Bogus Killdozer YouTube full of false facts

I received a polite e-mail through blog from a person who recently read my book “KILLDOZER.” He wrote that after reading the book he was “surprised to see your take on the whole situation. After doing a bit of my own research I’ve come to a different conclusion and I hope that you will too after taking a look at some of the comments in the video linked below. Seems like many fellow Americans like myself share a different sentiment.”

It was from a guy who claimed his name was Justin. The “fellow Americans” comment should have been a tip-off.

In the interest of fair play I went to his YouTube link and watched the video posted. I did not come to a different conclusion than what is presented in my book. The Bogus Killdozer YouTube was absolutely packed with the typical false statements and outright lies that have been disseminated about Marv Heemeyer and the events leading up to the Killdozer rampage.

Starts with false premise

The video, by zachdirects, starts with the odd notion that, referring to Granby, “the city isn’t making a lot of profit so like any other city decides to bring in a source of revenue and in particular a concrete factory.”

Wrong. For starters, the city’s sales tax revenues were fine at the time and towns like Granby don’t try to make a “profit.” And besides, the city didn’t decide to bring in a “concrete factory.” An existing concrete batch plant operator wanted to put a new batch plant on land inside the city limits in an industrial part of town. That parcel was located next to Heemeyer’s Mountain View Muffler shop. The town didn’t do it. The operators of Mountain Park Concrete wanted to do it. They needed the town’s permission, however, which is granted through the zoning and subdivision approval process.

The narrator then states “everyone is excited and happy that there’s going to be a source of income to the town. But there’s one problem. The building of the concrete factory will block the main access road to a muffler shop owned by a man named Marvin Heemeyer.”

False.

First, people weren’t “excited and happy” about any source of income to the town. In fact, the town was skeptical that any sales tax revenue to the town from the plant would be minimal since most of the work for which the concrete was to be sold would probably be located outside of town, therefore not generating sales tax. The property tax revenue from the plant would have added to the revenue stream, but not in an amount that would make any substantial change to the town’s revenue.

Biggest lie is about blocked access road

But the biggest lie in the narrative was that the new plant “will block the main access road to a muffler shop” owned by Heemeyer. This is simply flat-out wrong. Never at any point in any of the proceedings did Marv lose an access to his muffler shop, either by the actions of the batch plant owners or by the town. Never.

How do I know this? Well, I covered almost all of the hearings and deliberations relating to Heemeyer’s protest of the new batch plant. His access was never blocked nor taken away. I actually drove to and from his muffler shop during and after the entire process. He never lost an access or had an access blocked. This is a myth that has taken off on the web and which now is considered settled fact when, in real fact, it isn’t. Marv never lost road access to his property.

If so, you’d think he would have complained about it in his 2.5 hours of tapes he left behind and in his scribblings. Guess what? He never once mentions losing a road easement to his property. That’s because it never happened.

And now, a note about the bogus photos used in the Bogus Killdozer YouTube. There’s a photo of a concrete plant, which is not the indoor concrete batch plant of Mountain Park Concrete. Oddly, just after the bogus photo of a huge and unsightly concrete plant the YouTube presents an actual photo of the real concrete batch plant. Odd.

There’s a photo of what appears to be a board of some sort deliberating about something in what appears to be a town hall meeting room. I think he presents this as if it were a photo of the Granby Board of Trustees. But it is not the Granby, Colorado Board of Trustees. It’s a photo of some sort of board or commission in Granby, Massachusets. The plaque on the wall bears out the truth here. It says the Granby relating to the photo was founded on June 11, 1768. Granby, Colorado was founded in 1905.

Many other images in this Bogus Killdozer YouTube mislead the viewers in similar twisted ways.

Invented story line is totally bogus

The bogus Killdozer YouTube then goes on to assert that Heemeyer asked to build a new road to his business for which he bought “machinery,” allegedly the Komatsu D355a that was used in the rampage. Nope. Although Marv did buy the bulldozer, it wasn’t to build some new road access to his property because he didn’t need any new road access to his muffler shop because he never lost any road access to his property. Nope. This is an invented story line by zachdirects.

Photos presented here are not Marv’s Komatsu. They appear to be stock photos cribbed from somewhere else on-line. There’s even a photo of a Komatsu pioneering a road. But it couldn’t have been Marv’s Komatsu because Heemeyer didn’t pioneer a road here in Granby because he didn’t need to.

The bogus Killdozer YouTube says Marv simply petitioned the town about the new concrete plant, which is only part of the story. Marv was trying to block the planning and zoning approval for the new batch plant by going through the town public hearing process. Yes, the town did not go along with Marv’s attempt to block the new plant. So Marv sued the town and his neighbors. The suit was thrown out by Grand County District Court on all counts.

In other words, Marv lost that fight fair and square, not by any evil doings or corruption. As well, the town approved the new batch plant after the lengthy public hearing process that was well-publicized.

In another huge fib, YouTube asserts sewage line was cut

Then this bogus Killdozer YouTube goes on to state: “During the building of the industry they cut off the sewage line to Marvin’s business and with the city deciding to eventually fine him for it.” Wow, that one’s a doozy with many errors.

But first and foremost, the town never cut off the sewage line to Marv’s because Marv NEVER HAD A SEWAGE LINE. (This despite the bogus stock photo in the YouTube of some “sewage” lines in a ditch, which could not possibly have been of Marv’s “sewage line” since Marv never had a sewage line.) The truth is that Marv dumped his sewage into a concrete mixing tank on the muffler shop property, which had no septic tank nor any leach field attached.

That was a non-conforming use on his muffler shop property that was tolerated by town and county officials for 12 years before any action was taken to fix it! If anything, the town and county didn’t pick on Marv needlessly, they treated him with kid gloves and let him get away with a non-conforming sewage system for more than a decade. One-time friends of Marv even noted that Marv used to brag about how he was getting away Scott free with this obvious violation.

If anything, the facts point to a situation in which government was too nice to Heemeyer, not too mean.

Anyway, this bogus Killdozer YouTube narrative then states: “And with no way to pay his bills he had to give up his land and sell his company.” In this point in the video there is a moving image of someone tearing up an envelope, as if he had captured Marv in his frustration.

The problem is that this is false. Marv did have a way to pay his bills since he operated his muffler shop right up until 2002. As well, he had income coming from other muffler shops he had sold on the Front Range.

Heemeyer wasn’t forced to close his business

Marv did not have to “give up his land.” He voluntarily shut down his muffler shop and conducted an auction of all his equipment. Nobody, neither the town nor his neighbors, forced him to do so. The actions against Heemeyer about the sewage line took place after he had auctioned his business. In fact, his concrete batch plant neighbors had earlier tried to give Heemeyer an easement for his sewer and water if he’d drop his lawsuit. Heemeyer hung up the phone and never responded. The town approached him with a similar offer. Same result. Silence.

The Bogus Killdozer YouTube then goes on to state he was told he had six months to evacuate the property. Once again, wrong. There was a court order issued that said he’d be fined and have a restrictive covenant on the property if he didn’t fill in the bogus sewage tank in six months. That’s all. He never did it and then was fined.

But in the meantime, he managed to negotiate a deal to sell his property to The Trash Company. He sold it for $400,000. He had purchased it 11 years earlier for $40,000. Marv wasn’t exactly broke, as this narrator would have you believe.

The Bogus Killdozer YouTube then presents a narrative that Heemeyer’s life was in a shambles and so he had to find a use for that bulldozer that he had allegedly purchased to build a new road to his business (false). So, in this bogus narrative, he takes the dozer and turns it into a tank.

It’s true he turned the dozer into a tank. It’s false that he had originally bought the dozer to build a new access since he had never lost any access.

The bogus YouTube video then goes on to explain the construction of the Killdozer and the rampage, leaving out any reference to the guns that were fired from the dozer at police and at propane tanks. The video uses photos of the dozer and clips from aerial news footage to add visual embellishment.

No evidence of any broken engagement

This Bogus Killdozer YouTube then makes the false claim that Heemeyer had broken off his engagement to a woman after his father passed away. Wrong. There’s no evidence of that anywhere nor from anyone. The video then shows a photo of a mountain town, which we are supposed to believe is Granby, but which is actually downtown Golden. Bogus again. He even flashes bogus image of a what looks like a town board deliberating, which I think we are supposed to believe is the Granby Town Board. The photo he used is not of any Granby board that I ever knew of.

The Bogus Killdozer YouTube then goes on to state that the day of the rampage started “dark and rainy.” This is minor but wrong again. The day was sunny and clear up until about halfway through the rampage when it sprinkled just a little bit.

The Bogus Killdozer YouTube then ends with this editorial statement from the director / narrator: “I don’t think Marv was that bad of a guy but a man that was driven to do irrational things. I feel we have thoughts of sticking it to the man, but we don’t . . . In my thoughts, neither the town or the man behind the machine were right.”

Hmmmm . . . Maybe if this director / narrator knew some of the real facts about the event he wouldn’t have thought that the town was really that wrong at all. Maybe it would have changed his perspective on Heemeyer as well.

The Bogus Killdozer YouTube video is so crammed full of mistakes and bogus assumptions that it comes close to defying my imagination. But I know that the narrative it presents is the dominant narrative on-line where Heemeyer is seen as the “last great American folk hero.”

This bogus YouTube is just one egregious example of how wrong that narrative is.

And it’s not as if this is an isolated, unknown video. It has been viewed 69,937 times as of Sept. 17, 2018. That’s according to the YouTube count.

No wonder people think Heemeyer was “right” and is a folk hero. Zachdirects has managed to produce a Bogus Killdozer YouTube video that is a true testament to our post-truth era, where false narratives make heroes out of our villains.

As our president would say: So Sad.