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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too.
And it's just the three of us rampaging away in podcast land.
What's Stuff You Should Know in case you didn't know?
Well, before we get started, I think we should mention that there are still tickets available for our shows coming up very soon in Chicago on August 7th and many appless on August 8th.
Yeah, it's going to be pretty great.
We're going to be at the auditorium in Chicago and we're going to be at a state theater in many appless.
And there are tickets left and you can come see us.
It's a great show. We've gotten great feedback so far.
Only like two people have been like that sucked.
Everybody else is like, that was pretty great.
You can go to Stuff You Should Know.com and click on the tour page, tour button.
And you can also go to link tree slash sysk live.
And both of those places will take you to sites where you can buy legitimate tickets to come see us.
Yeah. And those are both great cities for us.
We love going to Chicago and many appless.
I know it's been a little while for many appless, but we've always had great shows there.
Yeah. And we're not promoting Indianapolis because Indianapolis sold out.
So we'll see them as well.
But you can't come in if you haven't already bought your tickets.
I'm sorry. Yeah. Well, you know, it's a midwestern themed show.
So sort of Chicago adjacent really Indianapolis adjacent.
So they got on it. They want to hear about their people.
That's right. So yeah, come see us at the beginning of August, do you guys?
Yeah. All right. Back to it.
Right. Good one. Oh, you think so.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks. I appreciate you letting us do this one first because like I just announced to you.
Yeah. I just watched the documentary on this topic.
Tread. Tread directed by Paul Solet.
It's Solet. Who knows? Who knows?
Did you watch it? Yes, I have actually.
I've seen it. I saw a few years back.
I haven't seen it. I didn't watch it recently for this.
For some reason, I think we covered this in like a video or something.
Like how do I know about this?
It was pretty big news. And I mean, it's become an internet legend.
Yeah. Maybe we did do like an internet roundup on it or something like that on the 10th anniversary.
Maybe I don't know. Yeah.
That feels about right.
But I guess we should say what we're talking about.
A sure. Oh, I'll do it then.
Okay. So for those of you who don't know, we're talking about an event that took place in 2004 in a little town called Granby, Colorado, about 15 miles west of Denver.
Population 2000. Yes. I think at the time, it's a small town.
Yeah. But it wasn't, you know, an economically depressed town.
It's like 16 miles away from the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park.
They're skiing around there.
So there's tourists. There's also rural ranchers that come into shop in Granby.
It's fine. It's just a cute, quaint small mountain town like South Park basically.
That's right. And it remained that way until June 4, 2004, when a lot of this town was destroyed by a man and a bulldozer that was that had ended up being dubbed later on as the killdozer.
We'll get to that later.
Right. But it was a muffler shop owner, a 52 year old guy named Marvin.
He Myr, Mark hemyr. And he had beefs with the town.
He had beefs with people in the town.
We're going to go over all that stuff.
So he built or modified rather a gigantic bulldozer into basically a tank.
And destroyed the places of the people he had beefs with and more.
Yeah. I left all that out of my introduction.
So I'm glad you filled it in.
Yeah. You said it was like a tank essentially.
In some ways, as we'll see, it was actually superior to a tank.
It was crazy what this guy built.
And if you have the time and you're not driving right now, just go look up killdozer and get a load of this modified bulldozer that Marvin Hemyr created.
So Chuck, I say let's just dive in.
That was a pretty good little setup.
Let's talk about Marvin Hemyr and who he was.
He was known around town as Marvin the muffler man, right?
That's right. Because he owned a muffler shop.
Previous to that, he was in the Air Force, served in the Air Force was stationed in Colorado at Larry Air Force Base, liked Colorado decided to literally set up shop there.
And this is when the early 90s, he moved to Grand Lake near Granby.
And you know, pretty soon he got, he started getting his feathers ruffled and ruffling feathers in the town.
Kind of right away, it seems like starting with having a beef against the local newspaper, the Sky High News.
Yeah. So they introduced the concept of legalized gambling in Grand Lake, which is pretty near Granby.
And the town was very evenly divided on it.
The local newspaper, the Sky High News, or one of the local newspapers, another one in Grand Lake, came out very heavily against legalized gambling.
Marvin was very heavily in favor of gambling so much so that he edited, I think, two editions of a newspaper that was created just to tout the benefits of legalized gambling.
And so he lost. Like, I think they voted in the area, they voted four to one against legalizing gambling.
And it was a bitter defeat, I think, to Marvin.
He seemed like the kind of person who did not accept defeat very well.
And that it just triggered stewing in him.
Yeah, that's fair to say, I think.
And that was in 1992, that same year is when he bought some property that would be sort of at the center of his next dispute.
It was a couple of acres in Western Granby.
He bought it at public auction and foreclosure for a little more than 40 grand, which turned out to be a great deal.
The guy had a really good knack for finding good deals on stuff.
Yeah, what's funny that you remember the savings in Lone scandal?
Yeah. He actually bought it from the FDIC because it was a failed savings in Lone Bank in town.
Yeah, including that big bulldozer that he would end up getting a great deal on.
So that was a savings in Lone bulldozer.
He had a nose for a deal. So he ended up setting up his Mountain View muffler shop there was apparently a great welder stuff that he brought into the Air Force.
It seems like was just really good on machines and motors and engines and welding.
And worked for a muffler shop for many years and finally it was like, I'm going to open up my own shop.
As this is happening, there's another local family and this is one of the two two main families that he had beef with, the Dochef family.
In particular, the patriarch, I guess, of that family Cody Dochef with his wife Susie and their son Joe had a concrete factory.
And they were trying to expand this factory.
So they bought up a, they wanted this property that Marv had bought.
They bought up a bunch of land around it, still needed more space and tried to buy Marv's parcel from him that he paid $42,000 for.
And initially they had an agreement for $250,000, which would have been a really nice take on that land deal for Marv.
It would have for sure. And apparently the Dochef's were at that auction that Marv bought it at and he outbid them.
So yeah, they were very interested in this parcel of land.
He agreed to that $250,000 deal later on.
I think that was eight years later.
So that is a pretty significant increase in your investment.
And then he changed his mind.
He decided that the land was worth more than 250 grand.
Apparently kept getting appraisals on it.
So it's not like he was just saying like, no, it's worth a billion dollars.
Right. He supposedly got appraisals and was like, this land is worth more than 250 grand now.
So he said he said he backed out of the deal.
I don't know how much, how far the deal had gotten, but he definitely backed out of an agreement to sell it for 250 grand.
Yeah, he ended up asking 400.
The Dochef's came up with 350.
And he said, now I want 450.
Again, he said because of another reappraisal, I'm not sure about all that stuff.
I mean, I'm just basing off kind of what I saw in the documentary and research.
I didn't see any appraisals or anything.
So I don't know if Marv was just like Jack in this thing up or not, who knows.
But while this is happening, at least one of the things we have left to kind of piece us all together is the series of audio tapes that he made on cassette that he mailed to his brother.
So the documentary features a lot of those, just firsthand accounts from Marv detailing what's going on.
And one of the things he just, he didn't like the Dochef.
He said that Cody Dochef and I guess this was after he had backed out of, I'm not sure if it was after he backed out or not, but Cody Dochef at one point basically, it costed him in a restaurant.
And that was one of their first exchanges about this.
And Cody Dochef was known as a real hot head in town.
And Marv, you should hear the words that he calls on those audio tapes.
He did not like this guy.
Right. That appraisal thing.
That's a really good example of the, the, the, the, the, the squishiness, I guess of this story.
It's really difficult to pin down because yeah, was he just jacking the price up because he didn't like the Dochef's?
Did he really think that the land was worth that?
Did he really get appraisals?
You don't know. But that kind of thing completely changes the complexion of it.
If he was getting appraisals and he, the Dochef's wouldn't pay the appraised value, that's pretty reasonable.
If he was lying about the appraisals and he was just jacking the price up on the Dochef's, that kind of makes him look like a jerk.
And so that just something that small can make a story like this totally do a 180.
And this story is filled with those little kind of details that have either gotten overlooked, added or blown out of proportion.
Yeah, absolutely. So they, the Dochef's end up buying some other land, a business park.
And they said, Hey, you give us your, the land where your muffler shop is and will give you the prime lot that's right on the highway, this frontage land where your muffler shop's going to do a lot better or get a lot more attention.
And he said, All right, I'll take that deal, but you got to build this muffler shop for me.
And that a really expensive one and really kind of high in muffler shop, I guess.
Right. Because that brought it up to about a million bucks.
And they said, No, you know, we're not going to pay a lot for that muffler shop.
Boy, how long were you waiting on that?
I mean, I've got good 30 seconds.
Oh boy, I hope that most people get that one at least.
It doesn't matter as long as you got it, friend.
Oh, I got it. So they said, no deal.
And he said, All right, then you basically started a war with me.
And I'm going to, I'm going to do everything I can to fight the city to make sure that you're not able to open up that cement factory that you want to open up.
And apparently got a lot of people on the side.
There was a lot of opposition in the town that backed Marv against this expansion of the cement factory or concrete factory.
Yeah. So I, what I don't understand was their opposition before Marv started this kind of grassroots campaign against it.
Yes. Okay. Yeah. So he didn't just drum that up out of thin air like not everybody was happy about a concrete batch creating plant.
Like this is almost in downtown Gramby.
Yeah. There was opposition, but it seems like he really fueled the fire.
Okay. Yeah. So now you have war between essentially what amounts to two hotheads who are neighbors.
And a concrete plan is not like a, a, a, a tidy quiet neighbor to be next to.
Right. So I'm sure that every sound and every clank and every bit of like dust that blew his way just made him less and less happy.
And I guess I don't know also if you said that they were buying up the land around him.
So ultimately his muffler shop was the only little piece of parcel left.
And they were literally building a concrete plant around his muffler shop.
And one of the things, if you, if somebody tells you this, they don't know what they're talking about and stop listening to them about this.
If they tell you that when the dough chuts bought the land up around him, that they cut off access from the road to Marv's muffler shop, basically created an island legally out of his muffler shop.
That's wrong. That's not correct.
He always had access and everyone always had access in and out of his muffler shop.
That's a really big point that a lot of people basically say, see the guy had no choice.
He couldn't, he couldn't run a business like that.
And that's just not true.
Yeah. That is not true. But that's something you see a lot online.
So thanks for clearing that up.
You got anything else? What else do you want me to clear up?
I got a pimple on my shoulder here.
Take care of that. Why did you say that?
Oh, I don't. I don't get pimples.
So Marv is, he's got another problem that's also brewing.
So you've got this problem with the doughchefs.
Then you have the second issue with the sewer line.
In order, his property wasn't hooked up to a sewer line.
You've got to get hooked up to a sewer line if you're going to be in compliance.
They kind of looked the other way for many, many years when he didn't because it was, you know, small town, western Colorado.
It was sort of the Wild West and people would just sort of turn a blind eye if someone was making do on their own.
Which he was doing. But he also didn't have a septic tank.
So he started dumping sewage into his concrete mixer or concrete mixing tank.
Big violation. Then when that filled up, he started pumping it into the irrigation ditch on the property.
All he had to do was pay a little bit of money at one point to hook up to some neighboring sewer lines.
But he basically thought that's the town that's the town holding me over a barrel.
You shouldn't have a resident or a business have to pay for their own sewer line, which is a public utility.
Okay. So I don't know, like the town you overlook this for a good decade, maybe 12 years, something like that.
He was pooping and peeing, I guess, into a bucket or something and dumping it into a cement mixer.
Even if they had a line to the cement mixer, yes, that's a huge health code violation.
So when that concrete plant was built, they ran a sewer line to it.
Right? And that made it way easier and way less expensive for Marv Hemeyer to connect his muffler shop to that sewer line that's now being run from the road to this concrete plant next door.
Then it would to have the city run it from the road to just his muffler shop.
The problem was this is the Dochef's sewer line and it was on their land and for him to tap into it, he needed to pay them.
So they came back with an offer.
They said, look man, if you drop all these lawsuits and all this campaign against us, we will let you, we'll give you an easement, a maintenance easement to connect to our sewer line from your muffler shop, free of charge.
That will be your little strip of land onto our land connecting your muffler shop to the main line.
You'll be in compliance.
We won't have this lawsuit against us anymore and we'll just call it a day.
And I don't believe Marv ever made good on that.
No, he didn't want to do it.
He was done with him by that point basically.
So he was like screw this.
I'm not hooking up to your sewer line.
I'm not paying the maybe as high as 80 grand to run the 400 feet to the main sewer line.
And so he wanted to sell the place.
He was like I'm getting out of this muffler shop and I'm going to move.
And the town then said, well hey, now that we know about all this, you can't even sell this thing without a sewer line.
So all of a sudden he was caught between a rock and a hard place there with this sewer connection.
He refuses to do it. He ends up being fined $100 a day because of the sewage issue and other violations that were going on.
Like more than $3,300 when he wrote the check to the town he put in the memo.
It's for the Cowards and Liars Department.
So this is kind of where things were.
This guy is fighting back against the town.
He's fighting against these people.
Whether or not you think it's fair that you have to pay for your own sewer line or not.
It's the way it was. They weren't singling him out to try and like screw him over anything.
That was just how it works.
I mean, I've had to replace sewer lines and it stinks.
It's the worst thing to have to pay for.
It stinks literally and figuratively.
As a owner, it wrecks your yard or your property.
It wrecks. It's awful because it's not.
It's expensive. Have you ever had to do it?
No, you were writing that check.
I mean, not gone wood here.
I've had to do it a couple of times.
It's awful. In the meantime, we need to introduce another family because he ended up having two beef with two prominent families, the dochefs and then the Thompson family who were had been there forever, thereby owned tons and tons of the land in the town.
A guy named the elder Dick Thompson was on the county board and then became mayor for a while back when he was going through all this stuff in the 90s.
Then he passed away and he took up this beef with his two sons basically saying like you owe me money because of all this stuff that your dad and the town board made me go through.
One thing that I couldn't find and it's one of those things that could change the complexion of the whole story is at what point did the sewer thing that the city overlooked for a decade or so become a thing?
Was it connected to the concrete plant?
I don't know. It's just something that sticks out to me.
So I guess what he did ultimately was he shut down his muffler shop in 2002 and he held an auction.
He auctioned off all of his equipment.
He sold his property to a local trash company for 400,000 which is I think what the highest he had asked the dochefs for for it.
But he said I want to lease this big old metal shed in the back.
I got to keep a place to keep my bulldozer because it's basically the only thing that no one bought in the auction of my stuff.
So I'm just going to keep it back here and this will be my little workshop.
That's part of the deal.
They shook on it and that's the setup starting around 2002.
Yeah and I'm also not sure how he was able to sell that or sell it given that he didn't put in the sewer line because in the documentary they said the the new owners this trash company like within 48 hours had the sewer line hooked up.
I mean I think the city was like whoever like this thing can't change hands without somebody agreeing that they're going to put in the line and that's what I think you could probably work that into a legal document.
Probably so. Should we take a break?
Yeah. We'll take a break and go find out.
Alright we'll be right back after this with Moira on the Kill Dozer Ram page.
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