Killdozer: The Story of Marvin Heemeyer

Episode Notes

AI TRUE CRIME: KILLDOZER

On June 4, 2004, Marvin Heemeyer entered an armored Komatsu bulldozer and began systematically destroying buildings in Granby, Colorado. The attack was the culmination of years of property disputes, failed negotiations, code violations, lawsuits, and increasingly obsessive grievances. Although Heemeyer fired at people and struck buildings that had been occupied moments earlier, nobody else died.

In this episode, AI True Crime examines the disputes that preceded the attack, the secret construction of the machine, Heemeyer’s recorded claims of divine approval, the two-hour rampage, and the internet mythology that transformed an attempted mass-casualty attack into a story about a working-class folk hero.

Twenty years after the attack, Denver7 reconstructs the rampage through interviews with residents, law-enforcement officers, and people whose buildings were targeted.

https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/killdozer-20-years-later-how-and-why-a-man-went-on-a-rampage-through-granby-in-an-armored-bulldozer

Patrick Brower, former publisher of the Sky-Hi News and one of Heemeyer’s intended targets, discusses the attack and his book, Killdozer: The True Story of the Colorado Bulldozer Rampage.

https://www.cpr.org/show-segment/this-man-barely-escaped-killdozers-path-now-hes-written-a-book-about-marvin-heemeyer/

Patrick Brower’s official Killdozer book site contains background material, photographs, interviews, and articles about the attack and its mythology.

https://killdozerbook.com/

Route Fifty examines the dispute, Heemeyer’s refusal to connect his property to an approved sewage system, and the lessons the case holds for local government.

https://www.route-fifty.com/management/2018/02/colorado-bulldozer-rampage-marvin-heemeyer/145747/