American hero on a bulldozer. Marvin Heemeyer is America's last hero. Heemeyer's main destruction

While fans and opponents of “Leviathan” argue about whether the author discredited Russia with his film, the fact remains in the shadows that the reason for creating the film was a story that happened in the United States.

“A friend told me a story about a man who lived in Colorado and who rebelled against a powerful company. This man first destroyed buildings and then committed suicide. This story could have happened anywhere. We moved it to Russia,” he said during a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival Andrey Zvyagintsev.

The story that formed the basis of the idea for the film “Leviathan” at one time shocked America and turned the main character into a real icon of anti-globalists.

Marvin John Heemeyer for the time being he could be considered almost a model American. A Vietnam War veteran who served in the U.S. Air Force as an airfield technician, he was a successful business owner after leaving the Army and owned a stake in a large auto repair shop in Denver, Colorado.

Mr. Heemeyer's personal life did not work out. As his friends said, in his youth he experienced an unhappy love and made no new attempts to start a family.

Land conflict

In the early 1990s, Heemeyer, who was in his early 40s at the time, sold his interest in the auto repair shop and purchased 2 acres of land in the town of Granby. Having moved to a town located 140 kilometers from Denver, Marvin Heemeyer opened a workshop with a store on his land.

For several years, Heemeyer faithfully repaired and sold automobile mufflers. The man had an undoubted talent as an engineer - as a hobby, he assembled snowmobiles, which he used to ride newlyweds at weddings in the winter.

By the end of the 1990s, the population of the town of Granby did not exceed 2,200 people, and the Mountain Park cement plant was a kind of “town-forming enterprise” in it.

Docheff family, which owned the plant, decided to build a new production line, received approval from the city administration and began to buy the necessary plots of land from private owners. Among those whose land Mountain Park needed was Marvin Heemeyer.

As the plant's owners later claimed, Heemeyer was offered $250,000 for the plot—a more than decent price, considering that he bought the land for $42,000. Heemeyer, again, according to the Docheff family, first agreed, but then demanded 375 thousand, and then completely increased the amount of compensation to a million.

It is impossible to find out Heemeyer’s own version today, but his friends assured that the owners of the plant were telling lies and did not offer any large sums to Heemeyer, and he himself did not demand them. On the contrary, they claim that the greedy Docheff family decided to take over the plot for almost a nominal fee.

Marvin John Heemeyer. Frame youtube.com

How they are “pressed” in America

What we can say with confidence is that the parties have not reached a compromise. And Heemeyer got into trouble.

For the city authorities, whose well-being rested solely on the generosity of the owners of the cement plant, the stubborn owner of the workshop became a bone in the throat.

And they put pressure on Heemeyer. Since all the lands around already belonged to the owners of the plant, the obstinate was blocked from entering his own territory. Heemeyer did not despair and decided to build another road to his site, for which he purchased a decommissioned heavy Komatsu D355A-3 bulldozer. However, the Granby administration imposed a ban on road construction.

Heemeyer appealed the permit to build a new plant line in court, but lost the case. The bank presented him with claims for incorrect registration mortgage loan and threatened to take the house away. This was followed by numerous claims from firefighters, tax authorities, and sanitary inspection - city services issued Heemeyer fine after fine.

The longer the confrontation continued, the more actively they put pressure on Heemeyer. According to the owners of the plant and local authorities, the man had two options - either go bankrupt or sell the land.

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Engineer's Revenge

Heemeyer found the third. He realized long ago that he would not be able to defeat the system. Investigators later found his diaries, which included the following phrase: “I wonder how I haven’t been caught yet. The project occupied part of my time for more than a year and a half."

The talented engineer hatched a plan for revenge, for which he took on the complete re-equipment of the bulldozer, which was originally purchased for peaceful purposes. Heemeyer lined it with twelve-millimeter steel sheets, laid with a centimeter layer of cement. Equipped with television cameras that display images on monitors inside the cabin. Equipped cameras with lens cleaning systems. There was even a refrigerator with a small supply of food, water and beer inside the cabin.

On June 4, 2004, 52-year-old Marvin Heemeyer decided his time for redemption had come. Armed with a rifle, carbine, revolver, and grabbing a gas mask, the man climbed into the cabin of his armored monster. Then using remote control lowered another armored box onto the chassis, finally locking itself inside.

At 2:30 p.m. local time, the vehicle, which was later given the name “Killdozer,” entered the streets of Granby.

Heemeyer did not act in a fit of anger, but according to a clearly developed plan. His list included the houses and offices of everyone who managed to poison his life during the conflict with Mountain Park.

Having entered the territory of the hated plant, he demolished the plant management building, and then industrial premises. Then the facades of the houses of members of the city council were demolished, the building of the same bank that threatened to take away Heemeyer’s house, the local administration building, the office of the local newspaper, the house of the widow of a former judge... In short, the avenger went through the homes and offices of absolutely everyone who was involved in his problems.

The local sheriff and his assistants fired at the “iron monster” with revolvers and shotguns, but, naturally, they did not succeed. The special forces squad also failed to stop Heemeyer. "Killdozer" took 200 hits from different types weapons, but never stopped.

In order to curb the ardor of law enforcement officers, the avenger fired his weapon through the loopholes left for this purpose, so the police chose to retreat to a safe distance. Attempts to smoke out Heemeyer with gas also failed - anticipating this, the man used a gas mask.

Ultimately, the police evacuated the town and waited for the Killdozer to stop on its own.

It happened at 16:30. During the demolition of a small wholesale store, the bulldozer was covered with debris from the roof, it got stuck and stalled.

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Consigned to oblivion

The police did not dare approach the Killdozer for another two hours. Then, for several hours, law enforcement officers penetrated the armor to get to the “tractor driver.” This was only possible the next morning.

Marvin Heemeyer was dead. After completing the raid on Granby, he committed suicide. The creator of "Killdozer" was the only victim of what the media called "Marvin Heemeyer's War" - not a single person was injured.

The total damage caused to the city was $5 million, and the Mountain Park plant was $2 million.

The state governor, who arrived at the scene, said that the city looked as if a tornado had passed through it.

They tried to quickly forget about the “enemy of the state” in the United States. The country's central media paid minimal attention to the story of Marvin Heemeyer, without going into the details of what happened. The city began to be actively restored.

However, its population continues to decline, as in many other small towns in America.

And “Marvin Heemeyer’s War” is today the only reason why Granby is still remembered in the rest of the world.

There was a guy with a capital M named Marvin John Heemeyer.

He worked as a welder, repairing car mufflers in the town of Granby, Colorado. The town is microscopic, 2200 inhabitants. He had a workshop there, with a store. As I understand, land plot he officially bought under this workshop for quite a lot of money at an auction (something like $15,000, for this he sold his share in a large car service center in Denver).
He also built snowmobiles as a hobby and used them to ride newlyweds around Granby in the winter. Like in a limousine. He even had the appropriate license (I never suspected that such activities could be licensed at all). In my opinion, the guy was quite good-natured and extremely funny. However, “While many people described Heemeyer as a likeable guy, others said he was not someone to cross.” At one time he served in the Air Force as an airfield technician, and since then he has worked steadily in the engineering and technical field.He lived to be fifty-two years old, unmarried (he had some kind of sad love story at one time).

Heemeyer, a fifty-two-year-old welder, lived in Granby for several years repairing car mufflers. His small workshop was closely adjacent to the Mountain Park cement plant. To the dismay of Heemeyer and other neighbors of the plant, Mountain Park decided to expand, forcing them to sell their land.

Sooner or later, all the plant's neighbors surrendered, but not Heemeyer.

The manufacturers were never able to acquire his land, although they tried to do so by hook or by crook. In general, despairing of resolving the issue culturally, they began to persecute the man. Since all the land around the workshop already belonged to the plant, all communications and access to the house were blocked. Marvin decided to pave a different road, and even bought a decommissioned Komatsu D355A-3 bulldozer for this purpose and restored the engine on it in his workshop.

The city administration refused permission to build a new road. The bank found fault with the mortgage loan and threatened to take away the house.

Heemeyer tried to restore justice by suing Mountain Park, but lost the lawsuit.

The tax office for taxes on retail trade, the fire inspectorate, the sanitary epidemiological inspection came several times, the latter issued a fine of $ 2,500 for the enchanting “junk cars on the property and not being hooked up to the sewer line” (in general, in his workshop “there was a tank, not answering sanitary standards". Let me remind you that we were talking about an auto repair shop. Marvin could not connect to the sewer system, since the land on which the ditch should be dug also belonged to the plant and the plant was in no hurry to give him such permission. Marvin paid. Attached to the receipt upon delivery short note- "Underpants". After some time, his father died (Mar. 31, 2004), Marvin went to bury him, and while he was away, his electricity and water were turned off and his workshop was sealed. After that, he locked himself in the workshop. Almost no one saw him.

The creation of the Armored Bulldozer took about two months, according to some reports, and about a year and a half, according to others... She covered it with twelve-millimeter steel sheets, laid with a centimeter layer of cement. Equipped with television cameras that display images on monitors inside the cabin. I equipped the cameras with lens cleaning systems in case they were blinded by dust and debris. Prudent Marvin stocked up on food, water, ammunition and a gas mask. (Two Ruger 223s and one Remington 306 with ammunition.) Using remote control, he lowered the armored box onto the chassis, locking himself inside. To lower this shell onto the bulldozer cabin, Heemeyer used a homemade crane. “By lowering it, Heemeyer understood that after that he would no longer be able to get out of the car,” police experts said. And at 14:30 I left the garage.

Marvin made a list of goals in advance. Everyone whom he considered necessary to take revenge on.
“Sometimes, as he put it in his notes, reasonable men must do unreasonable things.”
To begin with, he drove through the territory of the plant, carefully demolishing the plant's management building, production workshops and, in general, everything down to the last barn.

Then he moved around the town. He removed the facades from the houses of city council members. Demolished the bank building, which tried to press him through early repayment of the mortgage loan. Destroyed the buildings of the gas company "Ixel Energy", which refused to refuel his kitchen after a fine gas cylinders, the building of the city hall, the office of the city council, the fire department, a warehouse, several residential buildings that belonged to the mayor of the city. He tore down the editorial office of the local newspaper and the public library. In short, he demolished everything that had anything to do with the local authorities, including their private houses. Moreover, he showed good knowledge of who owns what.

They tried to stop Heemeyer. First, the local sheriff and his assistants. Let me remind you that the bulldozer was equipped with centimeter spaced armor. Local police used nine-point revolvers and shotguns. With a clear result. From zero. The local SWAT team was alerted. Then the forest rangers. SWAT found grenades, and the rangers had assault rifles. A particularly dashing sergeant jumped from the roof onto the hood of a bulldozer and tried to throw a flashbang grenade into the exhaust pipe. It’s hard to say what he wanted to achieve - the son of a bitch Heemeyer, as it turned out, welded a grate there, so the only thing the bulldozer lost as a result was the pipes themselves. The sergeant, of course, also survived. The driver's tear tracker didn't take it - the monitors were visible even in the gas mask.

Heemeyer actively fired back through the embrasures cut into the armor. Not a single person was harmed by its fire. Because he shot significantly higher than his head. In other words, into the sky. However, the police no longer dared to approach him. In total, counting the rangers, about 40 people had gathered by that time. The bulldozer took more than 200 hits from everything from service revolvers to M-16s and grenades. They tried to stop him with a huge scraper. The Komatsu D355A easily pushed the scraper backwards into the front of the store and left it there. A car full of explosives in Heemeyer’s path also did not give the desired result. The only achievement was a radiator punctured by a ricochet - however, as experience in quarry work shows, such bulldozers do not immediately pay attention to even a complete failure of the cooling system.

All that the police could actually do in the end was to evacuate 1.5 thousand residents and block all roads, including Federal Highway No. 40 leading to Denver (the blocking of the federal highway especially shocked everyone).

"Heemeyer's War" ended at 16:23.

Marvin decided to tear down the Gambles small wholesale store. In my opinion, there was simply nothing left to demolish there; there was still a liquefied gas filling station, but its explosion would have destroyed half the town without distinguishing where the mayor’s house was and where the garbage man’s.

The bulldozer stood, ironing the ruins of Gambles department store. In the sudden deathly silence, the steam escaping from the broken radiator whistled furiously; it was covered with debris from the roof, it got stuck and stalled.

At first, the police were afraid for a long time to approach Heemeyer’s bulldozer, and then they spent a long time making a hole in the armor, trying to get the welder out of his tracked fortress (three plastic charges did not give the desired effect). They were afraid of the last trap that Marvin could set for them. When the armor was finally penetrated with an autogen gun, he had already been dead for half a day. Marvin kept the last cartridge for himself. He was not going to fall into the clutches of his enemies alive. Heemeyer was not one to give up!

As the governor of Colorado so aptly put it, “the city looks like a tornado went through it.” The city actually suffered damage worth $5,000,000, and the plant - $2,000,000. Considering the scale of the town, this meant almost complete destruction. The plant never recovered from the attack and sold the territory along with the ruins.

Some smart people wanted to put the bulldozer on a pedestal and make it a landmark, but the majority insisted on melting it down. For the residents of the town, this incident evokes, as you might guess, extremely mixed emotions.

Then the investigation began. It turned out that “Heemeyer’s creation was so reliable that it could withstand not only the explosion of grenades, but also a not very powerful artillery shell: it was completely covered with armored plates, each of which consisted of two sheets of half-inch (about 1.3 cm) steel, fastened together with a cement pad.” He was nicknamed Killdozer

“He was a nice guy,” recall people who knew Himeyer closely.

- “You shouldn’t have made him angry.” “If he was your friend, then he was your best friend. Well, if the enemy is the most dangerous,” say Marvin’s comrades.

This act was admired by many people in the US and around the world. Marvin Heemeyer began to be called "the last American hero." Now this incident is assessed as a spontaneous anti-globalist action.
Marvin John Heemeyer

In the absence of worthy heroes of our time, The Kaliningrad Room continues to turn to the past in search of inspiration, and today we have in turn the idol of office workers, unbalanced schoolchildren and sociopaths of all stripes - a skilled welder, a failed tanker and a tornado man, Marvin John Heemeyer.

This story, which the American media would later dub "Marvin Heemeyer's War", began back in 1992 in a small town called Granby (only about 2,200 inhabitants at that time), located in Colorado. The hero of our story, old Marvin, an experienced engineer and former airfield technician of the US Air Force, then acquired about eight thousand square meters of land in the city in order to open his car repair shop here, work honestly on it and thereby benefit capitalist society. But, like any other decent tragedy, this one must have its own villain, who will unobtrusively appear at the very beginning, and then play a fatal role in it: in the case of Marvin Heemeyer, such a villain turned out to be the town-forming enterprise of Granby, a local cement plant, which, among other things, was owned by very specific individuals, namely the Docheff family.

Throughout the nineties, Heemeyer's car service successfully, but without any special pretensions, ran its business, for the time being without coming into conflict with the administration of the plant, with the territory of which it bordered on one side. However, everything changed when, closer to the millennium, the Docheff family decided to increase the production capacity of the enterprise by building another production line, which, of course, required land. Quite quickly, all the plots adjacent to the plant were bought up, and the only one who suddenly refused to sell the treasured acres, to the misfortune of the plant administration, was none other than old Marvin, who categorically did not want to part with his workshop and move anywhere.

According to Susan Docheff, the reluctant mechanic was initially offered $250,000, even though the land cost him only $42,000 in 1992. But by the time mutual understanding seemed to have almost been reached, Heemeyer decided to follow the principle and increased the price first to 375 thousand, and then to a million dollars, which made the deal simply impossible

Actually, when it is impossible to come to an agreement with a person, they begin to poison him. Perhaps, if this story had happened not in the law-abiding States, but somewhere in the outback of Russia, the body of an intractable businessman would have been discovered in the nearest river and the matter would not have gone so far, but American villains, unlike ours, play honestly. Therefore, it was decided to let the man survive by cutting off his oxygen: since all the land in the area already belonged to the plant, the area that Heemeyer had previously used to access his car service center was now closed to him. The local administration, in turn, was on the side of large entrepreneurs and even fined Marvin’s workshop $2,500 for not being connected to the city sewerage system. Our hero also could not fix this, because the territory through which the pipes should have been laid again belonged to a cement plant, and that, of course, was not so interested in simple solution Problems. Therefore, the fine had to be paid, but according to rumors, Marvin Heemeyer attached a note with just one word to the money: "Underpants".

Despite the fact that many assessed Heemeyer as a nice guy, others noted that he was not a person who should cross the road

From this moment on, the most important and most formidable participant in history enters the development of events: bulldozer Komatsu D355A. Marvin purchased it in 2002 in order to independently pave a new road to the auto repair shop, because the client had to be able to somehow get into it so that the business would not completely collapse. The only strange thing about all this is that Marvin, who by that time had already eaten the dog in the fight against the authorities, did not assume that these same authorities would simply not allow him to build any roads. Although... perhaps he didn’t really count on it, and when he bought a decommissioned bulldozer, he knew in advance what kind of destruction and chaos he would wreak in the near future. It took Marvin Heemeyer almost a year and a half to make a makeshift modernization of his Komatsu, but as we know, revenge is a dish best served cold. Xzibit, with his sleek customization, nervously smokes on the sidelines, looking at what improvements the old bulldozer has undergone:

First of all, improvised anti-cumulative, that is, combined armor, which in theory can protect against a direct hit from an anti-tank projectile. An inch of steel (about 1.3 cm), then almost 8 inches of concrete and another inch of steel. In some places the total thickness of the armor reached 30 cm!
External video cameras with a monitor in the cabin, providing the driver wide view. The camera lenses were prudently protected by three inches of bulletproof glass, and were also equipped with a system for removing dirt and dust using compressed air.
Weapon loopholes and, in fact, the arsenal itself in the form of a Kel-Tec P11 pistol, a Ruger AC556 automatic carbine, a Magnum revolver and a large-caliber Barret M82 sniper rifle, from which, if you wanted, you could shoot down a combat helicopter.
Fans, air conditioning, gas mask, as well as food and water supplies for a comfortable stay in an almost sealed cabin.

As the creator of Killdozer himself wrote in one of his notes, “sometimes reasonable men must be able to act unreasonably.”

On June 4, 2004, Marvin John Heemeyer sat in the cabin of the tracked monster and, using a homemade remote-controlled crane, lowered the last armored box onto the chassis, walling it up inside. It was no longer possible to get out on his own, and Marvin had no intention of doing so. After checking his predetermined list of targets, which included all the people who had a hand in his eviction in one way or another, at 2:30 p.m. he drove out of the garage straight through the wall, without even using the garage door. There was no need to worry about this anymore, because waiting in line for Heemeyer’s lynching were: the entire cement plant, including the plant management building and production workshops, the office of the gas company, the bank buildings, the city administration, the fire department and the warehouse, the editorial office of the local newspaper, which threw mud at Marvin in his articles, as well as several residential buildings, owned by the mayor and members of the city council, a total of 13 objects. It is noteworthy that the businessman who went on the warpath did not fall into a fighting rage, as one might expect, but carefully controlled the destruction, firstly, destroying only the property of those who, in his opinion, deserved it, and secondly, not demolishing load-bearing walls, because of which buildings could collapse and bury the bulldozer under their rubble.

Of course, the police immediately raised the alarm: all roads were immediately blocked and one and a half thousand residents were evacuated, and local rangers and a SWAT team came out to confront Heemeyer. True, there was nowhere to get any serious anti-tank weapons in such a small city as Granby, so all the lawmen could do was shoot at a fifty-ton armored bulldozer from service pistols and rifles, periodically throwing stun grenades under its tracks, which were of no use slightly more than zero. There was even one brave sergeant who decided to play Rambo - he managed to climb onto the bulldozer while moving and throw a gas grenade into the exhaust pipe, but in this case, the prudent Marvin equipped it with a grate, so that although the pipe was torn, this was the only damage caused bulldozer until its radiator was damaged by a stray bullet (and even this did not in any way affect the performance of the machine). But Marvin Heemeyer used his weapon only for defensive purposes, and deliberately shot above the police in order to keep them at a distance. Despite the terrible appearance and arsenal of the bulldozer, he was not injured at the hands of its driver no one man in the city.

And yet, the end was inevitable. No matter how hard Marvin tried to be as careful as possible in demolishing buildings, a few hours after the revenge began, another small wholesale store still collapsed, the bulldozer got stuck and stalled. For two hours the police were afraid to approach him, and then all night long they tried without much success to open the cabin using plastid and autogen, so when they finally managed to get inside, they found Marvin Heemeyer had already shot himself for half a day.

The governor of Colorado estimated damage to the city at $5 million and the plant at $2 million, noting that “Granby looks like a tornado went through it.”

The American media, although they talked about what happened, still did not pay enough attention to the story of the hunted businessman, describing the events in Granby rather restrainedly and sparingly. In general, it is understandable: it would be completely unprofitable for the state to praise such protests. Although if you think about it, analyze the situation and evaluate the consequences, it turns out that Heemeyer did not do anything outstanding: thanks to the property insurance system, the plant compensated for its losses and resumed work in just ten days, the rest also received appropriate financial compensation. The fact that no one was injured in the process of his lynching may turn out to be a happy accident, because in 11 of the 13 buildings he demolished there were people left until the last moment, and if Marvin did not hit anyone during defensive shooting, this does not mean that he wasn't aiming.

Ultimately, the city survived this “tornado”, recovered from the destruction and continued its quiet existence, and those who from the very beginning were the source of Heemeyer’s headaches are either alive to this day or died later, by natural causes. To make a cornered entrepreneur into a hero of his time, who found the only way to declare his rights in such a radical form, or to consider him an irresponsible, unbalanced psycho who put the lives of hundreds of people at risk is everyone’s personal choice, and The Kaliningrad Room hopes that you will make it yourself.

I wanted to tell you something new about a man whom everyone here knows one way or another. At first I thought of simply informing the public of some unknown or previously misreported touches. Then I realized that it was better to combine new facts with the whole story to get a more or less complete story. The result was a compilation large quantity studied articles, memoirs, interviews about Marvin Heemeyer, as in English language, and in translation.

Since the tenth year has passed since those events, many links, unfortunately, cease to be working, the information goes into paid archives. In the USA, you can obtain any information about a person in a legal way. For money. Car and telephone numbers, addresses, relatives, business ownership, speeding fines, mentions in the press and much more about any US citizen are stored in the appropriate paid archives. Just for fun, I spent $10 to find out a little more (eg social data - SSN, military - military service record, and a few other things). For 30 dollars you can find out all the addresses and telephone numbers that he had in different time, over 45 - all administrative violations.

Marvin John Heemeyer
(28.10.1951, Castlewood (SD) – 4.06.2004, Granby (Co)

Parents:

Father - John Harm Heemeyer, born July 30, 1924 in the town of Hank Tekronys, 6 miles east of Castlewood (South Dakota)
Mother - Augusta Mulder, born October 31, 1920 in Orange City, Sioux County, Iowa
married September 21, 1948 in Volga, South Dakota
The parents died shortly before the events in Granby.

Brothers, sisters:

Older brother - Donald Keith Heemeyer, born September 16, 1949 in Clear Lake, South Dakota
Younger sister - Kathy Elaine Heemeyer, born July 1, 1955 in the same place
Younger brother - Kenneth Alan Heemeyer, born June 21, 1958 in the same place

It was possible to discover the family tree of Marvin Heemeyer, starting in 1720:

http://genforum.genealogy.com/mulder/messages/160.html

Graduated from school in 1968. In 1968, received Social Security Number (SSN) No. 503–68–9471

Army

Entered military service in 1969 in the Air Force.
On March 17, 1971, he was sent to the Vietnam War.
Branch of the Armed Forces: Air Force
Military specialty: Inventory Management Specialist (storekeeper). Code: 645550A. He served at an air base.
Rank: Senior Airman (senior aviator)
He was discharged on March 16, 1975 and returned home to South Dakota.

Acquaintances describe two sides of Heemeyer. On the one hand, he’s a cheerful, friendly guy, a good goofball. On the other hand, it is unreliable and “murky”, suspicious and dangerous.

Younger brother Ken Heemeyer said he has lost track of his older brother (Marvin) since he joined the Army in 1969.

Business

Cliff Eudy was business partner Heemeyer since the late seventies and was kept with Scotty Mufflers until they had a falling out in 1980.

Youdy recalled that he first met Heemeyer in 1978, Marvin got a job at one of the Scotty Mufflers stores where Youdy worked, and they worked together for about seven months. He and Heemeyer eventually bought out Scotty Mufflers and became owners of four stores. Their business problems began when they fell into debt and owed money to Exhaust and Suspension Systems. Yudi said the two of them agreed to raise money to pay off their debts. Yudi had the opportunity to borrow money from his ex-wife’s family - $10,000, which he deposited in the bank.

Heemeyer, however, did not participate in the fundraiser and tried to withdraw money from the account, Youdy recalled. "I told him it wasn't fair to me," Youdy said. “We sat down and talked for three or four weeks. And I was thinking, talking to him, I thought I had an understanding that we could do things together." They couldn't, and their paths diverged. Heemeyer took over the Englewood store and renamed it the Mid-States Muffler Shop, and Eudy took control of the other store. We had to get rid of two more stores because they were making losses. Yudi said he was later forced into bankruptcy. Heemeyer sold his store and bought another in Boulder. Since then, Yudi has not seen Heemeyer or heard anything about him.

Eudy said he didn't think Heemeyer had a gentle disposition; Marvin was an unreliable businessman. “He (Marvin) was very friendly, special type guy to such an extent that he captivated people with himself. He was really endearing when he realized he could screw you. When he realized that screwing was not going to work, he could become unpleasant and repulsive.”

At some point, Marvin moved to a small town in Colorado. In Granby, Heemeyer purchased a house using a mortgage loan from a local bank, and in 1992, for approximately $42,000 (according to other sources, for $15,000), he bought 2 acres (8.1 thousand m²) of land at auction from the Resolution Trust Corporation outskirts of the city. On this plot of land, Heemeyer built a workshop for the repair and installation of car mufflers. Marvin opened a small network of workshops. After some time, he began to rent out almost all of his workshops, leaving himself one in Granby.

Hobby

Colorado records show Heemeyer also owned the Cornice Snowmobile business, which was founded in 1996 but was liquidated in 2002. This was his hobby - snowmobiles, which he used to ride around the surrounding area with local newlyweds and tourists in the winter.

Conflict

Heemeyer became involved in politics almost immediately after purchasing a house in Colorado. He was loved by his friends and neighbors. They described him as a “pleasant person” and “ready to do anything for his friends.” Some, however, were more familiar with his erratic nature. He was a strong supporter of legalization gambling and published at least two newsletters with his ideas on the matter. When a local newspaper reporter interviewed Heemeyer about gambling, Heemeyer became so furious trying to prove his point that the interview almost ended in a fight. On another occasion, for example, Heemeyer threatened to kill a client's husband when she refused to pay for muffler repairs. “If Marv were your friend, he would be the best friend in the world,” said one of Heemeyer’s closest acquaintances. “But if he decided, decided that he would be your enemy, then he would be your most dangerous enemy.”

Granby was a stone's throw from the Colorado winter resort of Aspen, where it had become fashionable for millionaires to own winter homes. A construction boom began, the demand for cement increased, and the cement plant, to which Heemeyer’s workshop was adjacent, decided to expand. In 2001, the zoning commission and city authorities approved the construction of a cement plant, and the Mountain Park cement company, by hook or by crook, began buying up land plots around the plant. All of Heemeyer's neighbors eventually sold their plots; Marvin disagreed. On average, similar land plots cost a cement company about $50,000, but Marvin asked for $270,000 for his. The cement company agreed, then Marvin increased the price to $500,000. And the cement company agreed again. But when Marvin increased the price to $1,000,000, it was decided to seek justice from Heemeyer.

According to the new approved site plan, the plant cut off the only road to Heemeyer’s workshop. Marvin tried to appeal the city authorities' decision to expand the plant in court. Lost the case. He tried to get permission to install sewer pipe, but was refused by the land owners. Then Marvin bought a decommissioned Komatsu D355A-3 bulldozer, restored the engine on it himself, and decided to build another road to his workshop, bypassing the factory grounds. However, the city administration prohibited the construction of a new road, and at the same time fined Heemeyer $2,500 for the lack of sewerage. Marvin paid the fine, attaching a short note to the receipt when sending it: “Cowards.” Just at this time (March 31, 2004), Heemeyer’s father died, and when he went to the funeral, in his absence, his electricity and water were turned off and his workshop was sealed. To top it all off, the local bank, having found fault with the mortgage loan, threatened to take the house away. In principle, it was not difficult - in the small town of Granby, Heemeyer was a stranger, the town itself was very poor and provincial, and the cement plant was the only large enterprise there. And this means taxes, jobs, city infrastructure and dependent city government. As a result, Heemeyer sold the property to his workshop and received six months to move.

Woman

Bonnie Brown, 48 years old (at the time).

Sources indicate that Heemeyer mistakenly thought he had a fiancee, but she did not think so. It seems that in modern slang it sounds like “add to the list of friends” - like keeping a guy near you so that he can be useful in some way on occasion or just take him somewhere for free. In short, Marvin ran into an “alter ego” - a person as difficult as he himself might have been.

After June 4, 2004, she introduced herself to correspondents as his best and only friend during last year Marvin's life. She said Heemeyer moved to Colorado in the mid-70s. Brown met Heemeyer after she went on a date with one of his best friends. “Something didn’t work out, it didn’t work out, and so Marvin wanted to look after me,” she said. “We talked about going ice fishing and other activities, but I didn’t want to and wasn’t going to do it at the time. He just wasn't my type (not my type). I just thought he was a nice guy and that he was a friend and that he would find someone else." Brown described Heemeyer as a cautious friend, someone who was on guard with others.

During an afternoon drinking together in January 2004, Bonnie saw the dark side of a man she thought was compassionate. Heemeyer said he's angry at how the city treated him, that he feels like he got screwed. He talked about selling his business, and how he had to pay too much money for it, and how the city (city officials) got involved in cutting him off, and how he was charged exorbitant taxes and all these other fees that they didn't impose. other people. Brown said he told her she should build a bulldozer and attack the people who hurt him. “I really didn't pay attention because I really didn't think he was capable of doing something like that. He never gave any indication of anything like this."

Brown said she was shocked when she saw Heemeyer carry out what she considered futile threats. She said that when she heard second-hand reports that Heemeyer appeared to be firing a large-caliber weapon from his bulldozer, she doubted it could be true. She said she couldn't imagine the man she knew causing real harm, even to his own sworn enemies. “I know that even in these actions, he would never harm anyone's life. I don't think he intended to hurt them intentionally, but he could have gone against their business and caused them financial harm." Brown said it was difficult to reconcile the friend she considered so kind with the man who welded himself into an armored bulldozer and rampaged through Granby. “This doesn't look like him. He was carefree, happy-go-lucky, compassionate."

The shock did not stop Marvin’s friend from calling live during the broadcast of events from Granby and in a completely calm voice telling reporters that she knew who it was - this was her friend Marvin Heemeyer. Practicality must have taken over, and Bonnie didn't want to miss this chance to become famous.

Preparation

In March 2004, Heemeyer's father died. His brother Ken's wife recalled that Marvin acted at the funeral as if he had come to say goodbye to more than just his father. It seemed to her that he really didn’t want to leave.

Heemeyer began work on his new project almost immediately after he was refused permission to build a road to the workshop. Heemeyer moved the Komatsu D335A bulldozer intended for the new road into the workshop and began working on modifications. He began by installing homemade cement composite armor between sheets of steel to protect the cabin and engine. He installed front and rear cameras with images displayed on monitors in the cockpit, and installed several rifle loopholes around the control center. He carried supplies of food and water inside, and also stocked up on an air tank to ensure air circulation, acquired a gas mask and weapons (a Barrett M82 rifle, a Ruger AC556 carbine, a Magnum revolver).

During construction (according to various sources, from two months to a year and a half), Marvin was amazed that visitors to the workshop who happened to be on the premises were not at all alarmed by the sight of the armored vehicle. Heemeyer recorded several audiotapes in which he explained his motives. “You didn’t agree with me because of your anger, because of your malice, because of your hatred.” “I will give my life, my miserable future, to prove to everyone that you are wrong.” “I have always tried to be a reasonable person. However, sometimes reasonable people must do unreasonable things."

Marvin Heemeyer's War

On the morning of Friday, June 4, Heemeyer mailed the audio recordings to his brother and locked himself in the bulldozer with a list of targets. He was able to lower the armored box onto the chassis using a remote control of a homemade crane. Heemeyer used three monitors and several video cameras to control the bulldozer. In case the video cameras were blinded by dust and debris, air compressors were connected to them.

At 3:00 pm, Heemeyer's bulldozer broke through the side of a barn and crashed into the Mountain Park concrete plant. Soon after, the 911 phones started ringing nonstop. A man named Cody Dochev witnessed the destruction of the plant and tried to intervene. He tried to climb into the loader to intercept the rampaging bulldozer, but was immediately fired upon from the bulldozer's embrasures. Within minutes, two buildings and several cars were destroyed, and Heemeyer's bulldozer rumbled down the highway toward the city. Behind the slow-moving bulldozer, as if on a parade, were dozens of police cars with their sirens turned on. One police SUV was simply crushed when it had the temerity to get in the path of a bulldozer.

Deputy Glen Traynor managed to climb onto the cab of the driving bulldozer and fired his service pistol 37 times in an unsuccessful attempt to penetrate the armor.

When Heemeyer reached the city, the Granby police were already waiting for him. However, law enforcement officers were powerless against the armored vehicle. When it became clear that it was impossible to penetrate the armor with conventional cartridges, the special forces unsuccessfully tried to blow up the bulldozer with explosives. The police cleared the path for the bulldozer as much as possible and notified local residents of the impending danger. Helicopters broadcast the unfolding violence live to news channels. The bulky vehicle was difficult to control, but Heemeyer was able to find and destroy his targets. The bulldozer easily destroyed cars and buildings, including a house former mayor, newspaper editorial office, city council building and town hall. Despite the destruction of property, no one was seriously injured.

The police brought in an industrial bulldozer, but the heavy Komatsu easily pushed the enemy to the side of the road. Within an hour, thirteen structures had been demolished and the destroyer was on its way to its next target: Gamble's Equipment. Small arms damage and excess weight armor affected the maneuverability of the vehicle. The radiator was leaking and the bulldozer was losing power. The car ripped open the wall of the supermarket and fell into a small basement under its own weight. The overheated engine was unable to pull the bulldozer out of the hole. As a SWAT team surrounded the stalled bulldozer, someone reported hearing a single, muffled gunshot from inside the cab. The vehicle came to a stop, ending destruction that lasted 2 hours and 7 minutes and left approximately $7 million in damage.

Police used explosives to try to get inside, but eventually had to use a cutting torch and spend 12 hours breaking through the armor. Heemeyer's body was found inside. He shot himself with a .357 caliber pistol. He was the only victim, something that was repeatedly highlighted by some media outlets afterwards as Marvin's ingenuity, ambition, and seemingly heroic efforts to prevent any casualties. At the same time, there were people in many buildings immediately before the destruction. There was also evidence of shots fired at fuel containers, which could lead to explosions and casualties. There was an attempt to bring down the wall of one of the buildings with the risk of crushing two police officers who were near the wall with rubble. After the cabin was opened and Heemeyer's body was taken to the morgue, police found several rifles in the cabin and a list of addresses of buildings and businesses with the names of the owners.

Consequences

All destroyed property was insured, so everything was restored in a short time. The cement plant was unable to recover from the destruction, and eventually the owners sold it.

Memory

Today there is whole line groups of people who idolize Heemeyer and his fight against a corrupt system.

Some links (I can’t vouch for its integrity due to the age of years):
http://genforum.genealogy.com/mulder/messages/160.html
http://www.archives.com/member/
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Marvin–Heemeyer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp–dyn/articles/A18948–2004Jun5.html
http://wn.com/Armored_Bulldozer–Rampage_Marvin_Heemeyer
http://web.archive.org/web/20041012024126/http://www.nobsnews.org/allheemeyer.html
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=04/06/06/0927171
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20060613043352326&query=Marvin+heemeyer
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/jul/25/magazine/tm–bulldozer30/2
http://www.damninteresting.com/the–wrath–of–the–killdozer/
http://web.archive.org/web/20041012024126/http:/www.nobsnews.org/allheemeyer.html
http://farkleberries.blogspot.com/2004/06/was–marvin–heemeyer–terminally–ill.html

Http://www.lenta.ru/articles/2012/06/18/king/
http://collectorium.ru/2012/01/18/marvin–dzhon–himejer–i–ego–buldozer/

Marvin Heemeyer (October 28, 1951 – June 4, 2004) was an American welder and owner of a muffler repair shop in Granby, Colorado. The town is microscopic, 2200 inhabitants. He officially bought his plot of land for a workshop and a store for quite a lot of money at an auction (something like $15,000, for this he sold his share in a large car service center in Denver).
He also built snowmobiles as a hobby and used them to ride newlyweds around Granby in the winter. Like in a limousine. He even had the appropriate license (I never suspected that such activities could be licensed at all). In my opinion, the guy was quite good-natured and extremely funny. However, "While many people described Heemeyer as a likeable guy, others said he was not someone to cross." At one time he served in the Air Force as an airfield technician, and since then he has worked steadily in the engineering and technical department. He lived to be fifty-two years old, unmarried (he had some kind of sad love story at one time).

Sooner or later, all the plant's neighbors surrendered, but not Heemeyer. The manufacturers were never able to acquire his land, although they tried to do so by hook or by crook. In general, despairing of resolving the issue culturally, they began to persecute the man. Since all the land around the workshop already belonged to the plant, all communications and access to the house were blocked. Marvin decided to pave a different road, and even bought a decommissioned Komatsu D355A-3 bulldozer for this purpose and restored the engine on it in his workshop.
The city administration refused permission to build a new road. The bank found fault with the mortgage loan and threatened to take away the house.

Heemeyer tried to restore justice by suing Mountain Park, but lost the lawsuit.

The tax office for taxes on retail trade, the fire inspectorate, the sanitary epidemiological inspection came several times, the latter issued a fine of $ 2,500 for the enchanting “junk cars on the property and not being hooked up to the sewer line” (in general, in his workshop “there was a tank, not meeting sanitary standards.”) Let me remind you that we were talking about an auto repair shop. Marvin could not connect to the sewer system, since the land on which the ditch should be dug also belonged to the plant and the plant was in no hurry to give him such permission. Marvin paid. Attaching a short note to the receipt when sending it - “Cowards”. After some time, his father died (Mar. 31, 2004), Marvin went to bury him, and while he was away, his electricity and water were turned off and his workshop was sealed. After that, he locked himself in the workshop. Almost no one saw him.

It looked like this:

Heemeyer returned fire from two twenty-three semi-automatic rifles and one fifty-caliber semi-automatic rifle through specially made loopholes in the armor on the left, right and front, respectively. However, according to experts, he did everything to ensure that no one was hurt, shooting more to intimidate and not allowing the police to stick their nose out from behind their cars. None of the police received a scratch.

To begin with, he drove through the territory of the plant, carefully demolishing the plant's management building, production workshops and, in general, everything down to the last barn. Then he moved around the town. He removed the facades from the houses of city council members. Demolished the bank building, which tried to press him through early repayment of the mortgage loan. He destroyed the buildings of the gas company Ixel Energy, which refused to refill his kitchen gas cylinders after a fine, the city hall, the city council office, the fire department, a warehouse, and several residential buildings that belonged to the mayor of the city. He tore down the editorial office of the local newspaper and the public library. In short, he demolished everything that had anything to do with the local authorities, including their private houses. Moreover, he showed good knowledge of who owns what.

They tried to stop Himeyer. First, the local sheriff and his assistants. Let me remind you that the bulldozer was equipped with centimeter spaced armor. Local police used nine-point revolvers and shotguns. With a clear result. From zero. The local SWAT team was alerted. Then the forest rangers. SWAT found grenades, and the rangers had assault rifles. A particularly dashing sergeant jumped from the roof onto the hood of a bulldozer and tried to throw a flashbang grenade into the exhaust pipe. It’s hard to say what he wanted to achieve - the son of a bitch Himeyer, as it turned out, welded a grate there, so the only thing the bulldozer lost as a result was the pipes themselves. The sergeant, of course, also survived. The driver's tear tracker didn't take it - the monitors were visible even in the gas mask.

Himeyer actively fired back through the embrasures cut into the armor. Not a single person was harmed by its fire. Because he shot significantly higher than his head. In other words, into the sky. However, the police no longer dared to approach him. In total, counting the rangers, about 40 people had gathered by that time. The bulldozer took more than 200 hits from everything from service revolvers to M-16s and grenades. They tried to stop him with a huge scraper. The Komatsu D355A easily pushed the scraper backwards into the front of the store and left it there. A car full of explosives in Heemeyer’s path also did not give the desired result. The only achievement was a radiator punctured by a ricochet - however, as experience in quarry work shows, such bulldozers do not immediately pay attention to even a complete failure of the cooling system.

All that the police could really do in the end was to evacuate 1.5 thousand residents and block all roads, including Federal Highway No. 40 leading to Denver (the blocking of the federal highway especially shocked everyone).

Marvin decided to tear down the small wholesale store "Gambles". In my opinion, there was simply nothing left to demolish there; there was still a liquefied gas filling station, but its explosion would have destroyed half the town without distinguishing where the mayor’s house was and where the garbage man’s.

As the governor of Colorado so aptly put it, “the city looks like a tornado has gone through it.” The city actually suffered damage worth $5,000,000, and the plant - $2,000,000. Considering the scale of the town, this meant almost complete destruction. The plant never recovered from the attack and sold the territory along with the ruins.

They wanted to put the bulldozer on a pedestal and make it a landmark, but the majority insisted on melting it down. For the residents of the town, this incident evokes, as you might guess, extremely mixed emotions.