[1] Authorities initially speculated that he may have used a homemade crane – found in his garage – to lower the armor hull over the dozer and himself. [1] Compressed-air nozzles were fitted to blow dust away from the video cameras. Over about eighteen months Heemeyer had secretly modified a Komatsu D355A bulldozer by adding layers of steel and concrete, intended to serve as armor. Instead, subvert those confines and be a positive force in the world with all your abilities. While the Marvin and has been called a lunatic and misunderstood by much of the media if you actually know the story you know that the officials who ran the town got exactly what they were bargaining for by running a crony capitalist scheme involving a cement plant. Mamerto Adan. Investigators searched the garage where they believed that Heemeyer built the vehicle and found cement and armor steel. If there’s a moral to the story, I guess it’s to not let the world force you into doing negative things. Yes, I know, dealing with government officials is a real pain most of the time. Double 1/2" plate with concrete pored in between for armor. [1] He used this to demolish the Granby town hall, the former mayor's house, and several other buildings. Contact Author. He also said it was God's plan that he not be married or have a family so that he could be in a position to carry out such an attack. Things were going well for Marvin until the town approved a cement factory to be constructed on the adjacent property to Marvin’s shop, thus blocking access and threatening to destroy his business. Marvin Heemeyer, 52, killed himself with a gunshot to the head when his bulldozer got stuck and police moved in. This is still within 2 days, and close enough to the 14th anniversary to talk about, but maybe I wouldn’t have rushed to post this so soon, but it’s all good. Heemeyer had installed two rifles in firing ports on the inside of the bulldozer,[15] and fired fifteen bullets from his rifle at power transformers and propane tanks. Around or just after the Killdozer mess, he was trying to start the business, and the county tried just about everything they could to stop it. Marvin then took his own life by handgun and the police only managed to retrieve his remains after the use of a torch for several hours. On June 4, 2004, Heemeyer drove his armored bulldozer through the wall of his former business, the concrete plant, the town hall, the office of the local newspaper that editorialized against him, the home of a former mayor (in which the mayor's widow then resided), and a hardware store owned by another man Heemeyer named in a lawsuit, as well as a few others. No one else in the Grand County town … I'm not saying what he did was right, but I understand Heeymeyer's frustration. Marvin Heemeyer was born on October 28, 1951, in South Dakota and lived in Grand Lake, Colorado, about 16 miles (26 km) away from Granby. Heemeyer had leased his business to a trash company and sold the property several months before the rampage. They kept throwing up road blocks - zoning issues in his face - 'it's not zoned for your type of business, etc. believed that this negotiation happened before the rezoning proposal was heard by the town council. In the late 1990s—after years of protests, petitions, and town meetings—it became obvious to the 52-year-old that he was entwined in a gross miscarriage of justice. etc. Image Source: https://twitter.com/NewsCPR/status/999847023015800834. The only issue with the armor was that once the armor was lowered, Marvin could not come out again, but considering how long he would go to jail for his rampage if caught, he probably wanted it that way. Early 2000's right? If the phrase "killdozer" doesn't immediately ring a bell, here's a quick refresher: Back in 2004, a muffler shop owner named Marvin Heemeyer got so angry about a … Now with the advent of the internet and related mass communication, there’s hope that countless Marvin’s will be able to seek justice more productively through the unfiltered free speech restored to the masses. Although I'm glad nobody got killed (besides Marv), the whole thing is kind of bad-ass in a demented way. Needless to say, once he found out about the changes they pretty much couldn't stop him from opening up. In total Marvin managed to destroy 13 buildings with his heavily modified Komatsu D355A bulldozer. In addition to writings that he left on the wall of his shed, Heemeyer recorded a number of audio tapes explaining his motivation for the attack. [1], For visibility, the bulldozer was fitted with several video cameras linked to two monitors mounted on the vehicle's dashboard. [20] The first recording was made on April 13, 2004. About a minute later, one of the SWAT team members, who had swarmed around the machine, reported hearing a single gunshot from inside the sealed cab.