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 at different times, for 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 had been Heemeyer's business partner since the late seventies and ran Scotty Mufflers with him 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 legalized 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, demand for cement and cement factory, 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 a 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 a joint January (2004) afternoon drinking alcohol, Bonnie saw dark side a man she considered 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 the front and rear camera with images displayed on monitors in the cockpit, and installed several embrasures for rifles 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 remote control 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 wall of the barn and crashed into concrete-mixing plant Mountain Park. 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, against an armored vehicle, employees law enforcement were powerless. 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 to news channels in live. 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 the former mayor's home, a newspaper office, city council buildings and city 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. Damage from small arms fire and the extra weight of the 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. Vehicle stopped, ending destruction that lasted 2 hours and 7 minutes and left about $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, therefore short term everything was restored. The cement plant was unable to recover from the destruction, and eventually the owners sold it.

Memory

Today, there are a number of 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/

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 visited several times for taxes retail, fire inspection, sanitary and epidemiological supervision, 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 that did not meet sanitary standards.”) speech, let me remind you , was 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.

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.

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 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 gas station left liquefied gas, 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.

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.

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 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.

This story happened in 2004 in a small town in Colorado and at one time shocked America and became known far beyond the borders of the United States.

So, in the town of Granby, whose population is only about 2 thousand people, a for the time being unremarkable man lived and worked - his name was Marvin John Heemeyer. He worked as a welder, had his own workshop and was engaged in the repair and sale of car mufflers. He was a veteran of the Vietnam War, during which he served as a military technician at the airfield. Marvin was not married, and it is unknown whether he ever had a family. He also had no relatives in the town or its environs. He lived quietly and unnoticed, and was quite a law-abiding and modest guy. There is no consensus about his personal spiritual qualities. His neighbors and acquaintances call Heemeyer a “nice man,” but at the same time it is known that in a fit of anger he once threatened to kill the husband of a client who refused to pay him for his work. One of his closest comrades says about him:

“If Marv was your friend, he was your best friend. But if he decided that he was your enemy, then he was your worst and most dangerous enemy.”

One way or another, for the time being no one noticed anything out of the ordinary in John Heemeyer’s behavior. Until the Mountain Park company decided to expand its cement plant. To do this, she began to buy up plots located next to the enterprise, while offering decent compensation for them. The owners of the plant wanted to buy Marvin’s plot as well. It was a fairly large piece of land - at one time John bought it for several tens of thousands of dollars. Although the company offered a quite decent price, Heemeyer did not agree and asked for 250 thousand dollars, but soon changed his mind and increased the price to 375 thousand, and then even demanded 1 million dollars. It must be said that there is information that he was not initially offered much money, but still it was a question of very good compensation.

Negotiations dragged on until 2001, when the zoning commission and city officials approved a plant expansion plan. However, the stubborn welder did not calm down and tried to appeal the decision in court, although unsuccessfully. They began to slowly push Marvin out of his area. The expansion of the factory blocked his access to the workshop. City authorities fined him $2,500 for various violations. The owner of the auto repair shop was first cut off the sewerage system, and when he left for his father’s funeral, water and electricity were also cut off, and the workshop itself was sealed. Then Marvin took decisive action.

It must be said that when his road was blocked, he purchased a decommissioned mining bulldozer " Komatsu D355A-3" This is a huge machine, such equipment is used, for example, by the Gazprom company in polar mining. With the help of a bulldozer, he wanted to pave his own road to the workshop, but he was not allowed to do this. And then Heemeyer decided to make a hellish revenge machine out of this tractor. He worked on it for almost a year and a half in his workshop. He scalded it with 12-mm steel sheets, and made spaced double armor: a layer of concrete was laid between the layers of metal. This made the homemade armored car practically invulnerable. Later, 200 bullets and three explosions fired at him will hardly harm him.

Monitors were installed inside to guide the bulldozer through video cameras located outside. The cameras were protected by armored plastic and even equipped with a pneumatic cleaning system. Marvin thought through everything down to the smallest detail. Inside there was an air conditioner, a gas mask, a refrigerator with some provisions and water. He also prepared weapons: a Ruger 223 carbine, a Remington 306 rifle, pistols and ammunition. John initially knew that he would no longer get out of the cabin, so using a remote control crane, he lowered another armored box onto the roof, blocking the exit.

On June 4, 2004, he left the garage. Heemeyer outlined in advance the objects that he decided to erase from the face of the earth. First, he razed the hated cement plant, all the workshops and the administration building to the ground; destroyed the facades of the houses of city council members; destroyed a bank that wanted to take away his workshop, finding fault with an allegedly incorrectly issued loan. Then the buildings were demolished: the mayor's office, the city council, the fire inspectorate, as well as the house where the widow of the former mayor lived. Even the office of the gas company that refused to refill Marvin’s cylinders, and the editorial office of the newspaper that wrote articles about him, did not survive.

13 administrative buildings were destroyed. And the damage caused amounted to $7 million. Despite the fact that Heemeyer demolished almost half the city, by some miracle none of the residents were harmed. Of course, they tried to stop the bulldozer. They shot at him, threw grenades at him, blocked his path with a road tractor-grader, but no one could even slow down the machine of destruction. The grader was easily thrown aside, and when the armored car's radiator was shot through, it still continued its inexorable march. The engines of such cars are very strong, and they do not soon jam from overheating.

Finally, the “Killdozer” (that is, the killer bulldozer, as it was later called) still got stuck in the ruins of the building, falling into a small basement. He was no longer able to leave - the engine finally seized from overheating. They managed to cut the cabin only the next day. When it was opened, it turned out that John Marvin had been dead for a day. The 52-year-old welder shot himself in the head as soon as he finished his job. They decided to cut the Killdozer into many parts and take them to different landfills, since Heemeyer had fans who could disassemble the car for souvenirs.

This is such an amazing story, especially for the law-abiding United States of America. This case can be assessed in different ways. Marvin has a considerable number of admirers around the world. He was called " the last hero America” and was used as a symbol of an individual’s opposition to the soulless state system.

So, how did a completely respectable American taxpayer and useful citizen of society come to live like this? Of course, everything can be attributed to the military past, to the “echo of war” and the “Vietnam syndrome”. But although Marvin served in Vietnam, during the war he worked as a mechanic at the airfield, repairing and maintaining US Air Force aircraft, and it is unknown whether he took any part in the fighting at all. Although, of course, war is not one’s own mother and always leaves a certain imprint on the psyche of people who have been there.

It is also difficult to believe that Heemeyer was a mentally ill, inadequate person. No one noticed any mental abnormalities in his behavior. In addition, over the course of a year and a half, he carried out his project very rationally, balancedly and thoughtfully.

To us, “born in the USSR” and living in Russia, where, unfortunately, “the severity of the laws was always compensated by the optionality of their implementation” and “the laws were like a drawbar: wherever you turned, that’s where you came out”, where “there is no escape from prison or purse.” no one, from the proletarian to the oligarch, swears, we all don’t really understand why Marvin was so outraged by the authorities’ decision to expand the plant and revise the boundaries of his property with the payment of compensation to him. For us, such a situation, unfortunately, is a harsh everyday life. They build a new road, a microdistrict or an elite village - and the house in which, perhaps, you were born and which your parents built, is demolished, and you are given an apartment in a concrete box, in a completely different, inconvenient area for you. This happens all the time.

But all this is an unimaginable chaos for the American average person. Why! After all, this is mine private property. And it is sacred, I am a free citizen of a free country. Although corruption and human vulnerability before the law are present in America, especially now. Of course, it’s unpleasant for everyone to leave a familiar place that you yourself have chosen, gotten used to and arranged. But Heemeyer was also offered considerable money, several times more than the real value of the site - so to speak, compensation for moral damage. And I’m sure there’s a lot of free land in Colorado, not Rublevo-Uspenskoe tea. It was possible to calmly buy a new plot and rebuild a workshop even better and larger than before, even more than one. Besides, besides the taking of property, there are much more terrible things. For example, when you or your loved ones are illegally imprisoned or when the state takes away your children, which is often practiced in Western countries.

This man, according to the testimony of people who knew him personally, was prone to hot temper, rancor, and touchiness. Apparently, his tendency to anger, aggression and sociopathy prevented him from starting a family. It is also known that Heemeyer had no relatives or friends in the city or its environs. He did not have a family, close people, communication and care for whom could soften his heart and become the goal of his life.

He knew in advance that after his action he would never get out of the tractor. His act was not revenge against Monte Cristo, with the desire to restore his good name and enrich himself. It was not even the act of Herostratus, who, although he was executed, saw the fruits of his destructive activities, saw the reaction of people and realized that he would not be forgotten. John didn't need all this. Otherwise, he would not have shot himself in the cockpit, but, having done his job, calmly surrendered to the authorities and would have spent a short time in a humane American prison, giving interviews and watching TV programs with his participation.

His task and goal were completely different. In this case, satisfying the thirst for revenge, which lasted several tens of minutes, because the bulldozer was very quickly able to turn half the city into ruins, was the goal that Marvin had been pursuing for several years. Surely, he repeatedly imagined how the city would tremble from the lion's roar of the Killdozer's 400-horsepower engine. How the pavements will tremble and the glass will ring when the multi-ton steel monster rolls towards its goals. How the offices and houses of hated enemies will collapse and fall.

According to local authorities, he fired 15 shots, including at transformers and propane tanks, which posed a huge threat to the population. True, there are other eyewitness accounts that Heemeyer fired into the air to scare off the police. But one way or another, if you suddenly demolish 13 buildings in broad daylight and at the same time shoot right and left, only a miracle can save people from death.

Overall material rating: 4.9

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There was such a man with capital letters, 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 it, he officially bought the land plot 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 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 - “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.

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. 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 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

Territorial disputes

In 2001, the zoning commission and city officials approved the construction of a cement plant. Heemeyer tried unsuccessfully to appeal the decision. For many years, Heemeyer used the adjacent property as a driveway for his own auto muffler repair and sales shop. The expansion of the cement plant deprived him of this opportunity. In addition, the city fined Heemeyer $2,500 for various violations, including “sewage containers on the property that are not connected to a sewer system.” Heemeyer would have needed to cross 2.4 meters of factory ground to make such a connection.

Bulldozer modifications

Heemeyer leased his business and property to a waste removal company several months before the events. Two years before, he purchased a bulldozer in order to use it to build a road to the store, but the city authorities did not allow him to build the road.

It took a year and a half to prepare the bulldozer. In notes later found by investigators, Heemeyer wrote: “I wonder how I haven’t been caught yet. The project occupied part of my time for more than a year and a half." He was surprised that none of his visitors found the bulldozer’s changes strange, “especially with its weight increasing by 910 kg.”

The bulldozer in question is a tracked Komatsu D355A with an armored cab. In some places, the thickness of the armor reached more than 30 centimeters; it consisted of several layers of steel sheets and cement and was a combined armor. It provided protection from small arms fire and explosives. Three explosions and more than 200 bullets fired at the bulldozer caused virtually no damage to it.

Heemeyer's Revenge

Heemeyer bulldozer

On June 4, 2004, Heemeyer drove his armored dozer through the wall of his store, then through a cement plant, Town Hall, a local newspaper office, the home of a former judge's widow, and others. The owners of all the damaged buildings were in one way or another connected with disputes over land owned by Heemeyer.

Heemeyer destroyed 13 buildings, with total damage estimated at more than $7 million. Despite the enormous destruction of property, no one except Heemeyer was physically harmed.

Many city residents were notified by the authorities about what was happening and were able to evacuate in advance. There were people in 11 of the 13 buildings demolished by Heemeyer until the last moment.