy. And he's like that sounds great, like let's do ran it. And then he was like, he's like, all right, I'll come back next week, we can take some photos, we can do an interview, and we'll get you in there. Was like cool. So the guy comes back, nobody's at the muffler shop. So then he's like, I come buy tomorrow, because by tomorrow no one's there. Tries again next week, ches again the next week, and then eventually just gives up Marv from his perfective The guy said hey, I'll put you in this thing, and then never came back. But really, Marv just was never working because there wasn't a lot of work to do at this muffler shop. Of the town of two thousand people, there wasn't a lot of people who needed muffler repairs, so he wasn't around all the time. Yeah, so allegedly he worked two to three days a week. The rest of his time he was snowmobiling, or he's a man after your own heart. He was in his hot tub. So Marv is really mad at the city council, at the city paper, and at Cody do Chef and a bunch of other people in town now too. He just feels like everybody's out to get him, and it's it's boiling, and it's boiling, and it's boiling, and you can probably try to convince yourself that they all conspired together. Yes, and it seems like it because they are all friends. Like it's it's a small town. Everybody knows each other, everybody has grown up together. He's the outsider. He came in from Bolder and bought this property, and so nobody, like nobody there knows him. He knows he knows everybody, and that's sure. Yeah, he just feels he feels on the outs and he spends a lot of time alone in a hot tub thinking, but you know what that does any good? Places. So he he has this idea and he says, I'm gonna intimidate Cody. Cody's got his Cody's got his little concrete plant plant right next door. So he says, I'm gonna intimidate Uh, sure, Cody next door neighbors. And so he goes to California. He goes to California and at an auction he buys this uh and he ships it home and parks it in the driveway. It's a yeah, it's a bulldozer, and it's not like this is not like a typical like front loader. This is a beef boy bulldozer. Beef boy, this is a beef boy bulldozer. Okay, parks it out on the driveway. It's going to be this guy means business is not the bulldozer. Yeah, So he sets it out there a couple of days later, puts a sign on it that says for sale, and it's it's like that for a year, and everyone's like, why did he buy that? Everyone in town's driving buy and they're like why does he have that? Like he's it's a muffler shop. What does he need a bulldozer that big for? And so everyone's very confused about what's going on here. But it's for a year. Yeah, it's sat there for a year, says for sale, right okay. And so a year later, uh, well, I should say after this sits there for a year, he moves it into the building and it's like it is literally like inches of clearance fitting through the garage doors. So he gets up through the garage doors and everyone's like, well, that bulldozer's gone and that bulder and now a whole nother year passes of it being parked inside. This is to intimidate Cody's really getting them. Well, it started out. It started out with it out there intimidating him, and then he moves they're intimidating him. Yeah, he's like intimidating him, shivering in his snowmobile boots. And so he decides, he says, he says, I need to cut my losses, and so he sells the property, sells it for four hundred thousand dollars, which is a huge profit. Yeah, you really cut his losses there. Sells it for four hundred thousand dollars. The next day. The new owner puts in a sewer line and an easement and he but he requests He says, hey, can I for the next year lease out just that unit that I have a bulldozer that I'm using that delivery you get in there something. He's like, I'm working on a project. He's like, could I just keep that least that from you? And they're like this, that's fine. It's like fully, I mean so, so to get into his bulldozer, he's got to like, you've been a really tight parking spot and try to open your car door. You got to be like, it's the unit. The unit isn't that small? The door is that small? The unit is not that small? Cody, better watch out you better? Is he intimidated? Hey? Tell me? Look at him? Is he intimidated? Can you see him? Does he look intimidated? Right now? Does he look? Does he look? I'll scare you right now, Cody, Cody, you gonna knock the bookshelf over. I'm coming for you. Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. If you like this one, We've got a lot of great past episodes that you can check out. One of my recent favorites is Frank Abagneil Junior. It's the dude from the movie Cast Me if you can, and it's the story about how he scammed everybody into a really big scam. There's one scam that's like the scammiest of scams I've ever heard someone scam. So check that one. Uh, it's it's a fun one. I like it a lot. But thanks for being here. No, the unit is not the unit is not small. The unit the door. The unit is small, but the unit has got a lot of space. Okay. And he actually so he started working on this project in there with the bulldozer, but he didn't want anyone to know about it. And so when they got it inspected after they first moved in, was putting like blades and stuff on your well. He put a big old, a big old tarp over the bulldozer to cover it up, and the inspector came in and like what he got there. It's just a project project and they didn't asked to look under it or anything like that building a giant battle bot. So he uh, for the next year, spends a year, and he's a welder, and so he's is he making a giant battle bot. He's reinforcing this bulldozer into this. And what he did is he made it bulletproof. Yeah, so he put he just made a homemade tank. Yeah yeah. So what he did is he he reinforced the entire thing, welded on steel around the entire like body cab of this of this bulldozer, and then he actually took concrete and there's three inches of concrete between that and another layer of steel, and he welded it all together. And he also, uh, there are on every direction there are these little portholes, and the portholes have two inch bulletproof glass on it, and behind their cameras and all those cameras feed into a control room he's got inside with screens. How do you get inside? There is a hatch, but I'll tell you the hatch is difficult to find. And inside he's got a control panel with a bunch of screens. I'll show you these screens. Actually, this is a better view. I'm gonna download these real quick. So he can see everything outside through those cameras. But the cameras have the bulletproof glass. He also installed air compressors with hoses that go out to the portholes, so if they get dirty, he can shoot air over him and clean them off with those air compressors. And so this is inside, so he's got this is two thousand and four. So those were cutting edge TV screens, a bunch of TVs in there, so you can control it from inside. Who's this guy? I don't know who that is. I want to say it's a local police officer or something like that. I'm not sure. He also has on all four directions openings where he's got guns mounted and the gun goes through, but there's no like air or anything like that, so it's not possible to be shot through. But he can have the gun sticking out and move it around outside, so it's completely sealed. But the guy sticks out there's air that can get in though, well he's got he's got it. Like so the gun goes through, yeah, but he can steal well. Yeah, so he installed in an air conditioning unit and it's got, it goes through. He's got this whole piping system so that way, like you can't shoot through the air conditioning unit or anything like that because it's not it's not a one way route, so it like moves through, moves around, so it's not possible. For So he spent the year making a thing that he, in his mind, can just level the town. Is that his plan? So on June fourth, two thousand and four, at two o'clock in the afternoon, broad daylight, THEPM, the tank busts through the walls of the shop because now it's not fitting through the door. Oh yeah, not too big, because I'm gonna get it out there though. So it just busts through the wall of the shop, goes across the street to Cody's concrete batch plant and just starts ramming the whole building and like nailing it, like lifting the bulldozer up and down and like destroying A video of this or anything. Oh, there's lots of video of it. Oh, I'd love to see some. I've got photos. I can show you video maybe in the after the fiddle. Okay, that we've already great, but they he's he's ramming in hurt lifting. Excuse me, I have pain in my cheeks for the beat twelve all that excess. My chick's gotta hurt too, now that you mentioned it opened my mouth kind of sore. It's all the laughter, I'm sure so. And he's he's wrecking this this building. Meanwhile, everybody who works there is like, what is happening right now? And so Cody, it's pretty clear what's happening right now. There's a there's a reinforced concrete bulldozer hitting your building. I don't know how that could be more clear. Cody has a handgun, and Cody just starts shooting at this thing with no effect. Nothing's happening, obviously, this is very re enforced. And so uh, he goes and he gets his bulldozer, which is a significantly smaller bulldozer. It is. It's a normal size word battle this thing right now. Uh, and the song comes down one of those little caterpillar things, and so he goes and he rams uh uh the tank with the bulldozer, and it is so much heavier, Like he tries to lift it with his bulldozer, it actually lifts him his tank, and so he the lift gets caught and starts lifting him backwards, and so he backs up and tries to ram it again and no effect. He's just freaking wrecking his concrete shop right in front of him while he's trying to stop him with the bulldozer. And then uh, his employees they start trying to take metal rods and shove it in the treads to like stop it, break it, and it's just bending and snapping these metal rods. Like this is like a this is a beefcake bulldozer, you know, like it is not There is no backyard bulldozer. This is a serious bulldozer. And uh, the police show up and the police are like, I don't know what I don't know what we should do with this. So the police start shooting at it, but it's not having any effect, and he is just like ignoring all the cops and he's just nailing this building over and over again, backing up and lifting his bulldozer armed and crushing the head leiding. Yeah, after forty five minutes of him just repeatedly ramming this building, he turns around and now there's a lot of cops here just unloading on Well, he turns around and he just runs like full speed towards this barrier. A bunch of cops are hiding behind and they all have to like dive out of the way, and he just destroys this barrier right theft Auto five stars and so he then leaves, uh, leaves the concrete shop, and he goes on this long rampage around town, going to all the people wrong him. The newspaper guy's house. Yeah, so he goes to from here, he goes to the newspaper like the actual office levels the office, goes to town hall levels town hall, going to all the different people's homes of the people who were like in the town council. Goes to the town grocery store, which is owned by the people like one of the guys in the town council, and is literally just going from place to place to place, leveling different spots all around town. And so these are there's a map of everywhere he went. So there's the news station, there is Gambles, which is the local grocery store, the town hall, and the library was one of them. Uh. And then the concrete batch plant was just copycas graphics and printing. Yeah. So anyone who leveled the bank, yeah, anyone who's wronged him in any way. He's going and he's leveling their uh, their building. So pretty quickly the police start getting getting wind of what's going on here. They're like, oh, this is that guy, and they're like, we know everyone he hates, and so they start calling all these places and they're like, you guys need to leave, like you needed like anybody. So he's not hurting anybody. There's debate on whether he wants to hurt anyone or not because when he like shot at Cody, he shot in the bucket of uh of of his bulldozer, and so they're like, did he miss or was he trying to like warn him and be like back off, I'm doing this, I'm gonna do it. Yeah, And so it's are you intimidated now, ad Now He's like, yeah, I am intimidated. Could you please stop? Please stop? Uh? And so he goes from uh uh from building the building, the building, and it's just he everywhere he's going. He's getting debris covered in this thing, and that's why he put those air compressors so it could blow all the bricks in the dust away from his camera views so he can go on his rampage. At one point in the rampage at cop was like, I'm gonna get up there, and ran up and climbed up on top of it and started trying to find the access door, because if I the access door and ends up starting just shooting inside his air conditioning unit. But he had designed the air conditioning unit so that they wouldn't do anything. So then they toss him flash banks. They starts dropping flash bangs down in the air conditioning unit, no effect, and so nothing is working. They are literally at by one point, it is literally a convoy of swat team and cops that are just walking along with this thing, shooting at it, jumping on it, throwing stuff in it, trying to say it's huge, Yeah, it's gigantic. This is not like a little bulldozer. This is this is fifteen feet tall. This is a massive, massive bulldozer and it's just wrecking the town, creating absolute havoc. At one point they go and they get. They call them scrapers. There's a really long for like when they're putting down roads and they're the really long tractors that have that kind of like diagonal scraper in the middle, and they're like, oh, we can stop it with that, and he just pushes it right out of the way and just keeps going, no problem whatsoever. He goes down to this Excel Energy plan and that is a power station that also has a bunch of pro paine tanks, and he parks there and for ten minutes he's trying to shoot the propane tanks, but his design of his tank, he couldn't get the right anglessing. What's significant is that was the one part of this whole event that could have actually been really tragic because the blast ratings. These aren't like home propane tanks. Yeah, these are massive propaine tanks, and they think that that would have leveled like entire blocks of the town if he actually got a shot off, because he was firing in Cyndi area rounds into him, so it would have been a major disaster. But he never got the shot off. Eventually he ditched that, gave up on that and went to Gambles which is where he ended the whole ordeal. At this point, allegedly, and there's some debate whether this is true or not, Allegedly, the National Guard was scrambling and they were sending Apache helicopters to shoot him, shoot him, like with rockets, because they're like, this is a tank. We need to deal with it. Like it's a tank. The police aren't going to be able to stop this thing, right, and so h somehow he started linking coolant and so it is leaking coolant, smoking really bad. He's going to Gambles. He nails Gambles, which is a grocery store, and I guess what he didn't know, what most of the locals didn't know is Gambles had a basement, and so he nails Gambles and it slips into the basement and he obviously gets stuck. He can't get out, and so he's stuck in there, and so the police now create like this perimeter and there. Now he's got to he has to come out. Yeah. Yeah, Well they're like, like, what's he going to do next? Like did he rig it with explosives for a situation like this, Like, what's what's the next step? And he ends up taking his own life, and they hear the shot, and then they spend two days trying to get into it. They finally get into it early in the morning two days later. Where was the hatch? Well there what? Once they got inside, they found that there was a hatch, but it was not like noticeable from the outside. They'd never found it from the outside. What they ended up actually doing is they burnt a hole in the side of it with a yeah, and that's how they got in, and that's how he got the pictures of the inside. And after the whole ordeal, they went through and they like obviously searched his home and they found two hours worth of tapes of him chronicling this whole year long thing of him building this tank and why he was doing it, and who he was targeting and why he was targeting them. So he was doing to get ready with me as I build a war machine. Pretty much get ready with me is I build a war machine to take on my neighbors, and so he to intimidate my name. Well, it's it's pretty sad because if you listen to it, it's very clearly someone who had too much time on his hands and didn't have a lot of friends to talk through this with or did just chose not to talk through it with his friends and like drove himself insane. Yeah, because they forget I'm sure they get progressively crazier. Yeah. Yeah, And by the end he's literally saying, I've been trying to get caught, but I'm not getting caught, and so that must mean that this is a sign from God that this is what I'm supposed to do. Yeah, I'm supposed he just gets progressively. Yeah, He's like, I'm supposed to teach these people less and that they can't behave like this, that they can't treat people like this. They've backed me into a corner. What am I supposed to do now? And he's like, I'm confident that the reason why God never allowed me to be married and never allowed me to start a family was so that way I could fulfill my purpose. And this is my purpose. And yeah, and so he did this. Nobody was injured in the whole event except for him, but a lot of property damage, A lot of property damage. Yeah, it was the total damage. I don't know what the let's see if I can check on that. But he Uh, when I was single and couldn't find anybody to date me. I also thought, I was like, maybe God's got another purpose for me, and I'm supposed to bull doze this time? Does this whole it's Mountain Town God Reagan came home, you know. Uh so uh he the town. They obviously seized the thing, and they said, we don't want anyone to like take souvenirs or anything of it, so they disassembled it and dispersed it to a bunch of different scrap yards, which was interesting to me. I don't know, I mean, I I kind of I guess I see the motivation, but at the same time, like it's a cool bulldozer. You're the reason save the bulldozer. Exactly why they did cool bulldozer. So the damage of the whole thing was estimated to be around seven million, Yeah, two million of which was that concrete plant which was under insured, so they only got a payout of seven hundred thousand. Oh so they just kind of stomached one point three million and loss off that. So it was a major, major event. It was televised all over at least uh the state of Colorado and definitely the nation. Uh. And he got his just I guess kind of. That's the kill dozer. They nicknamed it the kill dozer even though nobody was killed by it, but it it does. It was pretty killer. I mean, this is it. I mean it's a big dozer. I mean, and you never know when someone's just going to do that, you know, Yeah, I mean he was. He was for a year. They're just working on it, like that is a determination, Like it's one thing they'll be like, oh man, I want to punch. Is there anything you spent a year on, like in general, or like anything crazy, I know, just anything you've like you're like, I've worked on this for like a year. I mean yeah, like my career, this podcast stupid I'm talking about like you know, I mean, I've put so many years into Rundscape and like some model train sets. Oh, I guess I have done that with city skylines. I've built radio. Yeah yeah, I don't know what else. Oh there is that bulldozer that wow. Yeah, it's like armored, reinforced, got some gun holes in it. Its excess something, excess energy, the best energy, drink killer and taste, the good thing, the best thing about it. You can only get it from that one door dasher you know what Jesus says, I am way. I didn't know a way it was a Christian company, it is. Yeah, amway, give them ten percent of your income. Oh yikes. Anyways, so yeah, that's the story of u pe Meyer the kill Dozer. Sorry, we talked for seventeen minutes before we got to the good story. That's it was pretty good. Hey, thanks for checking out this episode. If you liked it, you can subscribe or watch some more episodes or some clips. But then I need to make this like twenty seconds. My producer said it has to be longer, so I'm just gonna keep talking for a little bit and is this long enough? Connor Okay? Cool? Yeah, thanks for being here.)

delete quotes and re-add them

In the quiet mountain town of Granby, Colorado, a man named Marvin Heemeyer became increasingly frustrated with the local government over zoning disputes related to some properties he owned. After over a decade of clashes, he hatched a disturbing plan for revenge.

In 1992, Heemeyer purchased a parcel of land in Granby with the intention of opening up a muffler shop. However, he immediately ran into issues with the city government regarding the septic system on the property. The previous owner had illegally installed a makeshift concrete septic tank, and the city demanded that Heemeyer replace it with a proper sewer line at great expense. This began a bitter feud between Heemeyer and the local officials.

Things escalated further in 1999 when a concrete plant opened on the lot next to Heemeyer’s muffler shop. The owner of the plant was a man named Cody Docheff, who Heemeyer already harbored resentment towards. Heemeyer vehemently opposed the city approving the zoning for the concrete plant, but his protests were ignored. The plant was built despite his objections.

At this point, Heemeyer decided to get revenge on those he felt had wronged him. In 2003, he purchased a bulldozer and over the course of a year secretly outfitted it with layers of concrete and steel armor plating. He installed bulletproof glass, cameras, and compressed air nozzles. He essentially turned it into a homemade tank. He intended to use this makeshift tank to demolish the buildings of his enemies.

On June 4, 2004, Heemeyer put his plan into action. Just before 2 pm, he used the tank to plow straight through the wall of his muffler shop. He then crossed the road and began systematically demolishing Docheff’s concrete plant. The local police tried unsuccessfully to stop him, firing guns and even using bulldozers of their own against the tank. But nothing could halt Heemeyer’s armored vehicle.

Over the next couple of hours, Heemeyer piloted his tank through town, demolishing the homes and businesses of people he had grudges against, including the city hall and the local newspaper office. Swat teams and police desperately tried to take down the tank, but it seemed impervious to damage. At one point, Apache helicopters were even scrambled to try to stop the destruction.

The rampage finally ended when Heemeyer drove the tank into a local grocery store owned by a city council member and the tank became stuck in the basement. After a standoff with police that lasted nearly two days, Heemeyer took his own life inside the tank. In total, he had caused over $7 million in damage but miraculously did not injure anyone but himself.

In the aftermath, investigators learned the full extent of Heemeyer’s year-long planning for his revenge through tapes he had recorded. It painted a portrait of a troubled man who had isolated himself and become consumed by bitterness and paranoid delusions against his perceived enemies. In the end, his anger and desperation led to a level of destruction that shocked the nation.

The story of Marvin Heemeyer and his homemade tank of destruction will be long remembered as a cautionary tale on the dangers of unchecked rage, resentment, and isolation. It serves as a disturbing example of how far some will go when they feel marginalized and ignored by the society around them.

Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning and laughing a lot while you do, you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode right now!

Watch

Listen


Sources

Marvin Heemeyer – Wikipedia


Related Episodes

The Barefoot Bandit

Michael Fagan

Joel Ortiz


Tell Us What You Think of This Content!

Don’t forget to share it with your friends!

Share This Episode

More Episodes
« | »