The Killdozer

Cracked had a good rundown of the messy details.

In the early ‘90s, Heemeyer got involved in a campaign to bring legalized gambling to the city, even launching his own newspaper to promote it. Patrick Brower’s paper had come out against the measure, which was eventually voted down. That’s the first time the local press and government wound up on Heemeyer’s bad side.

Around that time, Heemeyer bought a patch of land for $42,000 and opened another muffler shop there. Several years later, a group looking to open a concrete batch plant offered to buy the land for $250,000. Heemeyer reportedly agreed, then later bumped the price up to $375,000, and maybe went as high as $1 million. Instead, the buyers went to the city to rezone the land around the shop and build there instead.

Heemeyer attempted to start a grassroots campaign to fight the plant. The problem was that the new plant would cut off customer access to his shop completely – he apparently bought the bulldozer to create a new road, but permission for that was denied too. He lost his battle and was forced to sell the shop, at which point he immediately started building a Killdozer. The rampage would come a year and a half later; it was hardly done on impulse.

Did the zoning dispute go badly for him? No doubt. Did he have multiple chances to avoid that outcome? It seems like it. Did the city leave him no choice but to do what he did? Well, most schools of morality posit that even in the most bitter business disputes, there are always non-Killdozer options.

…

In addition to the newspaper, Heemeyer tore through the concrete plant, the town hall, a hardware store owned by another man he had a dispute with – he’d made a list. That’s where the noble vigilante story comes into play. He wasn’t out to hurt anybody, they say, just to do to others what they’d done to him.

But as Piechocki points out, the lack of a body count was down to pure luck. “When he attacked the town hall, the library is in there, and my son was in that library at that time. Gambles, the store he got stuck in, what happened if somebody was stuck in there?” In fact, most of the buildings were occupied right up until the inhabitants ran away screaming that a Killdozer was coming their way.

This dude was a special snowflake conservative who thinks the government owes him a free sewage system on his undeveloped lot.

City officials told Heemeyer that putting in a septic tank was a less expensive alternative, but he rejected both options and said that the government not paying for the sewage linehookup was “extortion by government fiat”.

Later someone bought the land he had been trespassing on as a shortcut, so he raged out that he didn’t get a payday from it.

I’m always amazed how much this story changes every time I check in on it.

The first rendition I heard, he was selling his land to a company that was going to build a mall. That was going to be a big boon for his automotive & welding shop, as it would bring a lot of new business to the area. As the sale was nearing completion, the buyer revealed they weren’t actually going to build a mall, instead they were building a concrete plant. That would have the opposite result for Heemeyer’s business, so he balked and increased the price. The buyer decided to play hardball and instead used the city council to put pressure on him, which they did by cutting his sewage lines & declaring his property uninhabitable.

That’s a very different story than what was posted above. And it’s fascinating how slowly the narrative has changed. The ‘build a mall’ portion disappeared first. Then the sewage lines were never there, he was always supposed to build a septic tank. The latest addition I see is now he has firearms as well and is shooting at power transformers. I wonder what will be adapted in the next cycle.

Honestly the entire story about that man is fucked up. And you honestly also barely know what’s true. There’s the city officials, who are telling one story, and then there are people close to heemeyer who tell another story. I don’t think we’re ever gonna hear about the truth.

I can’t imagine being angry enough to do what he did. Given that he did this and then took his own life when the killdozer got stuck, it seems he wasn’t well mentally. So perhaps that was the reason.

https://youtu.be/Yvl_7_Up7zU

Everyone gets the story of Killdozer wrong. It was poop all along.

Anything but psychotherapy.

I’m surprised they didn’t just let him get away with it for being such a bad ass

They probably could have stopped him a bit sooner by taking a grenade to the radiator..