You know how angry you have to be to stay mad the whole time you’re building this. Halfway through id probably be like “Yeah, this isn’t worth it” after I calmed down lol
Fun fact: he did try to bring it up to code but his neighbors blocked him and the town put ultimatums on him getting up to code. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place and felt this was the only way to push back on both sides at once.
That's an overly charitable view of it that is largely at odds with pretty much every other account I have ever read or heard.
>Heemeyer asked for $250,000 for his property, but later claimed he'd had the lot reappraised and asked for an additional $125,000. The Docheffs managed to collect $350,000, but according to Susan Docheff, Heemeyer again upped his asking price, claiming he'd again had the property appraised at a higher value, this time asking for $450,000.[^(\[1\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer#cite_note-:2-1)[^(\[8\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer#cite_note-:0-8) This negotiation happened before the rezoning proposal had a public hearing at town hall.[^(\[5\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer#cite_note-Durango-5)
>Despite the deal falling through, the Docheff family pursued their plans to expand their business, and purchased a defunct commercial subdivision opposite Heemeyer's lot. Heemeyer had attempted to buy this land just before the Docheffs, but was unsuccessful. He later proposed a land swap whereby he would receive the prime lot. The Docheffs initially accepted the offer, but Heemeyer demanded the Docheffs construct a new building on the lot at great expense. The negotiations fell apart, with Heemeyer [stonewalling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewalling) the Docheffs.
>Heemeyer launched a public campaign against the planned concrete plant. His campaign was initially successful, with members of the public concerned about potential environmental impacts packing into hearings on the construction proposals. The Docheffs addressed these concerns by promising to install additional measures against dust and noise and presented miniatures of the plant to concerned citizens. Opposition to the proposal dwindled, and the plan was set to move forward again.[^(\[1\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer#cite_note-:2-1)[^(\[8\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer#cite_note-:0-8) In November 2000, Heemeyer filed a lawsuit to block the project.
>A city clerk wrote a letter to the newspaper arguing that Heemeyer had a vendetta against the Docheffs. The clerk referenced Heemeyer's increasingly "exorbitant" demands during negotiations for the sale of his property to the Docheffs, during which he had the land reappraised several times.
People get really mad when it gets pointed out their fantasies of being a wildly mentally unstable lunatic stem from a clearly unstable lunatic with personality disorders
This needs to be the top comment every time this story is posted. He wasn't an underdog being shafted by local government, he was just a greedy prick who threw a tantrum after he kept trying to negotiate better deals, and eventually being told to kick rocks.
They literally offered to hook his line up for free as his cement mixer septic systems was overflowing and he was dumping it in the river. He also made a 360k profit on the part of his land he did sell…
He just refused to get his property hooked up to the sewage system, and then refused to build a simple septic system. Then he sank a concrete mixer truck into the ground and once that was full, just continued dumping his sewage and waste into the creek.
He thought he was instructed by god to do all this.
This guy was just a giant crazy manbaby 😂
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle...
Not a septic tank guy but guessing you can probably make it work if you can build a killdozer if you were willing to put in the same energy.
that's the type of shit you look into BEFORE signing a p&s and either bake the removal costs of previous lien holders property into the contract or make the contract conditional on its removal. of course this assumes that a person making a purchase is a sane human and not a total fucking nutjob who will build a tank and go on a killing spree over a civil infraction.
Fun Fact: That's false.
He did not try to bring it up to code. He continued to pump his sewage into an irrigation ditch even after he sold the property and illegally lived on it to continue upgrading his dozer.
I love reframings like this. Yes of course. How silly of us all to demonize this man. He was just a misunderstood gentle soul who was pushed that one step too far by those pen pushers at city hall!
No. Dude was a fucking piece of shit, insane psychopathic asshole, who was sick of not getting his own asshole way who decided, like an asshole does, to build a tank to "get back at all those who wronged him". Luckily because he was also an incompetent dipshit, he only really managed to do property damage, despite the fact that despite everybody pretending he wasn't trying to hurt anybody, he was trying to kill as many people as possible. Really the closest thing to casualties was a few schoolkids he almost killed by accident, who had only been removed from the building a few minutes earlier when others heard that some fucking asshole had built a tank and was on their way. Perhaps Marvin had the radio on and the news was on and they said that some crazy asshole was heading towards the library in a tank and he went "Oh shit I need to stop that guy!"
The only positive impact he ever had in his entire pathetic life seems to be when he killed himself and saved everybody the trouble of existing in a reality that still contained the festering pustule of his existence.
> Perhaps Marvin had the radio on and the news was on and they said that some crazy asshole was heading towards the library in a tank and he went "Oh shit I need to stop that guy!"
The sheriff's office used the 911 system to place a reverse call to all citizens in the town warning them to evacuate. The only reason most of these places were empty when he ran over them is because of that warning, otherwise he def would have killed many people, including those kids.
> Dude was a fucking piece of shit, insane psychopathic asshole, who was sick of not getting his own asshole way who decided, like an asshole does, to build a tank to "get back at all those who wronged him".
My absolute "favorite" part of the entire stories are the stories of the locals who, upon seeing the Killdozer tearing down the street breaking shit, said, "Oh that's probably Heemeyer." If the people in town are unsurprised that you would go nuts and do that, you probably were a piece of shit.
It might just be me but people who think the killdozer guy was backed into a corner and just had to killdoze remind me of people saying the confederacy just wanted "states right"
When he was told he needed to connect his land to an actual sewer line or septic tank (instead of using a cement mixer buried in the ground) he called it 'extortion through government fiat' so yep, you know exactly what kind of flags he'd be waving.
Please can you source your fun fact? It does not match with, for instance, wikipedia.
According to that he had 9 years but continually refused to fix it. The neighbour you claim blocked it, actually offered to help for free with an easement.
Not a fact. He was a fukin nutjob who refused to take multiple deals better than he should have got. Hopefully you're reading the replies of people who know the actual details.
He threw a Guinness book of world records level toddler tantrum and died because of it. Get it up to code or sell it, not hard. Another option is seek mental health help.
No he wasn’t. He blocked himself at every turn. Heemeyer was the very definition of a piece of shit, who wanted more and more and more, and when they eventually stopped giving, he threw a tantrum, where it’s a miracle no-one died (apart from the loser himself)
The sooner people stop portraying him in any kind of positive light the better.
Lived up there during this, when the tv was showing it live I was in the marina bar and grill and everyone knew exactly who it was, he’d been talking about it for many months and everyone figured he was full of shit. We went into town to watch him drive around.
There is actually an interesting detail regarding that. In addition to spending an extremely long time slowly building this (so it was definitely something he thought about long and hard), once the concrete shell was on, he had no way to get it back off. He had no intention of leaving that thing alive.
It had a hatch. He didn't 'lower the concrete shell on to it'. The shop wasn't nearly capable of supporting 25 tons of armor on a pulley. It had a hatch.
It's wild how people rewrote different narratives around Killdozer.
As usual the truth is pretty out there, it was an alien all along.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killdozer!\_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killdozer!_(film))
They should do a remake and pay homage to Marvin Heemeyer by having another [failed muffler salesman ](https://i.ibb.co/WHtpzpq/flatten.png) star in it. Perhaps Marvin should have tried cooking.
I have no idea what the other guy just said about critical thinking skills, weird comment. Anyway, the answer is that:
> Perhaps the most unique feature of his Killdozer was its lack of an entrance/exit. Instead of building the armor plating entirely onto his bulldozer, he fashioned the top piece separately to be lifted by crane onto the bulldozer once he was inside. This meant that once he was in the Killdozer, there was no getting out, but more importantly, it meant there was no hatch that could be breached by law enforcement.
https://stephenzimmerman.com/killdozer-marvin-heemeyer
Funny enough, it's pretty well known that the governor at the time ordered the national guard to strike it with a hellfire. He only changed his mind when it came to light he'd probably destroy more of the town than the bulldozer.
That's not well known. Maybe you mean widely rumored.
The governor denies he considered that measure much past determining it would likely cause as much damage as the dozer itself.
Here is the very good video that the Well There's Your Problem guy made about the truth and untruths of the problems Heeymeyer had with his neighbors. Spoiler: He was in the wrong about basically everything, the city and neighborhoods tried to help him and work with him, and he was just a giant prick.
https://youtu.be/Yvl_7_Up7zU
Generally, when your solution to "i'm really mad" is to create a massive armored bulldozer aimed at causing as much random destruction predominantly upon people who aren't even the people who pissed you off, mostly out of spite, that is a pretty big hint as to their personality lol
He sold the land with the driveway to a concrete plant but tried to screw them by doubling the price for the 2nd part of the land. His plan backfired and his only access to the main road was by backwoods access roads
He actually raised the price after they agreed to it THREE times and then after they refused the third time, acted like a victim instead of taking 10x what he paid for the land initially, which would've given him enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life.
Dude is motivated purely by greed and spite and refused every generous offer put his way. People who describe it as a righteous rampage are either stupid or missing the context entirely.
Also just a lot of anti-establishment “rebel without a cause” types to be found in comment sections of certain social media. Like if you see this story posted on Instagram, almost assuredly the top comments will be about how this dude rocked and the government is bad.
Clinical Narcissism if anything. He seemed all together. He wasn't the paranoid type who thought everyone was against him for inoccuous made up reasons, he was the spiteful type because he thought it would be unfair if he received 10x what he paid for the property, and thought he deserved more. He refused a bunch of generous deals and when they just decided to build around him he thought he was justified to destroy their property.
Well.. it wasn't just a one time thing that "set him off".. he had quite a lot of runins:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin\_Heemeyer#Zoning\_and\_sewage\_disputes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer#Zoning_and_sewage_disputes)
This guy doubled down on like 5 separate occasions. There is a great documentary about it, the city council fucked with him the slightest bit and he went completely off the rails.
https://youtu.be/LZK9XthMZ1w?si=mspS3v0F4Ducox-H
The dude was well beyond unreasonable, obviously. He was absolutely obsessed with “getting back”.
I did a pretty deep dive on this story a while back, and found this guy isn’t the internet folk hero I’d heard about. He was a fucking loser, a childish, petty, vindictive loser who decided to take out a personal grudge on an entire town of innocent people.
Fuck Marvin Heemeyer.
Thank you, I'm tried of getting called a glowie because I don't think being pissed because someone stopped you from pumping raw sewage into an irrigation ditch makes you a hero.
I full expected to find a story of a man railroaded by “the man” and be righteously indignant on behalf of him, especially because he died in the end.
What I found instead was the story of a pathetic man who expended his life for what amounts to a tantrum, which would be amusing if it had not risked the lives of innocent people, and destroyed the property of people who had done absolutely nothing to him.
Shooting at the propane tanks and running into buildings with people still inside immediately nullifies any argument that he was lashing out at “the system” for oppressing him. He was a pathetic man trying to feel superior in some way, and he used the wealth from his successful businesses to build this machine, which also disproves the “poor, hard-working guy” rhetoric.
There’s a really good documentary about the whole thing. I don’t think it’s streamable, but it’s definitely worth the $3.99 rental if you’re into absolutely crazy stories with matching real-life footage.
Wait a minute: isnt there a quest in GTA San Andreas that's pretty similar to this story? Something in los fierros and pushing construction workers into concrete?
Was that a reference to this event?
In San Andreas some construction workers ~~dogwhistle~~ cat all(?) after CJ's sister, so CJ behaves like a ~~reasonable adult~~ GTA protagonist and destroys part of the construction site. The foreman hides in a porta potty, so CJ pushes it into a hole which he then fills with concrete.
Not quite the same story, but just as unhinged.
I got in trouble because every time we had guests over and they never heard of killdozer they don’t believe me and I force them to watch a short video on killdozer and now my husband has banned killdozer talk when we have company……😬
I wonder how you brought this up so often as a topic of polite discussion with house guests. Is there a picture of the killdozer in your dining room or something? 😂
Also it's weird that people would just flat out deny your wisdom and lore. It reminds of when sometimes I bring up civil asset forfeiture to people and explain how the police sometimes just seize traveller's cash without ever charging them for a crime and I've had people just swear up and down that that can't be happening and it can't be legal then I have to show them court cases or a video where it's happened.
Every year all the losers in a welding group a follow circlejerk to this thing.
Yesterday I read "that he did everything he could not to hurt anyone". Absolute horseshit.
He ran over the fucking library that had kids in it minutes before.
Reporters at the local paper ran out of the building less than 10 seconds before he ran it over.
Then he ended up stuck in a grocery store.
WTF did the library or a grocery store do to him?
He shot up massive (30k lbs each) propane tanks *then* shot at power transformers nearby.
he was absolutely trying to make an explosion that police estimated would have threatened the lives of anyone with in 1/2 mile.
> WTF did the library or a grocery store do to him?
he had a list of over 100 people he thought wronged him. dude was a complete nut
Not to mention that he had literally years to mitigate his issues with the local authorities before they shut down his business, and his neighbor offered an easement to install a sewer, while he instead allowed sewage to over flow into the local waterways the entire time. He was an unreasonable ass.
> while he instead allowed sewage to over flow into the local waterways the entire time
Not just that, he actually pumped it into the draining ditch manually.
And continued to dump it there even when the new owners connected the lines on the property. He leased half the building which now had working water and sewer connections, yet he continued to dump the sewage in the ditch.
What jumped out to me is that once he finally sold the property (for 10x what he had paid for it just ten years prior, so it's not like he was financially ruined by the dispute) the new owner got it connected to the sewer line within a single day.
So it's not like this was some massive undertaking he couldn't manage. He was just an asshole.
He shot through portholes at law enforcement, and if he hadn’t gotten stuck in a basement, he would have bulldozed the Catholic Church because they didn’t support legalizing gambling.
He was unwell and unreasonable.
He had guns mounted in the thing and he fired at law enforcement. Just didn't hit anyone because he had no real way to aim.
The only difference between this guy and any mass shooter you can think of is that he didn't manage to kill anyone, but it definitely doesn't seem to be for lack of trying.
It enrages me that so much of the talk about this guy is lionizing him and talking about "a reasonable man pushed too far". The only person who ever described him as reasonable was himself. In what fucking world does a guy who spent months building an armored bulldozer who then leveled half the town come off as reasonable?
Fuck this psychotic asshole. It's an interesting story but the perpetrator was the villain not the hero.
It irrationally annoys me when I see people worshiping this guy as some comic book hero. The guy was a psychopath whether other people fucked with him or not. You don't go on a rampage trying to destroy a town because you're mad.
Fucked up the timing of that though. He only did it once his machine was stuck and cops took out the cameras. At that point, all he could look forward to was eventually getting extracted and then going to jail. If, instead, he killed himself before building the killdozer, he would have been much more sympathetic (still an asshole, apparently) but much less memorable.
The library was part of the town hall, which was the building he targeted. The fact that the library had kids in it may or may not have been known to him. He had his head too far up his own ass to think about it. The grocery store was owned by someone who was involved with his attempts to block the construction of a concrete plant.
I just read his Wikipedia page. He seems like he was a real jackass and probably a pretty unpleasant person to deal with.
>There is no force in the world stronger, more relentless, more unstoppable than spite
This is very true. [This comic has lived rent free in my head since I first saw it.](https://maximumble.thebookofbiff.com/comic/1432-spite/) Spite brings out the most motivated--and worst--in all of us.
I love the people celebrating him as a man, “pushed too far,” like all of his neighbors and other people who just did the correct things and didn’t have a problem. Man was mad at the world and wanted an excuse to take it out on someone.
He kept recordings of his thoughts, and the dude was suffering from psychosis, even his best friend said he was losing grip with reality, and these are guys who are already pretty out there.
"I'd rather be secretly modifying a Komatsu d355a bulldozer over a year and a half time period in Granby, CO" read a bumper sticker I saw a month ago in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. WTF. I knew what it was referring to but seriously wtf.
[Best video I have seen about the lead up to the attack. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/bwsjzv/15_years_ago_today_marvin_heemeyer_a_muffler_shop/) Dude was an asshole who thought the world was out to get him. Truth is he was just an asshole.
Most people just latch on to the killdozer as an icon of an Everyman against forces greater than themselves.
Like I'm sure some people find it cathartic to daydream about bulldozing Mitch McConnell's house.
However it's just not something you should actually do. What you should do is armor a demolition excavator instead, a machine like that won't get stopped by pesky basements. /s
You'd have to be. Even if the city were unjust towards him which seems debatable at best this was a crazy response and he targeted buildings that had nothing to do with his beef against the government.
a YouTuber is currently rebuilding this. He bought a similar Komatsu and drove it through Granby when transporting it back to Indiana. Safe to say the locals didn’t appreciate it.
It's really sad how lionized this guy was and is.
He genuinely just was a rotten asshole who, instead of self-reflecting on what a piece of shit he was, decided to triple-down on being an asshole, and then he was such an asshole he wouldn't even face the music.
A true S-tier piece of shit loser, if there ever was one.
I hate the way some people try to think of him as a kind of folk hero. He was a bitter, crazy, paranoid lunatic with delusions of entitlement about his stupid fucking lot who was perfectly willing to have killed people that day. He rolled over homes and libraries without notice and shot at giant fuel tanks and police officers. It's just lucky no one was killed.
Well kiddos, if there's anything to learn from Marvin; is that when you don't get your way but you feel like you have been slighted try to do as much destruction as possible before you suicide by cop. That'll show em.
I recommend looking as little into the story as possible if you want to keep your idea of this guy as some kind of bad ass figure. Once you get into the details you'll find out who he really was and the only unique thing about him was he chose to weld that thing together out of pure Boomer entitlement and pointlessness.
You know how angry you have to be to stay mad the whole time you’re building this. Halfway through id probably be like “Yeah, this isn’t worth it” after I calmed down lol
I would be so chill after all the welding and then just drive it in a field yelling fun sounds.
Goddammit I'll show them.... *five hours welding later* Hmmmm.... It would be easier to just bring the business up to code....
It was MONTHS
Fun fact: he did try to bring it up to code but his neighbors blocked him and the town put ultimatums on him getting up to code. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place and felt this was the only way to push back on both sides at once.
That's an overly charitable view of it that is largely at odds with pretty much every other account I have ever read or heard. >Heemeyer asked for $250,000 for his property, but later claimed he'd had the lot reappraised and asked for an additional $125,000. The Docheffs managed to collect $350,000, but according to Susan Docheff, Heemeyer again upped his asking price, claiming he'd again had the property appraised at a higher value, this time asking for $450,000.[^(\[1\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer#cite_note-:2-1)[^(\[8\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer#cite_note-:0-8) This negotiation happened before the rezoning proposal had a public hearing at town hall.[^(\[5\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer#cite_note-Durango-5) >Despite the deal falling through, the Docheff family pursued their plans to expand their business, and purchased a defunct commercial subdivision opposite Heemeyer's lot. Heemeyer had attempted to buy this land just before the Docheffs, but was unsuccessful. He later proposed a land swap whereby he would receive the prime lot. The Docheffs initially accepted the offer, but Heemeyer demanded the Docheffs construct a new building on the lot at great expense. The negotiations fell apart, with Heemeyer [stonewalling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewalling) the Docheffs. >Heemeyer launched a public campaign against the planned concrete plant. His campaign was initially successful, with members of the public concerned about potential environmental impacts packing into hearings on the construction proposals. The Docheffs addressed these concerns by promising to install additional measures against dust and noise and presented miniatures of the plant to concerned citizens. Opposition to the proposal dwindled, and the plan was set to move forward again.[^(\[1\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer#cite_note-:2-1)[^(\[8\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer#cite_note-:0-8) In November 2000, Heemeyer filed a lawsuit to block the project. >A city clerk wrote a letter to the newspaper arguing that Heemeyer had a vendetta against the Docheffs. The clerk referenced Heemeyer's increasingly "exorbitant" demands during negotiations for the sale of his property to the Docheffs, during which he had the land reappraised several times.
People get really mad when it gets pointed out their fantasies of being a wildly mentally unstable lunatic stem from a clearly unstable lunatic with personality disorders
Putting the "he was your standard, entitled Boomer with a fact allergy" into the story does tend to ruin the folk hero-ness.
This needs to be the top comment every time this story is posted. He wasn't an underdog being shafted by local government, he was just a greedy prick who threw a tantrum after he kept trying to negotiate better deals, and eventually being told to kick rocks.
They literally offered to hook his line up for free as his cement mixer septic systems was overflowing and he was dumping it in the river. He also made a 360k profit on the part of his land he did sell…
He just refused to get his property hooked up to the sewage system, and then refused to build a simple septic system. Then he sank a concrete mixer truck into the ground and once that was full, just continued dumping his sewage and waste into the creek. He thought he was instructed by god to do all this. This guy was just a giant crazy manbaby 😂
Wasn't that cement truck already there when he bought the property?
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle... Not a septic tank guy but guessing you can probably make it work if you can build a killdozer if you were willing to put in the same energy.
that's the type of shit you look into BEFORE signing a p&s and either bake the removal costs of previous lien holders property into the contract or make the contract conditional on its removal. of course this assumes that a person making a purchase is a sane human and not a total fucking nutjob who will build a tank and go on a killing spree over a civil infraction.
Fun Fact: That's false. He did not try to bring it up to code. He continued to pump his sewage into an irrigation ditch even after he sold the property and illegally lived on it to continue upgrading his dozer.
I love reframings like this. Yes of course. How silly of us all to demonize this man. He was just a misunderstood gentle soul who was pushed that one step too far by those pen pushers at city hall! No. Dude was a fucking piece of shit, insane psychopathic asshole, who was sick of not getting his own asshole way who decided, like an asshole does, to build a tank to "get back at all those who wronged him". Luckily because he was also an incompetent dipshit, he only really managed to do property damage, despite the fact that despite everybody pretending he wasn't trying to hurt anybody, he was trying to kill as many people as possible. Really the closest thing to casualties was a few schoolkids he almost killed by accident, who had only been removed from the building a few minutes earlier when others heard that some fucking asshole had built a tank and was on their way. Perhaps Marvin had the radio on and the news was on and they said that some crazy asshole was heading towards the library in a tank and he went "Oh shit I need to stop that guy!" The only positive impact he ever had in his entire pathetic life seems to be when he killed himself and saved everybody the trouble of existing in a reality that still contained the festering pustule of his existence.
> Perhaps Marvin had the radio on and the news was on and they said that some crazy asshole was heading towards the library in a tank and he went "Oh shit I need to stop that guy!" The sheriff's office used the 911 system to place a reverse call to all citizens in the town warning them to evacuate. The only reason most of these places were empty when he ran over them is because of that warning, otherwise he def would have killed many people, including those kids.
> Dude was a fucking piece of shit, insane psychopathic asshole, who was sick of not getting his own asshole way who decided, like an asshole does, to build a tank to "get back at all those who wronged him". My absolute "favorite" part of the entire stories are the stories of the locals who, upon seeing the Killdozer tearing down the street breaking shit, said, "Oh that's probably Heemeyer." If the people in town are unsurprised that you would go nuts and do that, you probably were a piece of shit.
It might just be me but people who think the killdozer guy was backed into a corner and just had to killdoze remind me of people saying the confederacy just wanted "states right"
It’s the same people
That's because its the same people. The dude was also associated with the Patriot movement being feed the same BS.
When he was told he needed to connect his land to an actual sewer line or septic tank (instead of using a cement mixer buried in the ground) he called it 'extortion through government fiat' so yep, you know exactly what kind of flags he'd be waving.
I hate society! Says man who depends and benefits from society. These types are so damn exhausting.
You seem angry, i suggest you stay away from welding equipment and construction machinery until you cool down (adding the just kidding thing here)
Please can you source your fun fact? It does not match with, for instance, wikipedia. According to that he had 9 years but continually refused to fix it. The neighbour you claim blocked it, actually offered to help for free with an easement.
No, he had other options. He didntnhave to go on a suicidal rampage.
Not a fact. He was a fukin nutjob who refused to take multiple deals better than he should have got. Hopefully you're reading the replies of people who know the actual details.
He threw a Guinness book of world records level toddler tantrum and died because of it. Get it up to code or sell it, not hard. Another option is seek mental health help.
No he wasn’t. He blocked himself at every turn. Heemeyer was the very definition of a piece of shit, who wanted more and more and more, and when they eventually stopped giving, he threw a tantrum, where it’s a miracle no-one died (apart from the loser himself) The sooner people stop portraying him in any kind of positive light the better.
From killdozer to chilldozer
The A-team would build that in 2 mins flat. They would easily stay mad the whole time.
Montage!
Hahaha you killed it for me :)
Lived up there during this, when the tv was showing it live I was in the marina bar and grill and everyone knew exactly who it was, he’d been talking about it for many months and everyone figured he was full of shit. We went into town to watch him drive around.
There is actually an interesting detail regarding that. In addition to spending an extremely long time slowly building this (so it was definitely something he thought about long and hard), once the concrete shell was on, he had no way to get it back off. He had no intention of leaving that thing alive.
It had a hatch. He didn't 'lower the concrete shell on to it'. The shop wasn't nearly capable of supporting 25 tons of armor on a pulley. It had a hatch.
It's wild how people rewrote different narratives around Killdozer. As usual the truth is pretty out there, it was an alien all along. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killdozer!\_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killdozer!_(film)) They should do a remake and pay homage to Marvin Heemeyer by having another [failed muffler salesman ](https://i.ibb.co/WHtpzpq/flatten.png) star in it. Perhaps Marvin should have tried cooking.
It had a hatch, but he welded it closed and did not have tools inside that would allow him to cut out.
If he welded it closed from the outside, how did he get in?
I have no idea what the other guy just said about critical thinking skills, weird comment. Anyway, the answer is that: > Perhaps the most unique feature of his Killdozer was its lack of an entrance/exit. Instead of building the armor plating entirely onto his bulldozer, he fashioned the top piece separately to be lifted by crane onto the bulldozer once he was inside. This meant that once he was in the Killdozer, there was no getting out, but more importantly, it meant there was no hatch that could be breached by law enforcement. https://stephenzimmerman.com/killdozer-marvin-heemeyer
There was a hatch, this article is not accurate
Concrete?
the shell is basically composite armor. there is a layer of metal, a layer of concrete and another layer of metal
Yep. There is a reason bombs couldn't stop this thing.
Funny enough, it's pretty well known that the governor at the time ordered the national guard to strike it with a hellfire. He only changed his mind when it came to light he'd probably destroy more of the town than the bulldozer.
That's not well known. Maybe you mean widely rumored. The governor denies he considered that measure much past determining it would likely cause as much damage as the dozer itself.
A hellfire has a 8kg warhead. You arent destroying much more than the target with it.
If you read his wiki, there was an access hatch.
Halfway? I wouldn’t even have managed to hoist one of those hunks of steel before thinking “This sucks and I’m tired now”
Watched the documentary and the dudes business wasn't up to code because he refused to put a bathroom in and when it got shut down he went nuts.
Here is the very good video that the Well There's Your Problem guy made about the truth and untruths of the problems Heeymeyer had with his neighbors. Spoiler: He was in the wrong about basically everything, the city and neighborhoods tried to help him and work with him, and he was just a giant prick. https://youtu.be/Yvl_7_Up7zU
Generally, when your solution to "i'm really mad" is to create a massive armored bulldozer aimed at causing as much random destruction predominantly upon people who aren't even the people who pissed you off, mostly out of spite, that is a pretty big hint as to their personality lol
I thought it was because he no longer had a driveway to access his shop.
He sold the land with the driveway to a concrete plant but tried to screw them by doubling the price for the 2nd part of the land. His plan backfired and his only access to the main road was by backwoods access roads
He actually raised the price after they agreed to it THREE times and then after they refused the third time, acted like a victim instead of taking 10x what he paid for the land initially, which would've given him enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life. Dude is motivated purely by greed and spite and refused every generous offer put his way. People who describe it as a righteous rampage are either stupid or missing the context entirely.
There's a couple of different ways to approach "enough money to last you the rest of your life" and he chose a different one.
Yes, The money he had in his wallet was enough money to last the rest of his life.
He should have bought a snickers instead.
I know I started a giant rant about how much of a greedy asshole he was but I had to stop my self lol
A lot of people in the YouTube comments support him
Being supported by the people in Youtube comments is NOT a seal of quality.
People like an underdog story and they also wish to live out their violent fantasies. It doesn’t make them not stupid.
Also just a lot of anti-establishment “rebel without a cause” types to be found in comment sections of certain social media. Like if you see this story posted on Instagram, almost assuredly the top comments will be about how this dude rocked and the government is bad.
People who comment on youtube are the worst people on earth
A lot of people in YouTube comments are reactionary idiots.
Kind of proves how wrong he was right there doesn't it?
Typical small business owner petty tyrant.
I mean the dude was really unwell.
What about a killdozer makes you think he was unwell…
Clinical Narcissism if anything. He seemed all together. He wasn't the paranoid type who thought everyone was against him for inoccuous made up reasons, he was the spiteful type because he thought it would be unfair if he received 10x what he paid for the property, and thought he deserved more. He refused a bunch of generous deals and when they just decided to build around him he thought he was justified to destroy their property.
Well.. it wasn't just a one time thing that "set him off".. he had quite a lot of runins: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin\_Heemeyer#Zoning\_and\_sewage\_disputes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer#Zoning_and_sewage_disputes)
>I was always willing to be reasonable until I had to be unreasonable. Ah yes, this dude seemed very reasonable
Reminds me of someone I knew who said they "avoided drama," when in fact they went out of their way to cause more drama than anyone I knew
This guy doubled down on like 5 separate occasions. There is a great documentary about it, the city council fucked with him the slightest bit and he went completely off the rails. https://youtu.be/LZK9XthMZ1w?si=mspS3v0F4Ducox-H
The dude was well beyond unreasonable, obviously. He was absolutely obsessed with “getting back”. I did a pretty deep dive on this story a while back, and found this guy isn’t the internet folk hero I’d heard about. He was a fucking loser, a childish, petty, vindictive loser who decided to take out a personal grudge on an entire town of innocent people. Fuck Marvin Heemeyer.
Thank you, I'm tried of getting called a glowie because I don't think being pissed because someone stopped you from pumping raw sewage into an irrigation ditch makes you a hero.
I full expected to find a story of a man railroaded by “the man” and be righteously indignant on behalf of him, especially because he died in the end. What I found instead was the story of a pathetic man who expended his life for what amounts to a tantrum, which would be amusing if it had not risked the lives of innocent people, and destroyed the property of people who had done absolutely nothing to him. Shooting at the propane tanks and running into buildings with people still inside immediately nullifies any argument that he was lashing out at “the system” for oppressing him. He was a pathetic man trying to feel superior in some way, and he used the wealth from his successful businesses to build this machine, which also disproves the “poor, hard-working guy” rhetoric.
Generational hater.
How did it take me 20 years to realize Killdozer Day was the same date as the Tiananmen Square Massacre?!?!
International killdozer day.
I just realized this… coincidence?
I’d give it about a 1:365 chance
Never tell me the odds
ok
You’re doing great so far.
The odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field are approximately 3720:1
And 10 cent beer night at the cleveland Indians
Chinese tank story vs American tank story…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer Here's his wiki. Incase you haven't read about him.
Wow that was a wild read. Thanks for sharing the link
Each paragraph gets wilder and wilder! I didn't know about his septic tank. It was an old cement truck mixer buried in the ground!
There’s a really good documentary about the whole thing. I don’t think it’s streamable, but it’s definitely worth the $3.99 rental if you’re into absolutely crazy stories with matching real-life footage.
This one on [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OzKxKdsBq8) Movies?
Someone posted the free one below. https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/Jhao9YMhai
The link I posted is free as well.
Wait a minute: isnt there a quest in GTA San Andreas that's pretty similar to this story? Something in los fierros and pushing construction workers into concrete? Was that a reference to this event?
In San Andreas some construction workers ~~dogwhistle~~ cat all(?) after CJ's sister, so CJ behaves like a ~~reasonable adult~~ GTA protagonist and destroys part of the construction site. The foreman hides in a porta potty, so CJ pushes it into a hole which he then fills with concrete. Not quite the same story, but just as unhinged.
I’m pretty sure you didn’t mean dog whistle
I'm pretty sure you're right. Cat call?
Meow
"Hey baby! Did you know that despite being 13%-" *getting shoved into concrete noises*
Jesus. Imagine this guy had put his energies to something productive. Wild & sad.
The Wikipedia article describes the situation resulting in the killdozer event lot differently than other articles imo.
20years old already? Damn I’m old!
2004 was just 8 years ago, right? Right?
I got in trouble because every time we had guests over and they never heard of killdozer they don’t believe me and I force them to watch a short video on killdozer and now my husband has banned killdozer talk when we have company……😬
We've both been banished to the killdozer kiddie table 😵
I wonder how you brought this up so often as a topic of polite discussion with house guests. Is there a picture of the killdozer in your dining room or something? 😂 Also it's weird that people would just flat out deny your wisdom and lore. It reminds of when sometimes I bring up civil asset forfeiture to people and explain how the police sometimes just seize traveller's cash without ever charging them for a crime and I've had people just swear up and down that that can't be happening and it can't be legal then I have to show them court cases or a video where it's happened.
Nah invite me over we’ll talk Killdozer for hours lol
how did he see?
Camera behind bullet proof glass feeding to monitors inside the bulldozer
Also compressed gas nozzles to clear the bulletproof lens shielding of dust accumulated from smashing through buildings.
Man thought of everything
Well not everything.
Didn't think of Basements.
Nowadays we have fancy spinning lenses for this
Cameras and tv screens
It looks better than the Cybertruck.
Every year all the losers in a welding group a follow circlejerk to this thing. Yesterday I read "that he did everything he could not to hurt anyone". Absolute horseshit. He ran over the fucking library that had kids in it minutes before. Reporters at the local paper ran out of the building less than 10 seconds before he ran it over. Then he ended up stuck in a grocery store. WTF did the library or a grocery store do to him?
He shot up massive (30k lbs each) propane tanks *then* shot at power transformers nearby. he was absolutely trying to make an explosion that police estimated would have threatened the lives of anyone with in 1/2 mile. > WTF did the library or a grocery store do to him? he had a list of over 100 people he thought wronged him. dude was a complete nut
Keeping a list of people who have wronged them is already a red flag.
 *Man, am I glad I called that guy*
r/nostalgia
Doo-wop, doo-be-doo-doo-wop, doo-wah, doo-lang Blue days, black nights, doo-wah, doo-lang
Gonna have to add you to the list for this egregious slander of us list-keepers.
That’s a grudging’ grungi
This scene played on comedy central like 10 min after you posted this.
Reminder to self: get that bigger hard drive.
LindseyLuohan - check
Not to mention all the “god chose me” “vessel for god” studf
Man am I glad I called *that* guy!
Not to mention that he had literally years to mitigate his issues with the local authorities before they shut down his business, and his neighbor offered an easement to install a sewer, while he instead allowed sewage to over flow into the local waterways the entire time. He was an unreasonable ass.
> while he instead allowed sewage to over flow into the local waterways the entire time Not just that, he actually pumped it into the draining ditch manually.
And continued to dump it there even when the new owners connected the lines on the property. He leased half the building which now had working water and sewer connections, yet he continued to dump the sewage in the ditch.
It’s wild that someone who demonstrably was a massive wanker like him get this much good press for actual terrorism.
What jumped out to me is that once he finally sold the property (for 10x what he had paid for it just ten years prior, so it's not like he was financially ruined by the dispute) the new owner got it connected to the sewer line within a single day. So it's not like this was some massive undertaking he couldn't manage. He was just an asshole.
He shot through portholes at law enforcement, and if he hadn’t gotten stuck in a basement, he would have bulldozed the Catholic Church because they didn’t support legalizing gambling. He was unwell and unreasonable.
You could have picked more sympathetic organizations to list than that. Lol
He had guns mounted in the thing and he fired at law enforcement. Just didn't hit anyone because he had no real way to aim. The only difference between this guy and any mass shooter you can think of is that he didn't manage to kill anyone, but it definitely doesn't seem to be for lack of trying. It enrages me that so much of the talk about this guy is lionizing him and talking about "a reasonable man pushed too far". The only person who ever described him as reasonable was himself. In what fucking world does a guy who spent months building an armored bulldozer who then leveled half the town come off as reasonable? Fuck this psychotic asshole. It's an interesting story but the perpetrator was the villain not the hero.
It irrationally annoys me when I see people worshiping this guy as some comic book hero. The guy was a psychopath whether other people fucked with him or not. You don't go on a rampage trying to destroy a town because you're mad.
Yeah, fuck this domestic terrorist piece of shit. He was a skilled welder and could have used his talents to improve the planet imo.
He moved way past terrorism, he wasn't using fear to get what he wanted, he was in full revenge mode. It's pretty crazy that he *didn't* kill someone.
He killed himself. That has to count for something.
Fucked up the timing of that though. He only did it once his machine was stuck and cops took out the cameras. At that point, all he could look forward to was eventually getting extracted and then going to jail. If, instead, he killed himself before building the killdozer, he would have been much more sympathetic (still an asshole, apparently) but much less memorable.
Reminds me of the current Ted kaczynski love that is going on.
The library was part of the town hall, which was the building he targeted. The fact that the library had kids in it may or may not have been known to him. He had his head too far up his own ass to think about it. The grocery store was owned by someone who was involved with his attempts to block the construction of a concrete plant. I just read his Wikipedia page. He seems like he was a real jackass and probably a pretty unpleasant person to deal with.
He didn't want to pay the fines on his late library book?
There is no force in the world stronger, more relentless, more unstoppable than spite. Or crazy. When you combine them you get Killdozer.
"I'd like to return this jacket." "May I ask why?" "For spite." "I'm sorry I don't think we can accept a return based purely on spite."
Well then I just don't want it... No. I'm afraid you already said *spite*.
>There is no force in the world stronger, more relentless, more unstoppable than spite This is very true. [This comic has lived rent free in my head since I first saw it.](https://maximumble.thebookofbiff.com/comic/1432-spite/) Spite brings out the most motivated--and worst--in all of us.
Spite is so powerful it motivated a successful presidential campaign in 2016.
It motivated the voters supporting that campaign too
Spite with the crazy…don’t forget the crazy
Sharknado vibes there
I love the people celebrating him as a man, “pushed too far,” like all of his neighbors and other people who just did the correct things and didn’t have a problem. Man was mad at the world and wanted an excuse to take it out on someone.
He kept recordings of his thoughts, and the dude was suffering from psychosis, even his best friend said he was losing grip with reality, and these are guys who are already pretty out there.
"I'd rather be secretly modifying a Komatsu d355a bulldozer over a year and a half time period in Granby, CO" read a bumper sticker I saw a month ago in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. WTF. I knew what it was referring to but seriously wtf.
Here’s the documentary : https://youtu.be/LZK9XthMZ1w?si=3dRFCaSFLrkv15NE Like or hate the guy, it’s an interesting story.
Can’t deny that it was an impressive feat
[Best video I have seen about the lead up to the attack. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/bwsjzv/15_years_ago_today_marvin_heemeyer_a_muffler_shop/) Dude was an asshole who thought the world was out to get him. Truth is he was just an asshole.
He's a neocon hero. I hate listening to the guys across the cube farm sing his praises
Most people just latch on to the killdozer as an icon of an Everyman against forces greater than themselves. Like I'm sure some people find it cathartic to daydream about bulldozing Mitch McConnell's house. However it's just not something you should actually do. What you should do is armor a demolition excavator instead, a machine like that won't get stopped by pesky basements. /s
Dude was unhinged
You'd have to be. Even if the city were unjust towards him which seems debatable at best this was a crazy response and he targeted buildings that had nothing to do with his beef against the government.
The boss of all boomers. Makes 10x on his property, but it wasn’t enough for him to stand complying with some basic town planning.
It's even worse than that, he 10x'd his property without ever bringing any of it up to code and was still so mad he decided to destroy the town.
So he did it on the 15th anniversary of Tiananmen Square?
So, how do you get in?
This guy now wouldve had 34 Trump-flags & bumper stickers on this here killdozer
Dude should have brought his shit up to code like everyone else, or cut losses on a bad investment. Ultimate man child.
It wasn't even a bad investment. He was just a greedy man child.
What losses? He had a deal to sell his property for 10x what he bought it.
a YouTuber is currently rebuilding this. He bought a similar Komatsu and drove it through Granby when transporting it back to Indiana. Safe to say the locals didn’t appreciate it.
Link?
Glad someone else watches WD. That dude is something else.
I thought this happened much earlier, but I'm conflating it with a 1995 incident in which someone stole a tank in San Diego.
Killdozer- great band that I haven’t thought about in a long time!
Time to put on Knuckles The Dog.
Still more beautiful than the Cybertruck....
It's really sad how lionized this guy was and is. He genuinely just was a rotten asshole who, instead of self-reflecting on what a piece of shit he was, decided to triple-down on being an asshole, and then he was such an asshole he wouldn't even face the music. A true S-tier piece of shit loser, if there ever was one.
Did he get his inspiration from the A-team?
I hate the way some people try to think of him as a kind of folk hero. He was a bitter, crazy, paranoid lunatic with delusions of entitlement about his stupid fucking lot who was perfectly willing to have killed people that day. He rolled over homes and libraries without notice and shot at giant fuel tanks and police officers. It's just lucky no one was killed.
Man fuck this guy. He should be forgotten.
Never heard of him. And I agree, wish I hadn’t.
Looks like a modern Russian tank, but needs more mattresses strapped on the sides.
Whistlin’ Diesel is remaking this right now.
Guy was a huge piece of shit. Absolute miracle he didn’t kill anyone, either with the dozer or the rifles he had in the dozer.
Fu... Oso Landslide 10 years ago, Granby 20 years ago... where did the gd time go?? I remember both of these like they were just yesterday.
Well kiddos, if there's anything to learn from Marvin; is that when you don't get your way but you feel like you have been slighted try to do as much destruction as possible before you suicide by cop. That'll show em.
Since it happened in Colorado, did that inspire the Woodstock episode from South Park?
Tony Stark built this in a cave! With a box of SCRAPS!!
People who pay attention to obscure anniversaries and post it on reddit for the rest of us. You the real MVP
Police: "And what are your reasons for rampaging in a killdozer?" Marvin's brain: "Don't say revenge! Don't say revenge!" Marvin: "Uh, revenge?"
Username checks out.
I recommend looking as little into the story as possible if you want to keep your idea of this guy as some kind of bad ass figure. Once you get into the details you'll find out who he really was and the only unique thing about him was he chose to weld that thing together out of pure Boomer entitlement and pointlessness.