Tread (2020)

1. 911, what is your emergency?

2. Ask them to help us get a National Guard unit.

3. Maybe with a helicopter to us.

4. Let's get over to Granby Town Hall!

5. We need a National Guard unit and a helicopter.

6. through the trees, he's going up towards the fire hole.

7. Get him blocked. Stop him!

8. or Army National Guard, need a whole lot of people...

9. Oh, no!

10. Hello, my name is Marvin Heemeyer.

11. Today is April 13th, 2004.

12. This tape is about my life since I came up here in 1991.

13. I am making this tape...

14. really didn't think it would make any difference if I didn't make it,

15. but a good friend of mine said I should make it.

16. Uh, he said I should sit down in front of a videotape machine

17. and do it, but you're just gonna have to take my word,

18. this is Marv Heemeyer, serial number 503-68-9471.

19. I wanna say right now, God bless me in advance

20. for the task that I am about to undertake.

21. Marv Heemeyer, he was from South Dakota

22. and, uh, he served in the Air Force.

23. He realized that he had a knack for welding,

24. working on engines, and motors. He was stationed in Colorado

25. and decided to stay in Colorado when he got out of the Air Force.

26. I moved up here in the Fall in 1991

27. to kind of take a six-month vacation.

28. I decided that, you know, I probably ought to buy

29. some property up here to have something to do,

30. so I, uh, looked at this tree lot,

31. with two little cabins, where I'm living in here right now.

32. And had a beautiful view. The place was really cheap,

33. so I bought them.

34. He worked at a muffler shop.

35. Moved up very quickly in the business.

36. At some point he just decided, "Heck, I can do this myself,"

37. and he went out and setup his own muffler shops.

38. He was able to have income from businesses that

39. he had started mostly in Northern Denver and Boulder area.

40. You know, if you got a champagne income with a beer keg,

41. you're gonna do well. And that's what I've always had.

42. Always believed that's the way it should be.

43. That's the only way I could get ahead.

44. I'm sure he counted pennies in every endeavor he ever undertook,

45. and he wanted to run businesses well so that they succeeded.

46. And I think he cared about his craft.

47. I knew of Marv Heemeyer

48. because he ran a muffler shop in Granby.

49. He did a lot of great work for people,

50. ran that muffler shop for a lot of years.

51. Uh, I even had work done at his shop.

52. He had a reputation as being the best welder around.

53. We put this truck together and the box was bouncing.

54. I took it down there and said, "Hey, Marv, what do you think?"

55. And he said, "Oh, I can fix that."

56. And he grabbed his welder and he ju-ju-ju, you know,

57. it was done. Never broke, never... I mean, the guy was a hell of a welder.

58. He had a great reputation in the town.

59. I mean, he was an outdoorsman. He loved to snowmobile.

60. I didn't ever meet anybody who disliked him.

61. I call it successful. I think I was

62. a very poor person most of my life,

63. but I... f... for who I was and th... where I,

64. what I was, I think I was a very rich man.

65. And I am thankful to God for giving me that life.

66. I met Marvin in the Lariat Saloon in Grand Lake.

67. I was there with a friend. He came in and he asked me out.

68. I had not dated in five years, you know.

69. My marriage had split up and, um,

70. but for some reason um, I said yes and

71. we went out and started seeing each other for several years.

72. He's old... he was old school to me.

73. You know, men aren't... people... society doesn't allow that anymore.

74. You know, he's a handshake's a handshake kind of guy to me.

75. I mean, he was confident and I thought he was handsome.

76. And he was larger than life. You know, I felt safe with him.

77. It's kind of personal,

78. but he was the first man that I was intimate with

79. after my marriage.

80. He was wonderful to me.

81. He only met my children once,

82. and he never had children, as you know.

83. But we did quite a few road trips together and never a dull moment.

84. Marv loved to snowmobile.

85. Ah, the Thursday group. Every Thursday they'd take the day off and go ride.

86. Sometimes you'd have four guys,

87. sometimes you'd have 24 riders.

88. Just a great bunch of guys to go out and ride with.

89. Little Matty was the youngest.

90. When I started riding with Marv and the Thursday crew,

91. I was 16 years old.

92. And these guys were 40, 50. I couldn't drink with them.

93. I couldn't do any of that stuff. I had to go home to Mom and answer to Mom still.

94. Marv was in some respects, he took me under his wing.

95. He helped teach me how to snowmobile,

96. work on snowmobiles.

97. He was always a mentor

98. and always helped, always gave.

99. He was my best friend. I looked at him as my bigger brother.

100. I let Marv lead unless it was someplace I knew better than him.

101. That's where we came from over there.

102. This is here, where we're supposed to be,

103. and that's where Stu went, way over there!

104. Marv made glove dryers.

105. We had a Marv grill.

106. Marv would take stock steel, bend it,

107. custom to every machine.

108. You weren't a snowmobiler in Grand Lake unless you had a Marv bumper.

109. It would take down four-inch trees, five-inch trees

110. and you'd just keep going. That was a Marv bumper.

111. Yeah, he was the king, yeah.

112. If he got beat by anybody on the mountain

113. that was the last time he got beat by that person.

114. He bought me my own Polaris

115. that he taught me how to get off trail

116. and when in doubt, gas it.

117. It's a kind of a community that in order for you to get ahead,

118. you have to keep the neighbor down. It's not...

119. you know, building yourself up on your own merit,

120. it's tear the other guy down.

121. Grand County definitely at one time was the Wild, Wild West.

122. We've modernized it from, but it is not uncommon

123. at all in the wintertime to have two weeks straight

124. where the temperature doesn't get above 10 degrees.

125. You have to be a little more independent,

126. a little more willing to do without.

127. You have to like small towns.

128. You kind of live in a fishbowl to some extent

129. because your neighbors kind of know your business a little more

130. than they would be in the city.

131. That can cause conflict.

132. After a few months of living here I happen

133. to cross a piece of property down there in Granby,

134. and this was about a month before they were gonna have this FDIC auction.

135. Marv originally bought the property

136. that he was on in a public auction.

137. They were selling FDIC-foreclosed properties.

138. Three thousand square foot building

139. and it had two acres of ground.

140. They had a bid for $35,000

141. from some guy upfront.

142. So, finally, they caught my bid, so I got...

143. the guy bid for 40. And this other guy

144. jumped up on a chair.

145. I come to find out his name

146. was Cody Docheff.

147. Cody Docheff is the owner of Mountain Park Concrete.

148. The Docheffs were looking for land upon which to put

149. this concrete operation with an indoor batch plant.

150. Docheff also showed up with Gus Harris.

151. Gus Harris was his buddy there, sitting beside him.

152. Gus was sponsoring the whole financing on this thing,

153. and Gus wasn't gonna pay more than 50 grand for it

154. and I was waiting for him to bid and he wouldn't bid,

155. so I got the property.

156. Marv says that after he got the property

157. he was accosted by Cody.

158. This guy came back there and

159. introduced himself to me, in fact, the rudest,

160. most arrogant person.

161. I mean, this guy's just a fucking asshole.

162. Come back and just introduced himself by

163. giving me a tongue lashing for about 10 minutes.

164. I mean, this is the only guy of all the properties that sold before his,

165. that was doing any screaming at anybody during the auction.

166. What I like about it here is we're in God's country.

167. Why live anywhere else?

168. But I don't like the way the county's run.

169. There's a good ol' boys club.

170. When he bought the property it had nothing more than just

171. a concrete mixer tank that was holding the sewage.

172. In the summer of '92,

173. they wanted me to be annexed into the water and sanitation district,

174. so I said, "Great." I just expected it to go through.

175. Ron Thompson was on the board for the sewer district.

176. Ron was pretty outspoken in the board meetings,

177. so he may have said things that upset Marv at that meeting

178. and taken a leadership role in making the decisions they made.

179. Well, as it turns out, the closest sewer main

180. was many hundreds of feet away from Marv's property,

181. so in order for Marv to hook onto that,

182. he would have had to build a long service line

183. from his property to the main.

184. When he learned that to do all that was gonna cost him

185. anywhere from 60 to 70, maybe even 80 thousand dollars,

186. Marv was upset.

187. They make you pay for the installation

188. of the sewer line that you don't want,

189. and then you have to still hook yourself up.

190. That's life-changing money.

191. Marv refused to do that.

192. I never heard him talk bad about anybody

193. but the people that did him bad,

194. the good ol' boys club. He did not like 'em.

195. I never had anybody sit there and plan

196. to cut me out of an opportunity like the Thompsons did

197. when they denied me access to their sanitation district.

198. It doesn't make any sense other than that

199. it was the good ol' boys patting each other on the back.

200. Had they not done that, I can assure you

201. the outcome, the whole thing

202. would have been completely different!

203. The Thompson family was what I'd call a Granby legacy family,

204. a wealthy working family in the Granby area,

205. making their money off of excavation, but also living off

206. the fact that they owned a lot of the land just because they'd been here forever.

207. The first Thompson clan that settled in Granby

208. actually bought lodging properties

209. and in the course of that they bought

210. little pieces of property around town.

211. The Thompsons formed their own excavation company.

212. Dick Thompson was the son of the first Thompson family.

213. Dick had several children.

214. Ron was kind of a, a leading son in the family.

215. Larry was kind of the older son who helped,

216. and Gary went right along with him

217. doing a lot of the excavation work.

218. Gus Harris and Cody Docheff

219. and the powers that be, the Thompsons,

220. if they would have left me alone,

221. I wouldn't have had this righteous anger

222. that I have towards the Thompsons,

223. their hierarchy, their attitude

224. that they have left in that community for so many years.

225. And so many people think like they do,

226. screw your neighbor.

227. In Marv's eyes, the Thompson family

228. was the epitome of the Granby establishment

229. that did everything they could to thwart Marv.

230. Well, I'm making lemonade out of lemons,

231. you know, I just kept on about my business

232. because this is a small community and, you know,

233. I need to fit in.

234. Life was pretty good and I was making

235. a real good income out of there.

236. And in '98, the town went

237. and spot-zoned the two acres

238. directly south of me, which is illegal in Colorado.

239. And because no one protested it

240. within 30 days, it became law that they could do that.

241. And this Docheff guy, he's gonna sign

242. and buy the property next door to the west of me,

243. and has a contract on it to purchase it.

244. And they were going to be able to put this concrete plant

245. right there next to all those houses,

246. downwind of the town. And Cody's motivation

247. was to get back at Marv.

248. Well, I find this out too late

249. and I be... I was right in the dust pale

250. of this whole operation. And that wasn't gonna work

251. because I didn't want no frickin' concrete plant next to me.

252. There was opposition to the concrete plant,

253. and we heard we had public hearings.

254. Uh, I was acting mayor because the mayor

255. and the mayor pro tem both had conflicts of interest,

256. so I presided over the public hearings.

257. We allowed the public to come in, and it was

258. a packed house. People spoke for it,

259. for the service the concrete would provide.

260. And there was lots of people that spoke out against it.

261. Marv Heemeyer did a great job of arousing

262. public sentiment in his favor against the batch plant.

263. He felt that the batch plant would hurt his business.

264. He claimed that there would be dust,

265. that there would be noise, that there would be excess traffic.

266. Who knew what they were going to do to the water supply.

267. He also made that argument on behalf of people in the neighborhood.

268. Marv got a lot of these people to show up and,

269. basically, say we don't want it, we don't like it,

270. what are you going to do to our neighborhood?

271. They voiced a lot of the concerns that Marv was voicing.

272. This went on for a series of three, four, maybe even five meetings.

273. And there'd be discourse and, and discussion,

274. and Cody would jump up because he was so upset.

275. He has, he's a fiery guy.

276. The town ultimately approved

277. Cody's batch plant down there,

278. but with a host of, of conditions,

279. the typical things that you see.

280. I think I read the motion, the whereas

281. and the wherefores and all that stuff

282. to approve the batch plant.

283. And it was at that meeting in '99

284. where Marv promised he'd fight 'em

285. the whole way.

286. In nature, wolves, coyotes,

287. they have their territory.

288. A mother just... look at the mother,

289. she will fight to protect her young.

290. And a male, a male will definitely protect

291. his territory. If he doesn't, he'll be overrun.

292. Now, if an animal will do this,

293. why wouldn't a man?

294. In the meantime, the town is cracking down hard on Marv

295. saying there is a serious issue with your water and sewer.

296. He ended up going to Granby Municipal Court.

297. Judge Noriyuki was presiding.

298. She said we find you in violation.

299. We're gonna give you a deferred judgment, however,

300. and you can't use the property for anything

301. until you're hooked up to water and sewer.

302. You have to connect, but 400 feet's a long way.

303. There could be a piece of property in the way

304. and in this case there was: Cody's.

305. He needed the easement. Cody wasn't gonna give him the easement.

306. The town contacts him and says we're gonna fine you $100 a day

307. because you're operating a business and you're not hooked up to the sewer.

308. Marv wrote a check to the town,

309. and he wrote on the memo line,

310. "Cowards and Liars Department."

311. And to add insult to injury, they sent it back

312. and said the amount is incorrect.

313. Well, this clearly angered Marv. He shows up at the town hall.

314. They kept fining him because he was an out-of-towner.

315. He came up here and small town...

316. In Marv's mind this was just another example

317. of the town not treating him fairly.

318. The Docheffs were moving forward with their proposal.

319. Suddenly Marv shows up with an attorney

320. then he's saying I think that we've caught you in a mistake.

321. The town board was stunned.

322. They called an executive session, kicked everybody out.

323. They said, well, we're gonna put everything on hold

324. until we can decide what we're gonna do.

325. The attorney made us be very

326. dot the I's, cross the t's,

327. so we wanted to make sure that whatever we did,

328. we were right on the money with.

329. They came back and said we're gonna let them restart

330. from square one so that we can do it right this time.

331. As a last ditch effort, Marv filed a lawsuit in district court.

332. But the Docheffs, they're serious about building

333. this batch plant as quickly as possible.

334. They're moving forward as if there's not any barrier

335. to their progress at all.

336. There's heavy equipment operating

337. at the soon-to-be batch plant site.

338. Marv is sitting here watching all this happening,

339. and I think he is just stewing about it.

340. You put yourself in my shoes

341. and tell me how you would feel,

342. realizing that you've wasted 10 years of your life

343. because of someone's malice.

344. He's putting out money and he's getting shut down every corner,

345. and then it was to nothing. I don't know how much he spent.

346. I know one time he had 150 grand into it.

347. And I said, "Well, you shouldn't have spent that much money

348. on these assholes because you can't fight the government."

349. Nine months later, the court made its ruling on the lawsuit.

350. Judge Doucet dismissed the lawsuit completely.

351. Suddenly, Marv had nobody on his side.

352. My attorney, as paid off as he was,

353. that's all he was doing was making money on the deal.

354. He didn't care if I win or lose. As a matter of fact he said

355. that he wouldn't appeal it. I always told him, I says,

356. "It's good enough if we lose to appeal it

357. to a higher court." He though wouldn't do it.

358. He would not appeal it.

359. You know, they think that I should have to stay down there

360. in Granby. I should have kept my muffler shop going.

361. I should have put up with all the dust, all the, the snickers.

362. You know the... the town council, I'd pass them in the post office

363. and they'd snicker at me after they knew I lost.

364. On the street, Casey Farrell, what a barbarian.

365. He comes across being one of those good guys.

366. He's part of the problem.

367. They knew what they were doing.

368. They were trying to run him out of town.

369. The town had a hard on for Marv Heemeyer.

370. They didn't stop a thing! Marv didn't have any malice towards us.

371. This is a sign to not do this.

372. No, they kept it in their hardened hearts...

373. and said we'll get him. They started getting me

374. in 1992 when they kept me off the sanitation district.

375. They started getting me when Gus Harris sold the property

376. to Cody Docheff. They got me when they issued

377. the building permit to Cody Docheff

378. for the concrete plant and denied

379. that it was for the concrete plant.

380. Are we all stupid? Come on, they knew!

381. And when I would ask them these questions...

382. but what you won't find in the minutes,

383. they would just shut right up, stonewall you.

384. They didn't have an answer.

385. I'd shoot the truth in their face

386. and they couldn't deal with it. And, and I'm sorry,

387. they are going to have to deal with it.

388. I guarantee you I am going to make them deal with it.

389. The battle with the town of Granby, you know,

390. um we talked about it, but I didn't get that feeling

391. that he was so angry.

392. No one realized how...

393. how... God, distorted it was becoming to him.

394. Marv was feeling defeated,

395. humiliated, and at his wit's end about what he was gonna do.

396. He goes out, sits in his hot tub with a beer

397. in his hand, and has inspiration.

398. When I was sitting in the hot tub, and I mean I was, I was weeping.

399. And a peace came over me

400. where I knew God wanted me to do it.

401. And I didn't understand.

402. I said, "Why did you ask me to do this?

403. Is that why I've never been married, so I didn't have a family?

404. Is that why I've always been successful

405. so that I would realize my rewards for doing this task?"

406. But it has to be done.

407. And the world will write stories

408. about how wrong I am

409. and without a doubt I wish it could be done a different way

410. but there is no way to make this right.

411. You picked on the wrong man!

412. Cody, do you remember the first time you met Marv at that auction?

413. There is the difference of points of view or memory

414. about what happened after Marv got it.

415. Cody Docheff, I mean this guy's just a fucking asshole.

416. Come back and just introduced himself by giving me

417. a tongue lashing for about 10 minutes.

418. The reason I ask is that Marv claims that you guys talked afterwards.

419. I talked to this guy forever it seems like,

420. and everybody around me, they couldn't believe this asshole.

421. And this is the only guy of all the properties sold before his

422. that was doing any screaming at anybody during the auction.

423. Gus doesn't remember it either.

424. I uh, I've been a school bus driver for 50 years.

425. Cody has been a good friend for many, many years.

426. We have gone to auctions together before on times.

427. So, Cody went with me but he had no party in the... in the auction.

428. Cody and I sat and listened to another bid or two.

429. There really wasn't much of anything happened.

430. I don't know what Marv did. I wasn't paying any attention to him really.

431. And then we just got up and, and, uh, left. Yeah.

432. Cody would maybe be interested in the property at a, at a future time,

433. but, uh, there was no agreement or talk between us

434. of him owning that property.

435. Cody would have been mad at anybody who would have bought the property,

436. anybody, but, but you gotta go there with enough money.

437. Otherwise you're the problem.

438. It's your fault that this happened, not mine.

439. Marv in his tapes, the way he characterizes the town,

440. me and many other people, just did not reflect what I thought

441. was the way those people really were and really are.

442. I wasted...

443. thirteen years of my life down there

444. because the Thompsons were pissed off

445. that I bought that property.

446. We lived here all of our life. We were born and raised here.

447. Probably gonna die here, so. Where else you gonna go, but...

448. No, our dad started here in business in 1949.

449. We had our mom, our dad, then we had another brother

450. between the two of us that got sick in '02, and he passed away.

451. And everybody has their hardships, so we had more than our fair share.

452. - A raft of 'em. - A raft of 'em.

453. And the popular conception of the Thompson brothers is that

454. they are the hardest working millionaires in the county.

455. They probably could live well off of the revenue

456. from their property that they have in Granby.

457. They could probably hire people but they don't.

458. They choose to work and I actually think they like the work.

459. We got a whole yard full of stuff.

460. We don't hire any help. We just do it ourselves.

461. It's fun, so keeps us out of trouble, so...

462. I spent one day here in the spring of 2003,

463. the Thompson brothers were down below my house here in Grand Lake,

464. digging a foundation for a house.

465. Larry Thompson was standing out by his truck by himself,

466. so I drove up to him and had a few words with him.

467. Basically what I told him was that, "You know, Larry,

468. you know, about in 1992, your family

469. financially affected my life for the rest of my life."

470. Well, Marv had a beef with our dad because he was on the town board,

471. town council for a lot of years. And in the last years of his life, he was the mayor.

472. And I says, "You owe me, I want $300,000 from you."

473. And he says it'll never happen.

474. And I says, "Well, I guarantee you, Larry,

475. I'm gonna collect."

476. One day, we always was friendly to him,

477. you know, and he rolled his window down and he says,

478. "I'm gonna get you guys." And rolled his windows up and left,

479. and that's the last time we ever talked to him.

480. He basically confirmed in my mind right there

481. that he knew what I was talking about.

482. And he knew what had been done

483. because he had one thing to say. He screamed it at me

484. as I am about five truck lengths away.

485. He screamed, "You can suck my dick!"

486. Well, when someone is that frustrated

487. that they've gotta say something like that,

488. you know they know.

489. It was all politics related, so

490. I don't think anybody ever done him wrong on purpose.

491. You never know what gets into people.

492. He's a cowardly bastard.

493. He's a Catholic, and I think they are some of the biggest cowards

494. I have ever met. They believe the only way that they can stay on top

495. is to keep their neighbor down.

496. I think that Marv might have seen in the Thompson family

497. an example of what he may have really aspired to,

498. which was being a relatively wealthy, land-owning family

499. that worked with their hands, worked with heavy equipment,

500. that were able to make a living at it and be successful.

501. This is my die-cast toy collection.

502. I've probably been collecting 15 years now, maybe a little longer.

503. And this is kind of my hobby that I do in the evenings,

504. mainly in the wintertime.

505. So I just buy one, two toys once in a while

506. as I can afford it.

507. Is this your favorite truck?

508. They're all favorite trucks.

509. They're our toys.

510. So... But anyway.

511. I went down to talk to Marv about his business

512. and whether he'd like us to do a new business story,

513. and would he like to buy some advertising.

514. And Marv was only open at select hours.

515. Marv ran that business so he could indulge in his snowmobiling habit.

516. I must've gone back down to the muffler shop

517. three-four times and Marv was never there.

518. This newspaper guy, Patrick Brower,

519. this guy hated me.

520. When I first came up here in uh '91,

521. he said that he was gonna come down

522. and do an article on my little business.

523. Well, he never did do it.

524. You know, he was doing everything he could

525. to keep me from getting any additional publicity.

526. He knows how to abuse the power of the pen.

527. And that's a big thing up here is abuse of power.

528. When the time came where I ran into Marv,

529. he was all upset with me for never doing his story.

530. I said, "Marv, why don't I just give you an ad."

531. Yeah, I took a photo of Marv and ran a free ad for him.

532. It was I think a $200 ad that he got for nothing.

533. I know the newspaper guy, that guy,

534. he has told so many lies. It's one thing about lying...

535. you tell a lie, usually you gotta tell five more to cover that up.

536. I came to Granby in '78, three kids raised here.

537. Bought the store in '92.

538. We try to be part of the community

539. and support the community because they support us.

540. So that's how I got kind of involved in town board thing.

541. Casey Farrell, what a barbarian.

542. He comes across being one of those good guys.

543. He's part of the problem.

544. Casey and Ronda Farrell and their family

545. are the kind of people you want for neighbors.

546. He never did anything with ill intent.

547. He never did anything with malice.

548. The town council, I'd pass them in the post office

549. and they'd snicker at me after they knew I lost.

550. In that batch plant, I felt like it was a positive,

551. and I couldn't see a downside for Marv.

552. It was gonna supply concrete so the community could grow.

553. The opportunity for jobs.

554. I mean, he might get a little dust on his muffler shop,

555. but it wasn't all that clean to begin with.

556. How many times do you have to try to deal with a man?

557. Come on, Cody, be reasonable, but that's what you cannot do

558. with people in the mountains, especially in Granby.

559. Cody Docheff built his concrete business from the ground up.

560. He's what I would call a kind of a salt of the earth businessman

561. who, uh, is a doer. He's a hard worker.

562. Maybe Marv and Cody had some head butting

563. just because they are both alpha personalities

564. or something of that nature.

565. I think they're both pretty good at what they do.

566. Neither one of 'em were trust fund babies.

567. Cody's worked hard to get where he's at.

568. Cody's, Cody's Cody.

569. - It's just his nature. - It's just his nature.

570. You know, he's just, he tells it the way it is.

571. - If you don't like it... - He just tells ya.

572. He tells ya, you know. He's a good guy, you know.

573. He'd do anything for ya, but he's just...

574. got a little short fuse, goes off, but he's okay,

575. - you know. - Oh, yeah, he has a bit of a temper,

576. - but he, he's all right. - He's all right, you know.

577. He's a little Bulgarian.

578. He's quite quick. He's a good man.

579. He's done all right around here, works his butt off like everybody else.

580. - Yeah, he, he's earned it. - Yeah, he's earned every nickel he made.

581. - He came here with basically nothing. - Nothing.

582. Uh, Marv and Cody

583. probably could have been friends.

584. For years I tried to appease Cody Docheff's misguided anger.

585. I bought every bit of concrete,

586. which turned out to be shit.

587. Marv complained about the sewer board holding him over a barrel,

588. but that was completely standard procedure.

589. It's true that it can be expensive,

590. but Cody connected when he built the batch plant,

591. and it would not cost much

592. for Marv to have hooked on.

593. The Docheffs called up Marv and said, "Marv,

594. we'll give you an easement for your water and sewer

595. if you drop your lawsuit against the town and us."

596. Marv just hung up. When he was called into the court

597. because he hadn't connected his sewer lines,

598. he's clearly stalling on resolving this issue.

599. This is where Marv confronts Deb Hess, who is a town clerk.

600. So, Deb, did you have any dealings with Marv?

601. He had come in my office, he was accusing me

602. of going over to the bank and badmouthing him.

603. I said, "Mr. Heemeyer, I wasn't over at the bank

604. and I wouldn't do that. I mean, I have no reason to badmouth him.

605. I just said I just need a different check.

606. Actually, he had made a mistake

607. when he wrote out the amount.

608. Marv corrects the verbiage on the check

609. and then the check clears and he's paid his fine.

610. Marv's anger affected his interpretation of events

611. with Dietze as well. He believed Dietze milked him

612. for money and abandoned him on appeal.

613. But if Dietze was really out to milk Heemeyer

614. why didn't he go to the appeal?

615. It'd be a way to milk another $55,000 out of him.

616. And the irony is Cody had been offering to buy Marv out from the beginning,

617. and Marv saw an opportunity to sell that two-acre parcel

618. that he had bought at that auction to the Docheffs.

619. Marv put a price on his property of $250,000.

620. That's a pretty good profit, six times what he paid for it.

621. Cody had agreed to 250,000.

622. Immediately, Marv backed out and said no,

623. I want 375,000.

624. Cody said all right, we'll pay that.

625. Marv backed out again.

626. I'm not sure if Marv was looking for a fight

627. at that point in time. He had a way out.

628. He had a way out to make some good money

629. and, and go on about his life,

630. but he chose that path for whatever reason.

631. At the town level, the people on there are just

632. everyday people that want to give back.

633. And to say that the people that sit behind us

634. in this board room do things for any other reason

635. than trying to make a difference and trying to do what's right, they're sadly mistaken.

636. He was raising hell about Cody and the batch plant,

637. Marv... actually made that better for the town

638. because he was raising issues that the people on the board they hadn't thought about.

639. So he'd come in and he'd say, "well, what about dust?" or this, or that or whatever,

640. they'd go, "Well, that makes sense to me. What do you think, Cody?"

641. "Oh, yeah, I can fix that, no big deal."

642. So we really got a better deal for the town

643. because of Marv complaining.

644. Well, after we approved it, it was, actually, I... I felt like it was

645. a pretty damn good deal, really.

646. Marv's assumption that there was this group

647. of community leaders that would get together

648. at the coffee shop in the morning and

649. conspire about how to keep Marv

650. from moving forward because he's the new guy...

651. It's patently untrue.

652. He was upset. He wanted to have it his way

653. and it wasn't gonna go his way.

654. Marv went to California probably based on an advertisement

655. he saw in a Ritchie Bros. auction site

656. for this Komatsu D355 bulldozer.

657. Marv bid on it and got it at a great deal.

658. It's a big dozer, yeah, big dozer.

659. He then stuck it on a flatbed, had it driven

660. all the way to Granby, Colorado, from California.

661. He had it delivered in July of 2002.

662. We're sitting eating dinner one night and this big yellow truck

663. comes in town with this big dozer on it. We sat down there and watched them

664. unload that thing off the trailer.

665. But we were working the next county up,

666. and it was midnight or one in the morning

667. before we got back to our warehouse, but we took the back way.

668. And they're unloading that dozer

669. that night. It's just really strange.

670. That thing, it's a pretty good-sized tractor. We thought,

671. "What in the heck is he gonna do with that goddam thing, you know?"

672. He ended up parking the dozer up on the access road

673. to the muffler property so that the blade was facing out on this dirt road.

674. And he had right in the middle of the blade, a for sale sign.

675. And it just sat there through that winter of 2002 to 2003.

676. He parked Komatsu outside the muffler shop

677. just to make Docheff nervous.

678. That's why he bought it... for the intimidation factor.

679. I wanted these people to learn,

680. and he knew that I eventually would get to the point

681. where I wouldn't put up with what they were taking away from me,

682. for what they had denied me.

683. God knew Marv Heemeyer very well.

684. Essentially, he becomes the victim that is then justified

685. in reacting against all these people that have done him wrong.

686. We know he wants to get out of it. We know he knows he's screwed.

687. Let's really screw him, you know.

688. That's exactly what their attitude was.

689. And, and they did. I had no choice.

690. What was I supposed to do?

691. The allegation is that somehow the town ruined Marv's business...

692. the town didn't do anything to shut him down.

693. He still had access to his property.

694. Marv just on his own decided to completely shut down his muffler shop

695. and put it all up to auction.

696. You know, God has his timing, his plans made out.

697. And it looks like it's going to be

698. because the one thing that I have wanted to do

699. is get caught. I had hoped that somebody would catch me

700. and that this whole thing would stop.

701. And that would be a good sign for me not to do it.

702. So Marv conducted the auction of all the materials

703. relating to his shop. Included in the items

704. he was gonna auction was this dozer.

705. This Komatsu was in excellent condition.

706. I was willing at the auction to take 33,000 for it.

707. Couldn't get a bid, so I kept the dozer.

708. And it also is unique how I had five things

709. at the auction and they sold.

710. But what two things did I keep?

711. The Komatsu dozer and the property.

712. If they would have bought it at that auction

713. of 450,000, I would have walked away,

714. but there wasn't one bid.

715. So stop and think about this:

716. I wasn't supposed to walk away from this

717. because the Komatsu was still there.

718. You know I had quit smoking for nine years

719. and I'd become this closet smoker, you know.

720. I'd sneak them, which is ridiculous, I know.

721. And he, uh, he didn't like that

722. and we got into an argument about it.

723. That's when things went downhill,

724. and then we quit seeing each other.

725. It was maybe easier to, to break it up, you know.

726. I don't know the details, but just him talking about her,

727. he was very in love with her. I knew that.

728. Is it possible that he felt stronger about you than you did him?

729. Marv was still perplexed about what to do with his property.

730. Travis Busse and his partner were owners of the trash company.

731. They had negotiated with Marv to lease his two acres

732. as a staging point for their trucks.

733. And I was trying to look for an area where it was more commercial,

734. than I could actually have a garage that I could keep my trucks in the winter.

735. He had the perfect building right there in town.

736. What was unique is I find out that the dozer

737. is two inches shorter

738. than 12 feet,

739. one inch narrower

740. than the door.

741. So I said let's put it inside

742. because then I can build it

743. to do what I am supposed to do.

744. The Komatsu just barely fit through the door.

745. Why did that particular dozer fit in the building?

746. Why had I not bought one of the D9s at that Fresno auction.

747. So, so I'm thinking, "Well, this is good. I get it inside, now I can build it.

748. Must be what I'm supposed to do."

749. At that time, we were getting bigger

750. and we needed a place to where we could call home.

751. Travis finally offered Marv $400,000

752. and Marv agreed to sell the land to them

753. for that amount. Sure enough, I think it was even within 24 hours,

754. Travis had water and sewer hooked up to the property.

755. We bought it all and he basically back rented from us

756. the building that he put the dozer in.

757. And this will be the first time that I've ever done something like that

758. the way they want it to be done, the way they do it,

759. to do it in secret, to do things behind their back,

760. to lie to you. I've had to do that.

761. People'd ask me what am I doing? Oh, I'm not doin' anything.

762. I spent 2003 in that friggin' building,

763. lived there without a shower for as much as four days at a time,

764. working on that dozer, getting it prepared.

765. Marv built a little sleeping area,

766. complete with cot, TV, hotplate, water,

767. so that he could basically work 24/7 on the dozer.

768. He ended up bringing in all the sheets of steel into the shed.

769. He had torches in the shed. He had all kinds of tools in the shed.

770. He built a lift which could lift large, heavy things, mainly sheets of steel.

771. It actually lifted 'em up and held 'em in place while he welded 'em in place.

772. It was 1/2-inch steel. He had spacers that he put in,

773. so he had two layers of steel plate.

774. And he poured concrete down in between them.

775. And then lifted the outer shell of that dozer.

776. So that made it a super fortified gap.

777. He was working on it at night, sleeping during the day, so,

778. but you'd think somebody would've known what was going on down there. But, evidently...

779. And he put in surveillance cameras on the outside of the shed,

780. hooked up to monitors he had on inside of the shed.

781. I think he kind of watched us and our schedule,

782. so he knew that basically when we left at five or six at night

783. he was free to work and make noise.

784. I don't understand. I guess I'm a dumb, I'm a dumb person.

785. I'm not as witty as some. I'm not as sharp as some.

786. I don't know that that's the backbone of America though.

787. I don't know what the backbone of America is anymore.

788. I did my buying that property...

789. you are so mistaken about the real world.

790. You know, you can call it revenge... I don't know.

791. Maybe what happened here,

792. maybe you'll remember that.

793. Marv knew he was gonna be spending long periods of time

794. in the shed, and he had in there a little small video collection

795. that he could watch. One of the movies he had in there

796. was a Vin Diesel film, called A Man Apart.

797. The hero of the movie loses his wife to a gang of criminals.

798. He takes the law into his own hands, goes out there,

799. shoots up the bad guys, and the movie ends with him alone,

800. but he has somehow redeemed and purified the corrupt society.

801. When we purchased the property, we had to have insurance on every building,

802. so we had to actually do a walkthrough through that building.

803. Last fall I had this dozer about half done.

804. Had the dozer covered up with these polypropylene tarps,

805. so these guys come in. "Oh, wow, what's this?"

806. I made up this story. I said this professor

807. was perfecting a cooling system

808. which would cool the air and increase

809. the performance of the engine.

810. I had this whole bullshit story

811. and they went along with it. And I couldn't believe it

812. when they walked out the door.

813. It was right there under their nose.

814. How come they didn't catch me?

815. Well, I wasn't supposed to get caught!

816. God built me to be here to prove to you

817. that what you have been doing

818. for God knows how many years

819. is wrong.

820. You picked on the wrong man.

821. I'm not tough.

822. I'm not that strong.

823. What I am going to do is above me,

824. and God gave me that peace years ago

825. in that hot tub. I had to do this.

826. That I could not do it without God's help

827. that it was his strength that would spur me on

828. at 51 and 52 years old to get this job done

829. at the pace that I could do it.

830. I believe that is why he gave me last winter off.

831. He says, "Marv, you're not gonna get it done,

832. go take off this winter, go play."

833. It was wintertime, I'm not gonna be here.

834. Everything's sold. I don't have a muffler shop anymore.

835. I'm gonna go snowmobiling.

836. Marv actually really did succeed in Granby.

837. He bought that property for $42,000.

838. He was able to sell it ten years later for $400,000.

839. And, in fact, that was the very thing he had been trying to do all along.

840. Marv says in his own tapes

841. that his muffler business was successful.

842. It gave him an opportunity to do what he wanted to do in life,

843. to enjoy his snowmobiling and still have money so he could live.

844. But you've got to do this. You've got to get this done.

845. And that was my goal so to speak,

846. take the winter off, relax,

847. you know, maybe something would come up

848. to change my mind.

849. In March of 2004, Marv's father dies.

850. Marv did go up to the funeral.

851. He took photos.

852. In the photos you see family members.

853. You see photos of Marv's father in the casket.

854. Included was a selfie that Marv took

855. outside the family farm there in South Dakota.

856. And it's a mournful, sad-looking photo.

857. A look of resignation is on Marv's face.

858. It's almost as if he's saying, "I know what I am gonna do

859. and I'm not happy about it. And this is my last look at my home."

860. But before that, Marv had given all the proceeds

861. from the sale of the lot

862. and of all of his material and equipment to his father.

863. You know, it's gone. Now money means nothing to me.

864. I've given my house away.

865. I do not need this cabin here in Grand Lake.

866. My snowmobiles, I've given those away this year.

867. Everything is gone.

868. What I own is just gonna be a pittance

869. compared to what I am going to take.

870. Marv transferred the sale proceeds from his bank

871. in $50,000 increments.

872. Prior to his father's passing,

873. his father conveyed those sale proceeds

874. to Marv's two brothers and sister.

875. By giving them to his father and willing all that

876. to the other members of the family,

877. it was one big step removed from Marv

878. so that when the time came to try to get resources

879. back from Marv to reimburse people who had lost,

880. uh, it was near impossible.

881. This is Tape 3. It's about 10:05 on, uh,

882. the 13th of April 2004.

883. And I want to say that I believe

884. that I am an American patriot.

885. I believe in free enterprise system.

886. I believe in a level playing field of competition.

887. If you want to change that level playing field

888. of competition to your advantage, basically,

889. you give me license to do that also

890. when my opportunity comes around

891. because you are the leaders of the community.

892. Through your actions, you show the community

893. how things are supposed to be done.

894. You have given me license through your example

895. to do what I need to do.

896. When I do this, that levels the playing field in my favor,

897. so now we've got a lopsided playing field

898. because when I come back at you,

899. I'm gonna destroy your side of the playing field.

900. He wanted everybody to hear what he felt about what happened to him,

901. but I won't even listen to 'em, you know.

902. I listened a little bit and I said, "Nah, I don't need to listen to this," you know.

903. He told me in his roundabout way through life, you know.

904. Lonely man.

905. He would just spend too much time alone.

906. That's what I put it onto.

907. He spent too much time in hot tub alone.

908. At the time I went to work for a dentist

909. we ended up doing a crown prep on Marv

910. and he was to come back that actual Friday

911. and seat the permanent crown.

912. I said, "Marv, you need to get the hell out of Grand County,"

913. I remember it vividly. And he gave me a big hug and he said, "Trish..."

914. he said, "You are the best thing that ever happened to me in Grand County."

915. I just remember that so vividly.

916. And... you know, he was gonna do this thing three weeks later.

917. He already had it planned, you know, so nuts to think about that.

918. And I would never have guessed. You know, he seemed like

919. it was so great to see him and, and it was great to have a hug,

920. you know.

921. I went snowmobiling with Marv a month before it happened,

922. early May on Vail Pass, just he and I.

923. We had plans of going again in June

924. just to say we did it.

925. And these are future plans.

926. He wasn't done.

927. And he spent a couple of weeks in Florida with some friends.

928. He talked about it on the way to Vail.

929. He said they're gonna get what's coming to 'em.

930. So here we are and I am at peace with what I am about to do.

931. People will think, "Why did he do that? He had such a good life.

932. He had a better life than me anyway."

933. It's not what I deserve.

934. You meddled in my business

935. and took what I deserve away.

936. You took advantage of my good nature.

937. Well, I think there's something you should learn here.

938. For as good as a man can be,

939. also can he be as bad.

940. When you visit evil upon someone,

941. be assured it will revisit you.

942. The Thompsons are guilty.

943. The Docheffs are guilty.

944. The Granby Town Board is guilty.

945. The Granby Planning Commission is guilty.

946. It took all of you

947. ten years to get me.

948. You got me, no doubt about it.

949. I got screwed big time.

950. Enough is enough.

951. I have been beaten to a point

952. where I'm not gonna take it anymore.

953. But I don't think that's what God had planned for me,

954. and he expects me to do something to those

955. who kept me now from getting what I deserve.

956. God's will be done through me.

957. You were cowards in the way that you dealt with me.

958. You all along were thinking that I was the person

959. that needed to be taught a lesson.

960. You were going to show me how it worked in Granby, Colorado.

961. How the real world worked.

962. You people needed to be taught a lesson.

963. - 911, what is your emergency? - This is Sherry at the trash company.

964. And there is a bulldozer over at Mountain Park Concrete destroying their building.

965. It's destroying the building? Is anyone on it?

966. Yeah, it's encased in metal

967. and you can't see who's driving or anything.

968. And they can't get it to stop.

969. 911, what's your emergency?

970. Hi, Sherry at the trash company again. It is headed

971. - for their main building now. - It's headed for the main building, okay.

972. Cody had grabbed a handgun from one of his workers.

973. He takes the gun up and bang, bang.

974. Not only is the diesel engine screaming

975. as it's pushing the dozer, but the treads,

976. they're creaking and scraping as the roar of the engine,

977. then there's just the sound of crash and ruin,

978. because he's really knocking all these walls down.

979. The tracks are probably the most memorable thing.

980. Our goal was to get the heaviest thing we could pack by hand,

981. because if you can get tangled up in some steel

982. you're gonna stop that track.

983. We got a big piece of angle iron off

984. of Cody Docheff's steel rack,

985. it's probably 1/2-inch diameter, so it was really heavy.

986. Our intentions was to try to lodge that into the tracks

987. and get it tangled up so it'd break the track.

988. That didn't work.

989. We have an armored, a very armored situation and it's getting closer.

990. 301, I copy, there's an armored bulldozer tearing down the building.

991. There are several deputies in route.

992. At the time of the call,

993. which was about a quarter after two

994. in the afternoon, I was approximately a mile away.

995. I pulled up and stopped my car,

996. and there's a bulldozer that doesn't completely look

997. like a bulldozer anymore. I had grabbed a shotgun and

998. ran towards the bulldozer. I'm yelling,

999. I am ordering it to stop. It backs away from the building,

1000. and a frontend loader approaches it.

1001. And I see the frontend loader is being operated by Cody Docheff.

1002. I told Cody, "Get the biggest loader you got

1003. and see if you can get underneath his track to uplift him."

1004. And Cody did. He backed up with a big loader and hit him.

1005. So he takes his frontend loader and slams into the side of him.

1006. And all it did was lift the back of the frontend loader up.

1007. It shook him hard enough that I think that's when Marv started letting out the rounds.

1008. Marv had a 50-caliber rifle pointed out the back.

1009. He shot numerous rounds into Cody's bucket.

1010. We have shots fired. We have automatic weapons in the bulldozer.

1011. Luckily, all the rounds hit in the bucket.

1012. Cody figures out where he is and he's not hit. He's okay.

1013. And he backs up and he thinks, "What am I gonna do now?"

1014. Shortly after that, Cody realized that that was too much. He was done.

1015. That's when the officers started surrounding the place.

1016. And I transitioned from a shotgun to an M-4 rifle.

1017. And about that time I was joined by a state trooper, Dave Patera.

1018. At first, Cody speculated that there's not a human being in there

1019. it's being run by radio controls.

1020. The dozer's continuing its damage. It's going in and out of the building,

1021. slamming into this huge concrete batch plant,

1022. essentially, knocking down all the sidewalls, just destroying it.

1023. Well, at this point there's more police on the scene.

1024. Okay, I'm gonna pull right up behind him...

1025. I'll go back around over the ditch on foot.

1026. I came in on the west side of the batch plant,

1027. bailed out of the vehicle, pulled my rifle out.

1028. And I could hear the squeaking of the tracks

1029. and the roaring of the engine, the banging into the building,

1030. but I still didn't see anything.

1031. Once I got close to the building around skirting

1032. an irrigation ditch, Marv come around the building

1033. in that bulldozer and that's when I got my first look of it.

1034. I don't know, I expected to see a bulldozer.

1035. It looks like a tank.

1036. There's this huge black monstrosity.

1037. I mean almost like a WWI big boxy, rumbly tank.

1038. And then the next thing you're thinking is, "how, how do you attack

1039. something like this? How do I stop this?"

1040. When I arrived on scene, I could hear the bulldozer operating.

1041. I walked around my vehicle and saw this absolute behemoth.

1042. Sergeant Rich Garner was our designated marksman.

1043. I just started shooting, trying to aim for what looked like a viewport.

1044. We made the decision to begin firing at the small portholes

1045. that we could see in the side of this bulldozer

1046. but they were maybe two inches by four inches at the very most.

1047. What I didn't know was that these portholes

1048. were covered with two sheets of 1/2-inch Lexan,

1049. which had me wondering how he was actually driving this thing.

1050. Garner stands there and takes a few shots at the dozer.

1051. Then all of a sudden bang, bang.

1052. I had two rounds go right by my head

1053. and I was like, "Oh, I know what that noise is."

1054. Marv fired his weapons and he fired at a bunch of cops

1055. that were standing behind a wall of jersey barriers.

1056. You know as we started firing

1057. of course, the rounds were having absolutely no effect

1058. he saw three state troopers behind

1059. a stack of jersey barriers that were next to the building.

1060. Watch out. The guy's gonna come over here with a bulldozer.

1061. Instead of just going by them, he turned

1062. and drove directly at those Jersey barriers.

1063. Come over. Go, run! Come over. Come over.

1064. If those troopers hadn't moved, he'd have probably killed all three of them.

1065. He started proceeding eastbound through the parking lot

1066. and the construction area. I had parked my vehicle on the south side of the building.

1067. At that time, Marv moved back around to the south side of the building,

1068. and Glenn Trainor's unmarked vehicle was over there.

1069. He put the blade up against that and started pushing it.

1070. He kept pushing it sideways, sideways. Well, then

1071. it caught the rims on the wheels and actually

1072. stopped it and started flipping over.

1073. He rolled over the top of it.

1074. As he was heading towards the highway,

1075. somebody notified me on the radio that the person

1076. operating the bulldozer was Marvin Heemeyer.

1077. He was not gonna stop at just the concrete plant.

1078. I don't think that just knowing what I am doing is enough.

1079. I think God will bless me.

1080. You get the machine done, you drive it

1081. to do the stuff that I have to do up to a point.

1082. Then you're either gonna blow me right off the fucking streets,

1083. I'm gonna have a heart attack and die, the machine's gonna break,

1084. or maybe, maybe it'll go all day and I'll run out of fuel.

1085. I've got a lot of fuel in that thing, let me tell you,

1086. to do what I believe needs to be done,

1087. what God has inspired me to do.

1088. I am the co-captain in my life.

1089. God is first, I am second.

1090. You have tried to control my life.

1091. You have tried to be the captain of my life.

1092. You do not run my life.

1093. You do not determine what I desire,

1094. what I want, what I deserve.

1095. I determine that and my God determines that.

1096. Not you people. No people do that.

1097. If they do, then you're a slave to them.

1098. I am not a slave to man.

1099. I am a slave to God.

1100. As he was heading towards the highway I began sending

1101. notifications having my deputies and supervisors

1102. go out and begin evacuating the town.

1103. That's when Glenn decided he was gonna try to get up on top it.

1104. I got the idea to climb up and see if I could actually gain entry.

1105. So he's clinging up and we start running along with him,

1106. trying to cover him.

1107. I was expecting to see, you know,

1108. something with a handle that I could pull up

1109. and open. And there was absolutely nothing.

1110. You know, it was solid sheet metal from the front to the back.

1111. The only thing I did see up there

1112. was there was some kind of a vent

1113. where it looked like there was like an RV air conditioner.

1114. He takes his pistol out and starts trying to shoot into

1115. some gaps where the air conditioner was. Of course, it does no good.

1116. Then, he's up there and he's just riding along on this thing.

1117. So then we started coming up with maybe getting some flashbangs.

1118. I brought some flashbangs if anybody needs 'em, this is 35.

1119. I'm throwing up these flashbangs and Glenn's pulling

1120. the pin on 'em and dumping 'em down the exhaust.

1121. Of course, they're going off.

1122. Whoo, big cloud of smoke

1123. and everything come out. No effect.

1124. It moves out of the immediate little industrial area,

1125. and the next building that it hits is Mountain Parks Electric.

1126. At the time of my tenure on the board,

1127. I worked at Mountain Parks Electric,

1128. so I don't know if there was some interplay there.

1129. He spent several minutes just going in,

1130. doing the damage, backing out, going in, backing out,

1131. the entire time of which I am sitting up there, watching

1132. this going on, knowing all along that he was on his way

1133. to the Granby Town Hall. That was the next place he went.

1134. Let's get a hold of Granby Town Hall.

1135. Start moving away everything over that way...

1136. And that the town hall was upstairs,

1137. but our public library was downstairs in the same building.

1138. And there were kids and other people inside the library.

1139. Midday, I had my lunch break.

1140. I did start hearing um, what I thought...

1141. I mean, it sounded like gunfire.

1142. And then I started seeing police cars,

1143. like flying by at high rates of speed.

1144. I started hearing sirens. I was hearing more gunfire.

1145. And at that point, I decided to go back to the library.

1146. We issued a directive to have a reverse 911 call

1147. sent out to the community to shelter in place.

1148. Because after the first one, we were just thinking barricade everyone inside,

1149. not knowing that we were the target,

1150. that there was a bulldozer heading right there.

1151. And then shortly after that we got another call,

1152. a 911 reverse call. They were telling everyone, "Evacuate your building now."

1153. It took me until that moment to realize that my 11-year-old daughter

1154. was in the basement of that building in the library.

1155. Okay, he's going east all the way to Napa.

1156. The bulldozer came out onto the highway and pulled off,

1157. and drove right into the lawn area of the town hall.

1158. Well, I elected to get off at that point and did jump down.

1159. Marv works his way up around. He goes around the back of the town hall,

1160. destroying the children's playground in the process,

1161. turning all the little jungle gyms and swing sets

1162. into just curled and twisted spaghetti in the backyard there.

1163. But we did gather up the kids and then we drove them all to their houses.

1164. We got there, turned the radio on, and as soon we turned it on,

1165. within seconds we heard the radio announcer say that he had just bulldozed town hall.

1166. The dozer methodically tore apart town hall.

1167. Everybody now, needs to move... Go for three to three.

1168. From the town hall it went back out to Main Street.

1169. We had this rolling roadblock out in front of him,

1170. the patrol units and then behind him as well.

1171. Somewhere during that time, Norm Rimmer shows up

1172. and he sees this camera sticking out the back.

1173. Then we start looking around and we see another one.

1174. That's when we figured out that's how he was steering it, was using the cameras.

1175. Marv placed around the outside of the dozer, five cameras.

1176. He had them mounted to three monitors inside the tank,

1177. so he had views of the back, front, and the sides.

1178. He actually thought ahead enough that there would be debris

1179. and dust, so he rigged up all these little hoses

1180. to a compressed air tank that's in the cab,

1181. and he was able to open the compressed air

1182. to blow dust and debris in front of his Lexan,

1183. so he could still see where he was going.

1184. As it's going down the highway,

1185. more and more law enforcement officers

1186. were showing up, people coming from home.

1187. I started hearing gunfire and sirens from my home,

1188. so I got my police radio started and I listening to the traffic

1189. and I heard officers describing being shot at

1190. and something about a bulldozer knocking buildings down.

1191. I thought the best thing to do at the time was to grab my camcorder,

1192. so I followed him around until he got to, uh, Sky-Hi News.

1193. This guy may possibly be going after Patrick Brower.

1194. It was a regular news day. We were working when one of the sheriff's deputies

1195. tells me, "Get out of here! You're on the list." I said, "What?"

1196. He then leaves the building. There's this large kinda gray, dark monolith

1197. driving down the road with two police cars on either side.

1198. Right when he gets by the front of the building he just takes a sharp right turn.

1199. The ground starts to shake. You could hear the creaking of the treads.

1200. And we were inside the building here.

1201. And blam! Knocks down the front wall of the building.

1202. Patrick and one of his reporters are leaving out the back of the building

1203. as Marv is driving through the front of the building.

1204. The ground is literally shaking under your feet.

1205. It's 85 tons of it just rolling, impervious.

1206. Well, we immediately start running out the back.

1207. Marv continues to take the dozer back

1208. and smashes into the front of the building. He works his way around.

1209. He just kept backing up, knocking cars out of his way

1210. taking a hit at the building and backing up again, taking another hit at it.

1211. Literally, the ceiling's caving in all around us.

1212. I ran out the backdoor with my camera around my neck,

1213. and run up the side of the building.

1214. There's a sheriff's deputy with a shotgun.

1215. I snap off a panicked photo,

1216. then I started hearing gunfire. I hear a few whizzes

1217. over my head and I think, "This is stupid. I'm getting out of here."

1218. I'm coming. Get people out of there!

1219. And then finally the entire building just collapsing around itself.

1220. There was a lot of metal on metal screeching going on,

1221. especially when he's pushing cars out of the way.

1222. There was a lot of screeching noises from the treads

1223. and it was just kind of overwhelming, you know,

1224. looking at and realizing, you know, I don't have a way of stopping this.

1225. None of us had a way of stopping it.

1226. The dozer goes down to the east end of town.

1227. They knew that we were on the hit list, so they hurried up up here

1228. and we came across the flats up here behind the town shop.

1229. And the county cop stopped us.

1230. He says, "You're not going any farther. We go, "Yeah, we are.

1231. You can get your ass down here and arrest me at home

1232. if you want to, but we're going down the hill."

1233. That's the Thompson residence. The bulldozer's headed there.

1234. We need to have everybody evacuated out of the Thompsons' residence.

1235. There's a little house owned by Thompsons

1236. and their mother lives there.

1237. I called her and she thought

1238. I was joking with her. I said,

1239. "You needed to get in the car,

1240. just drive out of town. Just get out of it."

1241. Marvin Heemeyer is around Thompsons' shop.

1242. The chief of Kremmling PD showed up.

1243. He rolls his window down and said,

1244. "Hey, Rich, I got a surprise for you."

1245. In the backseat is this big, huge 50-cal silhouette gun.

1246. And I picked up the gun and I let loose with it.

1247. No effect.

1248. It came down the backstreet here, knocked some trees down.

1249. The dozer ran right through the house.

1250. It completely leveled the house.

1251. She did get out safely.

1252. My only concern was her.

1253. Thelma Thompson was asleep

1254. in the house only 30 minutes before Marv

1255. completely destroyed their home.

1256. It started to destroy a construction yard

1257. that's owned by Thompson & Sons,

1258. systematically destroying that area.

1259. And then he turned and came over to the shop here

1260. we had a lowboy trailer sitting out here, and he shoved it

1261. through the wall. Then he went down the street down here

1262. and tipped over another semitrailer we had.

1263. He flat laid it over on its side,

1264. full of truck parts. Then he went around

1265. in front of her house and shoved the Xcel Energy pickup

1266. through our rental building.

1267. Meanwhile, this whole ridge is up here was just covered with people,

1268. following him through town, watching what he was doing like a circus.

1269. Then after that it looked like a war zone out here.

1270. All the helicopters flying around and all the news trucks showing up.

1271. And that's when he headed off down the hill, went down to Independent Gas.

1272. Hey, would you make a general broadcast all units

1273. should evacuate at least a thousand feet

1274. back from the propane tanks at Independent Gas.

1275. I was on top of the hill looking down on that.

1276. All I saw was rows and rows

1277. of propane tanks of various sizes.

1278. You know we're not talking camping propane,

1279. we're talking about, you know, industrial-size propane tanks.

1280. If you're standing in the farm, looking up the hill,

1281. you can see a senior citizens' home,

1282. a trailer park, private residences.

1283. There were a lot of homes, a lot of people in a blast area.

1284. Well, Marv was by the propane, shooting at the tanks.

1285. Move back! He's shooting at the tanks! Move back!

1286. He was using incendiary rounds,

1287. so they made kind of a flash and a puff of smoke.

1288. He's shooting at the propane.

1289. One of those bullets could easily hit

1290. a propane tank and ignite it immediately.

1291. There would have been a lot of damage using these things

1292. flying through the air, landing on homes.

1293. he's got a 50-cal, he's trying to take out the tanks

1294. and transformers... at Independent Propane at this time.

1295. He had a ripper on the backend of the bulldozer.

1296. And when he would try to maneuver it to get the barrel of the gun

1297. pointing towards the propane tanks,

1298. the ripper was digging into the ground and not going down far enough

1299. to allow his armor to get out of the way.

1300. And the 50-caliber was hitting his own armor.

1301. You can see the shells hitting the armor and bursting

1302. into a puff of smoke and flame when they hit his own armor.

1303. While one of his bullets did penetrate the power transformer,

1304. none of 'em penetrated the actual propane tanks.

1305. Granby PD also be advised, Federal Heights is going to be in route

1306. with their Peacekeeper on its flatbed.

1307. It'll take about two hours, Summit County is also

1308. - en route with a SWAT team. - Ask them to help us get

1309. the National Guard units in here,

1310. maybe with a helicopter to stop this unit.

1311. You need a National Guard unit and a helicopter?

1312. Yeah, the uh, the Air National Guard or Army National Guard,

1313. uh, either out of Laramie or out of Eagles.

1314. And then that's when the county scraper tried to stop him.

1315. Yeah, I'm gonna try to bring the scrapers down Highway 40.

1316. We wanna know where they need to go.

1317. We had asked for a bulldozer from

1318. our road and bridge department. The director

1319. of Grand County Road and Bridge was Clark Branstetter.

1320. Branstetter on Road and Bridge, I've got

1321. a scraper inside of where the A&W used to be

1322. on 40, where do you want me to put this?

1323. What he did do is bring in two big earthmovers

1324. or scrapers from the landfill.

1325. Let's get him up here just as fast as we can.

1326. Clark Branstetter actually tried to stop the bulldozer

1327. at the top of the hill, going back up onto the highway.

1328. contact the station, we have a giant tractor

1329. that is completely armored with iron running over

1330. all vital components, including the compartment with only complex.

1331. He can fire out of firing way. The driver is completely enclosed with no entrance.

1332. Get him back! Stop him! I can't, he's got a dozer.

1333. The bulldozer just basically moved the scraper just right out of the way.

1334. He's going out towards the highway!

1335. He went back up the hill, back on to Main Street again.

1336. We're at 4th and Main, and 4th and Agate now.

1337. Somewhere right in that timeframe it appears that he loses all his antifreeze.

1338. There's a big white puff of what would be the antifreeze

1339. hitting hot metal components from the engine

1340. and there's a lot of white smoke.

1341. Copy, vehicle smoking heavily at 4th and Agate.

1342. He damaged copycat printers a bit while he's positioning

1343. to get his bulldozer facing towards the Gambles store.

1344. He said, "Oh, he's headed for Gambles". Oh, I don't remember how the verbiage was.

1345. And I just, my stomach went like, just like a ball.

1346. Just clinched because I knew my life was gonna be completely different.

1347. The engine of the bulldozer began overheating.

1348. I was across the street, watching as it came up the street,

1349. and then watched as it turned in to go down the side of the Gambles store.

1350. You can also tell that he's starting to lose power at this time.

1351. And then it starts methodically just tearing apart that Gambles store.

1352. Here 33, Ft. Collins is en route with a SWAT team and an armored vehicle.

1353. All units, Grand, too, we need you to move back towards the east.

1354. Once again start blocking traffic.

1355. He begins going down the side of it, basically,

1356. trying to rip the entire side of the building off.

1357. The county had gotten a belly scraper out.

1358. They pulled that in behind to block his way.

1359. Having worked in the Gambles store I knew what a lot of people didn't know,

1360. and that's that there was a basement in there.

1361. So he took a run at Gambles, not realizing

1362. that the right hand side track would go into the basement

1363. and that left him stuck, unable to move.

1364. This is the first time he's actually stopped,

1365. and the machine shut down.

1366. But we don't know what he's doing,

1367. so we pulled everybody back.

1368. Can you confirm your location?

1369. Right now the dozer is at Gambles

1370. or what used to be Gambles.

1371. One of the radio transmissions at the time is, "Get ready for a gunfight." It was...

1372. where else are we going with this? It just figures we've gone this far,

1373. now it's, you know, does somebody pop out of it?

1374. Does it just fire from its position?

1375. We need a Grand 24... - We started to pair up

1376. people and get some tactical advantage.

1377. You need to go down to Mountain Parks Concrete

1378. and help secure that bridge down there.

1379. And it was a short time after that

1380. a gunshot was heard.

1381. A couple of sheriff's deputies actually got on top of it

1382. and were trying to figure out if there was something they could do,

1383. some way they could get in.

1384. You know they had the same luck that I had, which is none.

1385. Some SWAT teams came up from other jurisdictions

1386. and attempted to breach the bulldozer with an explosive charge.

1387. And they started blasting on the dozer.

1388. All that did was put a, a stain on the side of it.

1389. When they triggered that explosive device

1390. it rattled the windows in my house.

1391. It was a tremendous, tremendous explosion.

1392. It didn't even dent the thing.

1393. When the second blast happened, they still didn't get in.

1394. They said, "If he's not already dead he is now."

1395. And they basically just brought a cutting torch up

1396. and cut off the access point to this air conditioning unit.

1397. Entry was finally gained some time in the midmorning of the 5th.

1398. Afterwards, we learned that he put the 357

1399. into the roof of his mouth and then pulled the trigger.

1400. All the cars' working perimeters, everybody is still okay.

1401. No response means everybody's okay.

1402. We all rode the sleds up

1403. and let his ashes fly away.

1404. Everybody couldn't wait to get that dozer cut up, scrap it.

1405. I think they made a big mistake by not making a museum out of the thing.

1406. That'd made this town a ton of money, a ton of money.

1407. They went to Blair's Machine Shop.

1408. He torched the thing into small pieces

1409. and disposed of the scrap steel so that no one person could get a hold of it

1410. and say, "Here's my shrine to Marv."

1411. This tape's probably got a lot of emotion in it,

1412. and, uh, anybody listening to it, you know, you need to...

1413. uh... realize that.

1414. And just take it from there, you know.

1415. Anyway, hey, I hope you all have a great time and good life.

1416. I've had a great life. And I'm gonna put this tape

1417. and tape recorder in a plastic bag

1418. for somebody else to try to figure it out.

1419. Well, see you later.