What happened to Killdozer?
Marvin Heemeyer had some feedback for his city.
June 2024 marks the twentieth anniversary of one of history’s strangest and most shocking true crime cases. But what happened to Marvin Heemeyer, the man behind the crime now known as “Killdozer“?
Heemeyer lived in Granby, Colorado, a small town in the Middle Park basin about 85 miles northwest of Denver. On June 4, 2004, however, Granby was filled with terror and chaos as Heemeyer drove a retrofitted bulldozer through the streets, leveling 13 downtown Granby buildings, including Granby’s town hall, and the house of Granby’s former mayor. Heemeyer also shot from the cab of the bulldozer, reinforced with concrete and steel. But according to Denver 7, no one was injured in the attack.
Heemeyer died by suicide
After destroying a large portion of Granby’s downtown, Marvin Heemeyer took his own life in the Killdozer cab, and with that, his rampage concluded. Authorities believe Heemeyer planned the attack for years, angered over a property dispute involving the muffler shop he owned.
In that case, Heemeyer felt that city officials betrayed him, and over time, he was fined by the city for several other code violations. “He vowed to get back at the people he felt somehow had wronged him,” Patrick Brower, who published Granby’s newspaper at the time and wrote the book Killdozer: The True Story of the Colorado Bulldozer Rampage, said about Heemeyer’s attack.
Questions remain to this day as to whether Heemeyer intended to hurt anyone, as some Granby residents said he tried to avoid people. However, others felt he targeted downtown Granby when it was busy. As for the Killdozer itself, it was dismantled and scrapped. Granby authorities wanted to ensure it would not be picked apart for souvenirs.
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