Marvin Heemeyer (Killdozer) | Mental Health & Personality

hello this is dr grande today's question asks if i can analyze the mental health and personality factors that may be at work in the marvin hiemeir case marvin heymeyer is best known for conducting an attack in 2004 with an armored bulldozer often referred to as the killdozer just a reminder i'm not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this if you enjoy this video please like it subscribe to my channel and consider supporting me on patreon i'll put the link to patreon in the description for this video so this is an interesting story the story of the killdozer i started working on this outline some time ago i pulled all the information that i was going to use and started building it out but i put it on hold thinking i would come back to it later when i could find more information and then we see this documentary come to netflix called tread this is the story of marvin hiemeir so i watched the documentary and it was actually pretty good except for the special effects where they tried to make it look like the killdozer was still there of course the actual killdozer that was used is now gone it was destroyed so i think this documentary really provided a lot of information that i didn't have access to before specifically the interviews with people with whom marvin heymeyer had disputes so really an interesting documentary so this case i'll be looking at the background then move to the timeline of the crime and then i'll talk about the mental health and personality factors so starting with the background marvin heymeyer was born in south dakota on october 28 1951. he served in the air force and was stationed in colorado apparently marvin was an exceptional welder and mechanic after he left the air force he moved to grand lake colorado 15 miles from the town of granby colorado marvin bought two acres of land in granby colorado in 1992 for 42 thousand dollars and operated a muffler shop on that property not long after this some dispute occurred around his alleged refusal to sell that property to another business owner who wanted to build a concrete batch plan evidently marvin had agreed to sell it from one price then he increased the price several times there was a conflict between marvin and the zoning commission that occurred after this they approved construction of the concrete plant next to marvin's property land that marvin was using but did not own they demanded that marvin connect his muffler shop on his property to public sewer the cost to connect to city sewer was between 70 and 80 thousand dollars marvin eventually was fined for not complying and he initiated a lawsuit with the concrete plant being built next to his property he would need an easement to connect to the sewer he was offered the easement in exchange for dropping his lawsuit but he wouldn't let the lawsuit go marvin continued to operate the muffler shop for a while but then closed his business and decided to auction off his property and his equipment including a komatsu d-355a bulldozer that he had purchased in california in the summer of 2002. at the auction he sold all the equipment except for the bulldozer and he did not sell the building or the land at the auction he did not sell the land or the buildings on the land but he did sell all the equipment except for that bulldozer eventually another business owner bought the land and the buildings for four hundred thousand dollars and he leased a metal building on the property back to marvin marvin would use that to store his bulldozer that building sat between the muffler shop and that concrete plant the new owner hooked up the sewer shortly after he bought the business making it seem as if marvin was exaggerating how unfortunate and desperate his situation was before that if the sewer hookup was that easy why didn't marvin just do that why did it become a lawsuit and a lot of other trouble now we find out later from two and a half hours of recordings that marvin produced when he was sitting in a hot tub on the balcony in his house in grand lake colorado one day he said that he determined that god wanted him to carry out an attack on people who had wronged him using what marvin referred to as an mk tank so yet again we see more hot tub inspired violence marvin went to work on modifying the bulldozer into what would eventually become referred to as the kill dozer he worked on the project for over a year and a half living in the metal building much of the time he was amazed that several people who came into the building and saw the project didn't realize what he was doing marvin's modifications to the komatsu bulldozer were extensive he built an armored shell around the cab and around the engine compartment of the bulldozer he took plates of half-inch steel and welded them together with a space in the middle that he filled with concrete he placed cameras on the vehicle and protected them with bulletproof lexon plastic the cameras were connected to three monitors he had inside the vehicle he had a compressed air tank inside the vehicle connected to nozzles directed at those plastic shields in front of the cameras so he could blow away any dust that would have obscured his view he had five weapons inside the vehicle with them two pistols a 357 magnum and a kel-tec p11 semi-automatic pistol it's a nine millimeter and three rifles a barrett m82 50 caliber rifle a ruger mini 14 chambered in 5.56 millimeter nato and an fn fnc also chambered in 5.56 he had three gun ports in the armor one for each of the rifles the gun ports were pointed forward rear and to the right side there was no gun port on the left side of the vehicle the bulldozer was 49 tons when he started working on it and it was 61.5 tons after his modifications marvin carried out his attack on june 4 2004 he was 52 years old at that time he covered the outside of the vehicle with grease so that anyone who tried to climb up on it would have difficulty he then lowered the armored shell onto the cab using a remote control connected to a crane so he sealed himself in he then drove through the building that the bulldozer was in it wasn't going to fit through the door coming back out although of course it fit going in he proceeded to ram the bulldozer into the concrete plant the town hall a local newspaper office the home of the former mayor a hardware store and a number of vehicles along the way several attempts were made to stop marvin people tried putting a steel rod into the tracks ramming his vehicle with construction vehicles the police and civilians fired bullets at the vehicle a police officer dropped a flashbang down the exhaust pipe but none of that actually stopped the vehicle he returned fire at the police through the gun ports but no one was injured marvin also fired at propane tanks and power transformers but he didn't cause any significant damage to those it appears as though he was trying to cause an explosion just before marvin attacked the hardware store the radiator of the bulldozer started to leak he was also leaking hydraulic fluid when marvin was destroying the store one of the tracks fell into the basement immobilizing the bulldozer police officers reported hearing a single gunshot after the bulldozer became stuck as it turns out marvin used the 357 magnum to bring an end to his life it would take the police until 2am the next day to gain entry into the bulldozer's cab they had to use a cutting torch because explosives did not damage the armor so marvin really did design the armor in a way that was quite resistant to potential threats marvin heemeyer was the only fatality of the attack he would damage 13 buildings altogether and cause 7 million in damage the town would eventually destroy the komatsu bulldozer they didn't want people taking parts of it as souvenirs now moving to the mental health and personality factors as is often the case we see a tale of two stories in terms of how people viewed marvin hemer prior to the attack on one side we see people that liked him he was described as being cheerful polite a wonderful person a good guy he actually had a reasonably large group of friends he would regularly go snowmobiling with several of them on the other hand we see a story of somebody who liked arguing for example we see that granby colorado wasn't the only place where marvin caused trouble in public meetings he was active in grand lake colorado over a measure to legalize gambling there apparently he became verbally aggressive with someone who had a different opinion about that measure looking at both sides of the story marvin's opinions and the opinions of those around him it looks like marvin was antagonistic and paranoid he was looking for a fight many have speculated that marvin had paranoid personality disorder i don't know if he did or he didn't all we can really do is look at the different behaviors and see if they align with the features of this personality in the diagnostic and statistical manual we see that paranoid personality disorder has seven symptom criteria four or more are required for a diagnosis let's go through these symptom criteria the first one a person believes that others are deceiving exploiting or harming them even though the evidence does not support that conclusion this one seems to fit he reported after he lost against the zoning board people were making fun of him in public looking at him funny and laughing behind his back i mean they could have been but this seems like an unusual reaction towards somebody who lost something like that wasn't like a big deal so again it just seems unusual the next one preoccupation with unjustified doubts about the loyalty of friends or colleagues i don't really see any evidence for this one moving to symptom number three reluctant to confide in others fearful that the information will be used against him he didn't confide in his girlfriend about what he was thinking but that doesn't necessarily mean it was because he was fearful so i would say no on this one next one interprets benign remarks as demeaning or threatening this is possible but again there's not a lot of clear evidence about this one moving to the fifth symptom criterion persistently bears grudges this one seems to match the next symptom believes that their character or reputation is being attacked and quickly reacts with anger well i don't know about this one because he did react with anger but he did not react quickly and then the last one symptom number seven believes that a spouse or partner is unfaithful without justification i don't see any evidence to support this one so here we only see an alignment with maybe two symptoms so some paranoia but not so much that we would think of this as a disordered personality so let's take a look at his personality profile as conceptualized using the five factor model i remember the five factors through the acronym ocean openness to experience conscientiousness extroversion agreeableness and neuroticism so with openness i would say low to mid-range he seemed like a fairly rigid thinker not necessarily somebody that appreciated art although he was quite creative so it's really hard to tell here in terms of conscientiousness the level was high he was a hard worker he was very successful with extroversion i would say low to mid although we do see some evidence that he was friendly and polite as i mentioned with agreeableness i think this one's pretty clearly low he had low trust low altruism he was relatively straightforward so that would point toward high agreeableness but anybody that builds an armored killdozer and destroys buildings in a town would likely be considered low in agreeableness with neuroticism the level would be mid maybe even high he had anger and maybe some feelings of depression now there's also a theory out there about delusions marvin believed that god was asking him or maybe commanding him to modify a bulldozer to tear apart a town this does appear to be delusional he also believed that the reason he was never married was so he could fulfill this mission marvin seemed to misinterpret information he attributed normal occurrences to destiny and this is something we see quite a bit with delusions a few examples he said other than the building the only item that didn't sell in the auction was that bulldozer as if that was a sign he should use the bulldozer in an attack this makes me wonder if the only item that didn't sell in the auction was a push mower would he have used that in an attack i guess kill mower just doesn't have the same ring as kill dozer although marvin wasn't the one who created that term killdozer he said that the bulldozer only fit in that metal building by one inch he took that to mean he was supposed to modify the bulldozer and again use it in an attack seems like a stretch for just seeing a bulldozer that fits through a door if someone was pleasantly surprised that a box of pasta fit on a shelf by just a small margin would they plan a massive rigatoni attack it almost seems like he wanted to get revenge but needed at least in his mind to justify the attack at one point he said that the people in the town picked on the wrong man he formed himself into an anti-hero who was going to pick a fight with big government and bring suffering to all who wronged him the only difficulty was that granby colorado was a town of about 1500 people an unlikely target for someone who is anti-government and the people that he believed had harmed and insulted him had not really done anything wrong sometimes delusions occur in people and they behave a certain way consistent with those delusions so the delusions drive the behavior other times people have a strong desire to do something and they form a belief system around that desire that looks like or eventually becomes a delusion in a case like this what could be happening is that there were feelings of depression and anger and to make sense of these feelings this narrative about revenge rises to the top it makes everything okay in a sense now the sadness and the desire for revenge can serve a purpose i think this makes the most sense based on the fact that marvin really did do something quite unusual here he planned an attack for several years just the part where he worked on the bulldozer was longer than a year and a half most of the time when somebody is angry they lash out when they are still having that feeling of anger not a few days later or a few weeks later marvin held on to his grudge for years this type of determination and commitment to a cause requires more than anger it requires a belief system that makes the action rational or perhaps in a case like this necessary or heroic again at least in his mind so it may have been that marvin did not have any mental illness but rather distorted thinking which led him to believe that others were after him and inspired a need for revenge that consumed him these feelings really became the purpose in his life marvin said in one of the recordings sometimes a reasonable man must do unreasonable things a more appropriate line would be sometimes an unreasonable man must make up reasons so he can do unreasonable things the next question is did marvin intend to kill others some have said that marvin didn't mean to kill anyone and of course he did not end up actually killing other people he did shoot at four people however and when somebody's shooting another person it makes sense to believe they were intending to kill that person he also rammed buildings without knowing if people were in there it's really hard to know what he was thinking though it does make sense that casualties were not his main focus he was willing to kill people if they got in his way but i don't think that was a central part of his plan necessarily he had access to a number of rifles they were in the cab with them there were easier ways for him to kill people if he didn't like them he didn't need to build this armored bulldozer to do that i think it might have been more about making a statement projecting himself as a hero if he caused the death of another person who wasn't attacking him in some way that would have hurt his cause it would have been harder for people to view him as a hero the last point i'll address here is the criticism of the police who failed to stop the bulldozer this is something i've heard many times this case really just highlights the advantage of someone who catches others unprepared i think it's reasonable to believe that nobody in that town was expecting an armored bulldozer to attack that day the police just weren't prepared for a situation like that there were things that the police could have done to limit the danger potential of that bulldozer one that comes to mind is they could have thrown paint on the cameras or used cans of spray paint to cover the cameras now there's been this argument that says something like wait a second the dozer was too dangerous to get near well i actually think it was too dangerous to get near but in the documentary we see that the police officers were walking right alongside the dozer for a while if they were willing to take that type of chance anyway they could have done something helpful in addition to the paint idea they could have dumped gasoline on the dozer and set it on fire that would not have really damaged the vehicle itself that steel armor but it would have made it extremely hot inside the vehicle so hot that marvin could not have survived even with the modified air conditioning system that he designed for that piece of equipment i know they tried throwing a steel rod in the treads unsuccessfully but normally that would be a good way to try to stop a treaded vehicle so again if somebody's going to take the chance to be that close anyway that could have had a chance of working panic is not known as a catalyst for good ideas so i really kind of understand what happened here again they were just taken completely off guard marvin really did gain the element of surprise so those are my thoughts on the killdozer case please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always i hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

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Id: 6yxDKoJjy6Q

Length: 19min 0sec (1140 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 06 2020