Stories Of Revenge: Marvin Heemeyer And His ‘Killdozer’
Craig F. Walker/The Denver Post/Getty Images
Investigators inspect the fortified bulldozer driven by Marvin Heemeyer where it came to rest after his revenge rampage through town.
Marvin Heemeyer was a small welding shop owner in Granby, Colorado, who built a makeshift bulldozer-tank in 2004 and plowed through the small town, causing $7 million worth of damage. The reason? A zoning dispute between Heemeyer, the city’s zoning commission, and a concrete company that wanted to build a plant on his land.
In order to build their new facility, the concrete company had purchased a piece of land from Heemeyer where his own shop was also located. When the city’s zoning commission approved the land for construction, Heemeyer argued that the construction blocked him from getting into his shop.
At first, Heemeyer took the rational course of action and petitioned the commission to prevent the rezoning. But after multiple rejections — as well as multiple fines for various civil violations — Heemeyer decided to take matters into his own hands.
For more than a year, he toiled away in his shop yard building his “killdozer,” a customized Komatsu D355A bulldozer outfitted with thick steel plate armor and a layer of concrete in between, and three-inch bulletproof plastic to protect the cameras he needed to navigate the vehicle. His killdozer was also armed with three makeshift gun ports housing a .50 caliber rifle, a .308 semi-automatic, and a .22 long rifle.
On June 4, 2004, Heemeyer sealed himself inside the killdozer’s cockpit and drove his machine into town. He plowed through the concrete plant next to his shop then made his way toward City Hall, wrecking a newspaper office, the former mayor’s home, a hardware store, and other properties. Once his killdozer was on the loose, the town put out an alert to its residents to warn them to stay away from Heemeyer’s rampage.
After two hours and seven minutes, Heemeyer had bulldozed every business or home that had some connection to his case against the zoning committee. The destruction he caused amounted to $7 million in damages.
The havoc was so great the Colorado governor considered authorizing the National Guard to attack Heemeyer in his killdozer with Apache helicopters and an anti-tank missile. But before they got the green light, Heemeyer rampage ended when he tried to plow through the Gambles hardware store. The store had a small basement that ensnared one of the treads on the vehicle. Unable to free the machine, Heemeyer’s rampage was over. He pulled out a handgun and killed himself with a single shot to the head.
Later, investigators found two lists inside the cab of the bulldozer-tank: one was a list of the 13 properties Heemeyer had destroyed, while another list contained several names, including the town’s mayor and some local business owners.
They also found Heemeyer had no way of getting out of the sealed cockpit on his own which suggests that he wasn’t planning on making it out of his rampage alive. Nobody was hurt during his bulldozing spree except for Heemeyer himself, but the memory of the incident still haunts the city’s residents.
“It’s not that I don’t feel safe, but it’s changed the way that you look at people, at stuff,” the Gambles store owner said. “I don’t know how to put it into words, really.”
