Unreasonable Things: The Story of Marvin Heemeyer

"When you strip a man of everything, what does he have left? Resentment."

-unknown

On June 4th, 2004, the small town of Granby, Colorado, found itself the site of a war zone.
That afternoon - as police and emergency workers watched helplessly - an armored bulldozer operated by a disturbed man wrecked havoc throughout town, smashing through buildings, crushing cars, and firing indiscriminately at police and civilians alike.

This act of violence was not spur-of-the-moment. The man behind this bizarre series of events had endured year after year of mistreatment, trickery, and bureaucratic wrongdoing which had destroyed his livelihood and his business - and he thoroughly cited all of it in a manifesto recorded before his actions. 

But even today, this man's actions have left a lasting impact on history - an impact that has been highly polarized. Some see him as an American hero standing up to a corrupt government who was out to screw over an honest businessman. Others see him as a violent criminal, hell-bent on terrorizing his community because things didn't go his way. 

But no matter what this man was - a hero or a villain - the effects of his legacy are impossible to deny. Since his rampage 17 years ago, some of his admirers have elevated him to godhood, dedicating themselves and their lives to carrying on what he started. And that alone is enough to warrant looking into this man, his life, and his legacy.

This is the story of Marvin Heemeyer.

Marvin Heemeyer

Marvin John Heemeyer was a country man from the beginning. Born in the tiny town of Castlewood, South Dakota, on October 28, 1951, Marvin - known as "Marv" to his friends and family - had a mostly uneventful childhood with his sister and two brothers.

Marv's father, John Heemeyer, owned a large ranch in Castlewood and provided well for his family, and as a teenager Marv spent a lot of time doing manual work on his family ranch - usually involving machinery.

Marv developed a very close relationship with his father during his early life, but was otherwise a rather shy boy who, though highly intelligent, friendly, and amiable, never developed many close ties to his community.

Marvin Heemeyer in middle school

For Marv, school was a constant irritant, and - despite his high intelligence - he struggled with academics. In fourth grade, his teacher told him in no uncertain terms that he would never amount to anything in life - which proved to be very demoralizing for the young boy. 

Ultimately, Marv graduated 28th out of the 29 people in his class at Castlewood High School, and, instead of going on to college, the 18-year-old Marv decided to enlist in the United States Air Force in 1969.

Marv Heemeyer during his time in the Air Force

Marv was transferred to Lowry Air Force Base in Denver in the early 1970s, and immediately the young man fell in love with the state of Colorado. The beautiful lakes, the magnificent Rocky Mountains, and the vast ski slopes quickly gained a special place in the young man's heart, and Marv vowed to move there after his military service ended.

In 1977, Marv Heemeyer was honorably discharged from the US Air Force, and immediately he returned to his beloved Colorado and bought a home in Denver. In Denver, Marv found work as a mechanic in Scotty's Mufflers, a chain of car repair shops in the Denver area. Marv became so good and proficient at his job that, in 1978, he and a coworker named Cliff Eudy became business partners and purchased one of the Scotty's Muffler's shops for themselves.

Marv's first business venture, unfortunately, came with some rocky beginnings. Just a year after purchasing his muffler shop, Scotty's Mufflers filed for bankruptcy. Because Heemeyer and Eudy had paid the franchise fee prior to the bankruptcy, they inherited three of the closed shops but were left $10,000 in debt. After unsuccessfully attempting to salvage the business, Marv and Eudy decided to dissolve their partnership, selling two of the four muffler shops while each keeping one.

In 1980, Marv sold his muffler shop and used the funds from the sale to open another shop further north in Boulder, CO. Heemeyer's expertise in muffler repair earned him the nickname "Marv the Muffler Man", and he was said to be so talented at his job that he could change a car muffler in only 20 minutes. Business was lucrative for Marv, and within a few years he was making money through some real-estate ventures, leasing and selling property in Aurora, Lakewood, Englewood, and Commerce City.

But, in the midst of this business, Marv Heemeyer also saw for himself the dark side of business - a side defined by corruption, greed, dishonesty, and bureaucratic malfeasance. For someone who had sought to provide and receive honest business, this brand of shady business and bureaucratic trickery was a constant thorn in Marv's side, and it would later come to define the rest of his life.

In the mid-1980s, Marv was duped into purchasing a plot of land in Toponas, Colorado, from a company that had fraudulently overstated their assets. When the company that leased him the land went bankrupt, the bank that had lent Marv the mortgage attempted to foreclose on his property. Unwilling to fight the decision with legal fees that would undoubtedly cost him a fortune, Marv reluctantly allowed his property to be foreclosed - a decision that cost him $57,000.

After the Toponas mishap, Marv tried once more to enter the real-estate market. He was talked by a mutual friend from church into buying an apartment complex in Boulder - a decision he hoped would recoup some of the losses from the Toponas failure. But, yet again, Marv had been lured and deceived into a bad deal. The apartment complex he purchased was immediately foreclosed upon, and, again unable to afford to fight the foreclosure, Marv endured yet another business failure.

Despite his irritating troubles with the real-estate market, Marv's muffler business was still doing remarkably well. But the dishonesty and deception he had endured shook Marv's faith in the system. Believing the government was incapable of looking out for honest businessmen like himself, Marv became involved in local politics, becoming a strong advocate for small businesses and libertarian causes such as legalized gambling. He wrote blunt, poignant letters to newspaper columns in which he voiced support for libertarian causes and criticized government overreach.

A business card for Marv Heemeyer's muffler shop in Boulder, CO

In 1992, Marv decided to move his business once again, believing that he wasn't cut out for life in the big city. In March of that year, Marv sold his muffler garage in Boulder and purchased a 27-acre plot of land in neighboring Grand County, CO, for $109,500, complete with a small cabin and a hot tub. But Marv still wanted to continue his muffler business, and when he heard that some land in the nearby town of Granby, Colorado, was going up for auction, he saw the opportunity to set up shop in the little town and continue his business venture.

Marvin Heemeyer's cabin in Grand County, Colorado.

But Marv had little idea of what awaited him in Granby. The series of events that followed Marv's arrival would set into motion the events that would one day make the town infamous.

Granby

The small town of Granby, Colorado, sits in rural Grand County and, in 1990, had a population of roughly 966 people. Being such a small town, Granby's population is very tight-knit, with local governments having familial connections to their own residents. Granby's business markets and government is therefore made up of several prominent families - all of whom have lived in the area for decades and have established their presence well over the course of multiple generations.

One of these families was the prominent Docheff Family - a family that has long established itself in the state of Colorado through a series of business ownerships in the dairy and concrete industry. The Docheffs were no less prominent in Granby, with family and friends within the town government and even the mayor's office. One prominent member of the family, Cody Docheff, was the owner of Mountain Park Concrete, a concrete batch plant in Granby that had been a family business for generations.

Cody Docheff, a member of the prominent Docheff Family, was the owner of Mountain Park Concrete. Beginning in 1992, Docheff and Marv Heemeyer would become locked in a bitter and angry rivalry over property disputes.

In 1992, an auction was held in Granby in which foreclosed property was to be sold to individual bidders, and Cody Docheff saw an opportunity to expand his business. An insurance company in the area had filed for bankruptcy, and the company's 2 acres of property in a lot next to the concrete plant was up for sale in the auction. Cody planned to buy the property so he could build a large, new indoor concrete plant for his company.

But Docheff had no idea that there was another man who also had his eye on the 2-acre property next to Mountain Park Concrete. And that man would soon present himself as an obstacle to the Docheffs' business ventures.

That man, of course, was Marvin Heemeyer - soon to become the Docheff family's bitter rival.

Auctioneers

In the summer of 1992, the Docheffs and one of their business sponsors, another Granby resident named Gus Harris, attended the foreclosed property auction in a hotel conference room in Denver, hoping to buy the 2-acre plot of land next to Mountain Park Concrete. The Docheffs believed that the auction was a done deal. In such a small town, there wasn't much demand for auctioned property, and the Docheffs didn't believe they would have to spend a lot of money. 

Gus Harris had told the Docheffs that he had set aside roughly $50,000 to spend in the auction, but wouldn't bid any higher than that. Even so, the Docheffs didn't believe that any serious competition would arrive during the auction.

Also attending that meeting was none other than Marvin Heemeyer, who, for most of the meeting, sat quietly in the back of the room. When Heemeyer had noticed the 2-acre plot of land up for sale in Granvy, he immediately saw it as the perfect place to set up his muffler shop. The property was located along a major highway - perfect for attracting customers - and the small-town atmosphere also provided a comfortable setting for his business.

But Marv had little idea of what a stir he would cause by entering this small, tight-knit town. In places like Granby, outsiders are generally not welcome, especially when they interfere with the business of the locals. And that was precisely what the town of Granby would soon see in Heemeyer.

Bidding for the 2-acre property - designated "Property 67" - began about halfway into the auction. The auctioneer's starting bid was $25,000 - a modest price sure to draw in most of the remaining prospective buyers.

Cody Docheff quickly tried to zero in. He quietly conversed with Gus Harris before raising the bid. "I bid $35,000!", he said. It was a reasonable price for Docheff - not too expensive for him but also high enough to dissuade any other bidders from outdoing him. 

Or so he thought.

"I bid $37,000!", yelled a voice from the back of the room. Docheff and Harris spun around in surprise. It was Marv Heemeyer - a man neither of them had ever seen before. No matter, they thought. A small raise in the price should dissuade him. Docheff and Harris immediately countered by raising the bid to $38,000. If Heemeyer wanted to outbid them, he'd have to bid at least $40,000. Surely, no outsider would pay that much for the property.

But the outsider wasn't giving in. "I bid $42,000!", Heemeyer offered. The outbidding price was now raised to $45,000. This was far more than Gus Harris was willing to bid. He refused to outbid Heemeyer, and the deal was closed. Cody Docheff could do nothing but glare at Heemeyer as the auctioneer handed him the deed papers to the 2-acre property.

Outside the auction room, as Heemeyer was preparing to leave, Cody Docheff's frustration and anger got the better of him. He decided to confront the outsider.

Cody walked up to Heemeyer and introduced himself. "Hey, I'm Cody Docheff", he said authoritatively.

Heemeyer raised an eyebrow. "Hi, I'm Marv Heemeyer".

Cody stuck his finger into Heemeyer's chest. "You bought my property!", he snarled.

Heemeyer was confused. "Were you the previous owner?", he asked.

"Yeah!", Cody fumed, raising his voice in anger. "That was my property!"

Heemeyer shrugged. "Yeah, well, I'm sorry."

Docheff was furious. "What the hell do you think you're gonna do with that land?", he asked.

"What business of yours is that?", Marv asked. "I'm building a car garage."

"This town doesn't need another car garage!", Docheff snapped. "It needs a concrete plant! I owned that property three years ago before the FDIC took it!"

Marv didn't want to start a fight. "Listen, if it means that much to you, I can reach a deal", he said, trying to calm things down. "The realtor I bought it from doesn't want to buy it back. If it really means that much to you, I can sell it to you for $66,000."

Docheff refused the deal. "I can't afford $66,000!", he growled. "That's my property and I offered $35,000!"

Marv didn't give in. He was not going to be swindled out of his money again. "I'm sorry, Mr. Docheff", he apologized. "I gotta make some money in this deal. If you can't pay $66,000, I'm gonna have to say good-bye."

Docheff still wouldn't give up. "That's my property!", he angrily repeated. "This town can't survive without that concrete plant".

But Marv was done with Cody. "I'm sorry, Mr. Docheff", he repeated as he walked away. "No deal".

The exact circumstances of this early dispute still remain unclear. The Docheffs claimed that they later offered Marv Heemeyer $250,000 for the property, but that he continually raised the price to outrageous sums, at one point exceeding $1,000,000. 

As he left, Marv would later recall, he tried to forget about his confrontation with "that huge fucking asshole". But Marv had no idea what he was in for. He - an outsider - had messed with Granby's most prominent and powerful family, and they were sure to never let him forget it.

Sewer Trouble

By the late summer of 1992, Marv Heemeyer had set up shop on the 2-acre property in Granby. After clearing out some remaining structures left by the previous owners, Heemeyer constructed a large yellow warehouse to serve as the workshop for Marv's Mufflers. He hoped now that his neighbors in Mountain Park Concrete would let sleeping dogs lie, and not give him any more trouble about the auction.

Marv's Mufflers in Granby, CO

As Marv was setting up shop, he received a notice from the town of Granby regarding the property's sewage system requirements. As with all businesses in Granby, Marv's Mufflers needed to hook up their sewer lines to the respective sewer district to comply with zoning and property laws. No big deal, thought Marv. He would simply find out where the closest sewer main was and hook up the lines. Problem solved.

But Marv soon found that the nearest sewer main to his property was located far away from his business. In order to connect to the sewer district, Heemeyer would have to construct a long series of sewage pipes reaching over 100 feet away from his property into another sewer district. Not only would this construction take months to complete, but Marv was expected to cover the cost of the hookup - a fee of nearly $100,000. 

To make matters worse, Heemeyer's property didn't have a maintenance access easement to the sewer line - requiring one to be built. However, because the easement would traverse property lines, Heemeyer would have to get the approval of the neighboring property owner before beginning construction.

And that neighboring property owner was none other than Gus Harris - Cody Docheff's business partner. Obviously, Marv considered it unlikely that the two people who had wanted to buy his property would be willing to help him out.

Heemeyer complained to the board of the sewer district. This, he said, was a fee he could not afford. But the head of the board - a man by the name of Ron Thompson - was a friend of the Docheffs. Like the Docheffs, the Thompson family was also a prominent fixture in Granby, owning a prominent construction and excavation business known as Thompson & Sons. Like Cody Docheff, Ron Thompson was also displeased with the presence of an outsider like Heemeyer in Granby.

The Thompson family, like the Docheffs, were a prominent fixture in the Granby community. Dick Thompson (bottom row, center) was the town mayor until his death in 2001, and his brother Ron Thompson (top row, left) served on the town sewer board. Dick Thompson's two sons, Larry and Gary (top row, center and right, respectively), owned Thompson & Sons, a prominent construction business in Granby.

Like the Docheffs, the Thompson family was not pleased when Heemeyer - an outside - set up shop in their town.

As the owner of the sewer district, Ron Thompson was unwilling to cut Heemeyer a deal when it came to the sewer hookup. Marv now had two options: pay the $80,000 hookup fee and begin construction, or remain unconnected to the sewer line. Marv chose to remain unconnected to the sewer line - a decision which he knew would cause problems down the road, but one that he hoped could be put off.

In November of 1992, Marv again complained to the sewer board and requested that Gus Harris grant him easement to connect to the sewer line. Harris declined to give Marv easement, but he did offer Marv Heemeyer the opportunity to buy the two acres of property necessary to begin the sewer line hookup for $17,500 per acre (or $35,000 in total).

Marv was hesitant to accept the deal. In the past, his real-estate ventures had left him in debt, and Marv was cautious about spending that much money. But, in the end, Marv decided to accept Gus Harris' offer, even after Harris raised the price to $20,000 per acre. The two men shook hands and agreed to the deal.

But Gus Harris never followed up on the agreement. Over the next several months, Marv Heemeyer received the documents that he and Harris needed to sign to complete the deal, but Harris was mysteriously absent and never came to sign the contracts.

By February, 1993, having received no follow-up meetings with Harris, Marv had no choice but to assume that Gus Harris had reneged on the property deal. He had wasted three months on yet another failed business deal and was no closer to solving the sewer line problem. Unable to gain easement from Gus Harris, Marv chose to remain unconnected to the sewer line.

It was one of the first in a very long line of frustrating mishaps that would come to define Marv Heemeyer's relationship and experience with the town of Granby.

Easement

Despite Heemeyer's initial frustrations, his muffler business soon began doing well. Marv began making a sizable income and even made some friends in Grand County. Marv spent much of his free time in the winter hanging out with a group of friends who would race with snowmobiles in the snow-covered mountains. For the first time since moving to Grand County, Marv finally felt like he had a place to belong. 

Despite his troubles in Granby, Marv soon began dating a local woman (left) and spent his free time during the winter snowmobiling and joking with a group of close friends (right).

But Marv's troubles were far from over. The dispute with Mountain Park Concrete still lingered fresh in his mind. And, once again, the source of his new troubles would be the concrete company next to his property.

Though Heemeyer and the Docheffs had kept their distance since the initial property feud, the Docheffs were still interested in expanding their business. And, incredibly, Marv's old rival would soon become his neighbor. In early 1997, Gus Harris - who had been mysteriously absent when Heemeyer had tried to buy his property, instead sold his property to Cody Docheff. The two bitter rivals were now camped out next to each other, and the animosity between them had not subsided.

When Heemeyer learned that Harris had sold the property to Docheff, he was furious.

"Why in the world would he sell to Docheff and not me?", he complained to a friend one night. "Cody's the one going bankrupt all the time!"

Even so, Marv hoped that he and the Docheffs could put their past behind them. As Cody Docheff moved into the neighboring property and set up shop one day, Marv walked over to the chain-link boundary fence and tried to talk things out with his old rival. 

"Hey, Cody!", he called out. "I guess we're gonna be neighbors!"

Cody Docheff scowled at Marv as he marched over to the fence. He knew Marv had wanted to buy the neighboring property. "Don't feel too good getting property stolen from you, does it?", he sarcastically crowed to Marv.

Heemeyer rolled his eyes as he tried to maintain his composure. "Mr. Docheff, don't you think it's time to move on?", he said. "We're gonna be neighbors, so we might as well bury the hatchet, don't you think?"

But Cody was still bitterly angry. "You big-city hotshots just sashay into these small towns and you take what you want!", he glowered. "It don't matter who it belongs to, if you have the money, it's yours!"

Marv shrugged. "Yeah, well, that's how the system works Mr. Docheff." He tried once again to make an offer. "Tell you what", he mused. "You want this property, I'll sell it to you. I can get it appraised and we'll work something out. Fact is, I'm not too thrilled about being next to a concrete plant. Might as well get out of your way."

Cody stormed off, but Marv decided to keep trying to smooth things over. Perhaps Granby wasn't the best place to be. If he could make a reasonable profit, he could simply sell his property and set up shop somewhere else where he was more welcome.

That week, Marv set up an appointment with a real-estate appraiser, who estimated that Marv's property was worth around $270,000. That was more than satisfactory for Marv, and that night he decided he would approach Cody Docheff with that offer. 

The following morning, Marv knocked on Cody Docheff's door and approached him with the offer. He would sell Cody his property for $250,000 - $20,000 lower than the appraisal - and allow him to pay for it with low monthly installments.

"I'll think about it", Cody told Marv. But Marv was snubbed yet again. Cody Docheff never followed up on his offer.

The Concrete Plant

For a while, Marv Heemeyer and Cody Docheff maintained a steady, if uneasy, truce between themselves. But that would change when one day, in 1998, Marv Heemeyer awoke to the sound of heavy construction going on in his neighbor's property. From the chain-link fence separating Marv's Mufflers from Mountain Park Concrete, Marv could see the Docheffs had set up a massive construction apparatus on their property, apparently beginning construction on the new concrete plant Cody Docheff had previously talked about.

Marv was disappointed that the plant construction was going forward. Obviously, a big noisy factory would not be good for his business, and Marv wanted to oppose the construction, but he also wanted to smooth things over with Cody Docheff. Campaigning against Cody's concrete plant would undoubtedly worsen the already fraught tensions between them.

An advertisement for Marv's Mufflers that appeared in a local Granby paper, showing Heemeyer in his shop.

However, Marv would soon see his hand forced into action. Directly south and west of Marv's property was an undeveloped 21-acre area of land which Marv intended to use to build a parking lot for his customers. This land was also where Marv intended to connect his business to the town sewer line.

Marv Heemeyer's property in Granby, Colorado. In 1998, a piece of land adjoining Heemeyer's plot was spot-zoned to the Docheffs, leading to a years-long bitter legal battle between Heemeyer and Mountain Park Concrete.

But the Docheffs had other ideas for the land. In 1998, the Docheffs applied for a "spot-zone" permit - an obscure rezoning practice that allows certain parcels of land to be exempt from town zoning laws if the rezoning serves a legitimate and specific community purpose. The Docheffs intended to spot-zone 2 acres of the undeveloped land south of Marv's property to allow for the construction of the concrete plant.

Marv was kept out of the loop regarding the spot-zoning process, and, by the time he was aware of what the Docheffs were up to, the 30-day deadline to protest the decision had passed - effectively granting the Docheffs free reign to seize the property and continue development. Marv would now not only be cut off from sewer line access; he would also be effectively contained within the concrete plant and would bear the brunt of the dust and pollution produced by it.

Marv ultimately decided that the risk to his business posed by the concrete plant outweighed his need to smooth relations over with the Docheffs. By the summer of 1999, Marv had rallied public opposition to the concrete plant and was petitioning the town to reconsider the spot-zoning permit, and in July of that year a series of town meetings were convened to hear public grievances against the proposed concrete plant.

Because of conflicts of interest, the mayor of Granby, Dick Thompson, recused himself from the town hearings, which was instead presided over by acting mayor Dick Broady, a member of the Granby zoning board. Both the Docheffs and Marv attended the hearings, and gave impassioned speeches both for and against the plant.

Marv was the most vocal opponent of the concrete plant. He told the town board and meeting attendees that the concrete plant would hurt his business and the surrounding neighborhood. Dust from the construction would contaminate his muffler shop and the nearby water supply, he said, and the constant noise and excessive traffic would be an incessant irritant to residents living nearby. Many town residents sided with Marv and joined his efforts to halt the batch plant construction.

Cody Docheff was furious. In his mind, it was Marv who was trying to ruin his business, not the other way around. Docheff angrily dismissed Marv's concerns and voiced his resentment with an outsider meddling in his affairs. He implored the town board to consider the benefits the concrete plant would bring to Granby - such as more jobs, better industry, and possible contracts.

After about four or five meetings, in early 2000, the town of Granby reached a verdict. They decided to grant Cody Docheff permission to build the concrete plant, but with a host of strict conditions, including added fees. 

Though this decision was meant as a compromise, it served to be anything but. Neither Marv nor the Docheffs were happy with the decision; Marv felt like his concerns had been ignored, and Cody Docheff felt like an outsider had meddled with his business ventures and cost him time and money. If anything, the town's attempt at a compromise only served to further strain the tensions between Marv Heemeyer and the Docheff family.

And things were only going to get worse.

"Cowards & Liars Department"

Throughout all of the concrete plant conflict, Marv still had not been able to hook up to the sewer line due to his inability to get easement from the Docheffs to connect through their property. And it was now - at the height of Marv's rivalry with his neighbors - that the town decided to take action. If there was ever a time where Marv would never be granted easement, this was it, and now he was in a serious bind.

In November of 2002, Granby Municipal Court issued a deferred judgement against Marv Heemeyer for failing to connect to the sewer line. The court ordered that Heemeyer not use his property to operate his business until he was connected to the town sewer line.

Marv tried to protest this decision. How could he connect to the sewer line if the Docheffs wouldn't grant him the necessary easement? How could he possibly comply with their order?

But the deferred judgement remained. Unable to connect with the sewer line, Marv remained unhooked and, inevitably, was found in violation of the court order. The town of Granby subsequently ordered that Marvin Heemeyer would be fined $100 a day until he connected with the sewer line - a task which he was so obviously unable to complete.

Marv was enraged beyond words. He felt like he had been set up and betrayed by the Docheffs. Here he was, trying to fit in, to be a good neighbor and comply with town restrictions, and this was how they repaid him? When the time came to pay the fine, Marv sent a $3,351 check to the town of Granby. On the check's memo line, he addressed it to the "Cowards & Liars Dept."

The check Marv Heemeyer wrote to pay the $3,351 fine for failing to connect to the town sewer line. Heemeyer wrote the words "Cowards & Liars Dept." on the check's memo line

Marv decided to take the town of Granby to court. He hired an attorney and contested the judgement against him, claiming the order was impossible to fulfill. But the town refused to lift the judgement and ordered Marv to connect to the sewer or pay the fine. Not only that, they imposed additional fines on Marv Heemeyer for allegedly violating scrap metal restrictions, ordering him to pay $1000 in fines for leaving junk metal too close to the Docheff's property.

Marv was now running out of legal options to challenge the unfair judgement against him. As a last-ditch effort, Marv filed a lawsuit against the town of Granby to force them to halt construction of the concrete plant and force an easement agreement with the Docheffs. But this lawsuit was to no avail. On April 26, 2003, District Court Judge Richard Doucett dismissed Marv's lawsuit, and Marv's attorney refused to appeal the verdict.

Now, Marv was out of options. He was now stuck with property he couldn't use, a judgement he could comply with, and massive fines he couldn't pay. He had been lied to, cheated, deceived, and sidelined for over ten years by a town that, in his eyes, was out to ruin his life. 

Marv now had only one real option left; pack up and leave Granby for another town. It had done him well in the past, so perhaps he would be able to find a better home in a more welcoming community.

In 2003, Marv abruptly closed his muffler shop and decided to auction off his property and equipment.

But even then, it seemed the town of Granby had it out for Marv. When the auction came, the auctioneers bought all of Marv's shop equipment but Marv received no sale for his property itself.

Now, Marv was truly out of business. With no way to run his business, and no way to sell his property, Marv was now stuck with a metaphorical white elephant that served no purpose but to bleed him dry.

Later that summer, Marv encountered Gary and Larry Thompson - the sons of the now-deceased Ron Thompson. Ron Thompson had been one of the Granby board members that had landed Heemeyer in his mess to begin with all the way back in 1992, when he had refused a deal to allow Marv to connect to the sewer line. Marv drove up to the brothers and began making demands.

"Listen, you two", Marv began, "your family made some decisions in 1992 that financially affected me for the rest of my life."

"I don't know what you're talking about", replied Larry.

"Don't play stupid with me!" Marv seethed. "Your brother kept me off the sewer district and your father allowed Cody Docheff to build his concrete plant! I'm now $300,000 in the hole, and I expect you to pay me for that!"

Larry scowled. "Not gonna happen", he sneered to Marv.

"Well, I guarantee you, Larry, I'm gonna collect", Marv replied. "One way or another, I'm gonna collect. That I can promise you."

Larry remained defiant. "Not gonna happen!", he repeated.

As Marv drove away, Larry Thompson's temper erupted. "You can SUCK MY DICK!", he screamed to Heemeyer as he departed.

Marv went back to his cabin in the Rocky Mountains. Sitting in the hot tub and sipping a beer, he contemplated his future. And, at that moment, Marv would later recall that a sense of peace came over him. He knew what he had to do. And he would make the town of Granby pay.

The Plot

In the summer of 2002, Marv Heemeyer had driven from Colorado to California to attend an auction hosted by the Ritchie Bros. Auctioneer Company. Marv had seen an advertisement in the paper that had piqued his interest - a Komatsu D355a bulldozer. Marv bid on it and won the auction, and in July of 2002 he had the gigantic bulldozer driven on a flatbed all the way back to Granby, Colorado, where he parked it outside his muffler shop.

For the next several months, the bulldozer sat on the access road to the muffler shop, with a "For Sale" sign hanging over the front blade. Nobody came to buy the bulldozer, and it sat undisturbed throughout the winter of 2002 to 2003.

Marv Heemeyer hung this "For Sale" sign on his Komatsu D355a bulldozer during the winter of 2002-2003. He later used the sign to write part of a manifesto justifying his eventual rampage.

After the 2003 auction deprived Marv of his shop equipment and left him with a money-hole that he was unable to sell, Marv decided that the town of Granby would have to pay, and he had a unique idea.

In 1998, in the town of Alma, Colorado, a snowplow driver named Thomas Leask had endured similar troubles with his own town government. Forced to pay water fees that he felt were unfair, Leask had shot and killed the former mayor of Alma before stealing a front-end loader and using it to destroy the town hall, post office, fire station, and water facility before finally being apprehended by police.

Leask would later plead guilty to murder in order to avoid the death penalty, and in 2000 he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

In February of 1998, snowplow driver Thomas Leask (left) shot and killed the former mayor of Alma, Colorado, before stealing a military-surplus construction vehicle and using it to wreck the post office (right), the fire station, and several other buildings before being captured.
Leask's rampage likely inspired Marvin Heemeyer to launch a similar attack against Granby in 2004.

The violent rampage made few headlines outside of Colorado, but Leask's crime spree seemed to resonate with Marv. Here was a man a lot like him - a man wronged and ruined by his town - and he had taken revenge into his own hands. Now Marv, seeing himself in a similar situation, decided that he would emulate Leask's rampage. Like Thomas Leask, Marv Heemeyer was now out for revenge.

In the summer of 2003, Marv moved his Komatsu bulldozer inside the now empty muffler shop warehouse. The giant bulldozer barely fit through the garage entrance, but Marv was determined that now, with his business in ruins and his livelihood destroyed, he would take revenge against all those he felt had wronged him. Instead of using the bulldozer for construction, he would use it for destruction. He would use his bulldozer to destroy the businesses and homes of those who had destroyed his businesses and his livelihood, and ensure that they knew they had messed with the wrong man.

Marv would no longer live in his usual cabin home. Instead, he now dedicated his life to this vengeance project. He planned to modify his bulldozer into a gigantic homemade tank, complete with impenetrable armor, firepower, and total destructive capability.

Marv constructed a makeshift living quarters within the warehouse next to his bulldozer, complete with a bed, stove, air conditioner, and even a small television set. Whenever he wasn't sleeping, Marv was busy building, cutting up sheets of reinforced steel, making homemade concrete, and drawing up designs for his machine.

The makeshift sleeping area Heemeyer built in his warehouse. Whenever Heemeyer wasn't sleeping, he was hard at work building his homemade bulldozer-tank.

Marv decided to remove and rebuild the entire control cabin of the bulldozer. He transformed the cramped control cabin into a spacious command center, adding a wooden board to serve as a desk and building storage compartments, mounts for video monitors, and a system of fans to keep himself cool.

Marv anticipated that the police would likely try to stop him in the middle of his rampage - as they had done with Thomas Leask. But, unlike Leask, Marv decided to go in prepared for battle. He created armor by taking sheets of half-inch-thick reinforced steel and cutting them into appropriate shapes. To create individual shield plates, Marv would space two steel sheets out from each other and fill the gap between them with homemade concrete, creating a dense, protective, reinforced plate of armor.

A side view depiction of Marvin Heemeyer's modified bulldozer which he turned into a well-armored homemade tank.

Marv would then use a lift to hold up the plates of armor while he welded them together, creating a giant protective shell that could encase his bulldozer. 

Also, unlike Leask, Marv decided to outfit his bulldozer with firepower. He created three portholes in the armor of his bulldozer, out of which he could stick the barrels of numerous guns to keep law enforcement at bay. And, rather than have a door through which law enforcement could pull him out, Marv Heemeyer designed the shell of armor to be lowered onto the bulldozer on top of him - ensuring that nobody would ever get in or out of the vehicle again.

The shell of armor had no room for windows. Marv didn't want to give police any advantage during his rampage, so instead of windows, Marv installed five CCTV cameras along the outside of the bulldozer. These cameras would transmit live feed to a set of three television screens inside the bulldozer's modified cockpit, enabling him to navigate and steer the bulldozer from the safety of his mobile fortress.

The modified cockpit of Heemeyer's armored bulldozer, with the three television monitors he used to steer the vehicle. A 5.52mm rifle can be seen aiming through the front gun port.

Knowing that debris and dust from ruined buildings would likely cloud the screens of the CCTV cameras, Marv also installed a sophisticated system of compressed air tanks and tubes, which he could use to blow dust off of the camera lenses so he wouldn't be driving blind. In order to prevent police officers from shooting out the cameras, Heemeyer contained the CCTV cameras in shielded mounts, with the lenses protected by 3-inch-thick panes of Lexan, a transparent and bulletproof type of plastic.

One of the five security cameras Heemeyer mounted along the outside of the bulldozer. 

Marv knew that the longer his project went on, the more likely it was to draw unwanted attention. But Marv above all did not want to rush this work. He would only get one chance for revenge - one chance to show the town of Granby that they had messed with the wrong man. If he was to exact his vengeance, he would have to be patient and diligent.

In order to avoid suspicion, Marv's schedule became increasingly nocturnal. He would begin his noisy work at around 5-6 PM - when all of his neighbors had gone home from work for the evening. After working nonstop throughout the night, Marv would sleep during the daytime. Even then, Marv took precautious to ensure that he would know when any unwanted visitors were coming into the shed. He installed security cameras along the perimeter outside his shed and hooked them up to TV monitors inside his workspace - ensuring he would see any intruders coming onto his property.

The interior of Marv Heemeyer's warehouse. The makeshift sleeping area, covered by a blue tarp, can be seen to the left.

But Marv didn't just work on the instrument of his rampage. He also worked on the motivations for it, too. Marv knew that his actions would make international headlines. He would become world-famous, and if he was to become known for his deeds, he wanted to make sure that everyone knew precisely why he had done what he did and exactly who was to blame.

Throughout the fall of 2003 and early 2004, Marv Heemeyer recorded several hours of audio tapes thoroughly recounting and explaining his life, his business, his series of troubles with the town of Granby, and the long chain of events that led him to revenge-fueled violence.

Marv decided to pause construction in the winter of 2003 to take some time off and go snowmobiling in his beloved Rocky Mountains. For all Marv knew, this would be his last winter he would ever experience. Marv knew that his rampage would likely - if not certainly - leave him dead by its conclusion. He fully expected to die that day.

Even if he somehow avoided being killed by police, the armor he intended to lower on his bulldozer had no exit hatch. He would be trapped in there by his own protection. But, during the process of building his bulldozer and planning his revenge, Marv had come to terms with his own mortality. Even if he was to die, Marv had made peace with his life. This rampage of his would simply be the closing chapter of his journey.

Abruptly, in late 2003, the Docheffs approached Marv with another offer to buy his property. They offered Marv a pretty good deal - $400,000 for the property, no strings attached. Marv agreed to sell the property to the Docheffs, and this time they actually followed through with the paperwork. Would this soften Heemeyer's heart towards his rival? Could he now walk away from his planned rampage of violence and let sleeping dogs lie?

Not by a long shot. For Marv, the fact that he had finally reached a deal with the Docheffs did little to make him forget about the cruel treatment he had endured at their hands and the town of Granby. If he walked away now and let them take his land, he would, in essence, be handing them victory. 

If Marv walked away here and now, then he would - in his mind - have to live with the knowledge that the people of Granby had bullied, harassed, and abused him until he had finally been chased out. That was a victory that Heemeyer never wanted to grant to the Docheffs.

No, even now - when he could have walked away with a modest profit - Marv was determined to teach the town of Granby a lesson they would never forget.

"This time, I'm not walking away from it", Heemeyer recalled in one of his audio tapes. "The real world is gonna come back and slap you in the face like you have never been slapped before. And maybe that will make you think the next time, a generation from now, when you start screwing an outsider!"

When the Docheffs sent a representative to tour the property in preparation for the sale, Marv had a very close call. Unable to hide his half-finished bulldozer-tank, Marv covered it up with a large blue tarp while the Docheff's representative visited the warehouse. When the representative asked Marv about the mysterious contraption concealed by the tarp, Marv told him it was an "air coolant system" that improved engine performance, and that he had "perfected" the device at the request of a college professor. The fib worked, and the representative paid no further attention to Marv's bizarre contraption.

In Marv's mind, the fact that he had been able to conceal his plot for revenge under the noses of his rivals was further proof that what he was about to do was not only morally right, but divinely sanctioned. 

"It was right there under their nose! How come they didn't catch me? Well, I wasn't supposed to get caught! God blessed me in advance for the task that I am about to undertake!", Heemeyer would later recall in an audio tape. "It is my duty. God has asked me to do this. It's a cross that I'm going to carry and I'm carrying it in God's name. God built me to be here to prove to you that what you have been doing, for God knows how many years, is wrong! You picked on the wrong man!"

Marv decided to take a break from the construction during the winter of 2003. Knowing that he would never experience another winter again, Marv wanted to have one last experience with the Colorado wilderness he loved. He spent the winter snowmobiling through his beloved Rocky Mountains with the few people he still considered to be his close and loyal friends. Marv's friends had no idea of the horror he was planning to exact on the town he hated.

Nobody knows for sure whether Marv Heemeyer had any second thoughts about his rampage during the winter of 2003 - or how serious those second thoughts would have been. His behavior seems to suggest that he did. He made appointments, planned vacations, and seemed oddly joyful and happy for someone preparing for a violent death.

But in March of 2004, personal tragedy would strike Marv Heemeyer, and that tragedy would put the final nail in the coffin of his plot for violent revenge.

Love and Loss

On March 31, 2004, Marv Heemeyer's father - John Heemeyer - died at the age of 79 in a South Dakota hospital after a long battle with illness. For Marv, the loss of his father was absolutely devastating. For all of the many connections Marv had made in his life, few were as close as the one he had with his dad.

Marv had never been all that close with his mother or siblings, but he loved his dad probably more than anyone else in the world. Now the man who had always been there for Marv - who had always supported him and stood by his life choices - was gone.

Marv traveled up to Castlewood, South Dakota, to attend his father's funeral. There, he saw his siblings for the first time in years. The loss of a patriarch is difficult for most any family, and this was no different. John's funeral was a mournful occasion for the entire Heemeyer family, but Marv himself particularly grieved.

Marv Heemeyer (second from left) attends his father's funeral with his three siblings.
The loss of his beloved father had a devastating impact on Marv, and was likely the final nail in the coffin of his revenge plot.

After the memorial service, Marv Heemeyer drove up to his father's ranch in his hometown of Castlewood. It was a ranch where Marv had done hard work with his dad for years in his youth. Now, visiting the only other home he had ever known, without his closest companion, Marv felt more alone than ever.

At the ranch, Marv used his camera to take a self-portrait. The photo is a mournful image that, probably more than anything, encapsulates the grief and flood of emotions that consumed Heemeyer at that time. Heemeyer stares into the camera, tears welling in his eyes, with a resigned, sad expression on his face.

Marv Heemeyer took this self-portrait while visiting his family ranch in Castlewood after his father's death. The grief, pain, and resignation in Marv's face is more than evident.

Now, Marv was completely alone. There was nothing left for him on the earth. If Marv Heemeyer had any second thoughts about his rampage against Granby, those thoughts almost certainly died with Marv's father.

When Marv returned to Granby in early May of 2004, he spent that last month putting the finishing touches on his homemade bulldozer. In a way, John Heemeyer had managed to help his son out one final time. When Marv had sold the property to the Docheffs, he had bequeathed the entirety of the $400,000 proceeds from the sale to his father. Now that John Heemeyer was dead, that money was distributed to Marv's two brothers and sister.

By funneling and separating the funds of the property sale, Marv Heemeyer had effectively ensured that he would get his full revenge on those he felt had wronged him. When the time would come for Marv's victims to collect damages on his estate, there would be no way for them to collect. Marv had, in essence, completely separated himself from his money and property.

Marv was now truly a man with nothing left to live for and nothing to lose. And a man with nothing to lose is, in the end, the most dangerous man of all.

Reasonable Men, Unreasonable Things

Throughout the month of May, 2004, Marv worked on the finalities of his revenge plot. With his formidable bulldozer now complete, Marv began finishing his audio diaries and drawing up his list of targets. Each of Marv's targets had served some part in the play of Granby versus Marv Heemeyer, and each would now feel the full force of his revenge.

The list of Heemeyer's targets was long, but not random. The list included Cody Docheff's numerous businesses; not just the plant at Mountain Park Concrete, but also the office building at Mountain Parks Electric.

Marv also intended to target the offices of Sky-Hi News and its editor, Patrick Brower. Brower, Marv felt, had written purposely negative stories against him in the paper and refused to grant him advertising (in truth, Brower had actually given Heemeyer free advertising). 

Patrick Brower, one of the editors at Sky-Hi News, became a target of Marv's wrath after Marv accused him of railroading his business with unfair coverage and denial of advertising. In truth, Brower had actually done neither of these things.

The Thompson family residence and the Thompson & Sons construction plant was also on the list of targets for Marv to hit. The Thompsons had, in Marv's eyes, been out to get him from the beginning, and had been instrumental in creating problems during his dealings with the town board.

Also on the list was the Gambles Hardware Store, owned by Casey and Rhonda Farrell. Casey Farrell had been on the town board when they denied Heemeyer's attempts to stop the construction of Mountain Park Concrete, and Marv had long resented him for having a "smug" attitude.

But Marv wasn't going to stop at targeting his individual enemies. No, in his mind, the entire town government was just as corrupt and evil as they were. Not only would Marv destroy the homes and businesses of his enemies, he would destroy the entire system of government that had wronged him. He planned to destroy the Granby town hall, the local Catholic Church, and several "public buildings", as he wrote on his list.

Heemeyer wrote several lists of people and organizations he felt had wronged him during the Granby fiasco, and they would soon become targets of his revenge plot.

"I believe in the free enterprise system. I believe in a level playing field of competition. If you want to change that level playing field of competition to your advantage, basically, you give me license to do that also when my opportunity comes around, because you are the leaders of the community. Through your actions, you show the community how things are supposed to be done", Heemeyer recalled in one of his audio tapes. 

"You have given me license through your example to do what I need to do", he continued. "When I do this, that levels the playing field in my favor, so now we've got a lopsided playing field. And when I come back at you, I'm gonna destroy your side of the playing field."

During the tapes recounting his life and business ventures, Heemeyer had been wistful and nostalgic. But in the days prior to his planned rampage, Heemeyer's audio tapes took on an audibly angry, bitter, and vengeful tone. One of his final tapes, recorded on May 22, 2004 - less than two weeks before his day of wrath - made this clear.

"This is not what I deserved. You meddled in my business, and took what I deserve away! You took advantage of my good nature!", Heemeyer raved. "Well, I think there's something you should learn here: For as good as a man can be, also he can be as bad. When you visit evil upon someone, be assured it will revisit you."

Heemeyer singled out his targets. "The Thompsons are guilty! The Docheffs are guilty! The Granby Town Board is guilty! The Granby Planning Commission is guilty!", he seethed. "It took all of you ten years to get me! Well, you got me, no doubt about it; I got screwed big time. But enough is enough. I have been beaten to a point where I'm not gonna take it anymore."

He closed with an ominous message. "But I don't think that's what God had planned for me, and he expects me to do something to those who kept me now from getting that - from getting what I deserve. Well, I will get what I deserve, but I am not afraid of death. This will gnaw at me for the rest of my life, and I am not going to live with it. I may die with it, but I will not live with it."

"You were cowards in the way that you dealt with me. You all along were thinking that I was the person that needed to be taught a lesson. You were going to show me how it worked in Granby, Colorado - how the real world worked. People, you are so mistaken about how the real world worked. Why was I so unsuccessful in protecting my property? Because it was you people who needed to be taught a lesson!"

"I was always willing to be reasonable until I had to be unreasonable", he closed. "Well, sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things."

Rampage

Early on the morning of Friday, June 4, 2004, Marvin Heemeyer awoke from his makeshift sleeping room in his warehouse. Over a year and a half of meticulous planning and construction would now come to its culmination. This was the day of wrath, the day of vengeance, in which Marv Heemeyer would exact his revenge upon the town of Granby, Colorado.

After taking a shower, Marv changed into a button-up Hawaiian shirt and a pair of black work jeans. He used a razor to shave his head, and then took some final preparations. He loaded up his bulldozer with fuel and stocked the control cabin with food, water, ammunition, makeshift explosives, and a gas mask. 

With all of his supplies gathered, Heemeyer outfitted the bulldozer's three gun ports with his weapons. On the front side, Heemeyer stuck the barrel of a semi-automatic 5.52mm FN FNC assault rifle out of the front gun port. On the right side of his homemade tank, Heemeyer aimed a semi-automatic .223-caliber Ruger Mini-14 ranch rifle out of a second gun port, while on the third and back gun port, Heemeyer mounted a 50-caliber semi-automatic Barrett M82 sniper rifle. The M82 is a civilian version of the M107 sniper rifle - a formidable and extremely powerful weapon designed for use against vehicles on the battlefield. 

 

Marv Heemeyer mounted a .50-caliber M82 sniper rifle which pointed out the back gun port of his bulldozer.

Inside the darkened cabin, Heemeyer brought several other weapons, including a .22-caliber long rifle, a semi-automatic Kel-Tec P11 handgun (which he stored in the glove box), and a .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 686 revolver. He checked to make sure his compressed air tanks were full and all of his cameras were working, and activated the three television sets he had wired to the five cameras outside the control cabin.

After gathering up his supplies and weapons inside the modified bulldozer, Heemeyer climbed into the control cabin, sat in the driver's seat, and used a remote control to lower the shell of fortified steel armor on top of him. Sealed inside his homemade fortress, Heemeyer knew that there was now no turning back.

At 2:00 PM on June 4th, Heemeyer drove the bulldozer through the eastern wall of his shed, armed and prepared for battle. His first target would be the thing that had started this entire mess in the first place - Cody Docheff's concrete plant. Heemeyer used the blade of the bulldozer to crush the first building on the lot - a small precast plant located west of the main building. The dozer effortlessly toppled the small structure, crushing it to smithereens.

Cody Docheff was operating a bulldozer at the plant with several of his workers - including Larry Thompson - when he heard the deafening sound of heavy machinery and what sounded like several explosions. Before he could see what it was, the panicked voice of Marcia Rust - one of Cody's managers - came screaming over the radio: "Cody! Cody!"

Cody Docheff immediately sensed that something was wrong. He ran over to the side of the batch plant and was immediately confronted by the terrifying sight of a gigantic, armor-plated bulldozer accelerating towards the main building. Even though he couldn't see the driver of the mechanical beast, Docheff knew immediately that it was Marv Heemeyer.

Docheff turned to one of his employees, Bob Howard, who had a concealed-carry permit. "Bob, give me your gun!", Cody yelled. Howard ran over to Cody and handed him his .357 magnum revolver. "Careful, it's loaded", Howard warned his boss. "Good!", Cody replied. 

Docheff took aim at the bulldozer and fired three shots from Howard's revolver. The rounds harmlessly bounced off of the bulldozer's thick armor, not even denting it. Cody Docheff may as well have used a slingshot.

Unable to stop the bulldozer with gunfire, Cody yelled for someone to get the heaviest steel beam they could find. If he could wedge a steel beam in the bulldozer's wheels, Cody figured, it might break the tracks and immobilize it. 

One of Cody's employees grabbed a half-inch bar of angle iron off of the steel rack - a bar so heavy it generally required two men to carry it. He ran over to the bulldozer and jammed the iron bar in-between two of the wheels to break the track. But it was fruitless. The bulldozer snapped the iron rod in half as effortlessly as if it were a twig.

Cody figured he might be able to climb on top and shoot Heemeyer through the roof. He jumped up on the back of the bulldozer's ripper to climb on top of the behemoth, but Cody immediately slipped off and fell to the ground. Before embarking on his rampage, Marv had covered the back ripper of the bulldozer with axle grease, making it nearly impossible for anybody to climb it.

Cody could only watch helplessly as the massive bulldozer crashed through the side of the concrete plant, knocking down pieces of the side wall and tearing through the support structures. Heemeyer continued wrecking the building, reversing and accelerating until he had torn the entire side of the structure away, causing it to collapse.

Larry Thompson turned to Cody. "Get the biggest loader you got and see if you can get underneath his track to uplift him", he yelled. Cody nodded and ran off to get his front-end loader.

 

At around 2:15, the first 911 calls came in, reporting that an armored bulldozer was destroying buildings at Mountain Park Concrete. Granby police immediately broadcast a wide tactical alert. Patrol officers began racing to confront the bulldozer, but they had no idea what kind of monstrosity they were up against.

Granby Sheriff's Deputy Jim Kraker was the first officer to arrive on scene, at 2:19 PM. Deputy Kraker exited his patrol car armed with a shotgun and ran over to the concrete plant, which was still being wrecked by Marv's bulldozer.

Kraker was dumbfounded to see the menacing vehicle. It looked less like a bulldozer and more like a tank, and the noise of the engine and squeaking of the tracks was deafening. Kraker ordered everyone to get back as he ran towards the bulldozer, aiming his shotgun at it.

"Stop the vehicle!", Kraker yelled to the dozer as he circled it. "Stop the vehicle now!"

Deputy Kraker confronts Heemeyer's bulldozer with a shotgun

But the armored bulldozer continued its rampage of destruction. As Heemeyer backed out of the ruined concrete plant, Cody Docheff appeared, driving his front-end loader and accelerating towards the bulldozer at top speed.

Cody Docheff attempts to disable Heemeyer's vehicle by ramming him with a front-end loader.

Docheff rammed into the side of the bulldozer, wedging the front bucket of the loader into the tracks. Docheff tried to raise the bucket up to flip the bulldozer over, but the behemoth was far too heavy, and instead the back wheels of Cody's front-end loader were lifted almost four feet in the air as he tried fruitlessly to disable Heemeyer.

Cody backed away from the bulldozer as Heemeyer repositioned himself to ram the building again. Docheff once again accelerated towards the bulldozer and crashed into its side. The impact sent Cody Docheff flying forward against the windshield, briefly knocking him unconscious.

Heemeyer remained undamaged, but the impact had shaken him enough that he decided to deal with Cody. From inside the cabin, Heemeyer maneuvered his vehicle, angled his .50-caliber M82 sniper rifle through the back gun port and opened fire on Docheff.

The barrel of Heemeyer's .50-caliber rifle aims out the rear gun port of the bulldozer. Marv fired several shots from the rifle at Cody Docheff as the latter tried to disable his vehicle with a front-end loader. Note the bullet holes around the viewport.

Dazed from the impact, Cody stirred awake to see several .50-caliber rounds exploding in the bucket of his loader, spraying dust and metal fragments into the air. He immediately backed his vehicle away from Marv and disengaged.

The forward bucket of Docheff's front-end loader, pockmarked with bullet holes.

After firing 8 rounds at Cody Docheff, Marv Heemeyer turned from the ruined concrete plant and accelerated towards a fleeing pickup truck in the plant's parking lot. The truck's owner abandoned his ride just in time before Heemeyer drove over the truck and crushed it.

The wreckage of Mountain Park Concrete's batch plant after Heemeyer's rampage.

Deputy Kraker ran back to his car, where he exchanged his shotgun for an .223-caliber M4 rifle. There, Kraker was joined by Colorado state troopers Dave Batura and Jack DeSanti, as well as Sheriff's Deputy John Lynch. Batura and DeSanti took cover behind a concrete barrier while Lynch and Kraker spoke to Cody Docheff.

"It's Marv Heemeyer! I know it is!", Docheff yelled to the cops. "I don't think nobody's in that dozer. I think it's radio controlled! He's probably in the hills around here somewhere."

Lynch attempted to flank the bulldozer, which was now withdrawing from the plant. He fired four shotgun blasts at the bulldozer, aiming for what appeared to be a viewport, but the 12-gauge pellets simply bounced off the side armor, causing no appreciable damage.

At this time, Sheriff's Deputy Sergeant Rich Garner arrived on scene on the west side of the batch plant, armed with an M4 patrol rifle, and raced around to the front, where he joined Batura and DeSanti behind the concrete barrier. From behind the barrier, the three officers opened fire with their patrol rifles, aiming for what appeared to be portholes along the left side of the bulldozer. 

Heemeyer switched to his side gun and returned fire with his Ruger Mini-14. Two rounds went by officer Garner's head, and he immediately ducked behind cover as more shots splintered through the concrete barrier. As the three officers ducked behind the barrier, Heemeyer repositioned the bulldozer to face the officers. He fired a few more shots from his 5.52mm rifle out the front gun port, pinning Batura, DeSanti, and Garner down, before accelerating towards the concrete barriers at full speed. The three officers scattered as Heemeyer crushed the barrier with the blade of his bulldozer.

Heemeyer then steered east to leave the concrete plant and continue forward into Granby. As he did so, he drove over an unmarked police car blocking his path and crushed it. As he drove east, a group of armed policemen attempted to block Heemeyer's exit. Armed with revolvers, M14 battle rifles, and M4 assault rifles, the officers began firing a barrage of shots at the bulldozer again, but the rounds harmlessly bounced off the thick armor. Heemeyer continued firing shots at police from his FNC rifle out the front gun port, scattering the officers aside as he pulled onto the main highway.

Heemeyer's bulldozer crushed this unmarked police car as he exited the concrete plant

Undersheriff Glenn Trainor ran behind the bulldozer. Like Cody Docheff, Trainor wanted to get on top of the bulldozer and see if he could enter the vehicle through the roof. He grabbed onto the back ripper and pulled himself up. Though grease still coated the bulldozer, Trainor was able to get a stable grip and finally reached the top of the vehicle. But when he got onto the bulldozer's roof, Trainor saw no entry hatch whatsoever - just a solid sheet of metal and a roof vent. 

Undersheriff Glenn Trainor climbs on top of Heemeyer's bulldozer in an attempt to enter the cockpit.

Trainor drew his service pistol and fired six rounds into the air vent, trying to hit the driver through the roof. This did nothing. Trainor then fired the remaining six rounds in his pistol at what he thought was the engine block, but Marv had plated the roof of his vehicle well, and none of Trainor's shots were able to penetrate the armor. 

Trainor reloaded his weapon and spotted one of the camera shields. Thinking it was a viewport, he opened fire again, attempted to shoot directly through the protective screen. But all that did was leave bullet marks on the plastic covering, and it did nothing to slow the bulldozer down. In total, Trainor fired 37 shots at the bulldozer while on the roof, and not a single one managed to penetrate the armor.

As Trainor tried to breach the bulldozer, other officers ran alongside him. "I brought some flashbangs if anybody needs them", Deputy Garner reported. He tossed a stun grenade up to Trainor, who threw it down the bulldozer's exhaust vent. The grenade exploded with a loud bang, shaking the vehicle and spewing white smoke, but did nothing to stop the mechanized behemoth. 

Further down the highway, Heemeyer came upon his second target - Mountain Parks Electric. The employees had just been evacuated by police when the massive bulldozer turned off the highway and barreled towards the building. 

Heemeyer slammed through the front of the building and, like he had done at the concrete plant, spent several minutes driving in and out of the structure, tearing apart the walls and collapsing the front side of the electrical plant. Officer Trainor was stuck on the vehicle's roof, helpless to stop Heemeyer's destructive rampage.

The ruined offices of Mountain Parks Electric

With the electrical plant destroyed, Heemeyer backed out and turned southeast, this time heading for the Granby Town Hall.

As the bulldozer lumbered towards the town hall, police began a frantic evacuation of the city center. The town hall at the time was also home to the public library, where dozens of people, including children, had gathered that afternoon. 

Police were now getting desperate to stop Heemeyer. As they ran along the tank, SWAT teams continued to fire a barrage of shots at the bulldozer, using armor-piercing ammunition, but Heemeyer's armor was too formidable even for the high-penetration rounds. All they did was leave the sides of the bulldozer riddled with bullet marks. 

However, police did have one tactical advantage. During his rampage at Mountain Parks Electric, Heemeyer had accidentally bent the barrel of his Mini-14 as it aimed out the side gun port. When he tried to fire a shot from the Mini-14 at police, the round struck the side of the bent barrel, permanently disabling the gun. Heemeyer's field of fire was now limited to the direct front and back, and he could not engage police on the sides of his machine. 

Marv Heemeyer mounted this .223-caliber Ruger Mini-14 rifle on the side gun port to fire at police, but accidentally bent the gun's barrel while demolishing one of his targets. This limited his field of fire to the direct front and back of the bulldozer.

However, Heemeyer still had the advantage of protection. Even if he couldn't engage officers in a gunfight, he still was well-shielded from any weapon in their arsenal, and he knew it.

As police watched helplessly, Marv turned off the highway and barreled towards the Granby Town Hall. As he did so, he rammed a parked truck out of the way, and, in one sweep, used it to smash through the front of Maple Park Builders. 

Heemeyer damaged Maple Street Builders while ramming a parked truck out of the path of his bulldozer

Officer Trainor, still on the vehicle's roof, knew that if he stayed put, he would quickly be crushed by falling debris. As the homemade tank closed in on the building, Trainor blindly fired all 12 shots from his pistol at the roof of the bulldozer and jumped off.

Heemeyer rammed his bulldozer through the front entrance of the town hall and drove along the side, using the dozer blade to rip through the side wall. As he pulled into the back lot of the building, the bulldozer plowed through a children's playground, turning the structures into pieces of twisted metal, before ramming methodically into the back of the building and tearing apart the north, east, and west walls, leaving the town hall in ruins.

The wreckage of Granby Town Hall

With the town hall destroyed, Marv turned his homemade tank back onto Main Street as patrol cars and police officers ran alongside his vehicle, desperately trying to find a weakness in the bulldozer's impenetrable armor.

As Marv pulled off Main Street and onto the northeast corner of 1st and Agate streets, he spotted the local Liberty Savings Bank branch, and immediately swerved towards the building, knocking over a fire hydrant and toppling the town's only traffic light. Heemeyer plowed through the west side of Liberty Savings Bank, caving in the walls and completely destroying the entrance.

On his way from the town hall, Heemeyer destroyed the Granby branch of Liberty Savings Bank

A group of state troopers attempted to flank Heemeyer from behind as he drove into building. Armed with 12-gauge shotguns and anti-barricade, armor-piercing shotgun slugs, the state troopers began firing a barrage of shotgun blasts at the vehicle's rear viewports and hydraulic system under the ripper. The armor-piercing slugs simply bounced off the armor and ricocheted into the air.

Immediately, the state troopers began taking fire as Heemeyer shot several .50-caliber rounds at them from his M82 rifle out the back gun port. The troopers dove for cover as Heemeyer backed out of the building onto the road and continued towards his next target - the offices of Sky-Hi News on Agate Avenue.

Police already anticipated that Heemeyer would be going after Sky-Hi News. They knew he had long had a beef with editor Patrick Brower, and they wanted to make sure that Brower was safe from Heemeyer's wrath.

"This guy may possibly be going after Patrick Brower", one officer reported over his radio. "Get all available units to Sky-Hi News".

Patrol officers raced ahead of Heemeyer to Sky-Hi News, where Brower, his 16-year-old son, and several newspaper employees were inside for their regular work day. An officer raced inside the building. "Get out of here!", he yelled to Brower.

Brower was confused. He had no idea about the rampage that was going on in Granby.

"Get out of here! You're on the list!", the officer urged Brower. 

Before Brower could ask what was going on, the officer ran outside, and Brower immediately heard the wail of sirens and the deafening noise of machinery drawing closer and closer to him.

As Brower ran outside, he spotted a gigantic armor-plated bulldozer rumbling down the road towards his office, with two police cars on either side of it. Brower immediately knew that it had to be Marvin Heemeyer, out for his revenge.

Flanked by police cars, Marv Heemeyer's bulldozer approaches the offices of Sky-Hi News

As Brower and his employees began to evacuate building, Heemeyer took a sharp right turn off the highway. He drove over the curb - toppling a small aspen tree in the process - and plowed through the side of the building. The front wall immediately crumbled, and less than a second later the entire front façade of the building came crashing down on top of the bulldozer, enveloping the area in a thick cloud of dust.

Heemeyer rams through the front of the newspaper office

Heemeyer continued to wreck the building, maneuvering to position the bulldozer's blade along the side wall before continuing to drive forward, ripping out the entire side wall. Patrick Brower, with the ceiling crumbling all around him, managed to run from the building just in time before the entire structure collapsed.

The offices of Sky-Hi News, completely destroyed by Heemeyer's bulldozer

As Brower ran past the front of Heemeyer's tank, he snapped off a quick photo of the vehicle. Immediately, Heemeyer spotted Brower and began firing his 5.52mm rifle out the front gun port again. Bullets whizzed past Brower's head as he ran for cover, abandoning his photo shoot. 

A SWAT team running alongside the bulldozer returned fire on the tank with rifles and shotguns, trying to distract Heemeyer from shooting at fleeing civilians.

Patrick Brower managed to briefly take a picture of the bulldozer wrecking his office before coming under fire

Heemeyer made a 180-degree turn as he pulled away from the ruined newspaper office. As he returned to the main highway, he used the dozer's blade to push several parked cars out of the way. 

Two SWAT officers took cover behind a patrol car in front of the bulldozer, and, aiming at the tank's cabin, fired a barrage of over a dozen rounds from their M4 rifles at the front viewport. Heemeyer quickly turned to engage the officers, and fired several more shots from his FNC rifle out the front gun port to keep police at bay. The two SWAT officers quickly abandoned the firefight and moved to cover.

Police continued to flank the bulldozer on either side, out of Heemeyer's line of fire, and, hoping to exploit a weak point in the bulldozer's armor, they continued to shoot at the viewports around the control cabin.

Heemeyer rams several parked cars out of the way as he leaves the destroyed newspaper office.  A SWAT team can be seen to the left firing on the bulldozer.

"I have a .50-cal over here on East Agate directly across the building", one officer announced over the radio. Maybe the high-powered, large-bore, anti-material rifle would finally be able to inflict damage on the seemingly impervious bulldozer.

Police assumed that Heemeyer would now target the Thompson family residence, also on Agate Avenue. Their intuition was correct; this was Heemeyer's next target.

"Would you call [phone number redacted]? That's the Thompson Residence", one officer announced over the radio. "We think the vehicle might be heading there".

Larry and Gary Thompson were, fortunately, not at the residence at the time of the rampage, but their mother, 82-year-old Thelma Thompson, was home. Gary Thompson quickly called his mother to tell her to get out. "Mom", he pleaded, "there's a giant bulldozer coming to tear the house down! You gotta get out of there!"

Thelma thought Gary was playing a cruel joke, but Gary was insistent that this was no prank. "You need to get in the car and drive out of town", he implored. "Just get out of there!"

Police barely managed to evacuate Thelma to safety before Heemeyer arrived in his bulldozer.

The armored bulldozer drove right through the single-story house, completely destroying and leveling it as if it were made of sand. 

The wreckage of the Thompson home

Heemeyer then turned towards the Thompson's construction plant, located just across the street from the house, and accelerated towards his next target.

As Heemeyer drove towards the Thompson's adjacent construction shop, Deputy Rich Garner - who had earlier exchanged shots with the bulldozer and was now pursuing it on foot - was confronted by the Chief of Police of the nearby town of Kremmling, Colorado. The chief pulled up alongside Garner in his patrol car. "Hey, Rich", he said, rolling down his window. "I got a surprise for ya in the back!"

In the back of the patrol car, Garner saw a large police-issue .50-caliber sniper rifle. It was the same caliber as Heemeyer's M82 rifle. Maybe now, Garner could even the playing field and take on the bulldozer with something more powerful.

Garner picked up the rifle, aimed directly at the tank's front armor, and fired a single shot. The round slammed into the bulldozer's armor, leaving a trail of sparks and a noticeable mark on the steel plating, but did not penetrate. Garner pulled back the bolt and ejected the spent shell before firing again. Again, the round glanced off. Ultimately, Garner fired five .50-caliber shots at the bulldozer, but not a single one of the rounds was able to pierce the tank's thick armor.

Even with the heaviest firepower the police had in their arsenal, they could not even slow down Heemeyer's destructive rampage. They were completely outmatched.

Heemeyer attacks the construction facility for Thompson & Sons

Police could only watch as the gigantic bulldozer crushed one of the construction warehouses, causing it to collapse. Heemeyer then turned and drove through the entrance of the main office and parking garage, completely tearing away the front facade and crushing most of the equipment inside.

The main garage for Thompson & Sons, destroyed by Heemeyer

As Heemeyer pulled out of the construction plant, he tipped over a semi-trailer on the property, causing it to fall onto its side. After leveling the plant, Heemeyer turned his bulldozer back towards the house. His bulldozer blade caught on an Xcel Energy pickup truck, and Heemeyer used his dozer to crush the truck against one of the Thompson's rental buildings, completely bending the vehicle in half.

Heemeyer used his bulldozer to crush this Xcel Energy truck into one of the Thompson's rental buildings

By now, it was shortly before 4:00 PM. Heemeyer's rampage had been going on for nearly two hours. Crowds of spectators sat on a ridge overlooking the town, watching as Heemeyer wreaked destruction upon their community. News helicopters flew overhead, providing live coverage of the unfolding terror, while police continued to scramble for a way to stop Heemeyer before he destroyed the entire town.

Much of Marvin Heemeyer's rampage was broadcast on live television by news helicopters

Heemeyer had now destroyed most of the main targets of his rampage. But his next target was one of opportunity, and if he was successful in destroying this target, he could endanger hundreds of lives.

Endgame

After destroying the Thompsons' plant and home, Heemeyer turned his bulldozer south, where he drove down the hill towards the southern edge of Granby. At the bottom of the hill was Independent Gas, a natural-gas company that specialized in selling giant tanks of industrial-grade propane. Hundreds of these gas tanks were stored in a lot adjacent to the company's building, neatly lined in rows and groups in close proximity to one another.

Police were now faced with a horrifying scenario. Just up the hill from the gas lot was a large retirement community. If Heemeyer ignited any one of the gas tanks, the resulting explosion could be catastrophic and level the entire surrounding neighborhood, killing everyone in the vicinity. Officers frantically began to evacuate everyone within at least a thousand feet of the gas lot, but they knew that they had no way to stop the bulldozer.

The time was now 4:17 PM. As Heemeyer approached the propane facility, the officers that had been flanking the bulldozer immediately retreated back from the blast zone. Heemeyer maneuvered his bulldozer so the back of the vehicle was facing the tanks. He loaded his M82 rifle with special .50-caliber incendiary ammunition, took aim at the propane tanks, and began firing.

The first shot struck a piece of the bulldozer's armor, exploding in a bright flash and a puff of orange smoke. Heemeyer adjusted his aim and fired three more times. Again, his armor got in the way of his aim, and the rounds exploded against the back of the bulldozer.

Smoke and flame erupts from the bulldozer as Heemeyer attempts to fire incendiary rounds at the propane tanks. Because of the design of his armor, Heemeyer could not get a clear line of fire on his target, and most of the shots exploded against the side of his vehicle

Because of the design of Heemeyer's gun port, his field of fire was very limited. His armor kept getting in the way of his aim, and the ripper on the back of the bulldozer couldn't lower down far enough to give him a clean shot. Heemeyer tried lowering the ripper to clear his line of fire, but it was to no avail.

Heemeyer tried to maneuver again to get a better firing angle on the tanks. Adjusting his homemade tank, Heemeyer fired four more rounds downrange in quick succession, but, as before, the vehicle's ripper blocked his aim, and three of the rounds exploded against the side of his armor. Only one round actually hit its target, striking a power transformer next to one of the tanks but failing to ignite any of the propane in the tank itself.

Heemeyer abandoned his attempts to detonate the gas tanks. No matter, there was still ample opportunity to destroy more targets. After reloading his rifle, Heemeyer maneuvered his tank back towards the road and continued back towards Granby.

Police were still scrambling to find a way to stop the tank. The situation was now getting desperate. 

"Ask them to help us get the National Guard units in here, maybe with a helicopter to stop this unit!", one officer reported over the radio.

"You need a National Guard unit and a helicopter?", replied the dispatcher, dumbfounded.

"Yeah, uh, the Air National Guard or the Army National Guard.", came the reply. "Either out of Laramie or out of Eagles."

Meanwhile, a group of police officers had commandeered two large scrapers used by the county for construction purposes. They wanted to see if they could use the giant earthmovers as a barricade to stop Heemeyer in his tracks. 

A police-commandeered earthmover maneuvers in front of the bulldozer, attempting to block Heemeyer's path.

One earthmover pulled ahead of the armored bulldozer and stopped directly in front of it, trying to block its path. Instead of stopping, Heemeyer continued forward, ramming against the earthmover and pushing it forward. The driver of the earthmover tried desperately to hold out, but it was to no avail.

"Get him back!", one officer yelled over the radio. "Stop him!"

"I can't! He's got a dozer!", the driver replied.

Heemeyer rams the earthmover out of the way

Heemeyer effortlessly pushed the earthmover to the side and continued back onto the road. He decided to head for his next target - the Gambles Hardware Store on Main Street.

At this point, Heemeyer's engine - which utilized antifreeze as a coolant system for the radiator - began to malfunction and overheat. White smoke began billowing from the bulldozer's engine, enveloping the vehicle in a cloud.

White smoke envelopes Heemeyer's bulldozer as his engine begins to overheat.

The cloud seemed to disorient Heemeyer. As he tried to position his vehicle to take out the hardware store, he glanced against the side of a copy-printing shop, knocking down part of the front and side wall. Heemeyer maneuvered back onto the road, turned to face the hardware store. With his engine overheating, Heemeyer knew he didn't have much time left. But he wanted to continue his rampage to the bitter end.

Heemeyer positioned the bulldozer and accelerated towards the hardware store, crushing the entire front façade into splinters of wood and dust.

Heemeyer attacks the Gambles Hardware store

Pulling back onto the road, Heemeyer positioned his bulldozer again and began driving down a small alley between the hardware store and an adjacent building, using the front blade to rip off the side wall of the hardware store and collapse it. As Heemeyer did so, a second earthmover quickly pulled in behind him to block his exit and trap him.

As Heemeyer destroys the side wall of Gambles Hardware, an earthmover blocks his escape

But what Heemeyer didn't know was that the Gambles Hardware store had a basement - unlike most of the buildings in Granby. And as Heemeyer drove through the side of the building, the floor beneath his right tread suddenly gave way, and the tread fell through the floor and into the basement. Heemeyer attempted to go in reverse, but with only one tread on the ground, he now found himself stuck and unable to move.

The impervious armored bulldozer that had wreaked havoc on Granby for the past two hours was now immobilized - trapped by the store it had tried to destroy.

Heemeyer becomes stuck as the side of his bulldozer falls through the floor of the hardware store and into the basement.

Trapped, and with his engine overheating, Heemeyer realized that his vengeful rampage was over. He turned off the ignition, and the giant bulldozer shut down.

Police cautiously began to surround the vehicle, training their weapons on the target. They didn't know if Heemeyer would begin firing from the vehicle or if he had rigged it to explode. Even though their target was now trapped, the danger was far from over and they still had no way of getting through the bulldozer's armor.

SWAT officers take cover behind an earthmover as they surround Heemeyer's trapped bulldozer

Heemeyer spent several minutes sitting in the darkened cabin of his homemade tank. He lit a cigarette and relaxed in his seat. He knew the police had no way of breaching the bulldozer, so he had plenty of time to prepare for the end. Would he fight and go out in a blaze of glory? Would he wait patiently to be captured? Or would he just end it here by his own hand, in a final gesture of defiance to show the world that he was - in his words - the co-captain of his life?

After a few minutes of sitting in silence, Heemeyer chose to end his life by his own hand. He had lived his life and was ready to go. Heemeyer picked up his .357-caliber Model 686 revolver, pressed it up against the roof of his mouth, pulled the trigger, and with a final shot, he put an end to his vengeful rampage of violence forever, two hours and seven minutes after it began.

Revolution's End

It would take law enforcement almost 12 hours to get through the bulldozer's armor. After attempting - and failing - three times to breach the armor with explosive charges, officers methodically cut through the armor with acetylene torches. At around 2:00 AM on June 5, 2004, Marvin Heemeyer's body was discovered, sitting in the driver's seat and surrounded by weapons, dead from a single self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

 

Marvin Heemeyer's body was found in the control cabin of his armored bulldozer, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Despite the total destruction Heemeyer had wrought on Granby, he was the only fatality of the rampage of June 4, 2004. Police had fired over 200 rounds at the armored bulldozer, and Heemeyer had fired at least 55 shots from his three rifles. Neither side inflicted injury on the other.

A police officer looks into the opened cockpit of Heemeyer's bulldozer. It took authorities almost 12 hours to cut through the vehicle's thick armor.

Marv Heemeyer destroyed or damaged 13 buildings in Granby that day, and inflicted over $7,000,000 in damages. The town would not fully repair the damage until 2012 - nearly 8 years after Heemeyer's rampage. 

Casey and Rhonda Farrell embrace outside the rubble of Gambles Hardware on June 5, 2004 - a day after it was destroyed by Marv Heemeyer. Gambles Hardware would not be rebuilt until early 2012.

In accordance with his final wishes, Heemeyer's body was cremated. Later that winter, Heemeyer's friends - with whom he had spent many winters snowmobiling with - took his ashes up his favorite trail on Gravel Mountain, revved their snowmobile engines as a sign of respect, and scattered Marv's ashes into the snowy wind.

Heemeyer's bulldozer is towed away on a flatbed.

As for Marv's bulldozer, the town later towed it to a police impound lot, where it sat untouched for almost an entire year in a warehouse. On April 19, 2005, despite some residents voicing wishes to turn the bulldozer into a tourist attraction, the town of Granby made the decision to cut up Marv's vehicle and turn it into scrap. 

The different pieces of the bulldozer were shipped to different places all across the country, to ensure that none of Heemeyer's admirers would take them as souvenirs.

Heemeyer's bulldozer was disassembled and scrapped in 2005. The pieces were sent to different scrapyards across the country to prevent any of his admirers from taking souvenirs.

Infamy and the Vicious Cycle

Marvin Heemeyer's bulldozer rampage made international headlines, and worldwide media attention was focused on the town of Granby, Colorado. Even now, 17 years after his rampage against the town of Granby, Marv Hemeeyer has grown a following of admirers. 

Sympathetic to his plights, and seeing him as the model American patriot standing up to a corrupt government, admirers of Marvin Heemeyer have written books, songs, and stories celebrating his life and commemorating him as a sort of folk hero. 

Most of the businesses Marv damaged or destroyed that day have since recovered. Mountain Park Concrete's batch plant that had started the whole ordeal was later rebuilt and is still in service today, though the company's review page has been flooded with dozens of negative reviews by Heemeyer fans. 

"Call and ask for Marvin", one user wrote on Mountain Park Concrete's Google Reviews page. "They appreciate that a lot."

But Marv Heemeyer's legacy has gone far beyond petty internet trolling. In recent years, Heemeyer has become an inspiration for a bizarre militant ideology known as the "Boogaloo Movement". 

Following a strange mix of neo-Nazi, anarcho-capitalist, and far-right libertarian ideologies, the "Boogaloo Movement" is accelerationist in nature - meaning they favor the complete destruction of governmental systems to bring about their revolution.

But despite their ridiculous-sounding name, the Boogaloo Movement has already engaged in violence. Boogaloo adherents have been involved in numerous violent acts, including a plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, the murder of a security contractor in California, the storming of the US Capitol in January, 2021, and even the murder of police officers.

In 2020, a Boogaloo militant named Steven Carrillo shot and killed a California sheriff's deputy and wounded his partner in a violent ambush and shootout. Before being captured, Carrillo used his own blood to write the phrase "I became unreasonable" on the hood of his car - an obvious reference to Marvin Heemeyer's quote: "Sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things". 

After killing a California police officer in a 2020 shootout, Boogaloo adherent Steven Carrillo wrote "I became unreasonable" on the hood of his car using his own blood. The quote is a reference to a phrase Marvin Heemeyer said in his audiotapes: "Sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things".
Carrillo still awaits trial and faces the death penalty if convicted.

"I became unreasonable" has since become a sort of "meme" among the Boogaloo movement, and adherents have worshipped Heemeyer as an almost godlike figure. Boogaloo members are often seen wearing Hawaiian shirts - the very same type of shirt Heemeyer wore on the day of his fatal rampage.

Boogaloo adherents see Heemeyer as a sort of American patriot standing up to an oppressive government, and they have dedicated themselves to following in his footsteps.

The Boogaloo movement's worship of Marvin Heemeyer is often referenced in their common phrase "Become unreasonable"

Even in death, it appears that Heemeyer's trail of destruction did not end. Through his rampage, he has continued to wreak havoc and has inspired a dangerous cult following of militants, dedicated to building off of what he started and using him to justify a total war against society.

Nobody knows whether Heemeyer intended for his rampage to inspire others to do the same, or if he simply wanted to let the world know why he did what he did. But if any lessons should be learned from the rampage against Granby, it should be this: A man who feels wronged can be the most dangerous man of all.

There is no doubt that Marvin Heemeyer was wronged by the town of Granby. From the very beginning, the town had it out for him. From the first auction in 1992 to his rampage in 2004, Heemeyer endured 12 years of harassment, deception, manipulation, and extortion from a town that hated him. He was pushed and pushed and pushed, until he could be pushed no more.

Now, I cannot condone what Heemeyer did. At all. Violence is the last resort of the incompetent, and regardless of his unfair treatment, there is no excuse or justification for Heemeyer's violent rampage against the town of Granby. 

Even though Heemeyer's defenders often point to the fact that Heemeyer didn't injure anyone during his rampage, this was not for lack of trying. Heemeyer destroyed buildings that had been occupied mere seconds before his arrival. He shot at cops and civilians alike, and rammed occupied vehicles out of the way with his bulldozer. No, the fact that Heemeyer caused no injuries or fatalities in his rampage had much more to do with luck than avoidance on his part.

But, at the same time, do I understand why Marv Heemeyer did what he did? Of course. Any sane person would. I understand perfectly how and why Heemeyer embarked on his vengeful rampage against the town of Granby, and this is why I now implore the town of Granby to acknowledge their role that led to this catastrophe.

In the years since the 2004 rampage, the Docheffs, the Thompsons, and the town of Granby still maintain that they did nothing wrong. They maintain that Heemeyer was treated just like anyone else was in their town, and that his rampage was fueled by greed or hatred instead of revenge for being wronged. But this tacit denial of responsibility is the very thing that will enable more tragedies like this in the future.

It is important to remember that Marv Heemeyer was not the first person to embark on such a rampage against his town. In 1998, as mentioned above, the town of Alma, Colorado, also found itself the target of a destructive rampage at the hands of Thomas Leask, after Leask found himself under similar treatment by town officials. 

Leask's rampage likely played a role in inspiring Marv's rampage, and Marv's rampage has likewise played a role in inspiring a militant, accelerationist movement that has already been involved in numerous violent crimes. It is a vicious, unending cycle of violence and revenge, and it will keep happening until the cycle is broken.

If we want to prevent another man like Marvin Heemeyer from becoming a violent, dangerous criminal, I believe we should take a good, long look at ourselves. How do we expect a man to react when we treat him the way we treated Heemeyer? I certainly don't condone what Heemeyer did, but - if my livelihood and my business became an unending struggle against government bureaucracy - who's to say that I wouldn't feel the same hatred, resentment, and righteous fury that Marvin Heemeyer felt? Who's to say anyone wouldn't feel that way?

It is time for a reckoning. The best way to break this cycle of violence is to listen. When people have grievances against what they believe is an unfair system, we should at least grant them the opportunity to be heard. We should at least consider the possibility that, maybe, we aren't treating someone fairly, and that maybe we should be receptive to complaints instead of passively dismissive of them.

Maybe if someone had listened to Heemeyer - if someone had actually taken the time to hear his grievances and problems - none of this would have happened. Maybe if Heemeyer had gotten his day in court - a fair day in court - all of this could have been solved before it culminated in the events of June 4th, 2004. And maybe, if we learn from our mistakes and change the way we deal with people, this sort of thing won't happen again.

But if we learn nothing, this vicious cycle will continue, and it will only serve to immortalize Marvin Heemeyer's words:

"Sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things."