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This is a story of greed, betrayal, and a fight for justice. Listen to Dr. Death the Cowboy wherever you get your podcasts
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00:01:46
It's Georgia and Karen here to tell you about a brand new limited series from Blanchard House with Exactly Right Media and iHeart Podcasts.
00:01:54
Hell in Heaven is the unbelievable true story of John and Ann Bender, a young American couple who moved to the Costa Rican jungle with $600 million and a plan to build their own private Eden.
00:02:05
But what starts as a dream spirals into a nightmare complete with abduction plots, armed guards, uncut diamonds, and in the end, one dead body and a mystery that stunned two countries.
00:02:15
Hell in Heaven is the newest true crime podcast hosted by award-winning journalist Becky Milligan.
00:02:20
She investigates how one perfect couple's dream life in the jungle turned into an international scandal and ended with a murder trial that had everyone gasping.
00:02:29
So stick around after this episode of My Favorite Murder and hear the trailer for Hell in Heaven premiering Thursday, October 9th.
00:02:35
You can follow Hell in Heaven now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:02:40
Goodbye. Thank you. . What's up, Denver? Wow. Incredible work, you guys. You did it.
00:03:57
And that's it, right? Yeah, we're done. Bye. Oh, my God. I can't believe this is happening again.
00:04:05
Oh, my God. yeah it's been a it's been a long time coming it's been a minute i forgot what this feels like it's pretty fucking awesome you guys
00:04:20
hi how are you guys tonight I feel like I should say, just as we start, we're not going to remember our lines.
00:04:37
There's going to be things that you remember that we do not remember. It's been six years since we have been on stage.
00:04:47
Yeah. Except for when we came to the Bananas show here in Denver. That's right. And we only want to perform live in Denver. I guess that's what our sound is.
00:05:05
Do you want to talk about your outfit? What you're wearing today? Oh, you're immediately moving on to outfits?
00:05:09
I don't know. I don't remember how to do this. Do you want to talk about your tights?
00:05:14
Oh, these are tights, and we made a post about this. I just realized I would say 11 minutes ago
00:05:23
that I did not have any tights with me at all so my friend Vicky and my friend Craig ran out
00:05:31
and bought them truly at the 11th hour it was very scary very me we almost cancelled the whole thing
00:05:41
we almost had to just say you know what, everybody go home I'm hot in an unhealthy way. Yeah. That's like, I don't think is okay, but I do. Who else here is in perimenopause,
00:05:54
menopause or postmenopause Hell yeah Let get angry over nothing Everybody now The air conditioning's not on in the car.
00:06:08
Oh my fucking God. Where'd you get your outfit, Georgia? I got my outfit today at a vintage store here
00:06:20
called Goldmine. Is that right? Yes. Is that right? That's right. Yeah. I went in there. I had my whole outfit planned for like weeks.
00:06:31
And then I was like, I should probably just go to a vintage store real quick here.
00:06:34
Found this fucking insane vintage dress. It looks like it's tailored to figure. I know.
00:06:39
It's crazy. I'm wearing lots of undergarments. Okay. Sure. But then I steamed it backstage and I can definitely like smell the vintage.
00:06:49
Smell the ladies of the past? Yeah. It's a show dress, not a party dress. What did those ladies smell like?
00:06:56
Just describe it to us right now. It's a dusty, musty, mothball, cigarette, perfume, martini.
00:07:05
Yeah. Our kind of lady. That's right. Nice. I mean, that's an incredible vintage stroke of luck, I would say.
00:07:14
Yes. It's great. I want to do it every city, I think. Just not bring anything. Bring jeans to wear.
00:07:19
Yeah. Just be like, fuck it, and then find something in the city that fits perfectly.
00:07:23
It's perfect. Oh, this is the first fucking night of our tour. It's so funny. Thank you for selling it out two nights in a row.
00:07:35
You guys are the best. Then what do we do? Oh, I'm going to tell them about my dress now.
00:07:42
Oh, yeah, go for it. It has pockets, ladies and gentlemen. The arc. The spin arc.
00:07:52
Work it. Right? Yeah. Did you see there's someone in a hot dog? Holy shit, we've got a hot dog in the front row.
00:08:04
Thank you. No, it's all you. Yeah. It's all you. She should be our ambassador, probably, right?
00:08:10
Oh, that would be good. Wait, are you from around here? Okay. Will you know how to pronounce street names and the kind of things that people yell at us about?
00:08:20
Good as gold? oh her guess is as good as hey hot dog fuck off all right we're not having you hot dog drive us
00:08:29
down some weird blind alley and then everybody on this side's furious and everybody on this side
00:08:35
posts on social media we can't do it again hot dog and at the end of it she takes her fucking
00:08:40
hot dog costume off and hides it because she knows on the way out people are gonna like shame her
00:08:43
like i'm not the hot dog it's like you're the fucking hot dog hot dog shame is the worst kind
00:08:48
of hot dog. Shame. The worst kind of shame. Yeah. What is this? I don't fucking know.
00:08:58
It feels like a fever dream. What a joy. What a joy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being
00:09:08
here. We're very, very excited to be here. There's been a lot of build up. Lots. People are fighting in
00:09:16
the walkways. It's exciting. This is the kind of stuff, can I just, how about we share our favorite live show memories with each other?
00:09:24
I think we've done this on the show. Okay, you go first, because I don't remember any of them.
00:09:28
Wait, Hot Dog, you tell me. Have I told this story already on the show? My favorite live show memory is when, and it was kind of right there, but I can't, I think we were in...
00:09:38
Washington, D.C.? I think it was, was it Miami? It's the throwing up story? Oh, no.
00:09:46
I think it was the King's Theater in Brooklyn when literally seven minutes into the show
00:09:53
an usher, a very angry usher justifiably so, had to walk down and snap out a big
00:10:01
black, glad, glad garbage bag to start to clean up someone's barf right at the beginning. Right at the beginning of the show.
00:10:13
They served this like, they served canned wine, right? Which is like, that's a mistake.
00:10:19
And then some kind of cocktail that like surely made everyone shit-faced immediately.
00:10:23
Yeah, I think it was like a Karen and Georgia Long Island iced tea type of situation that people got very excited about.
00:10:31
Right, so we didn't technically make her throw up. We didn't make her, but we were a big part of it.
00:10:38
And that's what the legacy of this podcast will be when we finally wrap this motherfucker up.
00:10:43
Oh, this is my favorite murder of the podcast. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
00:10:54
That person over there forgot to clap. And then when I looked at them, they were like, oh, that's right.
00:10:58
Sorry, sorry, sorry. Sorry. Yep. It's kind of part of the show. It's hard with podcasts.
00:11:04
Because you're just used to like hearing us in your head. Like you're hallucinating a little bit.
00:11:10
Arguing about the stuff we're getting wrong. I thought you were the other one and she was you this whole time.
00:11:15
Yeah, there's that. That's a big piece of it. Has anyone been to a show before? A live show?
00:11:22
Okay, great. We're going to rely on you to tell us how this fucking goes. Thank you.
00:11:28
Should we... Is it time to sit down? Should we do it? Yeah. Let's do this. Look at this.
00:11:35
I know. How mad men are we? This is all from article. Promo code murder. I really needed to sit down because I needed to demurely grab the tissue I tucked into my...
00:11:47
There we go! There it is! Where'd you have that? Where was that, Georgia? Up in the carriage.
00:11:54
Up in there Undercarriage In her Kleenex undercarriage Sponsored by Kleenex That kleenex oh man i really thought i get get get over this by now this fucking tissue thing but
00:12:08
i think it's a great personality trait yeah it's one of your foremost personality traits yeah it's
00:12:15
martini dusty mothball tissue girl i mean what if you were the ghost of the woman who owned that
00:12:24
dress before. I love that for me. Magical. Wow. And then what do we do? Oh, yeah.
00:12:37
We don't really want you to yell at us. Remember, I'm the bitchy one. That's right. That's right.
00:12:49
I was a big bitch back before it was trendy. Remember that? I was all alone with it.
00:12:54
now we're all here in 2025 everyone's a bitch now just cutting it up all over the place
00:13:01
as is our right I mean enough is enough yeah since the last time we saw you our rights have been taken away
00:13:10
our bodily autonomy has been taken away and I think by the end of this tour we should figure out what to do about that
00:13:16
but in the meantime we're just going to have a fun podcast how about that Oh, I forgot to take a beta blocker.
00:13:25
I just remembered. Not only that, I drank a fucking Red Bull. Oh. This is going to be fun for...
00:13:33
That's the poor man's speedball right there. Yeah, girl. Can you check in about how it feels to be up and down at the same time?
00:13:42
My skin is tingling. Yes. For sure. And, yeah, I'm hot again in a weird... Like, feel my...
00:13:51
Yeah, I'll feel your neck. Oh, it's very hot. That's kind of a George Foreman grill heat right there.
00:14:00
And not even that cool. It's like, ugh. Yeah. Do you want to tell them, the people who haven't been here before,
00:14:07
the drag-alongs, like the rules of the show? We know you're out there. You poor, poor people that don't listen to this podcast
00:14:15
but had to come anyway tonight. We call you drag-alongs. We personally apologize.
00:14:21
We do. We understand. You're a great friend. You're a very good friend or sister or whatever.
00:14:27
Here's the thing. If you're going to use your camera, you can't have the flash on, Grandma.
00:14:33
Yeah. Check your stats there before you throw the camera up and then put a big light in our fucking face.
00:14:40
Please don't get that Usher angrier at us than he already is. Hell yeah. Yeah, you made the fucking Usher or security guard laugh.
00:14:49
That's a win for you. That's all we need. That's the point. That's all we're looking for.
00:14:55
Because they're like, what the fuck is this show tonight? And why do I have to work it?
00:15:00
These two weird chicks with a rug? Yeah. What? Look, it's this thing called podcasting.
00:15:06
They started it. Mark Barron started it in 2011. And it's gone since there. It's just like that.
00:15:12
That wasn't real. they're like she's stealing the history of podcasts old man marin started it way back when
00:15:20
what do we say yeah we say this is a comedy true crime podcast which is kind of hard for some people
00:15:28
who don't like comedy true crime or podcast to understand which we understand um we get it
00:15:36
we don't think murder is funny. We think we're funny. And finally, there might be other lines, but I can't remember.
00:15:44
If you don't like it, you can get the fuck out. But we don't want you to. What else should we say?
00:15:55
What else is there to say? Oh, wait, just really quick. Because we're back at a live show,
00:16:00
it does feel like a kind of a monumental event. Are you going to propose to me? Yeah, give me that big fucking ring right now.
00:16:08
Big fucking ring. I'm Taylor Swift, bitch. I just wanted to give a shout out to Stephen.
00:16:18
He's not dead, but he's also not here. He's totally fine. He's fine. He's still our friend.
00:16:28
He hasn't cut us out of his will or life. No. He actually recently sent me a picture of a sinkhole.
00:16:34
and then it was this friend that did it and then they went and put one of our t-shirts
00:16:38
it was a here's the thing t-shirt and they just put it right at the edge of the sinkhole
00:16:42
and when I looked at the picture you know sometimes when you look at your phone you see the picture before you see who sent it
00:16:48
or what the hell is going on and I was just like wait what is someone threatening me
00:16:53
sinkholes have merch now and they're ripping off our merch that's amazing sinkholes have merch
00:17:01
hell yeah Right? Yes. Can I really quick, just one technical thing. Can we hear ourselves on the monitor just to hint more?
00:17:08
I can't hear a word she's saying when she's not chasing me. Just a little more. Just laughing.
00:17:14
A little more us. This is where the show gets good because we can actually hear each other talking.
00:17:19
Watch this. I'm sure it's funny, but what if it was sad? I just laughed hysterically at it.
00:17:25
We look out and Hot Dog is sobbing. I'm just like, no, it's supposed to be funny.
00:17:31
How's this? This is better. This is good. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you. This tour is really hard because we've almost done 500 fucking episodes of this podcast.
00:17:42
Thank you. Most people quit at 63. Just a quick reminder. They should. So I feel like finding stories that we haven't done in the city or the state.
00:17:54
Okay. If it the state don boo It hard right Yeah We have to dig So yeah Luckily we have our researchers Maren and Ali who bust their asses for us
00:18:05
Badass. Do amazing work. Our producer, Molly Smith, who came on... Yes, you can totally applaud Molly Smith.
00:18:13
Amazing. Basically, in two weeks, became the producer of this podcast. So we love her.
00:18:22
She makes it work. As do, we could be naming lots of people that work at ERM right now,
00:18:28
but I'm just thinking of the people that literally got us to these seats right now.
00:18:32
Did we win an award? We have to like thank everyone now. And my mother. While the world watches the stars at the FIFA World Cup this summer,
00:18:42
Hyundai has its eyes on the next generation of talent. The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14.
00:18:48
Making plays that end up on everyone's feed, scoring from angles that don't make sense,
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rewriting record books that barely had time to gather dust. Because Next doesn't wait for an invitation, and Hyundai doesn't either.
00:18:59
Hyundai has always moved the future within reach. Hyundai did it by making advanced safety standard on every vehicle.
00:19:05
Hyundai did it by engineering EVs with ultra-fast charging capability. And Hyundai continues doing it every day.
00:19:11
From robotics that change how people live to young athletes changing the game, the future isn't some far-off concept.
00:19:17
It's already here. Next starts now. Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye.
00:19:23
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00:19:32
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Terms and conditions apply. See pandora.net for more details. Goodbye. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace.
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00:21:49
Quince.com slash MFM. Goodbye. All right. Should we start? You should start. You go first.
00:21:58
I'm first this time. Yeah. Thank you. It's confusing because we're going by stories, who goes first, not by who's supposed to actually go first.
00:22:11
So I'm sure we'll get it wrong one day. Right? Yeah, as we tend to do. It's kind of our style.
00:22:20
All right. Well, I'm going to do a story tonight. It's technically one of Colorado's oldest cold cases.
00:22:28
You guys know I love cold cases. Even though it was probably solved, but I'm going to need you because I have a theory.
00:22:33
too, and I think I'm right. Always. I'll figure out a way to argue with you. No, you'll like it. So, okay.
00:22:42
In the early 1900s, a prominent businessman was killed, leading to a winding investigation, several
00:22:49
scapegoats, and ultimately an escape from justice. This is the story of the murder
00:22:54
of William Dickens. Is anyone related to him here? You guys, we're in Longmont, Colorado.
00:23:06
Long butt! He's like one of your founders, like your founding father. So, you should know this.
00:23:14
Yeah. He founded it for you. That's right. And, uh, so the sources used in today's
00:23:20
episode are, episode? Story. I always do that. That's right. A WordPress essay titled Mysterious Death of William
00:23:25
H. Dickens by Carol Turner and an article from the Colorado Culture Magazine called The Oldest Unsolved Murder in Boulder
00:23:32
was probably solved a century ago by Erica Sims, the other sources in our show notes.
00:23:36
So look them up right now. What if you did the whole story in that voice? God, just channel the woman who wore this dress before.
00:23:45
She just- Light up the sink. Oh my god. What else do I have in my Spanx, do you think?
00:23:49
Just start pulling shit. Capris. Okay. This is scary. I can't believe we're doing this.
00:23:57
I mean, I'm going first and I'm terrified. You're really leading the way here. You got it.
00:24:04
Don't get it twisted. We seem fucking cool and collected, but we are... I am not right now.
00:24:09
Yeah, I know. Speak for yourself. Karen took the beta blocker, not me. Jealous. Uh-huh.
00:24:16
Okay. Thank you. That one person supports you. Mom? Janet? Is that you? Janet's here?
00:24:28
Okay. So it's the night of November 30th, 19... Holy shit, this is fucking weird.
00:24:33
I'm not kidding you. 1914. Carrie just texted me and told me that's when this ring is from.
00:24:38
1914. Whoa. Oh, my God, that's spooky. This is crazy. I didn't... Do it on purpose?
00:24:45
No. Wow. Admit it now if you did. Everyone... No one thinks it's as crazy as I do, right?
00:24:50
That's fucking bananas. There's a ghost. There's a ghost. My diamonds. My diamonds are haunted.
00:24:57
Play this fucking story. Stop it. Okay. November 3rd, 1914, a 71-year-old businessman named William Dickens and his wife,
00:25:04
Ida, are relaxing their reading in the library of their home. Me too. In Longmount, Colorado. It's a little bit north of Boulder.
00:25:16
I love Boulder. It's got this big boulder. Did you see the moth? There's a little moth, but it's good luck, right? Moths are good luck,
00:25:25
so don't kill it. There, I see it. Okay. Stop. About 8 p.m., they're chilling in their library,
00:25:35
as rich people do, and when a bullet pierces the library window and hits William in the back,
00:25:41
it passes all the way through him, which is not good, and grazes Ida's cheek and then lands in the wall.
00:25:48
Ida's injury is minor, and she jumps to her husband's aid, but tragically she watches as he passes away
00:25:54
within 10 minutes of being shot. Wow. The drag-alongs are like, this was not sold to me
00:25:59
as I thought it would be. They're like, I fought with you in the car all the way over here just for this.
00:26:08
Okay, so let's back up a little bit as we like to do and talk about the Dickens family.
00:26:14
William Henry Dickens is born, this dude, born on May 25th, 1843 on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
00:26:21
Sounds fucking horrible for her, for the mother. Yeah, for real. Right? Yeah, it's just like the gopher, the purser, there to help, boiling water or something.
00:26:31
We'll vote reference. No one. Okay. That's how your parents met. It is. Right? We're cruise line people.
00:26:40
Congratulations. Thank you so much. So his parents moved, are moving the family from England by way of Quebec when Mary gives
00:26:49
birth to William. It's probably a nightmare on board the ship. You can assume. Also, having a baby in international waters.
00:26:56
Oh. Where's that baby from? That's a great question. The ocean? Everywhere? The Little Mermaid movie?
00:27:05
Does he get to go back to the ocean anytime he wants? Because he's a citizen? Just ducks right in.
00:27:11
Like, I get to live here now? Like, I want to do in Ireland? Wouldn't that be great?
00:27:15
But I can't? Okay. Da-da-da-da. The family are all distant relatives of that, you guessed it,
00:27:21
English author Charles Dickens. Oh my god, I knew that. Wait, for real? Yeah, because that's their last name, Dickens, remember?
00:27:28
Yeah. Which indicates being related to someone. Always. Which is also, Ali's probably like,
00:27:35
Georgia probably didn't remember any of this because she told me some of the names
00:27:39
that Charles Dickens, of his books. Oh, nice. But I know, Ali. Let's hear him so we can finally cheer
00:27:46
for Charles Dickens the way we've always wanted to. Oliver Twist! Yeah! Great expectations.
00:27:53
My favorite. And a Christmas herald. I love the Muppet one. So good. I've read that one.
00:28:03
Soon after arriving in Quebec, the family then moves to Wisconsin and William's father.
00:28:08
Sure. All right. Cheeseheads in the crowd. The father and sisters pass away as their want to do back then.
00:28:16
Like everyone just fucking gets a cold and dies. They died. You know what they did a lot?
00:28:20
they coughed into like a kerchief and died a lot. Ooh, flummy. Yeah? Yeah, that's right.
00:28:26
So his mother, Mary, remarries a man named Alonzo Nelson Allen. They remain in Wisconsin until William is 16,
00:28:34
but they need to make more money. So he and his stepfather moved to Boulder. So they must have got along a little bit, right?
00:28:40
And they go mine for gold in what would be known as the Colorado Gold Rush. So congratulations, you guys.
00:28:47
You guys did amazing during that period of time. Incredible. So much gold. Yeah.
00:28:53
William and Alonzo aren't very good miners, though. You don't hear these stories that often.
00:28:59
The shitty mining stories. The shitty miners. Yeah. But they're smart, though. Instead, they leave Boulder.
00:29:06
They build a cabin near where St. Rain is. St. Rain Creek and Left Hand Creek cross in an area that soon becomes Longmount, Colorado.
00:29:16
Can I just say that when you said they were bad miners, then I immediately pictured two people with super long skinny arms.
00:29:23
They just can't get that pickaxe going at all. Oh, the pickaxe. I was thinking of the sieve, you know.
00:29:30
Oh, they can't, yeah, they can't. Sift for gold? Sift, yeah. No. Pan. Pan. Fucking pan, ladies and gentlemen.
00:29:38
Fucking pan. We got it. We still got it. We are miners. okay so this is what they do they build a farm together
00:29:47
and as more and more people start moving into the area because those are the people who
00:29:51
made the long lasting money the ones who took advantage of the gold rush people by opening businesses to sell them shit yeah right it what it called Capitalism Thank you You welcome I was absolutely gonna say communism
00:30:09
Thank you for that. Okay, so they, what did they do? When they, the firm business grows,
00:30:16
in 1863 William, Is this a dress rehearsal? I swear to God I've been studying this
00:30:23
because I've been so nervous. I can't, literally, I can't hold a thought in my mind.
00:30:27
I'm just like, we're doing it. It's happening. This isn't a dress rehearsal. It's so surreal.
00:30:33
Oh, my God. I have notes. And I'm still warm. Okay, sorry. No, you're good. No, you're right.
00:30:40
You're totally right to question me. Okay, so then the mom and their kids all show up.
00:30:45
And because this family home is situated along a prominent stagecoach route connecting Wyoming to Denver, the Cherokee Trail,
00:30:52
I don't know why I'm pointing at you, I'm pointing to you. Thank you. Mary and Alonzo set up a tavern and an inn,
00:31:00
and that does really well. This family was also... They become like fixtures in their community
00:31:06
after having been struggling before. And at age 26... Oh, I have a photo of him.
00:31:11
He serves in the Colorado Calvary, and he gets out, and here is a photo of William Dickens.
00:31:17
What, what, what, what? Oh, okay. all right then right this is from the longmont museum i know thank you this is on loan from the
00:31:29
longmont museum we got to get it back to them by midnight it's like at first you're like what and
00:31:34
then you're like i don't know yeah right no like you see this guy in a tavern in longmont yeah
00:31:40
longmont whatever it is like hello sir it can't be a lot of eligible bachelors back then
00:31:46
in general, right? No, I doubt it. Also, doesn't it look like he made that three-piece suit out of a cow
00:31:53
25 minutes before he took this picture? I mean, you can almost see the hair on that.
00:31:59
Yeah, they didn't have lint rollers back then. Oh, you mean the cow hair? I get it.
00:32:05
That's funny. Not cat hair. Nope. Well, we never know. You don't ever know. Okay.
00:32:16
You don't never know. You don't never know. And I refuse to accept it. Okay, so he takes the family profits and builds this place called Independence Hall,
00:32:26
which is a community center and drugstore. So they just get rich selling people shit.
00:32:30
Do you think it's still there? I don't... Is it? For real? Do they sell ice cream?
00:32:35
Do not lie about Independence Hall right now. Tavern. The tavern's still there. Fuck.
00:32:43
Party after. After party. is what I meant to say. We'll just drive three and a half hours to Longmont
00:32:49
and get fucked up. That's right. So, I don't know what you're yelling and I don't care.
00:32:57
Yeah, no. We literally can't hear. It makes me so nervous. We can't hear each other.
00:33:01
Of course we can't hear you. When you yell, even in a good spirit, a happy way, it makes us think you're mad
00:33:07
and it scares me. Okay? We're very, very damaged people. You should know that. Yeah, Jesus.
00:33:15
In 1969, within the next four years, he acquires a 120-acre plot of land he uses to expand the farm, cattle, like that cow outfit.
00:33:26
And so now he's making an honest living, and he's ready to settle down. He marries the woman from the beginning of the story, Ida Kitely.
00:33:33
Oh, here's a picture of her. Yeah, pretty good, right? Yes, she looks like many of the TikTokers I watch.
00:33:42
What? What? She's about to teach me how to use setting spray correctly. Come on, girl. She sure is. Oh, my God. Yeah.
00:33:50
Do you think they, I mean, they made people pose all serious like that for pictures back then.
00:33:55
Right. Because you can't, you have to sit there for three minutes, and so smiling for three minutes is kind of hard.
00:34:00
Yeah. But what if, like, deep down, she was like, yes, let's go get pictures taken.
00:34:04
I know. I always think that. She's the party girl of Longmont. She might be so fun.
00:34:09
No one will ever know. That's so sad. Anyway. Sorry for her. So they have five children.
00:34:18
They really liked each other. Or it was cold that winter. And he adds more and more business ventures to his plate.
00:34:27
In 1881, he builds the Dickens Opera House on Main Street. I don't want to keep referring to pictures.
00:34:32
Do you know it? There is a picture of it, though. Whoa. Fuck yeah. Does it still look like that?
00:34:38
Just with a bunch of Teslas everywhere? So many potential opera houses that we could be looking at right now.
00:34:44
I mean, pick one, you know? There. I think it's that one. No. On the right. There's a bunch of...
00:34:51
Do not do Hot Dog's job. They're not having it. Is it the one on the right? Once again, Hot Dog throws up her hand.
00:35:06
It's gorgeous. It's cute. Yeah. Right? I'm sure there's just meter after meter, parking meter.
00:35:12
You know, that's just what happens. It's the horse having to put the coins in with their big teeth, though.
00:35:17
Aw. That's cute. So they have kids. Then in 1891, he finds the farmer. He founds, founds, not finds.
00:35:26
It's not a thing. You got it. The Farmer's National Bank. And soon after, he co-founds the milling and elevator company.
00:35:33
What? How do those go together? What range this man has? Money. Elevators. Milling.
00:35:40
Booze. What's milling? Making stuff. Okay. Oh. Rubber? Someone yell hookers from the back?
00:35:50
Sugar. Thank you. Sugar? Milling? Sorry that was me Then that was on me Oh hey guess what It says the only flour mill large enough to complete just mere words away i have read this before i swear to god i fucking sweating i was having a thing backstage
00:36:11
where my it felt like my eyes weren't taking in information anymore like they were sitting on
00:36:16
things but like i didn't know what it meant i was like this is an interesting way to be yeah
00:36:21
Yeah. That's anxiety. Is it? I think so. Okay. And anyways, he maintains his wealth and social status as a successful businessman and philanthropist
00:36:31
into his early 70s, watching his children grow into adults. He enjoys his retirement with his wife, Ida, until, of course, the night of November 30th, 1914.
00:36:43
Yep. They're on board now. Yeah. They love it. And he gets shot, as I said. I'm back at the crime scene.
00:36:50
investigators find that bullet was shot with what would have come to be a fair, what would have been
00:36:55
a very distinctive high-powered rifle, which you know all about. Yes, ask me anything. On Reddit.
00:37:04
Because he's such a prominent figure in the Longmont community, the press picks up the story
00:37:09
of his murder. It seems that he had done so much good while he was alive that it was hard for people
00:37:14
to believe that he had an enemy capable of killing him, but you can make a lot of enemies. He's the
00:37:19
banker. Right. Don't people hate banker? Huge banking area group of people. Oh shit.
00:37:27
What the fuck? Karen. We've been listening to you since day one. She just starts reading it to herself. Anyway.
00:37:38
Oh my Oh my god. Just tell about the good part. Okay. So the sheriff Sanford Buster comes
00:37:48
up with some theories. First, they set their sights on a man named M Swallow. Spell it.
00:37:53
Swallow. Well. Do you need me to spell that for you? No. You don't usually work blue, but M as in just the letter?
00:38:05
Yeah, I think that Ali was like, oh, sometimes old-timey newspapers just refer to men by
00:38:10
their first initial. So we're going with M because we couldn't find any other name. Let's
00:38:15
call him what? Maurice. Maurice Swallow. People, are you guessing or do you actually know?
00:38:25
Is he your uncle, your great uncle? All these citizens that are just like, please get our history correct.
00:38:32
And he had an argument with him, but he's cleared. And then, so he has no enemies.
00:38:38
And so Sheriff Buster and his team consider the possibility of someone maybe who wants revenge on him.
00:38:43
because it turns out he wasn't the best. I guess when he served in the Colorado Third Calvary
00:38:49
back in the 1860s, he participated in the Sand Creek Massacre. Yep. You did that one, didn't you?
00:38:59
That was awful. You covered that one, right? Did I? How would I fucking know? I don't listen to this show.
00:39:09
That was me doing an impression of my sister. It was great. So they were thinking that maybe people were going to plot revenge against him,
00:39:20
but it had been so long. And then, let's see. I'm going to skip that, that, that, and that.
00:39:26
Just read it. People like it. They do? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're fine.
00:39:32
Okay, thank you. This is really interesting. We're not the opening act and they want us out of here?
00:39:39
Okay. You got this. Okay, thank you. Thank you. But in 1870, a full 44 years before the murder,
00:39:52
there was one or other event that sucked that could point to someone who would want revenge against William Dickens.
00:39:57
That year, a man named Billy Dubois, French, killed an innocent man. And a posse of vigilantes, which included William Dickens,
00:40:10
went after Billy Dubois. and they try to arrest him but it led to a shootout Billy goes down in the fight
00:40:18
and he swears to William that one day he will have his revenge right? Always a bad thing
00:40:25
I'd suspect that guy for sure right oh no he's dead oh he won't have his revenge
00:40:35
but maybe his brother will oh you know how brothers are I actually don't Yeah, you don't.
00:40:43
They fucking suck. They're real dicks. They steal your shit and hide it from you.
00:40:49
It's annoying. But it had been so long, and this brother is working as the clerk of a,
00:40:57
let's see, Laramere County. Is that you guys? He's got no criminal record. It sounds like he's just let his brother's memory
00:41:07
live on in a positive way Instead of seeking revenge. Right. So he's out. Okay. And then...
00:41:16
And it's, sorry, really quick. It's Larimer County. Oh, shit. Thank you. Yeah. What is it?
00:41:21
They actually, in a very organized way, yelled that back at us. I wasn't listening to that.
00:41:25
I didn't want to deny it because it was great work. I appreciate it. Yeah. No, you're totally right.
00:41:29
I see it here now. Clears day. Yeah, yeah. That was what I was meant to say. So, okay.
00:41:37
So he's out. He's out. Investigators find themselves back at square one, but they get a new lead when a clerk at a store
00:41:46
out of Denver, let's see you guys. Reports. No one class from Denver. And you like eh the fucking street lights here are real rough Aren they Like you stop at every streetlight every red light My God stop it
00:42:05
You mean the streetlights work here? They make you stop and then they ask you to go?
00:42:11
It's ridiculous here. Okay. Sorry, I was mean about the streetlights. I didn't mean it.
00:42:17
No, you were correct. So someone in Denver reports the purchase of a high-powered rifle
00:42:23
and silenced are just one month before the murder. They can trace these things back then.
00:42:26
And they care. And it's the same type of gun that was used in the shooting, which was a rare gun.
00:42:33
And the person who purchased this weapon is none other than William's own son, Rienzi Dickens.
00:42:41
You surprised? That surprises you? Heartbreaking. 34 years old, I mean... Spoiled.
00:42:47
Yeah. Nepo baby. Nepo tavern baby. You know how they are. The worst kind. Filled with pretzels and ego.
00:43:00
So he's arrested on December 3rd, 1914, just minutes after his father's funeral,
00:43:05
which had to be a fucking scene, right? Like, that's kind of fucked up. Those cops were, like, that's revenge from cops.
00:43:12
Totally. Like, you better be sure you got the guy if you're going to, like, storm a funeral.
00:43:16
Yeah. Right? One would hope. When Sheriff Buster asked if he ever purchased the gun
00:43:21
and silencer. Rienzi swears he didn't, but then the authority searches home and finds the rifle and
00:43:27
silencer. Where do you put it? I don't know. Well, it's dismantled into several pieces and
00:43:33
hidden throughout his own home. Which I bet houses back then didn't have a lot of hiding places, you know?
00:43:39
It's not like today. There's one big vase that you just had to put everything in there.
00:43:45
Police also dig through a pile of ash in the alley behind his house looking for evidence
00:43:51
because one witness claimed to have seen him frantically digging there the morning of his
00:43:57
father's funeral, which is a weird, like maybe that's his religious, no. Try a second one.
00:44:07
I don't want to. It wasn't good to begin with. Okay. Thank you. But thank you for the opportunity.
00:44:11
In the ash, they find the cartridge that held the bullet that killed William, like the bullet,
00:44:16
not the same one. So he is like, all right, you got me. I did buy the gun, but I insisted he was just shooting at a fence post for fun.
00:44:25
Sure. Toward his father's library. Right. Yeah. The fence post with the library behind it.
00:44:32
For fun. Right. So fun. And so he has an alibi, though. He was home on the night of the murder with his kids, but his wife was at the movies,
00:44:42
so there's no witnesses to actually place him there that night. There was movies back then?
00:44:47
A picture. I don't know. That's a great fucking question. What? Yeah. movie was it? There were pictures.
00:44:52
It wasn't a talkie. Kramer versus Kramer. Definitely. It was just that train coming at him
00:45:00
over and over. She was there forever. Screaming. Screaming their heads off. So his alibi isn't good
00:45:08
enough to prove and police discover a potential motive. Of course, because it's, guess what it is.
00:45:15
Right. Money. Money, money. Right. What were you going to guess? My mind was completely blank.
00:45:20
literally your finger went like that and I was like uh oh I'm supposed to say something right now
00:45:26
I know I hate when you do that so I don't know why I just did that to you I'm sorry
00:45:31
well I'll get my revenge during my story fuck okay what'd you do? this so it turns out
00:45:42
he's got a lot of debt records indicate that Renzi owes somewhere between $35,000 to $40,000
00:45:48
in debt guess how much that is today. Okay, we're talking 1914. 35 to 40. God, I'm bad at this.
00:45:57
I have to admit, after nine and a half years of doing this podcast, I'm so bad at this.
00:46:01
You got it right once. Let me just try it out. Don't help me. It's $350,000. I really wanted you to get this.
00:46:11
You're right, a million dollars. All right. Yay. And that's an example of what it feels like to be a Nepo baby.
00:46:22
Okay. You have another chance. Because his father's worth, estimated net worth, is about $300,000, which in today's money...
00:46:31
$20 million. $9.5 million. Sorry. It's okay. I've never been a math person, that's for sure.
00:46:40
Me neither. That's why we have a podcast. Podcast. Yay! so he was going to of course inherit some of that
00:46:49
of course and so but I swear to god I didn't kill my dad probably his mom and siblings
00:46:57
they all have his back they don't think he did it and later in the same month of his arrest
00:47:04
oh my god we haven't done this in so long December 1914 you have to remember inflect up
00:47:10
and come back down He's arraigned, pleads not guilty. He's released on $37,000 bond, which I don't know how much it is.
00:47:19
$800,000? Yes, it has to be. So they hire a whole team of private investigators to track down the real killer and get him, you know, out of here.
00:47:29
And they find one suspect worth considering. It's a rancher named John Ensley. Everyone's related to these people, I bet.
00:47:37
Yeah, I'm sure. And they just don't know him. Every single one of these people, yeah.
00:47:39
Oh, I have a cousin I don't know in the audience. I've just remembered. that's what he said
00:47:43
I don't know and you don't know your own cousin? he's like second cousin yeah so kind of a stranger?
00:47:49
yeah what do you think he thinks of you right now? I don't know but his wife likes me
00:47:53
so that's cool okay that's good I think he's a drag Wong and I appreciate you Stephen
00:47:58
um Okay, he used to work for William, but people close to him says he always resented William.
00:48:05
He was spotted drinking at a Longmont bar on the night of William's murder, and a bottle of this liquor that he drinks was found nearby, outside of the Dickens' home.
00:48:14
So that's not great. Shouldn't have left that behind. Right, right. But he was probably drunk off it.
00:48:20
It's enough for the police to question Ensley, but he tells them something interesting
00:48:23
that unravels the private detective's story. according to Enzli, most of the group of private investigators,
00:48:30
they all got him shit-faced, basically. And one of them, yeah, pretended to be a priest
00:48:35
who tried to trick him into confessing. So, a whole scam. What do you think? Yay or nay?
00:48:44
So it's like 1914 cops, so they're probably literally beating the shit out of him,
00:48:49
and then they're like, okay, we'll give you a moment to bleed and walk outside, and then one of them turns their shirt around
00:48:55
and is like, hey, I'm also going to beat you up, but you'll tell me, right? But I love God, so you tell me.
00:49:03
Peace up to the big one. Yep. And then the whole thing just was a big setup to try and frame him,
00:49:11
and so with no hard evidence against Ensley police, believe him and go back to the son.
00:49:17
So his trial for the murder of his father begins April 24th, 1915, and Judge Neil F. Graham, your favorite,
00:49:27
presides over the case and they come in hot and drop a bombshell. He claims he's received a confession letter
00:49:35
in the mail from the actual killer. Oh. Do you want me to read it to you? He reads it in court.
00:49:40
Please do, and please do it in a classic Colorado accent. Yes. Okay. Dear sir, please don't let them convict
00:49:49
Rianzi Dickens. Do I have it? pretty dead on, I think, yeah. Please don't let them convict him. I am the murderer.
00:49:58
I'd kill any man who would do me the way old blank blank did. I shot him in the window
00:50:03
with a rifle, which afterward... It's just like admitting to it in such a ridiculous way. Read the letter.
00:50:09
Read the letter. I shot him through the window with a rifle, which I afterward buried in Loveland. For God's
00:50:15
sake, don't let them convict an innocent man. Someday they will be sorry. I did it because
00:50:21
he had it coming. Signed, X. Real bullshitty. It's a real convenient... Real bullshitty.
00:50:27
Yeah. It's the For God's Sake that pushed it over the edge for me. Oh, please. Oh, please.
00:50:32
Easy. I'm fine killing a dude, but I don't want anyone to go to prison for it. That's right.
00:50:38
I don't know about that. The district attorney is like bullshit. Calls bullshit.
00:50:46
And so after about a month of going back and forth in court, Judge Graham sends the jury
00:50:50
off to deliberate and he gives them an option to either find Rienzi guilty of first degree murder or guilty of
00:50:56
second degree murder or not guilty and they find him guilty of second degree murder.
00:51:02
His wife faints in the courtroom when she finds out which is dramatic. Very old fashioned.
00:51:09
They fainted a lot back then. They loved fucking fainting back then. Like couches, literal couches
00:51:16
for it. I hear it was the corsets. but that might just be a rumor. Yeah. He gets a retrial and he gets out
00:51:25
on $40,000 bail and... $237,000. Yes. Man, you're fucking killing it. Every single one is right.
00:51:35
And it looks like his mother pays the bill, you know. Yeah. And then they, in the course
00:51:43
of the next trial, they find a weapon specialist who's like, maybe it wasn't the gun, the murder weapon
00:51:49
that was hidden all over his house. Maybe it wasn't. Could it not have been? Maybe.
00:51:55
There's so many things in this world. Right, that one of them could be this. And so
00:52:00
he Okay, so no, here we go. Just read the letter again. Okay, their application for retrial
00:52:13
is denied and he's given a sentence of 18 to 27 years imprisonment for the murder of his father, but he continues to appeal his guilty verdict. And in October of 1919,
00:52:22
the Colorado Supreme Court orders a new trial on the grounds that the second degree premeditated
00:52:28
murder charge was invalid because whoever did it was like premeditated it. You guys know how true
00:52:35
crime works. So the only valid verdict would have been first degree or not guilty. So technicality,
00:52:42
you're out, which is, you know, there for people who aren't guilty. You know? I mean, he's released
00:52:51
from prison while he awaits a second trial and he relocates to Long Beach, California for some reason.
00:52:57
I don't know. We went to the Rocky Stadium for the game last night. It was so...
00:53:03
I should have talked about that at the top. I know. It was like an anecdotal thing
00:53:06
to warm everybody up and win people over, but I forgot. It was so gorgeous and cool, and the Giants won, so I was excited.
00:53:16
But it was cool. Sorry, don't be mad. Let's not turn it into a sports thing like you always have to.
00:53:21
Just let us do our show. She has one team, that's it, that she wants to win. That's all I ask.
00:53:28
Let her have it. And in October 1921, he returns to Colorado for a second trial,
00:53:34
a couple weeks, focuses on that. Was the gun and the bullet the same? and they paid a lot of people a lot of money to say maybe it wasn't.
00:53:42
There's so many things in this world. There's so many things in this world, yeah.
00:53:45
And in the end, about two weeks, after two weeks of trial, he's found not guilty this
00:53:51
time. So after receiving his not guilty verdict in 1921 he heads wait there been other photos and I forgot them Is there another photo Let just take a look that yeah so that him right that right before he dies probably
00:54:06
william dickens no probably he looks kind of young it's just the same picture with a fake goatee
00:54:12
he's wearing a fake beard and he finally got that lint roller he was dreaming of
00:54:18
oh and then i think there's a photo of his house for some reason if you feel like saying it
00:54:23
Ooh. Right? Third Avenue, the place to be in Longmont. Oh, my God, do you guys know it?
00:54:28
Do you love it? I used to go trick-or-treating there as a child. Okay, and I think that's it.
00:54:33
So, yeah, that's all the photos. So stop looking over there. So look away. So stop it.
00:54:41
And so he lives in Long Beach the rest of his life, passes away in 1961, and what if, okay, here is my,
00:54:49
so they never really caught, it's a cold case because they never actually caught the murderer,
00:54:52
even though everyone thinks that they did, it was the son. Yeah. What if he had an insurance policy taken out on himself?
00:55:00
Hear me out. It's in a book that I won't spoil for you. Okay. But he has himself...
00:55:05
Guilt? Yeah. Isn't that terrible? Why would he have himself killed? Because then his wife can get the insurance money.
00:55:12
So do you think he had suicidal ideation? He was like, let's get five other people in on this plan
00:55:17
and make some cash? Wasn't he already rich? Yeah. Yeah. Shit. But you know what?
00:55:25
That's what greed is like, you know what I mean? It's never enough. It's never enough.
00:55:29
Tell it to the hot dog. That's why I'm a podcaster and not a detective, among other things.
00:55:38
Like I didn't go to college. Look, we're doing our best. As for his murder, the case technically remains cold, though most people believe Ramsey was
00:55:49
guilty but he was able to cast enough doubt with enough money to win his freedom and he maintained his innocence to the end leaving the truth about his
00:55:59
father's death a mystery hmm and that is the story of the murder of William Yeah. You're done. You did it. It was great. I know. Thank you. It happened. Yeah. Oh, thank you. You got it done. Thank you. Thank you. We all thank you. The people of Longmont, thank you.
00:56:26
Right? The Longmont Museum, now our business partners. That's right. It's an incredible opportunity.
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00:59:15
Goodbye. Okay, are you ready for my story? I'm going to tell one now. You guys know that we don't ever know each other's stories,
00:59:25
which we were talking about how annoying that must be for everyone who has to work on the show
00:59:29
because we have to take separate calls. I don't know what she's going to do. Yeah.
00:59:33
Well, so I'll tell you right now. I wish you would. All these people in the audience are like,
00:59:37
we've been listening to this bullshit for nine years. We know you don't know. But it's fun.
00:59:44
It's fun to talk about. Yeah. Guys, tonight I'm going to tell you a story that takes place
00:59:50
in one of your beautiful charming little scenic towns in the Rockies here in Colorado It one of those towns that has great hiking skiing fishing and what one website describes as quote strong Old West vibes I love those things Right Everyone got kind of a weird
01:00:09
janky hat on. The town has around 2,000 people. It's a tight-knit community. It's been described
01:00:16
as sleepy, cozy, and laid back. Me too. Right? That's you all over. You're so tight-knit.
01:00:25
But all of that changed on the afternoon of June 4th, 2004, when a man came roaring down the streets of this quiet little town
01:00:35
in a customized bulldozer. With the intent of leveling everything in his path, the man's name was Marv Heemeyer, and the town was called Granby.
01:00:49
This is the story of the killdozer. good job yeah wow i'm pretty sure maryn found this one and i was like you have done me a great
01:01:04
service truly truly this story is fucking nuts oh this is a great you story too like i feel like
01:01:14
this one was made for you it's really there's a lot of heroes and anti-heroes in this story
01:01:20
and then there's one big ass bulldozer and that's all I need really I'm like a three-year-old boy
01:01:28
in that way I just want I just want to look at big bulldozers bulldozers and sinkholes
01:01:32
sinkholes and bulldozers fire trucks you know uh okay did you say your sources for yours yes okay
01:01:39
great though I wasn't listening you even commented on it did I yeah you did was that tonight yeah
01:01:46
So the main sources that Marin used for this story today are the book Killdozer, the true story of the Colorado Bulldozer Rampage by author Patrick Brower and a 2020 documentary called Tread.
01:02:04
Okay. So we'll just talk about Marv first. And so you learn a little background.
01:02:11
Marv Heemeyer is born in 1951 in South Dakota. Are you fucking serious? Are you serious?
01:02:22
Wow. Did you drive? Wow, they drove. How long is the road trip? 11, 7. Someone goes in a bulldozer.
01:02:33
Classic. That's good. It's like the straight story, but with a bulldozer from South Dakota.
01:02:38
How long does it take to get here driving? Six hours. Thank you very much. Yeah.
01:02:43
All the rest of the shit you're saying we can't hear, and we'll talk about it later.
01:02:50
South Dakota. I know. I feel like I've never met a person from South Dakota. No, you haven't.
01:02:56
This is... What's one of your names? Carrie? Veneres? Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary?
01:03:08
Mary Smith? Nice to meet you, Mary. Now I've met someone from South Dakota. Okay.
01:03:15
But Marv's family comes to Colorado in the mid... No, sorry. Marv himself comes to Colorado in the mid-1970s.
01:03:22
He's stationed at the now-defunct Lowry Air Force Base right here in Denver. Thank you for your service.
01:03:30
And then when Marv leaves the Air Force, he stays in Denver to pursue his newest passion.
01:03:37
Just give a guess. Okay. Is this you pointing at me to guess? A little bit. Uh, bulldozers?
01:03:44
No? Race car driving. Snowmobiling. Damn it! That's kind of close, though. I got a vehicle, you know?
01:03:54
And it's also one of those vehicles with the cheney things, not actual wheels. So I'm going to take that as a win.
01:03:59
I think it's a huge win. I need it. Also, I just think it's funny when I was looking at this,
01:04:04
where it's like the words passion and snowmobiling are quite a combination. Yeah.
01:04:10
So snowmobiling becomes a huge part of his life. He takes weekly trips out to rugged areas with his friends
01:04:17
so they can ride their snowmobiles and hoot and holler and whatnot. They snowmobile so hard together that eventually Marv decides
01:04:26
to go into an auto repair business with one of those friends, a man named John Kleiner.
01:04:32
So they open up a shop in Boulder, and Marv becomes known as a virtuoso Also when it comes to welding and repairing mufflers.
01:04:42
Kind of hot. The Mozart of mufflers. Did you say kind of hot? I don't know why welding to me is just like one of those tough person things.
01:04:53
Yeah, let's show it. Can we see? Yeah. Hey. If you saw that while you were scrolling whatever the apps, what would you do?
01:05:03
Push left. What's the thing you do? I don't know. The answer is yes. Does his hat say silver bullet?
01:05:11
Does it? Hell yeah. He got that for free. Or with like points from the tabs. He sent away for that.
01:05:23
So one of Marv's friends will later tell the AP that, quote, he could change a muffler by himself in 20 minutes.
01:05:31
No wasted motion. He knew what he was doing. All right. It would be nice to have friends that talked about you like that.
01:05:39
Yeah. Yeah. True appreciation of your skill. Especially mufflers. She's great. Karen's great at mufflers.
01:05:46
She's so good at mufflers. No wasted motion. It's the thing I'm sick of when I go get my car fixed and they're like, ugh.
01:05:53
It's like, come on. 20 minute oil change for fuck sake So at some point Marv and John they split off and do their own things Marv opens a different shop on his own and that does very well He also made a
01:06:10
bunch of money investing in real estate so he's doing good. And then in the early 90s he moves
01:06:15
to Grand Lake, Colorado. It's just this huge lake. I don't know, Grand. And he does it for
01:06:25
the snowmobiling, that's right. And then this is when he hears that his old friend and business
01:06:32
partner John is thinking of expanding his business toward the Rocky Mountains. And that news gets
01:06:39
Marv's wheels turning because he had recently come across a vacant two-acre lot in Granby,
01:06:45
near his current home in Grand Lake. That lot was previously owned by a concrete business that
01:06:52
changed hands before that business failed and went bust. Sometimes Maren uses these phrases,
01:07:01
like she'll be like, and everything went bust. And I'm like, I don't really talk like that,
01:07:05
but I guess I missed that one. So that piece of property has been bank owned for three years
01:07:13
and when Marv sees it, he sees it as the perfect place for an auto repair shop. It's got a two-bay garage.
01:07:20
It has lots of storage space, beautiful lighting, a great room in the front, an office,
01:07:30
and it's perfectly located at the intersection of two highways. So it's where you want to be.
01:07:35
Break down. Here you go. To right over here. Yeah. The best thing about it, though, is the price.
01:07:40
The property is appraised at around $100,000, but the starting bid is $20,000. That's cheap, right?
01:07:48
Yeah. Marv's like, I'm going to go to that auction. I'm going to kick some ass. Do you want to guess how much?
01:07:56
$20,000? $70s? No, no. It's 94. That's the last. 92. Okay. The last thing I heard was 70s.
01:08:05
Okay. $20,000 in the 90s. Today it would be $85,000. $46,000. That doesn't sound like enough.
01:08:17
Shit. Okay. Reporter Patrick Brower says, quote, Marv hoped he could buy it for a song, lease it, or sell it back to Kleiner on favorable terms
01:08:26
and add to his already fairly comfortable income stream. So the two men work out a deal where Marv agrees to buy the two-acre Granby lot and finance it back to John for $66,000.
01:08:39
That's still well below the appraised value, making it worthwhile to John, but a big payday for Marv, as long as he can buy it close to that starting price.
01:08:48
So it's 1992. Marv shows up at a real estate auction ready to get that property.
01:08:53
But right as the bidding begins, he realizes that someone else wants that property too.
01:09:00
And it's the former mayor of Bramby, a man named Gus Harris. So Mayor Harris also has a friend with him.
01:09:08
It's the former property owner of the concrete business that used to be their...
01:09:17
Right? You know what I'm about to deal with. So this man's named Cody Docheff, and Cody sold his concrete business, someone else bought
01:09:26
it, and then that person went out of business, and then the bank owned it. Okay.
01:09:30
So Cody actually made money off of that. Got it. So he's there with the mayor, and author Patrick Brower describes Cody in his book as, quote,
01:09:39
as a, quote, high-energy spark plug of a man. See, when you're here at the live show, you can hear all the edits that we can't make.
01:09:48
That's right. The blabbing and the t-t-t-t. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to... It's hard to...
01:09:55
Yeah, that's right. So he's basically... Cody's there to egg on the old mayor and to get him bidding and have some fun.
01:10:07
So the auction begins. It's immediately intense. The bidding, of course, goes back and forth between Mayor Gus, then Marv,
01:10:15
and then Gus raises, and then Marv raises, and it goes back and forth until finally Marv wins the auction
01:10:20
with a bid of $42,000, which is about how much in today's money? $68. $95. Fuck.
01:10:30
Damn. Yeah. Should we stop doing this? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's an old fucking trope that we should put away.
01:10:37
Yeah. Just shelve it and never again guess money. Maybe this tour is the last money-guessing tour.
01:10:44
And then we fucking end it. We were trying to think of a title for this tour, and now we've finally stumbled upon the best title ever.
01:10:52
So once that auction's over, Marv claims that Cody came over to him and starts to chew him out.
01:10:59
He will later describe Cody as, quote, the rudest and most arrogant person. I mean, this guy is just a fucking asshole.
01:11:07
Marv, language. Love it. Marv also claims that he immediately offered to sell the lot that he just bought to Cody,
01:11:16
even though Mayor Gus is the one that was bidding on it, for $66,000, which was the same price that he offered to finance it for his friend John.
01:11:25
Cody and a handful of other people who were at the auction that day flatly denied that that exchange ever took place.
01:11:33
But the problem is, now in this very small town of Granby, Marv Heemeyer is rubbing some locals the wrong way. And as we all know, the people of us that
01:11:44
come from the country, that's a problem. You don't want to do that. But Marv's problems are
01:11:50
about to get worse. Because not long after purchasing this property, a man named Bud
01:11:55
Wilson from the Granby Water and Sanitation Department comes out and informs Marv, that this property is not connected to the city septic system.
01:12:04
Yeah, what does that mean? That means when you flush the toilet, it just kind of goes out.
01:12:12
All right. Actually, in the country of, you think called, wait, it's a leech field, right, where it
01:12:24
just, it's like, well, it just goes out into a big empty field. Oh, no. Uh-huh. Okay, so listen.
01:12:30
Let's not talk about shit anymore. Because that's not the worst part. The worst part is it turns out that the main line hookup
01:12:38
for him to get connected to the city septic system is 100 feet away off of his property.
01:12:45
So it's on somebody else's property. And if that's not bad enough, the owner of that land is none other than former mayor Gus Harris.
01:12:54
Oh, man. His auction enemy. This is like a Looney Tunes cartoon. It's a little Coen Brothers-y, this story.
01:13:04
So after the way things shook out at the auction, it is easy to assume that Gus probably wouldn't be the hugest fan of Marv,
01:13:11
might even be a little resentful of Marv's obnoxious behavior. Plus, as anyone who grew up in the country knows,
01:13:17
the installation and upkeep for a new sewer system is pricey. And that's when Marv learns it's going to cost him upwards of $80,000
01:13:27
to install this. And that's, of course, twice what he just paid for the land itself.
01:13:34
So the project is automatically way over budget from what he and John Kleiner originally agreed to be working on.
01:13:41
So suddenly Marv's investment property is morphing into a serious money pit, and he tries to do some damage control.
01:13:47
He shows up at the next Granby Town Hall meeting, and he thinks he can somehow push or reroute the negotiations
01:13:55
away from Gus and to the city of Granby itself. And he basically wants them to handle the negotiations
01:14:05
and the subsequent installation costs. And Marv actually tells the city board, quote,
01:14:12
you've got to hook me up. Get that on a shirt. Yeah. And then there's just a bunch of shit underneath.
01:14:22
Karen's going blue. Is that blue? No. No, that's just gross. I guess it's brown, if anything. So the Granby Town Board tells Marv
01:14:32
that the city will not be holding his hand through this process and that Marv needs to get his
01:14:37
property hooked up to the city's sewer system, which means he has to work things out with Gus
01:14:42
Harris. And as you might guess, Marv does not like this answer. And he tells the board members in what
01:14:48
some might say is a condescending tone that, quote, you can't expect to grow if this is your
01:14:54
policy. It's extortion by the government fiat. I don't need you. You need me. Uh-oh. Yeah. That's foreshadowing.
01:15:03
Then he tries to drop the mic, but it's one of those ones that connected to the podium.
01:15:07
So he's just like pushing it down. And then he storms out. Yes, queen, go. right men are so dramatic i love this dance of uh you're asking me to be reasonable
01:15:24
how can you grow if that's your policy maybe they don't want to grow yeah you know maybe that's
01:15:30
granby um so the whole thing is taking place in a town hall meeting on the record in front of a
01:15:37
bunch of people it's not a good look for the new guy who basically just screwed up and is now
01:15:41
begging the town for help. Marvel then informed town officials in the interim that he will be
01:15:47
putting in a new septic tank. So Gramby's fine with that. What he doesn't tell them is what he's
01:15:53
doing is he found an old cement mixer on the property and he's just going to bury that and
01:15:59
use that as the septic tank. The cement mixer? I guess I don't really know how septic tanks work.
01:16:05
It's just a big... I'm being honest. I'm from the suburbs. It's like a waiting room for your shit.
01:16:11
Okay. It's more complicated than that, but we don't need to talk about it. And then Merrin wrote, and if you think that sounds like a bad idea, that's because it is a bad idea.
01:16:26
So Bud Wilson from the Water and Sanitation Department warns Marv he can't rely on a septic tank forever.
01:16:34
He will need to figure out how to hook up to the city sewer line at some point. But before Marv can expel the cortisol from his system and work amicably with his neighbor,
01:16:49
his business buddy Snowmobile sister, John Kleiner, unexpectedly finds himself involved in an EPA audit over some old oil spills.
01:16:59
That doesn't sound good. Don't worry about it. It's not a big deal. It's just personal oil spills that the EPA has to get involved with.
01:17:07
It's personal. So when you know it, John now begins backpedaling to get out of the Gramby plan that he was going to do with Marv.
01:17:16
So Marv decides that he's just going to do it himself. He's going to set up his new muffler shop.
01:17:22
But remember, he planned to lease and finance that property to and with John. It's not happening.
01:17:31
So Marv has to go it alone. He opens Mountain View Mufflers. everybody loves it totally and he services just about uh everybody in town and he actually does
01:17:44
really well so things start looking up and even better because he does such great work at the
01:17:50
muffler shop he basically starts doing damage control with the locals he even makes some friends people are like oh this guy really good and they get to know him as a person And he doesn waste a movement or whatever it was That right No wasted movement
01:18:05
They're like, look at the clean lines of this guy and his muffler work. Look at him go.
01:18:10
He's like a ballerina with the muffler. Locals think that Marv is nice, he's friendly, he's making friends,
01:18:19
things are starting to go smoothly, and Marv is really happy about his transplant
01:18:24
to this mountain community and then he's making good money and what is he doing with that money?
01:18:30
Snowmobiling, that's right. I knew it this time. It's the dream life, he's thriving.
01:18:36
But there is one problem for Marv and it's Bud Wilson, the Granby water and sanitation guy
01:18:43
who keeps on calling and reminding him he's got to connect to the city sewer line.
01:18:49
Yeah, how's he, okay. Yeah. Well, it's that kind of thing where like, you know how some of us get very good at pushing
01:18:56
off other people to not do the thing that they just don't feel like doing? Well, he does this
01:19:01
for five years. Okay. Epic procrastination, just masterful, no wasted movement in that.
01:19:10
So now it's 1997. Marv's in his mid forties. He has been running this muffler business for five
01:19:15
years. And that is when the Dochev family approaches him asking if they can buy the property.
01:19:22
So this is Cody Dochev's family. They owned the concrete plant before. And Cody was the spark
01:19:31
plug of a man. And the family basically wants to start the concrete plant on that property again.
01:19:38
But Marv doesn't like Cody. God, he doesn't like a lot of people. I think he's sensitive,
01:19:44
maybe a little emotional sometimes you gotta look at yourself if you're not getting along with a lot of people
01:19:50
that's very true saying that to me, saying that to you surprisingly Marv says he is not opposed
01:20:02
to selling to the Dochefs in fact, he gets the lot appraised and he lets them know the property is
01:20:08
now worth $270,000 but when the Dochefs agree to that price, Marv ups the price to
01:20:16
$375,000 and then before claiming that actually the land is worth a million dollars.
01:20:26
Dude, calm down. So he kind of does a bait and switch of like, sure friend, I'll negotiate
01:20:32
with you and then, not really. So this forces the Doge Chefs basically to just walk away from this deal.
01:20:38
But what they do, because they're also petty bitches, is they buy the land next door to Marv.
01:20:45
Or maybe they just had to. You know what I mean? Maybe that was just, you can't put a concrete plant just anywhere.
01:20:51
Sure. It was just like, they didn't have a ton of choices. Yeah, I get it. So when Marv finds that out,
01:20:57
he tries to buy that property out from under them before they can finalize the deal,
01:21:01
but it's too late. Ink is dry. He can't do it. And this is when Marv goes on an all-out crusade
01:21:07
to fight that forthcoming concrete plant being put in next door to him. this guy is exhausting.
01:21:13
Like, fuck, dude, take a nap and go ride your fucking snowmobile. My thing, it's for real,
01:21:18
right? It's like, you can't only snowmobile your way out of your emotions. You have to pit,
01:21:22
you have to go to therapy. You have to fucking go to therapy. I'm sorry. Yeah, you can say snowmobile.
01:21:28
I mean, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What were you saying? Nothing. Okay. So, what is that bug?
01:21:38
It's a mob, I'm telling you, it's a ghost. I mean, but it's a pig moth. If it lands on my shoulder, I'm leaving.
01:21:48
We do. Okay, so Marv frames this concrete plant as a toxic, harmful project. He says he's worried that the dust and the environmental issues will bring all kinds of problems to his property.
01:22:02
He cites all sorts of zoning violations and issues. To be fair, Marv is not the only person in Granby who feels this way about this concrete plant.
01:22:11
But for Marv, it's personal. He starts going door to door in Granby. Yikes. And he also runs countless ads in the local newspaper.
01:22:22
Oh, God. Sky High News. Anyone heard of it? Love it. Of course not, they say. We're not from Granby.
01:22:30
But basically, he's doing everything he can to kind of lobby against this plant.
01:22:33
He also lawyers up. He files a lawsuit in hopes of halting construction. so now the Sky High News starts covering this battle
01:22:43
because it's so public Marv's not pleased with the angle they take on the situation though
01:22:48
because they position both him and his attorney as outsiders I'm considered an outsider in Petaluma
01:22:55
because I moved there when I was two it's how small towns are and that town is a big town compared to Granby
01:23:02
if that fucking moth doesn't get out of here while I am performing. Excuse me. Excuse me.
01:23:15
Mom? Okay. They're good luck. Man on the street interview with a moth? How long have you lived at the Paramount Theater, moth?
01:23:27
Okay, this is so fucking long. I gotta go. All right. Unfortunately for Marv, all his time, money, and energy fighting this cause
01:23:35
does not stop the concrete plant. If anything, it causes the town of Granby to make sure
01:23:40
everything is done exactly by the book. So they're not breaking any rules. And the dochefs work with the town to iron out
01:23:47
all those zony issues that he was trying to cite. And meanwhile, Marv has convinced himself
01:23:52
that the city is conspiring against him and his business He might be right I mean I don think he is Oh Okay Knowing what is at the end of this document
01:24:05
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Keep it in mind. Yeah. So then in 2001, which is four years, you know, into his crusade against the concrete plant,
01:24:14
a really bad thing happens. We're going back to... 2001? Yeah. I think I know what it is.
01:24:22
It's not 9-11. Oh. the concrete mixer fills up and begins to overflow. Ew! Yeah.
01:24:34
And so what Marv does is he doesn't solve the problem. He just, he simply pumps all of that human waste
01:24:42
into a ditch behind his property. Nah, dude. You can't do that. Nope. Turns out.
01:24:47
It turns out it is against the rules. Yeah. He's like mad at the concrete people,
01:24:52
but then he's just like dumping shit? Exactly. He's an environmental toxicity warrior.
01:24:57
And then it's like, it's natural. Yeah, he's only mad at concrete, not human feces everywhere.
01:25:07
So he immediately gets caught doing that. He gets fined $2,500 and warned that he absolutely must get connected to the city sewer system
01:25:15
or his business could be shut down. And Marv calls this requirement a form, quote, a form of terrorism.
01:25:23
Ah, bad timing, dude. What, do you want me to have indoor plumbing, too? What is this?
01:25:32
Did it land on me? Oh, it landed on me. That's good luck, right? Anyone? Is it on you?
01:25:37
Yeah. What do you want from us? Hi. We're trying to do our first live show back after six fucking...
01:25:46
That's cute. Yeah. I'm happy about it. Oh, wait. Maybe it came from my dress. Maybe I don't smell like moth balls.
01:25:58
That poor moth is like, I just want to go home. Please let me, please let me go home.
01:26:05
This hot lady is wearing my fucking dress. You steamed him out of the dress. Oh no.
01:26:12
Oops. He's still there. Put your finger up, wait if he flies away. So this is when Cody Dochev calls Marv and offers to cover the cost of the sewer line installation if Marv will just stop fighting about the concrete plant.
01:26:33
So Marv hangs up on him. Yes, he is not down. So at this point, Marv's been spending a lot of time alone, often in his hot tub, which you would think would be a positive.
01:26:46
I get it. Yeah. This is the one man who a hot tub is not a positive, doesn't have a positive effect on him.
01:26:53
It makes it worse. He's wearing those overalls and he has a muffler and he's just like, I've never wasted any emotion.
01:26:59
And still, here I am. Stewing in anger and paranoia in a hot tub. If this sounds like you, please call the Gramby Hot Tub Hotline.
01:27:11
uh also i wrote in this is just a guess but it sounds like it might be spring so i think he
01:27:18
hasn't snowmobiled in a while so he's itching all this is to say marv isn't a bad place and we know
01:27:25
this and we know what happens next because marv ends up recording a very long manifesto man when
01:27:32
there's a manifesto you don't shit's going south right this is that's the gate yeah through which
01:27:39
you walk and you're like, now this goes into a terrible true crime story. The timeline goes like
01:27:45
this. In April of 2002, Marv's lawsuit against the Dochefs is officially dismissed. Back in the hot
01:27:52
tub. Hot tears. Five mufflers this time. So the concrete plant is going full steam ahead. Three
01:28:00
months later, in July of 2002, a special delivery arrives for Marv in Granby. What is it? It's an
01:28:08
enormous Komatsu D355A bulldozer, which he reportedly got a great deal on. Oh. So these are the gigantic bulldozers
01:28:20
that were designed for oil fields and mining operations. I didn't know there were different kinds of bulldozers.
01:28:25
That's great to know. There's like a little one, like a skip loader that they use at Costco,
01:28:29
and then there's these fucking gigantic ones that are like, we're going to dig into the center of the earth
01:28:33
and release cryptids. that's my personal dream anyway they're over 12 feet tall nearly 30 feet long and they can weigh
01:28:44
over a hundred thousand pounds jesus what else is 30 feet long a standard school bus a large rv
01:28:50
an adult blue whale good to know for reference that's according to ai i'll say which also
01:28:58
recommended that to stay healthy you should eat six small rocks a day so let's take everything
01:29:05
with a grain of salt in our AI future. This whole thing was written by AI. So the manifesto, of course, is a terrible sign.
01:29:15
Giant earth-moving equipment is not a great one either. Then Marv starts selling everything he owns at auction.
01:29:22
Horrible. His shop equipment, motorcycles, boats, his house, and worst of all, his seven beloved snowmobiles.
01:29:31
It was very bad. I thought you were going to say dogs, but snowmobiles isn't as bad.
01:29:37
So by October of that year, Marv has sold almost all of his assets. He's closed his muffler business.
01:29:44
Nobody is seeing these signs, which is very upsetting. And maybe he just alienated enough people where it's just like, oh, that guy.
01:29:51
He also moves all his money into his father bank accounts without telling him or anybody else He also works out a temporary arrangement with the people that he sells his like house and land to that he they allowing him to lease back the muffler shop for a year
01:30:07
so as he explains to them so he can quote finish some work. Fun fact one day after closing the sale
01:30:14
on this property the new owners connect the property to the city sewer system. Just that easy.
01:30:21
my god 24 hours okay so marv secretly moves himself and his giant bulldozer into his muffler
01:30:32
shop and for the next year no one knows what he is doing in there this is when he begins recording
01:30:39
this manifesto in which he says of the local people of gramby quote they thought they could
01:30:44
do whatever they wanted to me, they were wrong. And so his revenge project begins. Marv begins
01:30:51
modifying this gigantic bulldozer, adding steel and concrete panels up to a foot thick, attaching
01:30:58
video cameras protected by bulletproof lenses, and mounting several gun ports, basically turning
01:31:05
this machine into a full-on weaponized tank. Jesus. Dude. And then, on June 4th, 2004,
01:31:14
Marv climbs into this gigantic armored bulldozer and lowers a steel slab weighing several tons
01:31:20
over the hatch, and once he does this, he has no way of getting back out. Oh. Let's take a look at the killdozer.
01:31:29
Can we? Holy shit. It's the death star of bulldozers. I mean, right? Wow. I mean, yeah, I guess welding. That's what welding. That's what welding can give
01:31:43
you. That's what no wasted motion can end up looking like. It's just so sad. It's like that
01:31:49
is that took so long. That's a person who is in so much pain and nobody, he didn't have anybody
01:31:54
to turn to. He did. He just was like, fine, I'll just weld the fuck out of these feelings. Yeah.
01:31:59
Horrible. So around 2 p.m., this 90-ton machine bursts out of the muffler shop and going three to five miles an hour.
01:32:12
That's not as tough, you know? Yeah. Very, very... Make up a different number. It's like...
01:32:19
It's a slow attack, which I think are worse. Yeah. It's like the zombie thing. I prefer a fast zombie and just get it over with.
01:32:28
Okay. Yeah. It's the... All right. Okay. So his first target is the Dochefs concrete plant.
01:32:39
Workers there watch in disbelief as this steel-covered bulldozer smashes onto the property through the plant walls.
01:32:49
The building collapses around it. Bystanders try stopping this bulldozer by jamming debris into the treads.
01:32:57
one person fires a handgun at it, but you saw it. It does nothing. And they can't see if there's a
01:33:04
driver inside. They don't know if somebody is working it remotely. Like no one understands
01:33:08
what's going on. And this is when Cody Docheff shows up. Oh, I bet you, can you go backwards
01:33:13
if you could? Because I think, I have a theory that that's Cody Docheff. He tried to get into it,
01:33:18
but he actually slipped off of that. That's a guess though, because there's a cop there,
01:33:23
so that could be a cop and I could be wrong. But Cody Docheff actually tried to get up and inside
01:33:29
when he was doing that and he was unable to. So what he did, he gets the rest of the concrete plant,
01:33:35
evacuate it, and then he goes and gets his own front end loader and he tries to basically go lift, I don't think we have that,
01:33:45
go lift that bulldozer off the ground. Damn. It's like, that's sad. Don't, no. You're not going to beat that thing.
01:33:54
All Cody can manage doing is spinning the bulldozer around a little bit, but as the two machines ram each other, Cody gets knocked out.
01:34:05
Oh, man. So this is when Marv starts shooting. Oh, fuck. He fires 10 to 12 rounds toward Cody's loader.
01:34:14
Sorry, that's really hard to say. Toward Cody's loader, but the steel plating makes it hard for him to aim on the right side.
01:34:22
So it's not very well planned out, I guess. So thankfully, he misses Cody. And I'm not sure if Cody was still unconscious or not,
01:34:31
but how scary for everybody else. We're like, then the gunshots start. Either way, if he was awake or not.
01:34:37
So now the police made it on the scene. They have to duck for cover as Marv turns the bulldozer's guns
01:34:42
in the direction of a fuel truck. Ooh. But thank God he can't aim well. So instead of hitting the fuel truck,
01:34:50
He just takes out some natural gas piping, which is, it's fine, it's natural. And a couple electrical boxes, which is just sparks, and that's fun.
01:35:00
And a transformer, which is a great cartoon. So once that's done, the bulldozer then turns and slowly drives off, heading toward downtown Granby.
01:35:13
And this is where it gets bad. Marv drives the bulldozer into Granby and his path of destruction begins
01:35:20
he crushes a Ford expedition he destroys the Granby town hall the town fucking hall
01:35:27
then he destroys the library then he destroys the city's only traffic light come on
01:35:39
then a bank we have the bank holy shit Yeah, like the bank. That gorgeous stone-faced bank.
01:35:54
Then this guy, hey, newspaper offices who had been reporting on him. Oh my god. That's a lot of...
01:36:00
Fucking damage. That is fucking damage like crazy. And then a house owned by a Granby Tau board member.
01:36:08
As it goes, people are trying to shoot at the bulldozer. Some people try throwing grenades at it.
01:36:14
What the... This is... That's... That's... Crazy. I'm sorry. You don't carry a grenade?
01:36:23
Well, then you're not ready when a big bulldozer comes to town. The top of your list of things you destroyed was a Ford Explorer.
01:36:31
Yeah. I'm really mad about that. They're a gorgeous vehicle. Bullets bounce off of this thing.
01:36:40
Some locals get it, like Corey tried to do, some get into their own construction machinery
01:36:45
and also drive at the bulldozer. None of them are a match. Soon, Denver media outlets have helicopters in the air on the scene
01:36:55
while everyone's radios are tuned to the blow-by-blow that the local AM radio station is basically giving everybody.
01:37:02
Hell yeah. So everyone hears it when Marv turns his bulldozer toward a propane storage yard
01:37:09
that has five 3,000-gallon tanks and two huge 30,000-gallon tanks of propane. That's big.
01:37:19
If he is able to shoot at even one of these tanks, the whole area could go up and right across the street is a senior living center.
01:37:29
Come on. Yeah. Luckily, Marv's aim is impeded, so he abandons that horrific plan.
01:37:37
It's just like everyone's standing there waiting for something to happen. He's just like...
01:37:40
Never mind. Goes the other way. And what he heads for is one of my favorite names of a business ever,
01:37:52
Grambles Hardware Store. Grambles Hardware Store. It's cute. No one likes it as much as me.
01:38:01
Alone again. And, thanks. And Grambles is owned by another town board member. So Marv drives directly into the front of this hardware store
01:38:14
and he brings the whole thing down around him. Can we see that? There it is. That's the one.
01:38:21
Is that the last one? To be this? Okay. That was it. Grambles. We hardly knew ye. This is when the bulldozer stops and steam starts hissing
01:38:33
out of the now dead engine and the bulldozer's treads, like there's debris stuck in all of them
01:38:39
that can't go any further. Deputies carefully approach the silent bulldozer, actively avoiding
01:38:44
the gun ports, and that's when they hear a gunshot from inside. It takes bomb techs 10 hours to cut
01:38:52
through the steel armor to get inside. So at 1 a.m., they are able to blow torch a hole big enough to see inside,
01:39:01
and that's where they see that Marv Heemeyer is slumped over dead. He has shot himself in the head.
01:39:07
Wow. So despite the name that the press ends up giving to this creation, the Killdozer, miraculously, no one in this town,
01:39:17
I almost said Grambles. No one in the town of Grambles, where I'm the mayor. This is good news.
01:39:27
No one is killed. It's very sad that Marv is killed. Yeah. But thank God no one else is hurt or killed.
01:39:34
Yeah. Except for the Ford Exposition. Yeah. Okay, so because of his manifesto, many outsiders have come to see Marv as like a kind of a folk hero.
01:39:45
being an anti-bureaucrat vigilante who's taking a stand against a small town's big government.
01:39:53
That's not what happened here. Yeah. This is a person who isolated themselves, started believing every goddamn thing that they thought,
01:40:01
got real into money, ego, bullshit, and didn't have a person to call up and go, hey, can I run a couple things by you?
01:40:09
I would really love to build the largest killdozer anyone's ever seen. And attack my enemies.
01:40:16
And then that person goes, Marv, get out of the hot tub. Get down to the tavern and be around other people.
01:40:25
So people do go to the town asking to see the killdozer. They're told there's nothing to see.
01:40:32
People do not like it when people go there, obviously. Authorities actually dismantled the killdozer and sent its parts to different scrapyards across the country.
01:40:42
so that it could never be made into a shrine or anything like that And over 20 years later from that day of destruction the town of Granby and the people who lived there still have painful memories And of course massive trauma about like one of the most like insane but also like is this actually happening moments of all time
01:41:05
Marv Heemeyer's two-hour rampage cost $7 million in damage. And it was done to basically mom-and-pop businesses, just local people.
01:41:16
many were never able to recover some were able to rebuild and the town actually really came together
01:41:24
to help each other very beautifully but you know some people just had to go out of business
01:41:29
in the aftermath of that day the people of Granby came together as a community as I was just trying to improvise
01:41:38
but now I have to read it off the paper oh look they came together this is where it ended up
01:41:44
this is Grambles that was grambles. Look at all those jeans. And those are all those people.
01:41:51
You're not into the denim? I love it. We told you it had an old west feel. You did.
01:41:58
These people cleaned up the destruction and the debris together. They actually found new spaces
01:42:03
for displaced businesses and they did their best to move forward as a community. It's a very stark
01:42:09
contrast to Marv Heemeyer's own trajectory. He worked to become a very well-liked fixture in the
01:42:15
town, but ultimately he couldn't get past these ideas he had in his head of what he was supposed
01:42:24
to get and what he was owed and that entitlement that a lot of people have a problem with.
01:42:29
And that, of course, caused him to withdraw into his hot tub and go insane. In the documentary Tread, one friend of Marv's actually offers a simple, sad, and I will say
01:42:42
a little bit funny explanation for Marv's dark turn saying, quote, he became a lonely
01:42:48
man. He spent too much time alone. That's what I put it off to. He spent too much time in the hot tub alone.
01:42:55
He said that? He said that. Damn. That's the full quote. And that's the story of
01:43:00
the Killdozer. Great job. Thank you. Wow. What a tale. Amazing. Amazing story Colorado
01:43:14
Good job guys Welcome back Welcome back What's up Hi, how are you How are you? We thought it would never happen
01:43:28
One small note That got lost in the kerfuffle This is Georgia Heartstar Oh yeah What happens
01:43:38
Thank God for ya for you. Oh, good job. So whoever gets picked, I'm going to be right over there.
01:43:44
Okay, did you find the button? Did you find the button? Remember? I got it. Oh, you do? Here, give it to me. Oh, hell yeah.
01:43:50
You're the best. Thank you. Can you do your couple stuff offstage, please? Well, I forgot to tell him.
01:43:56
Remember I told you that I bought something today at Goldmine for the hometown person? Here, it's a
01:44:02
button. You want to read it out loud? Ask me about my bad habits and red flags. it's kind of like made for this podcast it's perfect yeah it's so good well oops so this if
01:44:14
you don't know i just felt my water did you on this gorgeous carpet um uh if you don't know this
01:44:21
is the part where georgia randomly picks anybody from the audience to come up and tell their
01:44:27
hometown with us on stage and and there's rules behind it don't just make it short don't be
01:44:34
shit-faced, right? Yeah. Don't point at someone you don't know. You want it? Yeah? Okay. Right here.
01:44:42
Go over there, please. Sorry. I hate doing that. For one second, I thought it was the hot dog putting their hand
01:44:50
up, and I was just like, well, here we go. Okay. And then we wait a little while.
01:44:56
Oh, yeah. Then we're like, how did you feel about that first show? Pretty good. I think we did okay. Yeah, right?
01:45:03
Thanks. Here she is. Oh, here they come. Yay. Hi. Hi, Katie. You guys, it's Katie.
01:45:14
Hi. Here. Yes, right here, front and center. Hi. I'm from Bradenton, Florida. We flew in from Florida yesterday.
01:45:24
Wow. Thank you. Thank you. Do you like Colorado? I do so far. We've only been here a day, and it's my first time ever, and we're having so much fun.
01:45:34
Sorry, Katie, I think they're all booing you right now. I don't understand. They mad because it not a Colorado hometown Oh okay Oh was it supposed to be It doesn matter Waiter say Oh I sorry I didn even know Hey hey hey hey hey Maybe there could be another one
01:45:50
Yes. If you're not mean. Unless we get kicked out of this theater. That's true. People are like, get out of here.
01:45:56
Yeah. Okay, Katie, tell us your hometown. My hometown is Bradenton, Florida. Okay.
01:46:01
And we like it. We like that idea. Yeah. Yeah. Is that all I'm supposed to do? Oh, no.
01:46:07
Oh, she doesn't know. I don't know how it went. Katie? Is that it? Katie? Hey, does anybody have a hometown from Colorado?
01:46:17
You pick someone. You do it. Really? You pick it. Oh, well, then I'll pick the clapping lady.
01:46:22
Is it from Colorado? Come on up. Okay. Okay, here she comes. Hi. Here we go. Cassandra?
01:46:31
Hi, it's Cassandra, everyone. From Colorado. Hello, for you. I was just in the community.
01:46:38
Here okay, what's your name? My name is Cassandra. Hi, Sandra or Cassandra? Cassandra. Cassandra everybody
01:46:49
And where are you from? From Vail, Colorado See how they did it? Yeah, I don't know how to do this. I'm sorry. No you do. Just tell us why you got into true crime
01:47:03
what story you got you into true crime yeah your voice it wasn't a story but my story my fun story is um from up in vale in those areas we all look at them they're very
01:47:20
you know oh yeah richie richie rich people right okay so when i was a freshman in high school i
01:47:27
I went to a party in Aspen, Colorado. And the mother walked around with a silver platter of illicit substances.
01:47:38
Oh, a good one or a bad one? Yeah, a good one. No, yeah, very clean. Very clean.
01:47:45
Wow. But later on, somebody snitched to their mother. and the wife and son that were involved
01:47:57
literally took all of the fall for this husband who purchased everything and owned the house
01:48:02
just so that his name wasn't involved wow and did they go to jail? yeah for like a hot minute
01:48:12
no really how old was the son? 17 no fucking way did he have to go to jail? I had a crush on him.
01:48:24
Oh, God, no. They were too rich. Oh, okay. No. Okay. No juvie. He probably, like, cleaned up trash on the side of the road for, like, six months.
01:48:32
Yeah, that's how it is in Vail. That's Vail. But, yeah. Aspen. Oh, I'm sorry. That's Aspen.
01:48:39
In Vail, our parents still yell at us. Oh, okay. Good. Yay. Cassandra, everyone.
01:48:46
Cassandra, everyone. Good job. Thank you. Cassandra, guess what you got? Wait, Cassandra, Cassandra, you get this pin.
01:48:56
Oh, yeah. Great job. No, you're right. I practiced for like six weeks and it still sucks.
01:49:04
No, it's hard. This is hard. She said I practiced for six weeks and it still sucked.
01:49:10
Aw. Cassandra, that's how we feel. That's the vibe, baby. Yeah, that's 100%. Well.
01:49:19
Thank you so much for being here tonight, Denver. This is incredible. We appreciate you guys coming to our first live show
01:49:30
in six frickin' years. Oh, my God. It's selling out two nights in Denver. Thank you guys so much.
01:49:38
We love you so much. Thank you, Denver. Stay sexy. And... Elvis, do you want a cookie?
01:49:52
Two rich young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to start over, but one of them will end up dead,
01:50:01
and the other tried for murder three times. From the start, the omens are bad. That place is the darkest jungle you've ever seen in your life.
01:50:13
You have no clue. John and Ann Bender are young, rich and attractive. He's a Wall Street whiz kid.
01:50:20
Just handsome. movie starring handsome and they're devoted to each other there's a lot of just like warmth and
01:50:27
care they set up a nature reserve and build a strange new home it like a spaceship landed on the top of a hill in the middle of the jungle in Costa Rica But slowly their dreams start to crumble
01:50:42
It was just doomed. Just doomed. I'm Becky Milligan, and this is Hell in Heaven,
01:50:49
a new podcast from Exactly Right Media and iHeart Podcasts, produced by Blanchard House.
01:50:55
I'm a seasoned investigative journalist, and I've reported on some pretty weird stories over the years.
01:51:01
But believe me, stories don't get much weirder than this. Because even out here in the jungle, you can run, but you can't hide.
01:51:12
All of a sudden there's guys with guns, lots of men with guns. They were saying, help, help, they're kidnapping us.
01:51:19
As their past catches up with them, our couple retreat from reality. They lose it, they actually lose it.
01:51:27
They sort of went nuts. Until one night, everything spins out of control. He says, Colonel, we heard a shot inside the boss's house.
01:51:40
And I could see the gun on the floor and the trail of blood. And one of them will end up being tried for murder.
01:51:48
Not once. People gasped. Not twice. Stunned. But three times. We were all looking at each other just in total disbelief.
01:52:03
Hell in Heaven premieres on October 9th. New episodes Thursdays. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the iHeartRadio app,
01:52:12
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This has been an Exactly Right production.
01:52:32
Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
01:52:37
This episode was mixed by Liana Squalachi. Our researchers are Maren McGlashan and Allie Elkin.
01:52:42
Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram at myfavoritemurder.
01:52:48
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:52:53
And now you can watch us on Exactly Right's YouTube page. While you're there, please like and subscribe.
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That's stitchfix.com slash murder. Goodbye. Georgia, you know that moment in the afternoon when your brain stops working
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and then you start looking for a little treat? Yeah, I guess it's less of a moment for me and more of an all-day thing, honestly.
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Yeah. I get a baseline of nutrition and sustenance. You just have this drink that kind of coats your stomach.
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Goodbye.