A federal grand jury indicted a man on July 15 who is accused of shooting and killing former Minnesota state House Speaker Melissa Hortman (D) and her husband, and wounding a state senator and his wife.
Vance Boelter’s indictment includes murder, stalking, and firearms charges in a series of alleged attacks where he is accused of disguising himself as a police officer. The murder charges related to the deaths of Hortman and her husband, Mark, could result in the federal death penalty.
“This political assassination, the likes of which have never occurred here in the state of Minnesota, has shook our state at a foundational level,” acting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said.
A decision on whether to pursue the death penalty “will not come for several months” and will be up to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Thompson said.
While Minnesota ended its state death penalty in 1911, the Trump administration has said it intends to seek out capital punishment for any eligible federal charges.
Prosecutors had already charged Boelter with the same counts but needed a grand jury indictment to take the case to trial under federal court rules.
Handwritten Letter
At a Tuesday news conference, Thompson unveiled new details on the case, including a handwritten letter by Boelter addressed to FBI Director Kash Patel that investigators found. Boelter allegedly confessed to the shootings and made a series of claims in the letter.“In the letter, Vance Boelter claims that he had been trained by the U.S. military off the books and he had conducted missions on behalf of the U.S. military in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa,” Thompson said.
In the letter, Boelter also wrote that a Democrat politician had approached him about killing two other Democrats.
When asked if he thought that all was Boelter’s fantasy, Thompson said, “Yes, I agree.”
“There is little evidence showing why he turned to political violence and extremism,” the acting U.S. attorney said. “What he left were lists: politicians in Minnesota, lists of politicians in other states, lists of names of attorneys at national law firms.”
Boelter is described as an evangelical Christian with politically conservative views by friends, who say he has struggled to find work.
Comments on Motives
Boelter, speaking to The New York Post on Saturday, said the shootings had nothing to do with his support for President Donald Trump or opposition to abortion, but did not say why he carried out the alleged attacks.“You are fishing and I can’t talk about my case … I’ll say it didn’t involve either the Trump stuff or pro-life,” Boelter wrote in a message to the newspaper through the jail’s messaging system.
He also faces state murder and attempted murder charges in Hennepin County. Boelter’s federal trial will move ahead of his state case.
Before allegedly shooting and killing the Hortmans, Boelter, 57, was driving a fake police cruiser and wearing a realistic rubber mask and tactical gear at roughly 2 a.m. on June 14, when he allegedly entered the home of state Sen. John Hoffman, a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, in Champlin, a suburb of Minneapolis, prosecutors said.
He also allegedly stopped at the homes of two other lawmakers, but one wasn’t home, and a law enforcement officer may have scared Boelter away from the second.
Prosecutors said that he finally went to the Hortmans’s home in Brooklyn Park, where he allegedly killed them both and wounded their dog so severely that it had to be euthanized.
