meet the killdozer

this guy is insane
The Wrath of the Killdozer
Marvin Heemeyer of Granby, Colorado was a profoundly frustrated muffler repair man. In the late 1990s–after years of protests, petitions, and town meetings–it became obvious to the 52-year-old that he was entwined in a gross miscarriage of justice. His business was ruined by some shady zoning changes, and Heemeyer contended that mayor and city council were corrupt. Even as he was forced to give up his legal fight and sell his land, he hatched one last plan to secretly retool his muffler shop to serve a single malevolent purpose: to construct a machine that would allow him to exact his revenge upon those who had wronged him.

Heemeyer set to work on his new project almost immediately. The Komatsu D335A bulldozer that was meant to save his business was instead moved into the muffler shop, and Heemeyer began to make some modifications. He started by adding home-made composite armor–cement sandwiched between thick sheets of steel–to protect the cab, engine, and parts of the tracks. He installed front and rear cameras to feed images to monitors in the cab, and several gun ports were set around the control center. A stockpile of food and water was stored inside, as well as an air tank to help provide air circulation.

Heemeyer went to his shop, and climbed into his bulldozer with a handwritten list of targets. He used the winch controls to lower the concrete and steel shell onto the top of his vehicle. Nothing short of a crane would be able to lift the thirty-ton armor shell off the vehicle once it was in place. With that fateful metal clap, Heemeyer was sealed in a concrete and steel box that he could never escape.

At just after 3:00 PM, the makeshift tank tore through the side of his shed, and smashed into the Mountain Park Concrete plant. Shortly thereafter, the phones at the 911 response center began ringing incessantly. A man named Cody Docheff witnessed the destruction-in-progress and attempted to use a front-end loader to intercept the rampaging bulldozer, but withdrew when he was fired upon from the gun ports of this “Killdozer.” Within minutes two buildings and multiple vehicles were eviscerated, and the Killdozer rumbled towards the highway into town. The slow-moving bulldozer picked up a parade of emergency vehicle escorts as it approached the city limits. One police SUV was crushed when it strayed too near.

Undersheriff Glen Trainor managed to climb atop the moving bulldozer, and used 37 rounds from his service pistol to try and shoot his way in. “I think the thing that drove me,” he later reported, “is that I knew that killing him behind the wheel was the only way we were going to be able to stop this thing.”

When Heemeyer and his Killdozer arrived in town, the Granby police were waiting for him. Against the armored behemoth, however, the lawmen were powerless. When it became clear that the armor was impervious to bullets the police tried explosives, but they too were without effect. Lawmen kept to the sides and tried to vacate anyone from the Killdozer’s path, and the local police utilized the reverse 911 system to call residents and warn them of the approaching danger. News helicopters filmed the unfolding violence from above.

The Granby Police requisitioned an industrial scraper to pit heavy equipment against heavy equipment, but the Killdozer merely shoved the lighter adversary aside.

In about an hour of mayhem, the bulldozer had demolished thirteen structures and was en route to its next target: Gamble’s Hardware. The damage from small arms and the extra weight of the armor were taking a toll on the vehicle, however. The radiator had sprung a leak, and the Killdozer was losing horsepower. As the fatigued machine crashed through the wall of the hardware store the floor beneath the beast broke, and the front end of the bulldozer fell into a shallow basement. The engine struggled, but it could not power itself out of the pit.

As SWAT teams surrounded the wounded Killdozer, one of the members reported hearing a single, muffled gunshot from within the cab. The vehicle didn’t move again, ending a rampage that had lasted 2 hours 7 minutes, and caused about $7 million in damage.

Explosives were employed to try to open the tank, but in the end it took twelve hours with an oxyacetylene torch and a crane to crack the armored top. Inside Heemeyer was found dead, having shot himself with a .357 handgun. He was the lone casualty of the destruction spree.

Once the Killdozer’s cab was opened and Heemeyer was removed, the police inventoried his numerous guns, and found his list of targets; in addition to buildings and businesses, the list included names.

full story with more pictures here