Hey, everybody, it's Georgia and Karen here to tell you about a brand new limited series from blantd House with Exactly Right Media and iHeart podcasts.

Helen Heaven is the unbelievable true story of John and Anne Bender, a young American couple who moved to the Costa Rican jungle with six hundred million dollars and a plan to build their own private eden.

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's stunned two countries.

Helen Heaven is the newest true crime podcast hosted by award winning journalist Becky Milligan.

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.

So stick around after this episode of My Favorite Murder and hear the trailer for Hell in Heaven, premiering Thursday, October ninth.

You can follow Helen Heaven now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Goodbye, m.

What's up dinner?

Wow?

Incredible work.

You guys, you.

Did incredible and that's it, right, Yeah, we're done.

Hi, Oh my god, I can't believe this is happening.

Oh my god.

Yeah, it's been a it's been a long time coming.

Been a minute.

I forgot what this feels like.

It's pretty fucking awesome.

You guys.

Hi, how are you guys tonight?

I mean, I feel like I should say, just as we start, we were not going to remember our lines.

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.

Yeah, except for right when we came to the Bananas show here in Denver, and we only want to perform live in Denver.

I guess that's what we're saying.

It was just.

I want to talk about your outfit, what you're wearing.

Some you're immediately moving on to outfits.

I don't know.

I don't know how to do this.

Talk about your tights.

Oh, these are tights, and we made a post about this.

I just realized I would say eleven minutes ago that I did not have any tights with me at all.

Uh So my friend Vicki and my friend Craig ran out and bought them, like truly at the eleventh hour.

It was very scary, very mean, very mean.

We almost canceled the whole thing.

We almost had to 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 who still here is in perimenopause, menopause or post menopau.

Yeah, hell yeah, let's get angry over nothing, everybody.

Now the air conditioning's not on in the car.

Oh my fucking god.

Where'd you get your outfit?

Georgia?

I got my outfit today at a vintage store here, Paul gold Mine, Is that right?

Yes' is that right?

That's right?

Yeah, I went in there.

I had my whole outfit plan for like weeks, and then I was like, I should probably just go to a vintage store real quick.

Here found this fucking insane vintage drive.

It looks like a tailor to figure.

You know, it's crazy.

I'm wearing lots of undergarments.

Okay, sure, But then I steamed it and I backstage and I can definitely like smell the Vinchin.

Smell the ladies of the past.

Yeah, it's a show dress, not a party dress.

What did those ladies smell like?

Just describe it to us right now.

It's a dusty, musty mothball cigarette perfume martini.

Yeah, our kind of lady.

That's nice.

I mean, that's an incredible vintage stroke of luck.

Yes, it's I want to do it every city, I think, just not bring anything, bring jeans to wear.

Yeah, just be like fuck it and then find something in the city that fits perfectly 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, you guys with the best.

Then what do we do?

Oh I'm going to tell him about my dress now?

Oh yeah, go for it.

It has pockets, ladies.

Is the art the spin art work?

It?

Right?

Yeah?

Did you see there's where the same hot dog?

Holy?

Should we got a hot dog in the front row?

No, it's all you, Yeah, it's all she should be our ambassador probably, Oh that would be good.

Wait are you from around here?

Okay, well you know how to pronounce street names and the kind of things that people yet yell at us about.

Good.

Oh, just gonna say hot dogs fuck off?

All right, we're not having you, hot.

Dog drive us down some weird blind alley, and then everybody on this side's furious, and everybody on this side posts on social media, we can't do it again, hot Dog.

And at the end of it, she takes her fucking hot dog postum off and hides it because she knows on the way out people are gonna I'm not the hot dog.

It's like you're the fucking hot hot dog.

Shame is the worst kind of hot dog shame, the worst kind of shame.

Yeah, what is this?

I don't fucking know.

It feels like a fever dream.

What a joy, what a joy?

Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here.

We're very, very excited to be here.

Yeah, there's been a lot of build up, lots.

People are fighting in the in the walkways.

It's excite.

This is the kind of stuff.

Can I just how about we share our favorite live show memories with each other.

I think we've done this on the show.

Okay, you go first, because I don't remember.

Anyway, 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 Washington, d C.

I think it was.

Was it Miami, It's the Growing Up Story?

Oh no, I think it was the Chase Theater in Brooklyn.

Yes, when literally seven minutes into the show, an usher and very angry usher justifiably so had to.

Walk down and snap out.

A big black glad, black glad garbage bag to start to clean up someone's barf.

Right at the beginning, Right at the beginning of however.

They served this like they served canned wine, right, which is like that's testing, and then some kind of cocktail that like surely made everyone shit faced immediately.

Yeah.

I so it was like a Karen and Georgia Long island ized Sea type of situation that people got very excited about.

Right.

So we didn't technically make her throw up.

We didn't make her, but we were a big part of it.

And that's what the legacy of this podcast will be when we finally wrap this motherfucker up.

Oh what, this is my favorite murder of the podcast.

Yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you.

That person over there forgot to clap and then when I looked at them, they were like, oh that's.

For the sorry, sorry sorry.

Yeah, it's kind of part of the show.

It's word with podcasts, you're just used to like hearing us in your head like you're hallucinating a little bit, arguing about the stuff we're getting wrong.

I thought you were the other one and she was you this whole time.

Yeah, there's that.

That's a big piece of it.

Has anyone been to a show before?

A live show?

Okay, great, we're going to rely on you to tell us how this market goes.

Thank you?

Should we U?

Is it time to sit?

Should we do?

Let's do that?

Look at this?

I know how mad men, aren't we?

So?

From article promo code murder.

I really needed to sit down because I need to demurely grab tissue I tucked into my There we go it is.

Where'd you have that?

Where was that Georgia up.

In the carriage undercarriage in.

Her Kleenex undercarriage sponsored by Kleenex.

Oh man, I really thought i'd get get over this by now, this fucking tissue thing.

But I think it's a great personality trip.

Yeah, it's one of the foremost personality traits.

It's a Martini dusty mothball tissue girl.

I mean, what if you were the ghost of the woman who owned that dress before.

I love that for me.

Magical Wow, And then what do we do?

Oh?

Yeah, we don't really want you to yell at us.

Remember I'm the bitchy one, that's right, That's right.

I was a big bitch back before it was trendy.

Remember that I was all alone with it.

Now we're all here twenty twenty five.

Everyone's a bitch now just cutting it up all over.

The place.

As is our right, I mean, it's not as enough.

Yeah.

Since the last time we saw you, our rights have been taken away, Our bodily autonomy has been taken away.

And I think by the end of this stour we should figure out what to do about that.

Absolutely.

In the meantime, we're just gonna have a fun podcast.

How about that?

Oh I forgot to take a beta blocker.

I just remembered, not only that, I drank a fucking red bull.

So, oh, this is gonna be fun.

For 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?

My skin is tingling, yes for sure.

And yeah I'm hot again in a weird like feel like you.

Can't Yeah, I'll fail your neck.

Oh it's very hot.

That's kind of a George Foreman grill heat right there, and not even that cool.

It's like, oh yeah, do you want to tell them the people who haven't been here before 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 but had to come anyway.

Tonight we call your drag alongs.

We personally apologize, we do.

We understand.

You're a great friend, you're a very good friend or sister or whatever.

Here's the thing.

If you're gonna use your camera, you can't have the flash on grandma.

Yeah, check your check your stats there before you throw the camera up and then.

Put a big lightm fucking face.

Please don't get that usher angrier at us than he already is.

Hell, oh yeah, you made the fucking pressure or security guard laugh.

That's a win for you.

Oh we need that's the point.

That's all we're looking for.

Because they're like, what the fuck is this show tonight?

And why do I have to work it?

Yeah?

These two weird chicks with a rug.

Yeah what Look, it's this thing called podcasting.

They started it.

Mark Maron started it in twenty eleven and it's gone sence there.

It's just like that that wasn't real.

They're like she's doing the history of podcasts.

Old man Maren started it.

Way back when I say yeah, we say this.

Is a comedy true crime podcast, which is kind of hard for some people who don't like comedy true crime war podcast to.

Understand, which we understand.

We get it.

We don't think murder is funny.

We think we're funny.

And finally, there might be other lines, but I can't remember.

If you don't like it, you can get the fuck out, but we don't want you to.

What else should we say?

What else is there to say?

Oh?

Wait, just really quick, because we're back at a live show.

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, fucking ring.

I'm Taylor Swift.

I just wanted to give a shout out to Steve.

And he's not dead, so he's also not here.

He's totally fine.

He's fine, he's still our friend.

He hasn't cut us out of his wills or life.

No, he actually recently sent me a picture of a sinkhole, and then it was his friend that did it.

And then they went and put one of our T shirts.

It was like, here's the thing T shirt and they just put it right.

At the edge of the sinkhole.

And when I looked at the picture, you know sometimes you look your phone, you see the picture before you see who scent it or what the hell is going on?

And I was just like, wait, but soon's threatening me, Like sinkles have merched now and they're ripping off our merge.

It's amazing merch.

Hell yeah right, yes, can I really quick, just one technical thing?

Can we hear.

Ourselves on the monitor?

Just to hint more, I can't hear a word, she said each other just a little more, just laughing a little more us.

This is where the show gets good because we can actually hear each other.

Talking like this.

I'm sure it's funny, but what if it was sad?

I just laughed hysterically at it.

We look out and hot Dog is sobbing and just like, no, it's supposed to be funny.

How's this?

This is better?

This is good?

Yeah?

So this thank you so much, thank you.

This tour is really hard because We've almost done five hundred fucking episodes in this podcast.

Thank you.

Most people quit at sixty three.

Just a quick.

Reminder, it should so I think finding stories that we haven't done in the city or the state, it's okay if it's the state, don't boo.

It's hard, right right, Yeah, we have to dig.

So yeah.

Luckily we have our researchers Marin and Ali.

Who bust our asses for us, badass do amazing work.

Our producer Molly Smith who came on, Yes, you can totally.

Applaud Molly Smith amazing.

Uh basically in two weeks became the producer of this podcast, so we love her.

She makes it work as do.

We could be naming lots of people that work at RAM right now, but I'm just thinking of the people.

That literally got us to these seats.

Right now.

Did we win an award?

We have to like think you think everyone else?

And my mother all right, should we or you should start?

You go from her time?

Yeah, thank you.

It's confusing because we're going by stories who goes first, not by like who's supposed to actually go first, So I'm sure we'll get it wrong one day and right, yeah, as we tend to do.

It's kind of our style.

All right, Well, I'm going to do a story tonight.

It's technically one of Colorado's oldest cold cases.

Guys.

No, I love cold cases.

Even though it was probably solved that.

I'm going to need you because I have a theory too, and I think I'm right.

I'll figure out a way to argue with you.

No, you'll like it, so, Okay.

In the early nineteen hundreds, a prominent businessman was killed, leading to a winding investigation, selveral scapegoats, and ultimately an escape from justice.

This is the story of the murder of William Dickens.

Is anyone related to him?

Here?

You, guys, we're in Longmont, Colorado, long but he's like one of your founders, like your founding fault, so you should know this.

Yeah, he founded it for you.

It's right.

And uh so the sources use in today's episode are episode story.

I always do that, That's right.

WordPress essay titled Mysterious Death of William H.

Dickens by Carol Turner and an article from the Colorado Culture magazine called the oldest unsolved murder and Boulder was probably solid the century ago by Eric Simms the other sources in our show notes, so look them up right now.

What if you did the whole story in that voice?

Got like, just channel the woman who wore this dress before.

She just loot us to say, oh my god, what else do I have in my spanks?

Do you think to start pulling shitting the preeze?

Okay, this is scary.

I can't believe we're doing this.

I mean, I'm going first, and I'm no, I'm sorry if I Yeah, you're.

Really leading it leading the way here.

Yeah, you got it, don't get it twisted.

We seem fucking cool and collected, but we are.

I am not right.

Yeah, I know, speak for yourself.

Karen took the beta blocker.

Not me jealous?

Okay, thank you.

That one person supports you.

Mom, Janets?

Is that you Janet's heard?

Okay, So it's the night of November thirtieth, nineteen.

Holy shit, this is fucking weird.

I'm not kidding you.

Nineteen fourteen.

Carrie just texted me and told me that's when this ring is from nineteen fourteen.

Whoa, my god, that's spooky.

This is crazy.

I didn't do it on purpose, no, wow, admit it.

Now.

If you did.

Everyone.

No one thinks it's as crazy as I do.

Right, that's fucking bananas.

There's a ghost.

There's a ghost.

My diamonds, My diamonds are haunted by this.

Suck a story, stop it, okay.

November thirty, nineteen fourteen, a seventy one year old businessman named William Dickens and his wife Ida are relaxing.

They're reading in the library of their home me too, in Long Mount, Colorado.

It's a little bit north of Boulder where we.

I love Boulder.

It's got this big boulder.

Did you see the moth?

Well, there's a little moth.

But it's good luck.

Right, moths are good luck, so don't kill it.

There, I see it?

Okay?

Stop When about eight pm, they're chilling in their library, as rich people do, and when a bullet pierces the library window and hits William in the back.

It passes all the way through him, which is not good, and graises Ida's cheek and then lands in the wall.

Ida's injury is minor, and she jumps to her husband's aid, but tragically she watches as he passes away within ten minutes of being shot.

Wow, the dragon lungs are like, this was not so to me as I thought it would be.

They're like, I've fought with you in the car all the way over here just for this.

Okay.

So let's back up a little bit, as we like to do, and talk about the Dickens family.

William Henry Dickens is born.

This dude born on May twenty fifth, eighteen forty three, on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

Sounds fucking horrible for her, for the mother, yeah for.

Real, right, yeah, it's just like the go for the purser there to help get boiling water or something.

Yeah, well vote reference no one.

Okay, that's how your parents met.

It is right, we're cruise lying people.

Congratulations, thank you so much.

So.

His parents moved or moving the family from England by way of Quetebec.

When Mary gives birth to William, it's probably a nightmare on board the ship.

You can assume also being having a baby in international waters.

Oh where's that baby from?

That's a great question.

The ocean everywhere the Little Mermaid movie.

Does he get to go back to the ocean anytime he wants because he's a citizen.

Just tigs right in, Like I get to live here now like I want to do in Ireland.

Wouldn't that be great?

But I can't.

Okay, the family are all distant relatives of that you guessed it English author Charles Dickens.

Oh my god, I knew that.

Yeah, yeah, because that's your last name Dickens, remember.

Which indicates being related to someone.

Yeah, always, which is also Alie's.

Probably, like Georgia probably didn't remember any of this because she told me some of the names that Charles Dickens of his books.

Oh nice, So but I know, Ali, Let's hear him, know, let's see him so we can finally cheer for Charles Dickens the way we've always.

Wanted to all over twists.

Yeah, great expectation, my favorite and a Christmas Harold.

I love the Muppet, so read that one.

Soon after arriving in Quebec, the family then moves to Wisconsin and William's father.

Sure, okay, cheese heads in the crown.

The father and the sisters pass away as they're wont to do back then, like everyone just fucking gets a cold and dies.

They died.

You know what, they did a lot.

They coughed into like a kerchief and died.

Oh flemmy yeah, yeah, that's right.

So his mother Mary remarries a man named Alonzo Nelson Allen.

They remain in Wisconsin until William is sixteen, 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, and they go for they go mine for gold in what would be known as the Colorado Gold Rush.

So congratulations, you guys stayed amazing during that period of time, so much gold.

Yeah, William and Alonso aren't very good miners, though you.

Don't hear these stories that often shitty mining story.

Yeah, but they're they're smart though.

Instead they leave Boulder.

They build a cabin near where Saint Rain is, Saint Frank Creek and Left Hand Creek cross in an area that soon becomes Long Mount Colorado.

Can I just say that when you said they're bad miners, and I immediately pictured two people with super.

Long, skinny arms.

They just can't get that pickaxe going at all.

I was thinking of the sieve, you know, Oh they can't.

Yeah, they can't sift for gold.

Sieve sift.

Yeah, no, pan, pan.

Fucking pan, ladies and gentlemen, fucking pan.

We got it.

We still got it.

We are miners.

Okay.

So this is what they do.

They build a farm together, and as more and more people start moving into the area, because those are the people who 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's what's it called capitalism?

Thank you, you're welcome.

It's absolutely gonna say communism, thank you for that.

Uh okay.

So they what did they do?

Then?

They they firm firm the business grows.

In eighteen sixty three, William is this a dress rehearsal?

I swear to god, I've been studying this because I've been so nervous.

I literally I can't hold a thought in my mind.

I'm just like, we're doing it.

It's happening.

This isn't a dress rehearsal.

It's so surreal.

Oh my god, I have notes and I'm still warm.

Okay, Okay, sorry, No, you're good.

No, you're right.

You're totally right to question me.

Okay.

So then the mom and their kids all show up, and because his family home is situated along a prominent stagecoach route connecting Wyoming to Denver, the Cherokee Trail.

I don't know why I'm pointing at you.

You thank you.

Mary and Alonso set up a tav and an inn and that does really well.

This family was also they become like fixtures in their community after having been struggling before.

And at age twenty six.

Oh, I have a photo of him.

He serves in the Colorado Cavalry and he gets out and here is a photo of William Dickens.

What what what?

What?

Oh?

Okay?

All right then?

Right, this is from the Longmont Museum.

I know this is on loan from the Longmont Museum.

We got to get it back to them by midnight.

It's like at first you're like what, and then you're like, I don't know.

Yeah right, No, Like.

You see this guy in a tavern in Longmart?

Yea, yeah, long Mont?

What longer day?

Like, hello sir.

It can't be a lot of eligible bachelors back then in general.

Right, No, I doubt it.

Also, doesn't it look like he made that three piece suit out of a cow twenty five minutes before he took this picture.

I mean you can almost see the hair on that.

Yeah, they didn't have lint rollers back then.

Oh you mean the cow hair.

I get it.

That's funny.

Not cat hair, no cow hair.

Well, we never know.

Oh you don't ever know.

Okay, you don't never know, don't ever know, And I refuse to accept it.

Okay.

So he takes the family profits and builds this place called Independence Hall, which is a community center and drug store.

So they just get rich selling people shit.

Do you think it's still there?

Is it?

For real?

Do they sell ice cream?

Do not lie about Independence Hall?

Right now?

Tavern?

The tavern's still there.

Fuck, party after after party is what I meant to say.

We'll just drive three and a half hours to Longmont and get that's right.

So I don't know what you're yelling, and I don't care.

Yeah.

Uh literally came there for each other.

But yeah, of course we can't.

When you yell, even in like a good spirit, like a happy way, it makes us think you're mad and it's scarce.

Okay, we're very, very damaged people.

You should know that.

Yeah, Jesus, there's sixty nine.

Within the next four years, he acquires a one hundred and twenty acre plot of land he uses to expand the farm cattle like the cow Outfit, 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 kit Lee.

Oh, here's a picture of her.

Yeah, it's pretty good, right.

Yes, she looks like many of the TikTokers.

I watch what she's about to teach me how to use setting spray correctly?

Come on?

Sure is?

Oh my god?

Yeah?

Do you think they I mean they made people pose all serious like that for pictures.

Right, because you can't you have to sit there for three minutes and say's smiling for three minutes.

This is kind of hard.

But what if, like, deep down she was like, yeah, let's go get pictures.

I always think that she's the party girl of long Watch.

She might be so fun.

No one will ever know.

It's so sad anyway, sorry for her.

So they have five children.

They really liked each other.

Cold that winter.

And he adds more and more business ventures to his plate.

In eighteen eighty one, he builds the Dickens Opera house on Main Street.

I don't want to keep referring to pictures.

Do you know it?

There is a picture of it though, whoa wow, buck?

Yeah, does it still look like that?

There's still the bunch.

Of Tesla's everywhere, so many potential opera houses that we could be looking at right now.

I made pick one, you know there, I think I think it's that one.

No, on the right, there's a bunch of do not do hot Dog's job because.

They're not having it?

Is it the one on the right?

Once again, hot Dog throws up her hand.

It's gorgeous, it's cute.

Yeah, right, I'm sure there's just meter after meter, parking meter.

You know, that's just the horse.

It's the horse having to put the coins in with their big teeth though.

Oh that's cute.

So they have kids.

Then in eighteen ninety one, he finds the farmer.

He founds bounds, not fines.

It's not a thing.

You've got it.

The Farmer's national bank, and soon after he co founds the milling and Elevator company.

How did those go together?

What range?

This man has money?

Elevators, milling booze?

What's milling?

Oh?

Making stuff?

Okay?

Oh Robin yell hookers from the back.

Sugar, thank you, sugar.

I'm sorry that was me then that was on me.

Oh hey, guess what it says?

The only flour mill large enough to.

Complete just near words away.

I've read this before.

I swear to god, I'm fucking sweating.

I was having a thing backstage where my eyes it felt like my eyes weren't taking in information anymore, like they were sitting on things, but like I didn't know what it meant.

And I was like, this is an interesting way to.

Be Yeah, yeah, that's anxiety, is it?

I think so?

And anyways, he maintains his wealth and social status as a successful businessman and philanthropist into his early seventies, watching his children grow into adults.

He enjoys his retirement with his wife Ida, until, of course, the night of November thirtieth, nineteen fourteen.

Yep, they're on board now, yeah, they love it.

And he gets shot.

As I said, I'm back at the crime scene.

Investigator's fine.

That bullet was shot with what would have come to be a fair would have been a very distinctive high powered rifle.

You know all about.

Yes, ask me anything on Reddit.

Because he's such a prominent figure in the longer monk community, the press picks up the story of his murder.

It seems that he had done so much good while he was alive that it was hard for people to believe that he had an enemy capable of killing him.

But you can make a lot of enemies.

He's the banker, right, don't people high banker, huge bank?

Oh shit, what the baron?

We've been listening to, useless dame.

So she just starts reading it to herself.

Oh my gold, just tell about the good part.

Okay, okay.

So the Sheriff Sandford Buster comes up with some theories.

First, they set their sights on a man named m.

Swallow.

Spell it swallow?

Well, do you name me to spell that for you?

No?

You don't usually work blue, but I know M as in just the letter.

Yeah.

I think that Alli was like, oh, sometimes old timy newspapers just refer to men by their first initial.

So we're going up.

We're going with em because we couldn't find any other name.

Let's call him what Maurice?

Maurice Swallow?

People, are you guessing or do you actually know?

Is your uncle?

Their great uncle?

All these citizens that are just like, please get our history correct.

And he had an argument with him, but he's cleared.

And then so he has no enemies since the Sheriff Buster and his team considered the possibility of someone maybe who wants revenge on him, because it turns out he wasn't the best I guess when he served in the Colorado Third Cavalry back in the eighteen sixties, he participated in the Sand Creek massacre.

Yep, you did that one.

To me?

It was awful.

So did you covered that one?

Right?

Did I?

How would I fucking know?

I don't listen to his show.

That was me doing an impression of my sister.

It was great.

So they were thinking that maybe people were like gonna plot revenge against him, but it had been so long and then let's see, I'm gonna skip that, that that and that.

Just read it.

People like it, they do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're fine.

Okay, this is actually this is really interesting.

We're on the opening act and they want to sup it.

Okay, you got this, Okay, thank.

You, thank you.

But in eighteen seventy, a full forty four years before the murder, there was one or other event that sucked that could point to someone who would want revenge against William Dickens.

That year, a man named Bill Duoi French killed an innocent man and a posse of vigilantes which included William Dickens went after Billy Dubois and they try to arrest him, but it led to a shootout.

Billy goes down in the fight, and he swears to William that one day he will have his revenge.

Right always, abad, I'd suspect that guy for sure.

Right however, Oh no, he's dead.

Oh he won't.

He won't have his revenge.

But maybe his brother will.

Oh you know how brothers are?

I actually don't you don't They fucking sucks.

They steal your ship and hide it from you.

It's annoying.

But it had been so long, and this brother is like working as the clerk of a let's see Laaramir County and does that you guys, he's got no criminal record.

It sounds like he's just like let his brother's memory, you know, live on in a positive way instead of seeking revenge.

Right.

So he's out, Okay, and then.

It's sorry really quick, it's Larimer County.

Oh shit, thank you?

What is it?

They actually, in a very organized way, yelled that back at us that I didn't want to deny it.

Because it was great.

I appreciate it.

You know, you're totally right, and I see it here now, clear as day.

Yeah, that was what I was meant to say.

So okay, 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 out of a Denver see you, guys, you're like, street lights here are real rough, aren't they?

Like?

You?

Stop it?

Every street light, every red light?

My god, stop it?

You mean the street lights work here?

They make you stop and then they ask you to go.

It's ridiculous here.

Okay, sorry, I always mean about the street lights.

I didn't mean it's no, You're okay, you were correct.

So someone in Denver reports the purchase of a high powered rifle and silence are just one month before the murder.

They can trace these things back then, and they care.

And it's the same type of gun that was used in the shooting, which was a rare gun.

And the person who purchased this weapon is none other than William's own son, Rienzi Dickens.

You're surprised that surprises you?

Heartbreaking thirty four years old, I mean spoiled, yeah, baby, tavern baby, the.

Worst time filled with pretzels and ego.

So he's arrested on December third, nineteen fourteen, just minutes after his father's funeral, which had to be a fucking scene, right, Like that's kind of fucked up, that is.

Those cops were like, that's revenge from cop.

Totally, Like you better be sure you got the guy if you're gonna like storm a funeral.

Yeah, right, one would hope.

When Sheriff Buster asked if he ever purchased the gun and silencer, Rienzi swears he didn't.

But then the authority searches home and find the rifle in silencer.

Where do they Where do you put it?

I don't know.

Well, it's dismantled into several pieces and hidden throughout his own home.

Yeah, which I've bet houses back then didn't have a lot of hiding places, you know, it's not n like today.

There's one big vase that you just had to put everything.

In there, right Yeah.

Police also dig through a pile of ash in the alley behind his house looking for evidence, because one witness claimed to have seen him frantically digging there the morning of his father's funeral, which is a weird, like maybe that's his religious.

No, And I tried second one.

I don't want to wasn't tip to begin with, Okay, thank you, thank you for the it's opportunity and the ash.

They find the cartridge that held the bullet that killed William, Like the bullet 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, sure.

Toward his father's library, right.

The fence posts with the library behind it, for fun.

It's 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 out the movie, so there's no witnesses to actually place him there that night.

There was movies back then, a picture.

I don't know.

That's a great fucking question.

What fucking movie was it?

There were pictures.

It wasn't a talkie.

Kramer versus Kramer, definitely.

It was just that train coming at him over and over.

She was there forever screaming.

Scraving their heads off.

So his his alibi isn't good enough to like prove and police discover a potential motive, of course, because it's guess what.

It is, right, money, money, right?

What were you gonna guess my mind was completely blank.

Literally, your finger went like that, and I.

Was like, oh, I'm supposed to say something now.

I know.

I hate when you do that, So I don't know why I just did that too.

I'm sorry.

Well, I'll get my revenge during my story.

Fuck.

Okay, what'd you do this?

Oh?

Yea.

So it turns out he's got a lot of debt.

In records indicate that Ramzio is somewhere between thirty five to forty thousand dollars in debt.

Guess how much that is today?

Okay, we're talking nineteen fourteen.

Yeah, thirty five to forty got I'm bad at this.

I have to admit, after nine and a half years doing his podcast, I'm so bad at this.

We've got it right once.

Let me just try it out.

Okay, it's it.

Don't help me.

It's a three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

I really wanted you to get this because everyone would have You're right, A million.

Dollars all right, yay, And that's an example of what it feels like to be a Nippo baby.

Okay, here you have another chance.

Because his father's worth estimated net worth is about three hundred thousand dollars, which in today's money twenty million, nine point five million.

Sorry, it's okay, okay.

I've never been a math person, that's for sure.

Either.

That's why we have a podcacast.

Hey, it's so he was good, of course inherit some of that, of course, and so but he's like, but I swear to god, I didn't kill my dad.

Probably his mom and siblings, they all have his back.

They don't think he did it.

And later the same month, later in the same month of his arrest, and oh my god, we haven't done this in so long to summer nineteen.

Were taping, but you have to remember it.

Inflect up right and come back.

He's a ragin plea.

It's not guilty.

He's released on thirty seven thousand dollars bond, which I don't know how much.

It is, eight hundred thousand, yes, yes, yes, okay.

So they hire a whole team of private investigators to track down the real killer and get him, you know, out of here.

And they find one suspect worth considering.

It's a rancher named John Ensley.

Everyone's related to these people, like, but yeah, I just don't know every single one of these people.

Yeah, oh, I have a cousin.

I don't know in the audience.

I've just remembered.

That's what he said.

I don't know, And you don't know your own cousin.

He's like second cousin.

Yeah, so kind of a stranger.

Yeah.

What do you think he thinks of you right now?

I don't know.

But his wife likes me, so that's okay, that's good.

So I think it's a drag loong and I appreciate you, Stephen.

Okay.

He used to work for William, but people close to him says he always resented William.

He was spotted drinking at a Longmont bar on the night of Williams murder, and a bottle of this liquor that he drinks was found nearby outside of the Dickens home.

So that's not great.

Shouldn't have left that behind, right, right, But he was probably drunk.

Yeah, off it.

It's enough for the police to question Ensley, but he tells them something interesting that unravels the private detective's story.

According to Ensley, most of the group of private investigators, they all got him shit faced, basically, and one of them, yeah, pretended to be a priest who tried to trick him into confessing.

So a whole scam.

What do you think?

Yeah, you're nah.

So it's like nineteen fourteen cops.

So they're probably literally beating the shit out of him, and then they're like, okay, well, we'll give you a moment to bleed and walk outside.

And then one of them like turns their shirt around and it's like, okay, I'm also going to beat you up, but yeah, you'll tell me, right.

That's what I love God, So you tell me he's up to the big one.

Yep.

And then the whole thing just was a big setup to try and frame him.

And so, with no heart evidence against Ensley, police believe him and go back to the son.

So his trial for the murder of his father begins April twenty fourth, nineteen fifteen, and Judge Neil F.

Graham, your favorite, presides over the case.

And they come in hot and drop a bombshell.

He claims he's received a confession letter in the mail from the actual killer.

Oh, you want me to read it to you?

He reads it in court.

Please do, and please do it in a classic Colorado accent.

Yes, okay, dear sir, please don't let them convict Ramsey Dickens, Do I have it pretty dead on?

I think, yeah, Please don't let them convict him.

I am the murderer.

I'd kill anyway who would do me the way old blank blank did.

I shot him in the window with a rifle, which afterwards it's just like admitting to it in such a ridiculous I shot him through the window with a rifle, which I afterward buried in Loveland.

For God's sake, don't let them convict an innocent man.

Someday they will be sorry.

I did it because he had it coming sign X so convenient.

Real bullshitty.

Yeah, it's the for God's sake that pushed it over the edge.

Right, Oh please, Oh please easy.

I'm fine killing a dude, but I don't want anyone to go to prison for it, you know what I'm saying, Like, Yeah, I don't know about that.

The district attorney is like the bullshit calls bullshit.

And so, after about a month of going back and forth in court, Judge Graham sends the jury off to deliberate, and he gives them an option to either find Ramsey guilty of first degree murder or guilty of second degree murder or not guilty, and they find him guilty of second degree murder.

His wife faints when in the courtroom when she finds out, which is dramatic.

Very old fashioned.

Yeah, yeah, they fainted a lot back then.

They loved fucking fainting back then.

It like couches, literal couches for it.

I hear it was the corsets.

But that's right, that might just be a rumor.

Yeah.

He gets a retrial, and he gets out on forty thousand dollars bail and.

Two hundred and thirty seven thousand.

Yes, man, you're fucking killing it.

Every single one is right.

And it looks like his mother pays the bill, you know as and then they in the course of the next trial, they find a weapon specialist who's like, maybe it wasn't the gun, the murder weapon that was hidden all over his house.

Maybe it wasn't.

Could it not have been?

Maybe?

So there's so many things in this.

World, right that one of them could be this, and so so he da da da da.

Okay, So no, here we go, just read the letter again.

Okay.

Their application for a retrial is denied and he's given a sentence of eighteen to twenty seven years imprisonment for the murder of his father, but he continues to appeal his guilty verdict, and in October of nineteen nineteen, the Colorado Supreme Court orders a new trial on the grounds that the second degree premeditated murder charge was invalid because whoever did it was like premeditated it.

You guys know how true crime works, So only the only valid verdict would have been first degree or not guilty.

So technicality, you're out, which is you know there for people who aren't guilty, you know, I mean he's released from prison.

Well, he waits a second trial, and he relocates to Long Beach, California.

He's always I don't know.

We went to the Rocky Stadium for the game last night.

It was that's right, So I should have talked about.

That at the time.

I know, it's like an anecdotal thing to warm everybody up and win people over.

Yeah, I forgot.

It was so gorgeous and cool and the Giants one, so I was excited, but it was cool.

Sorry, don't be mad.

Just don't.

Let's not turn it into a sports thing like you always have to.

Just like, let us do our show.

She has one team, that's it that she wants to win.

Let's ask let her have it.

And in October nineteen twenty one, he returns to Colorado for a second trial.

A couple of weeks focuses on that the what 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.

There's so many things in this world.

There's so many things in this world.

Yet and in the end, about two weeks, after two weeks of trial, he's found not guilty this time.

So after receiving this not guilty verdict in nineteen twenty one, he heads, wait, there's been other photos and I forgot them.

It's just trying to look.

Yeah, so that's him, right, that's right before he dies.

Probably William Dickens.

No, probably, it's kind of young.

It's just the same picture with the fake go tee.

He's wearing a fake beard and he finally got that limp roller he was dreaming of.

Oh, and then I think there's a photo of his house for some reason.

If you feel like saying, oh, right.

Third Avenue the place to be in long mind?

God, do I know it?

You love it.

I used to go trick or treating there as a.

Child, Okay, and I think that's it.

So yeah, that's it.

Stop looking over there, so look away, so stop it.

And so he lives in Long Beach, the rest of his life passes away in nineteen sixty one, and what if Okay, here is my so they never really caught.

It's a cold case because I never actually caught the murder, even though everyone thinks that they did.

It was the sun.

Yeah, what if he had an insurance policy taken out of him health?

Hear me out, it's in a book that I won't spoil for you.

Okay, But he has himself guilt.

Yeah, it's terrible.

Why would you have himself guilt?

Because then his wife can get the insurance money.

So do you think he had suicidal ideation?

He was like, let's get five other people in on this plan and make some cash.

Wasn't he already rich?

Yeah?

Shit, But you know what, that's what greed is like, you know what I mean, It's never enough.

It's never enough.

Tell it to the hot dog.

That's why.

That's why I'm a podcaster and not a detective.

Among other things, 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 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 him father's death a mystery.

And that is the story of the murder of William Dickens.

Yeah, you're done.

You did it.

It was great, I know.

Thank you, thank you.

Oh it happened.

Yeah, Oh, thank you.

I got it done.

Thank you, thank you, we all thank you.

The people of Longmont, thank you.

Of course, right the Longmont Museum there now are our business partners.

It's an incredible opportunity.

Okay, are you ready for my story?

I'm gonna tell them that you guys know that we don't ever know each other's stories, which we're talking about how annoying that must be for everyone who has to work on the show because we have to like take separate calls and I don't know this what she's gonna do.

Yeah, well, so I'll tell you right now.

I wish you would.

All these people in the audiences are like, we've been listening to this bullshit for nine years.

We know you don't know, but it's fun.

It's fun to talk about guys.

Tonight, I'm gonna tell you a story that takes place in one of your beautiful, charming, little scenic towns in the Rockies here in Colorado.

It's one of those towns that has.

Great hiking, skiing, fishing, and what one website describes as quote strong.

Old West vibes.

I like those things, right.

Everyone's got kind of a weird, yanky hat on.

The town has around two thousand people.

It's a tight knit community.

It's been described as sleepy, cozy and laid back.

Me too, right, that's you all over.

You're so tight knit.

But all of that changed on the afternoon of June fourth, two thousand and four, when a man came roaring down the streets of this quiet little town in a customized bulldozer.

With the intent of leveling everything in his path.

The man's name was Marv he Meyer and the town was called Granby.

This is the story of the Killdozer.

Good job, Yeah wow, I'm pretty sure Maren found this one, and I was like, you have done me a great service, truly, truly.

This story is fucking nuts.

Oh this is a great you story too, Like I feel like this one was made for you.

It's really there's a lot of heroes and anti heroes in this story and then there's one big ass bulldozer.

And that's all I need.

Really, I'm like a three year old boy in that way.

I just want to I just want to look at.

Big bulldozers, bulldozers and sinkholes, singles and bulldozers.

You know.

Uh, Okay, did you say sources for yours?

Yes?

Okay, great, I wasn't listening.

You even commented on it, yeah, And was that tonight?

Yeah?

Yeah.

So the main sources that Marin used for this story today are the book Kill Dozer, The True Story of the Colorado Bulldozer Rampage by author Patrick Brower, and a twenty twenty documentary called Tread.

Okay, so we'll just talked about Marv first, and so you learn a little background.

Marv Hemeyer is born in nineteen fifty one in South Dakota.

Are you fucking serious?

Are you serious?

Did you drive?

Why they drove?

How long is the road trip?

Eleven seven?

Someone does in a Bulldozer.

Classic.

That's good.

It's like the straight story, But with a bulldozer from South Dakota, how long does it take to get here driving?

Six hours?

Thank you very much.

Yeah, all the rest of the shit you're saying, we can't hear, and we'll talk about it later.

Yeah, South Dakota.

I know, I feel like I've never met a person from South Dakota.

No, you haven't.

This is what's one of your names, Carrie veneras Mary.

Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary.

Mary Smith.

Nice to meet you.

Mary.

Now I've now you know someone in South Dakota.

Yeah, okay, But Mar's family comes to Colorado in the mid No, sorry, Marv himself comes to Colorado in the mid nineteen seventies.

He's stationed at the now defunct Lowry Air Force Base.

He's right here in Denver.

Thank you for your service.

And then when Marv leaves the Air Force, he stays in Denver to pursue his newest passion.

Just give a guess.

Okay, is this to you pointing at me to guess a little bit?

Bulldozers?

Now, race car driving, snowmobiling.

Damn it.

That's kind of close though, like it iss like a vehicle, you.

Know, and it's also one of those vehicles with the cheney things, non actual wheels.

So I'm gonna take that as a win.

I think it's a huge win.

I need it also.

I just think it's funny when I was looking at this where it's like the words passion and snowmobiling are quite a combination.

Yeah, So snowbowle biling becomes a huge part of his life.

He takes weekly trips out to rugged.

Areas with his friends so they can ride their snowmobiles and hoot and holler and whatnot.

They snowmobile so hard together that eventually Marv decides to go into an auto repair business with one of those friends, a man named John Kleiner.

So they open up a shop in Boulder, and Marv becomes known as a virtuos when it comes to welding and repairing mufflers.

Kind of hot the mozart of mufflers.

Did you say kind of hot?

Yeah?

I don't know why.

Welding to me is just like one of those like tough person things.

Yeah, let's show really see.

Yeah, Hey, if you saw.

That while you were scrolling whatever the apps, what would you do?

Push left?

What's the thing you do?

You don't know the answer is yes, does his hat say silver bullet?

Oh shit, yeah, hell yeah he got that for free.

Or with like points from the tabs.

He sent away for that, right, So one of Marv's friends will later tell the AP that quote.

He could change a muffler by himself in twenty minutes, no wasted motion.

He knew what he was doing, all right.

Be nice to friends that talked about you like that.

Yeah, yeah, true appreciation of your skill, especially mufflers.

She's great.

Karen's great at muffler's.

She's so good at mufflers.

No wasted motions.

It's the thing I'm sick of when I go get my car fits and they're like, it's like, come on, twenty minute.

Oil change for fuck's 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's also made a bunch of money investing in real estate, so he's doing good.

And then in the early.

Nineties he moves to Grand Lake, Colorado.

It's just this huge lake.

I don't know her grand and he does it for this gnowmobiling, that's right.

And then this is when he hears that his old friend and business partner, John is thinking of expanding his business toward the Rocky Mountains.

That news gets Marv's wheels turning because he had recently come across a vacant two acre lot in Granby, near his current home in Grand Lake.

That lot was previously owned by.

A concrete business that changed hands before that business failed and went bust.

Uh.

So sometimes Marin uses these phrases like She'll be like, and everything went bust, and I'm like, I don't really talk like that, but I guess I missed that one.

So that piece of property has been bank owned for three years, and when Marv sees it, he sees it as the perfect place for an auto repair shop.

It's got a.

Two big garage, it has lots of storage space, beautiful lighting, a great room in the front, an office, and it's perfectly located at the intersection of two highways.

So yeah, breakdown, yeah, to it.

Right over here.

Yeah.

The best thing about it, though, is the price.

The property is appraised at around one hundred thousand dollars, but the starting bid is twenty thousand dollars.

So right, yeah, Marv's like, I'm gonna go to that auction.

I'm gonna kick some ass.

Do you want to guess how much?

Twenty five thousand dollars?

Seventies?

No, No, it's a ninety four.

That's the last ninety two Okay.

The last thing I heard was seventies.

Okay, twenty thousand in the nineties today would be eighty five thousand, forty six thousand.

That doesn't sound like enough 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 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 gran By lot and finance it back to John for sixty six thousand.

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.

So it's nineteen ninety two.

Marv shows up at a real estate auction ready to get that property, but right as the bidding begins, he realizes that someone else wants that property too, and it's the former mayor of Bramby, a man named Gus Harris.

So Mayor Harris also has a friend with him.

It's the former property owner of the concrete business that used to be there.

They write, you know what I'm about to deal with.

So this man's named Cody dochef and Cody sold his concrete business.

Someone else bought it, and then that person went out of business, and then the bank owned it.

So Cody actually made money off of that.

So he's there with the mayor and author Patrick Brower describes Cody in his book as quote higher high energy, 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, that's right, the blabbing and theah, yeah.

It's hard to it's hard to.

Yeah, that's right.

So so he's basically Cody's there to egg on the old mayor and to get you know, get him bidding and have some fun.

So the auction begins.

It's immediately intense.

The bidding, of course, goes back and forth between Mayor Gus, then Marv, and then Gus raises, and then Marv raises, and it goes back and forth until finally Marv wins the auction with a bid of forty two thousand dollars, which is about how much.

In today's Okay.

Sixty eight ninety five, am.

Yeah, should we stop doing this?

Yeah?

Maybe that's an old fucking trope that we should put away.

Just shelve it and never again guess money.

Maybe this tour is the last money guessing tour, and ver 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.

So once that auction's over, Marv claims that Cody came over to him and starts to chew him out.

He will later.

Describe Cody as quote the rudest and most arrogant person.

I mean, this guy is just a fucking asshole.

Oh, Marv, language love it.

Marv also claims that he immediately offered.

To sell the lot that he just bought to Cody, even though mayor Guess is the one that was bidding on it for sixty six thousand dollars, which was the same price that he offered to finance it for his friend John Cody and a handful of other people who were at the auction that day flatly deny that that exchange ever took place.

But the problem is now, and that's very small town of Granby.

Marph he Meer is rubbing some locals the wrong way, and as we all know, the people like people of us that come from the country, that's a problem.

You don't you don't want to do that, Okay, But Marv's problems are about to get worse because not long after purchasing this property, a man named Bud Wilson from the Granby Water and Sanitation Department comes out and informs Marv that this property is not connected to the city sectic system.

Yeah, what does that mean?

That means when you flush the toilet and just kind of goes out all right, Actually in the country of you've been called uh wait, it's a late a leech field right where it just it's like, well, just goes.

Out into being empty fields.

Oh no, okay, So listen, 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 for him to get connected to the city septic system is one hundred feet away off of his property, and it's so it's on somebody else's property.

And if that's not bad.

Enough, the owner of that land is none other than a former mayor Gus.

Harris oh Man, his auction enemy.

This is like a looney to in this cartoon.

It is at it's a little Cohen Brothers e this story.

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, might even be a little resentful of Marv's of noxious behavior.

Plus, as anyone who grew up in the country knows, 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 eighty thousand dollars to install this, and that's of course twice what he just paid for the land itself.

So the project is automatically way over budget from what he and John Kleiner originally agreed to be working on.

So suddenly Marv's investment property is morphing into a serious money pit, and he tries to do some damage control.

He shows up at the next Granby town hall meeting and he thinks he can somehow push or reroute the negotiations away from Gus and to the City of Gramby itself, and he wants he basically wants them to handle the negotiations and the subsequent installation costs.

And Marv actually tells the city board quote, you've got to hook me up.

Get that on a shirt.

Yeah, and then there's just a bunch of shit underneath.

Karen's going blue.

Is that blue?

No?

No, that's just gross.

Yeah, I guess it's brown if anything.

So, the Granby Town Board tells Marv that the city will not be holding his hand through this process, and that Marv needs to get his proper hooked up to the city sewer system, which means he has to work things out with Gus Harris.

And as you might guess, Marv does not like this answer, and he tells the board members, in what some might say is a condescending tone, that quote, you can't expect to grow if this is your policy.

It's extortioned by the government fiat.

I don't need you, you need me.

Uh oh yeah, that's foreshadowing.

Then he tries to drop the mic, but it's one of those ones that connect it to the podium, so he's just like pushing it down.

And then he storms.

Out, Yes, queen, go right, man, are so dramatic.

I love.

The stance of, uh, you're asking me to be reasonable?

How can you grow if that's your policy?

Maybe they don't want to grow.

Yeah, you know, maybe that's Granby.

So the whole thing is taking place in a town hall meeting, on the record, in front of a bunch people.

It's not a good look for the new guy who basically just screwed up.

And is now baking the town for help.

Marvel then informed town officials in the interim that he will be putting in a new septic tank.

So Grahamby's fine with that.

What he doesn't tell them is what he's doing is he found an old cement mixer on the property and he's just gonna bury that and use that as the septic tank.

The cement mixer huh.

I guess I don't really know how septic tanks work.

It's just a big I'm being honest.

It's like a suburb.

It's like a waiting room for your shit.

Okay, it's more complicated than that, but.

We don't need to talk about it.

And then Barn wrote and If you think that sounds like a bad idea, that's because it is a bad idea.

So so Bud Wilson from the Water and Sanitation Department warns Marv he can't rely on an aceptic tank forever.

He will need to figure out how to hook up to the city sewer line at some point, but before mar this is my writing, But before Marv can expel the cortisol from his system and work amicably with his neighbor, his business buddy, snowmobile sister John Kleiner unexpectedly finds himself involved in an.

EPA audit over some old oil spills.

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.

It's personal, okay, So when you know it, John now begins backpedaling to get out of the Gramby plan that he was going to do with Marv.

So Marv decides that he's just going to do it himself.

He's going to set up his new muffler shop.

But remember he planned to lease and finance that property to and with John.

It's not happening, So Marv has to go it alone, he opens Mountain View Mufflers.

Everybody loves it totally and.

He services just about everybody in town.

And he actually does really well.

So things start looking up and even better because he does such great work at the muffler shop, he basically starts doing damage control with the locals.

He even makes some friends.

People are like, oh, this guy's really good and they get to know him as a person, and.

He doesn't waste a movement or whatever it was.

That's right, no wasted movement.

They're like, look at the clean lines of this guy and his muffler work.

He's like a ballerina with the muffler.

Locals think that Marv is nice, he's friendly, he's making friends.

Things are starting to go smoothly.

And Marv is really happy about his transplant to this mountain community.

And then he's making good money and what is he doing with that money?

Such, it's the dream life.

He's he's driving.

But uh, there is one problem for Marvin.

It's Bud Wilson, the Granby water and sanitation guy, who keeps on calling and reminding him he's got to connect to the city sewer line.

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 off other people to not do the thing that they just don't.

Feel like doing.

Well, he does this for five years, Okay, epic procrastination, just masterful, No wasted movement in that.

So now it's nineteen ninety seven.

Marv's in his mid forties.

He has been running this muffler business for five years, and that is when the Docheff family approaches him asking if they can buy the property.

So this is Cody Docheff's family.

They owned the concrete plant before, and the Cody was the spark club of a man, and the family basically wants to start the concrete plant on that property again.

But Marv doesn't like Cody.

He god, he doesn't like a lot of people.

He's I think he's sensitive, Yeah, maybe a little emotional, like he's you know.

Yeah, sometimes you got to look at yourself though, if you're like not getting along with a lot of people.

That's very true, you know, saying that to me, say that to you.

Surprisingly, Marv says he is not opposed to selling to the Dochefs.

In fact, he gets the lot of praised and he lets them know, the property is now worth two hundred and seventy thousand dollars, but when the Dough Chefs agree to that price, Marv ups the price to three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars.

And then more.

Before claiming that actually the land is worth a million dollars.

Dude, calm down.

So he kind of does a bait and switch of.

Like, sure, friend, all negotiate with you and then not really.

So this forces the Doe Chefs basically to just walk away from this deal.

But what they do, because they're also petty bitches, is they buy the land next.

Door to Mark.

Or maybe they just.

Had to, you know what I mean.

Maybe that was just you can't put a concrete plant just anywhere.

Sure, it was just like it didn't have a ton of choices.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So when Marv finds that out, he tries to buy that property out from under them before they can finalize the deal.

But it's too late.

Ink is dry.

He can't do it, and this is when Marv goes on an all out crusade to fight that.

Forthcoming concrete plant being put in next door.

This guy is exhausting.

Let's talk, dude.

Take a nap and go ride your fucking snowmobile.

My thing is for real, right, It's like you can't only snowmobile your way out of your emotions.

You have to pit.

You have to go to therapy.

You have to fucking go to therapy.

I'm sorry.

Yeah you can say snowmobile.

I mean yeah, yeah, yep, nothing.

Okay.

So what is that buzz a mob?

I'm telling you it's a ghost.

It's a big moth.

If it lands on my shoulder, I'm leaving 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.

He cites all sort of.

Zoning violations and issues.

To be fair, Marv is not the only person in Gramby who feels this way about this concrete plant, 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, Got sky High News.

Anyone heard of it?

Love it?

Of course not?

They say we're not from Granby.

But basically he's doing everything he can to kind of lobby against this plant.

He also lawyers up.

He files a lawsuit in hope of halting construction.

So now this guy I News starts covering this battle because it's so public.

Marv's not pleased.

With the angle they take on the situation, though, because they position both him and his attorney as outsiders.

I'm considered an outsider in Petaluma, really because I moved there when I was two.

It's how small towns are, got it, and that town is a big town compared to GRAMBYA.

If that fucking moth doesn't get out of here, will I am performing?

Excuse me?

Excuse me?

Mom?

Okay, they're good luck.

Man on the street interview with the moth.

How long have you lived at the Paramount Theater?

Mom?

Okay, this is so fucking long.

I gotta go, all right.

Unfortunately, for Marv, all his time, money, and energy fighting this cause does not stop the concrete plant.

If anything, it causes a town of Grahamby to make sure everything is done exactly by the book.

So there's they're not breaking any rules and the dochef's work with the town to iron out all those zony issues that he was trying to cite.

And meanwhile Marvs convinced himself that the city is conspiring against him and his business.

He might be right, I mean I don't think he is.

Oh okay, knowing what is at the end of this document, Oh yeah, keep in mind.

Yeah.

So then in two thousand and one, which is four years you know, into his crusade against the concrete plant, a really bad thing happens.

We're going back to two thousand and Yeah, I think I know what it is.

It's not nine to eleven.

The concrete mixer fills up and begins to overflow.

Yeah, And so what Marv does is he doesn't solve the problem.

He just he simply pumps.

All of that human waste into a ditch behind his property.

Yah, you can't do that.

No, it turns out, it turns out it is against the rules.

Yeah, he's like mad at the concrete people, but then he's just like dumping shit exactly.

He's an environmental toxicity warrior.

And then it's like it's natural.

Yeah, he's only mad at concrete, not human feces everywhere.

So he immediately gets caught doing that.

He gets fined twenty five hundred dollars and warned that he absolutely must get connected to the city sewer system or his business could be shut down, and Marv calls this requirement a form quote a form of terrorism.

Ah, bad timing, dude.

Do you want me to have indoor plumbing too?

What is this?

It didn't land on or landed on me?

Is it on him?

Black?

Right?

Anyone?

Is it on you?

What do you want from us?

Hey, we're trying to do our first live show back after six.

Fucking kulle I'm happy about it.

Oh wait, maybe it came from my dress.

Maybe I don't tell like moth.

Balls that poor moth is like, I just want to go home.

Please let me, please, let me go home.

Lady wearing your fucking dress.

You steamed him out of the dress.

Oh no, okay, Oops, he's still there.

Just put your finger up way if he flies away.

Okay.

So this is when Cody Dotchev calls Marv and offers to cover the cost of the sewer line installation if Marv will just stop fighting about the concrete plant.

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.

I got it.

Yeah, this is the one man who a hot tub is not a positive.

Doesn't have a positive effect on him.

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 and still here I am stewing an anger and paranoia in a hot tub.

If this sounds like you, please call the Gramby hot Tub hotline.

Uh.

Also, I wrote in this is just a guess, but it sounds like it might be spring, so I think he hasn't snowmobiled in a.

While, so he's itching.

All this is to say Marv isn't a bad place.

And we know this and we know what happens next because Marv ends up recording a very long manifesto.

Oh man, when there's a manifesto, you just shit scones out right.

This is that's the game through which you walk, And you're like, now, this goes into a terrible true crime story.

The timeline goes like this.

In April of two thousand and two, Marv's lawsuit against the Doe Chefs is officially dismissed.

Back in the hot Tub, Hot Tears five mufflers this time, so the concrete plant is going full steam ahead.

Three months later, in July of two thousand and two, a special delivery arrives from Marv in Granby.

What is It's an enormous Comatsu D three five five, a bulldozer which he reportedly got a great deal on.

Oh so these were designed.

These are the gigantic bulldozers that were designed for oil fields and mining operations.

I didn't know there were different kinds of bulldozers.

That's great to know.

They're like a little one, like a skiploader that they use a costco, and then there's these fucking gigantic ones that are like We're going to dig into the center of the earth and release cryptids.

That's my personal dream.

Anyway.

They're over twelve feet tall, nearly thirty feet long, and they can weigh over one.

Hundred thousand pounds.

What else is thirty feet long?

A standard school bus, a large RV, and adult blue whale.

Good to know for a reference.

That's according to AI, I'll say, which also recommended that to stay healthy, you should eat six small rocks a day.

So let's take everything 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.

Giant earth moving equipment is not a great one either.

Then Marv starts selling everything.

He owns at auction.

Horrible his shop, equipment, motorcycles, boats, his house, and worst of all, his seven beloved snowmobiles.

Very bad.

I thought you were going to say dogs, but snowmobiles isn't as bad.

So by October of that year, Marv has sold almost all of his assets.

He's closed his muffler business.

Nobody is seeing these signs, which is very upsetting.

Yeah, and maybe he just alienated enough people where it's just like, oh, that guy.

He also moves all his money into his father's bank accounts without telling him or anybody else.

He also works out a temporary arrangement with the people that he sells his house and land to that he they're allowing him to lease back the muffler shop for a year, so, as he explains to them, so he can quote finish some work.

Fun fact, one day after closing the sale on this property, the new owners connect the property to this city sewer system.

Just that easy, my god.

Twenty four hours Okay, so Marv secretly moves himself and his giant bulldozer into his muffler shop, and for the next year, no one knows what he is doing in there.

When he begins recording this manifesto, in which he says of the local people of gramby quote, they thought they could do whatever they wanted to me.

They were wrong, And so his revenge project begins.

Marv begins modifying this gigantic bulldozer, adding steel and concrete panels up to a foot thick, attaching video cameras protected by bulletproof lenses, and mounting several gunports, basically turning this machine into a full on weaponized tank.

Jesus mm hmm dude.

And then on June fourth, two thousand and four, Marv climbs into this gigantic armored bulldozer and lowers a steel slab weighing several tons 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.

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 you.

That's what no wasted motion can end up looking like.

It's just so sad.

It's like that is it took so long.

That's a person who was in so much pain and nobody he didn't have anybody to turn to.

He did.

He just was like, fine, I'll just weld the fuck out of these feelings.

Horrible.

So around two pm, this ninety ton machine bursts out of the muffler shop and going three to five miles an hour.

That's not as tough, you know, yeah, very very up.

Make up a different number.

It's like it's a slow attack, which I think are worse.

Yes, it's like the zombie thing.

I'd prefer a fast zombie and just get it over with.

Okay, Yeah, it's.

Okay.

So his first target is the Dochef's concrete plan.

Workers there watch in disbelief as this steel covered bulldover bulldozer smashes onto the property through the plant walls.

The building collapses around it.

Bystanders try stopping this bulldozer by jamming debris into the treads.

One person fires a handgun at.

It, but you saw it.

It does nothing and they can't see if there's a driver inside.

They don't know if somebody is working it remotely, like no one understands what's going on.

And this is when Cody Docheff shows up.

Can oh, I bet you can?

You go backburns if he could, because I think I have a theory that that's Cody Docheff.

He tried to get into it.

Yeah, but he actually slipped off of that.

That's a guest though, because there's a cop there, so that could could be a cop and I could be wrong, but Cody Docheff actually tried to get up an inside.

But when he was doing that and he was unable to.

So what he did he gets the rest of the concrete plant 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 go lift the that.

Bulldozer off the ground.

Damn.

It's like that's sad.

Don't know, you're not going to beat that thing.

All Cody can manage doing is spinning the bullet doozer like around a little bit.

But as the two machines ram each other, Cody gets knocked out.

Oh man, so this is when Marv starts shooting.

Oh fuck, he fires ten.

To twelve rounds toward Cody's loader.

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, so it's not very well you know, planned out, I guess.

So thankfully he misses Cody.

And I'm not sure if Cody was still unconscious or not, but how scary for everybody else where.

Like then the gunshots start either way if he was awake or not.

So now the made it on the scene.

They have to duck for cover as Marv turns the bulldozer's guns in.

The direction of a fuel truck.

Ooh, but thank god he can't aim well, so instead of hitting the fuel truck, he just takes out some natural gas piping, which is it's fine, it's natural, and a.

Couple electrical boxes.

It just sparks and that's fun.

And a transformer, which is a great cartoon.

So once that's done, the bulldozer then turns and slowly drives off, heading toward downtown Branby.

And this is where it gets bad.

Marv drives the bulldozer into Granby and his path of destruction begins.

He crushes a Ford expedition.

He destroys the Granby.

Town Hall, the town fucking holl No, Then he destroys the library.

Then he destroys the city's only traffic light.

Come on.

Then a bank.

We have the bank, Holy shit, yeah, look the banks.

That gorgeous stone faced bank.

Uh.

Then this guy hey newspaper offices who had been reporting on him.

Oh my god, that's a lot of fucking damage.

That is fucking damage, like crazy.

And then a house owned by Granby's, a Granby towed board member.

As it goes, people are trying to shoot at the bulldozer.

Some people try throwing grenades at it.

What the this is?

I'm that's that's crazy.

I'm sorry you don't carry a grenade.

Well, then you're not ready when a big bulldozer comes to down.

The top of your list of things you destroyed was a Ford explorer.

Yeah, I'm really mad about that.

They're a gorgeous vehicle.

Bullets bounce off of this thing.

Some locals get it like Corey tried to do.

Some get into their own construction machinery and also drive at the bulldozer.

None of them are a match.

Soon, Denver media outlets have helicopters in the air on the scene while everyone's radios are tuned to the blow by blow that the local AM radio station is basically giving everybody Hell yeah, so everyone hears it when Marv turns his bulldozer toward a pro paane storage yard OOO that has five three thousand gallon tanks and two huge thirty thousand gallon tanks of pro pain.

That's big.

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.

Come on.

Yeah.

Luckily, Marv's aim is impeded, so he abandons that horrific plan.

So it's just like everyone's standing there waiting for something to happening.

He's just like m.

Never mind goes the other way.

And what he heads for is one of my favorite names of a business ever, Grambles Hardware Store.

Grambles Hardware Store.

It's cute.

No one likes it as much as me alone again.

And thanks, and Grambles is owned by another town board member.

So Marv drives directly into the front of this hardware store and.

He brings the whole thing down around him.

Can you see them there?

It is that's the one.

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 out of the now dead engine, and the.

Bulldozers treads like that.

There's breeze stuck in all of them that can't go any further.

Deputies carefully approach the silent bulldozer, actively avoiding the gun ports, and that's when they hear a gunshot from inside.

It takes bomb techs ten hours to cut through the steel armor to get inside, so at one am they are.

Able to blow torch a hole.

Big enough to see inside, and that's where they see that Marv Hemeyer is slumped over dead.

He has shot himself in the head.

Wow.

So, despite the name that the press ends up giving to this creation, the kill Dozer, miraculously, no one.

In this town, I always said, Grambles, no one in the town of Grambles, where I'm the mayor.

This is good news.

No one is killed.

It's very sad that Marv is killed, but thank god, no one else is hurt or killed except for the Ford exposition.

Okay, so because of his manifesto, many outsiders have come to see Marv as like a kind of a folk hero, being an anti bureaucrat vigilante who's taken a stand against a small town's big government.

That's not what happened here.

This is a person who isolated themselves, started believing every goddamn thing that they thought, 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?

I would really love to build the largest kill dozer anyone's ever seen and attack my enemies.

And then that person goes, Marv, get out of the hot tub, get down to the tavern and be around other people.

So people do go to the town asking.

To see the kill dozer, they're told there's nothing to see.

If people do not like it, where people go there.

Obviously, authorities actually dismantled the killed dos and sent its parts to different scrap yards across the country so that it could never be made into like a shrine or you know what I mean, anything like that.

And over twenty years later from that day of discrettion, the town of Granby and the people who live 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.

Marfe Meyer's two hour rampage cost seven million dollars in damage, and it was it was done to basically mom and pop businesses, just local people.

Many were never able to recover, some were able to rebuild, and the town actually really came together to.

Help each other very beautifully.

But you know, some people just had to go out of business in the aftermath of that day.

They the people of Granby came together as a community.

As I was just trying to provised, but now I have to read it on the paper.

There we are there together.

So this is where it ended up.

This is this is Grambles.

That was Grambles.

We got all those genes and those are all those people.

Yeah, you're not into the deno.

I love it.

We told you it had an old west field.

We did.

These people cleaned up the destruction and the debris together.

They actually found new.

Spaces for displaced businesses and they did their best to move forward as a community.

It's a very stark contrast to Marv Hemeyer's own trajectory.

He worked to become a very well liked fixture in the town.

But ultimately, yeah, he couldn't.

He couldn't get past these these ideas he had in his head of what he was supposed to get and what he was owed, and that entitlement that a lot of people have a problem with, and that of course caused him to withdraw into his hot tub.

And go insane.

In the documentary tread, one friend of mar Marves actually offers a simple, sad and I will say a little bit funny explanation for Marv's dark turn, saying, quote, he became a lonely 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.

He said that.

He said that.

That's the full quote, and that's the story of the kill Dozer.

Great job, thank you, Wow, what a tale.

Amazing, amazing story, Colorado.

Good job, Bran much at all?

That's up?

Hi are you?

We thought it would never happen.

One small note.

Oh they got lost in the kerfuffle.

This is Georgia hart Star.

It happens.

Thank don Bia, thank DoD Wia.

Oh good job.

So whoever the okay, so would you find the button?

Did you find the button.

Remember, oh you do here?

It gives me.

Oh hellya, you're the best.

Thank you.

Can you do your couple stuff off stage?

Please?

Well?

I forgot to tell him.

Remember I told you that I bought something today at gold Mine for the hometown person.

Here it's a 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.

Perfect.

Yeah, it's so good.

Well oops, so this if you don't.

Know, it spelt my water?

Did you this?

Gorgeous am?

If you don't know, this is the part.

Where Georgia randomly picks anybody from the audience to come up and tell their hometown.

With us on stage.

And and there's rules behind it.

Don't just make it short, don't be ship faced, don't point at someone you don't know you want to Yeah, okay, right here, go over there please.

Sorry.

I hate doing that.

For one second, I thought it was the hot dog putting their hand up, and I was just like, well.

Here we go.

Here okay, And then we wait a little while.

Oh yeah, and we're like, how did you feel about that first show?

It's pretty good.

I think we did.

Okay, thanks, so.

Here you come.

Hi Katie.

You guys, it's Katie here.

Yes, right here, friend and center.

Hi, I'm from Brandenton, Florida.

We flew in from Florida yesterday.

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.

Sorry, Katie, I think they're all booing you right now.

They're mad because it's not a Colorado hometown.

Oh was it supposed to be?

It doesn't matter.

Say I'm sorry, I didn't know.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, maybe there could be another one.

Yes, if you're not mean.

Unless we get kicked out of this theater, people, get out of here.

Okay, Katie, tell us your hometown.

My hometown is Bradenton, Florida.

Okay, yeah, and we like it.

We like that idea.

Yeah, yep?

Is that all I'm supposed to do?

Oh?

No, I shouldn't know.

I don't know, Katie.

Is that it?

Katie?

Kate?

Does anybody on the hometown from Colorado?

You picked someone?

You do it?

Really?

You pick it?

Oh?

Then I'll pick the clapping lady?

Is it from Colorado?

Come on up?

Okay, Okay, here she comes, here we go Casada.

It's Cassandra.

Everyone from Colorado?

Were you shop?

You're right here here?

Okay, what's your name?

My name is Cassandra, Hi.

Sanda or Cassandra, Cassandra, Cassandra?

Everybody?

Where are you from?

Vail?

From Vail, Colorado?

Malcolm?

Ye see what they see?

How they did it?

Yeah, okay, I don't know how to do this.

I'm sorry.

Don't you do?

Just tell us why you got into true crime?

What story you got you into true crime?

Yeah?

Your voice, it wasn't a story name, but.

My story, my funny story is from up and veil.

In those areas we all look at them, they're very you know.

Oh yeah, richie, richie rich people.

Right.

Okay, So when I was a freshman in high school, I went to a party in Aspen.

Colorado, and.

The mother walked around with.

A silver platter of illicits substances a good one or yeah, oh yeah, very very clean, very clean.

Wow.

Yeah.

But later on somebody snitched h to their mother, and the uh wife and son that were involved literally took all of the fall for this husband who purchased everything.

And known the house.

Wow.

Just so that his name wasn't involved.

Wow, really did they go to jail?

Yeah for like a hot minute.

No?

Really?

How old was the sun?

Seventeen?

Now did he have did he had a cru crush on him?

Oh?

God?

They were critch oh okay, no, okay, no, Juicie.

He probably like cleaned up trash on.

The side of the road for like six months.

Yeah, that's but.

Yeah, aspic Oh, I'm sorry.

And veil.

Our parents still yell at us.

Okay, yay, Cassandra, everyone, Cassandra, guess what you get?

Wait, Cassandra, Cassandra, you get this pin.

No practice for this is hard, she.

Said, I've practiced for six weeks and it still sucked.

Cassandra.

That's how we feel.

This is that's the vibe.

Baby.

Well, thank you so much for being here to.

This is incredible.

We appreciate you guys coming to our first live show in six freakin years.

Oh my god, selling us two nights in Denver.

Thank you guys so much.

We love you so much.

Thank you, Denver, Stay.

Sexy, Elvis, do you want to cookie?

Two rich young Americans moved to the Costa Rican jungle to start over, but one of them will end up dead.

And the other tried for murder three times.

From the start.

The omens are bad.

Yeah, place is the darkest jungle you've ever seen in your life.

You have no clue.

John and Anne Bender are young, rich and attractive.

He's a Wall Street wiz.

Kid, just handsome.

We'll be very handsome.

And they're devoted to each other.

There's a lot of just like warmth and care.

They set up a nature reserve and build a strange new home.

It's like a spaceship's landed on a little of a hill in the middle of the jungle in Costa Rica.

But slowly their dreams starts to crumble.

It was just doom't just don't.

I'm Becky Milligan and this is Hell in Heaven, a new podcast from Exactly Right Media and iHeart Podcasts, produced by Blanchard House.

I'm a seasoned investigative journalist and I've reported on some pretty weird stories over the years.

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.

And all of a sudden there's guys with guns, Lots of men with guns.

They were saying, help, help, the they're kidnapping us.

As their past catches up with them.

Our couple retreat from reality.

They lose it.

They actually lose it.

They sort of like nuts until one night everything spins out of control.

He says, we heard a shot inside the boss's house.

And I could see the gun on the floor, the trail of blood, and.

One of them will end up being tried for murder.

Not once, people, yes, not twice stunned, but three times.

We were all looking at each other just in total disbelief.

Helen Heaven premieres on October ninth.

New episodes Thursdays.

Listen to Helen Heaven on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This has been an exactly right production.

Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.

Our editor is Aristotle Aarcevedo.

This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.

Our researchers are Mere McGlashan and Ali Elkin.

Email your homecounts to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.

Follow the show on Instagram at my Favorite Murder.

Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And now you can watch us on Exactly Wright's YouTube page.

While you're there, please like and subscribe.

Good byebye,