Marvin Heemeyer is much different than the vast majority of villains out there and on this blog; it was frustration that drove him to his final machination and inevitable demise.
He led a relatively normal life and was described as an enjoyable person that would “bend over backwards for anyone”, however some noticed a darker side of Marvin. He was known to have had a temper and had even once threatened a customer of his muffler shop over a measly $124.
Marvin Heemeyer’s real troubles began brewing around 1992 when he bought two acres of land from the Resolution Trust Corporation and was loaned $42,000 to build and open up his muffler shop. Subsequently, Heemeyer agreed to sell the land to a concrete manufacturing plant. The price was originally agreed at $250,000 but over time Heemeyer continued to raise the price to upwards of one million. It is hard to say but I believe that Heemeyer continued to raise the price in order to stop the potential deal from being made after seeing the miles of red tape he had accidentally created for himself. With a concrete plant in the lot adjacent to his muffler shop there would be virtually no access to it from the street as well as no sewage outtake. After years of appeals and zoning law nonsense, the zoning commission and the town’s trustees approved the construction of the cement manufacturing plant and effectively disabled Heemeyer’s ability to run a legitimate business. As a last resort Marvin petitioned the city with help from neighbors and friends, but to no avail. There was no way his business could survive without a working sewer line or street access.
Marvin Heemeyer had reached his breaking point.
He leased his business to a trash company and sold his property to procure funds for final project, one that would be dubbed the Killdozer by the national media. Heemeyer had purchased a Komatsu D355A bulldozer two years prior to this incident with the intention of building an alternative route to his muffler shop, but city officials rejected his request to build a new road. It took Marvin about a year and a half to make the final preparations on his project making sure that nothing would fail. He fitted his dozer with over foot thick armor consisting of concrete sandwiched between sheets of steel to create composite armor impervious to both small arms fire and explosives. There were also two rifles fitted into firing ports from the inside that he could use. He had fitted his creation with bulletproof cameras all over the hull so he could see and operate from the inside. Heemeyer stocked his machine with food, water, and life support. Once the hatch was closed he had no intention of leaving.
June 4th, 2004, it was time for Marvin to put all his hard work into action and began doing so by driving his dozer straight through his former business. Heemeyer went on a rampage eventually causing over $7 millions in damages while destroying 13 buildings. This however was no random act of destruction, every building he destroyed he had a reason for which included the Town Hall, the concrete plant, the office of the local newspaper who had written against him, the former judge’s home, another competing hardware store and seven others who had wronged him over the years. By some stroke of a miracle not a single person was killed in the insane destructive rampage, except of course for the trouble brewer himself.
The local police were obviously called in very quickly and did everything they could to stop this rampage including firing over 200 rounds and three external explosives upon it with literally no affect at all. They could only wait and evacuate people away from the monstrosity.
The only thing that could stop this beast was the beast itself and unfortunately for Marvin Heemeyer that is exactly what happened. While running over Gable’s Hardware store one of the tracks became stuck in the small basement that this store possessed. He was not able to move at all and realized that his daylong rampage had finally come to an end. As SWAT team members surrounded the immobilized dozer they heard a single shot come from the inside of it. It still took over twelve hours to cut him out with an oxyacetylene cutting torch.
Marvin Heemeyer had taken his own life in the attempts to preserve himself as a martyr and symbol for a small business owner who can’t get a break from red tape. But unfortunately for him, the majority of the country will always see him as a villain with nothing to lose who went on a destructive rampage to express his frustrations.
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