Shooting suspect allegedly went to other lawmakers’ homes during rampage

ST. PAUL, Minnesota — The man charged in the shootings of two Democratic state lawmakers and their spouses over the weekend went to the homes of at least two other Minnesota legislators during his rampage intending to kill them, authorities said Monday.

Vance Boelter extensively stalked his victims and posed as a law enforcement officer during the shootings that killed state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and left state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, critically injured, said Joseph H. Thompson, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota.

Between the attacks, Boelter allegedly drove to the homes of a state representative in Maple Grove and a state senator in nearby New Hope. But in both cases, Thompson said at a news conference Monday, Boelter was thwarted before he could carry out further violence.

The representative was away on vacation, Thompson said, and Boelter left the senator’s home after encountering a police officer nearby. Authorities have not identified either elected official, but Minnesota state Sen. Ann Rest (D) said she’d been informed by law enforcement that the gunman had parked near her home early Saturday.

“I am so grateful for the heroic work of the New Hope Police Department and its officers,” Rest said in a statement. “Their quick action saved my life.”

Boelter, meanwhile, allegedly texted his family in the hours after the shootings that set off the largest manhunt in state history and roiled officeholders’ sense of safety in Minnesota and across the country.

“Dad went to war last night,” he wrote, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Monday. In a separate text to his wife, Boelter allegedly said: “Words are not gonna explain how sorry I am for this situation.”

“There’s gonna be some people coming to the house armed and trigger happy and I don’t want you guys around,” the text to his wife said, according to the complaint.

Those details emerged a day after Boelter, 57 — whose online profile suggests he has an interest in security work and Christian evangelism — surrendered to police in the woods near his home in rural Sibley County following a massive two-day search.

Prosecutors said Monday that Boelter would face federal murder charges in the slayings of the Hortmans — counts that could result in a death sentence should he be convicted.

“This was a political assassination, which is not a word we use very often in the United States,” Thompson said during a news conference in Minneapolis to announce the charges, which also included counts of stalking and using a firearm in an act of violence. Thompson declined to say whether he would pursue a death-penalty case.

Boelter, dressed in an orange prison uniform, answered questions from a federal magistrate judge during a brief court appearance in St. Paul and was ordered detained without bail pending a hearing next week. Matthew Deates, a public defender appointed to represent him, declined to comment afterward.

Boelter had already been charged by state prosecutors with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of attempted second-degree murder — charges Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said would likely be upgraded to first-degree murder as soon as her office could present evidence to a grand jury, as required by Minnesota law.

“We are at early stages,” she said. “We will review all of the evidence from law enforcement as it comes in and are working with our law enforcement partners.”

Court documents filed in the federal case laid out a chilling narrative of what FBI investigators described as an extensively planned “campaign of stalking and violence.” They also shed new light on Boelter’s alleged movements as authorities scoured the state to find him.

Hours before his arrest, investigators found a car linked to Boelter abandoned on a road. In a letter inside the vehicle, addressed to the FBI, Boelter admitted to being “the shooter at large in Minnesota involved in the 2 shootings,” according to the criminal complaint.

Authorities allege that Boelter researched his targets for months, looking up their addresses and other personal information on publicly available websites and compiling a list of potential targets, most of whom were elected Democrats. He allegedly purchased flashlights, a “hyperrealistic silicone mask” and materials authorities said he would later use to disguise his car as a police vehicle.

Around 2 a.m. Saturday, Boelter, wearing the mask and a tactical vest, arrived first at the home of the Hoffmans in Champlin, a quiet suburb about 20 minutes outside Minneapolis, according to court records. Banging on the door, he claimed to be a police officer responding to a shooting reported inside, the charging document states.

It was only after he stopped shining a flashlight in the Hoffmans’ eyes and they saw he was not an officer, Thompson said, that they realized they were in danger.

“This is a robbery,” Thompson said Boelter shouted before shooting John Hoffman nine times and Yvette Hoffman eight, then fleeing as their daughter called 911. The couple remain hospitalized but both are expected to make a full recovery, authorities said.

Roughly 20 minutes later, Boelter surfaced again at another lawmaker’s home in Maple Grove, according to the complaint. Authorities said surveillance footage from the state representative’s house shows Boelter repeatedly ringing the doorbell and shouting: “This is the police. We have a warrant.”

The lawmaker was away on vacation, Thompson said Monday, and Boelter left shortly afterward, headed to his next intended target — a state senator in New Hope.

By that time, authorities responding to the shooting of the Hoffmans had dispatched law enforcement to conduct wellness checks on certain members of the state legislature, Thompson said.

According to the complaint, an officer sent to the senator’s home in New Hope encountered Boelter parked nearby in his black SUV, disguised as a police car. The officer initially mistook him for a fellow law enforcement member and tried to speak with him, Thompson said, but Boelter did not respond.

She left him to continue on to the lawmaker’s house to investigate. By the time she returned, Boelter had driven away, according to the complaint.

It was then authorities said that Boelter made his way to the Hortmans’ home in the neighboring suburb of Brooklyn Park. Arriving around 3:30 a.m., he again encountered officers who had been dispatched to conduct a safety check in light of the earlier shooting, the complaint states.

As the officers arrived, they spotted Boelter dressed in dark clothing standing near the front door, records add. Boelter fired several shots into the house, then rushed inside and shot the couple, according to the complaint. He fled out a back door before he could be apprehended, Thompson said.

The Hortmans’ family dog, who also appeared to have been shot, was gravely injured and later had to be euthanized.

This booking photo released by the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office on June 16, 2025, shows Vance Boelter at the Hennepin County Jail in Minnesota.

Investigators said they discovered a 9mm Beretta they believe the gunman used in the shooting disassembled and abandoned outside, as well as a face mask, according to the complaint. In Boelter’s car, they found five guns, including assault-style rifles, ammunition, and a notebook listing more than 45 other Minnesota state and local officials, Thompson said.

As authorities scrambled to find Boelter in the hours that followed, police pulled his wife over as she was driving with the couple’s children near Onamia — more than 75 miles from the scene of the final attack. According to the complaint, she gave them permission to search her cellphone and the vehicle without a warrant. They found two handguns, $10,000 in cash and passports for her and her children in the car.

Greg Fuchs, Boelter’s brother-in-law, told The Washington Post on Monday that the family would have no comment.

At a home in Minneapolis where Boelter lived part time with roommates while working in the city, investigators found another handwritten list containing many of the same lawmakers’ names that were detailed in the notebook found in his car as well as those of Democratic lawmakers from other Midwestern states, the complaint states.

Scrawled notes next to Hortman’s name read: “married Mark 2 children 11th term” and “big house off golf course 2 ways in to watch from one spot,” evidence suggesting that Boelter had surveilled the house before Saturday’s shootings, authorities said.

As the manhunt continued into a second day Sunday, Boelter traveled to Minneapolis to meet with a stranger whose e-bike he had arranged to buy, authorities said.

The man, whom authorities did not identify Monday, told law enforcement that Boelter arrived to the meeting wearing a cowboy hat and carrying two duffel bags. In addition to the bike, he offered to buy the man’s Buick sedan, paying $900 in cash for both, the seller told authorities, according to the complaint.

Sunday afternoon, investigators found that car abandoned along Highway 25 — about two miles from Boelter’s home in Green Isle, in rural Sibley County. Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said Monday that the discovery led them to Boelter.

Just after 9 p.m., an officer spotted Boelter running through the nearby woods, according to the complaint. He surrendered after what Evans described as a “relatively short period” of negotiations.

“They were moving in, and he was cooperating,” Evans said, adding: “I believe he was in a position where he just had to give up.”

Thompson, speaking at Monday’s news conference, said it was still “way too speculative” to say what allegedly motivated Boelter. Though he acknowledged nearly all of the targets on Boelter’s alleged hit list were Democrats, investigators had found no writings indicating any ideology and had “seen nothing like a Unabomber-style manifesto in his writings.”

Interviews and a review of Boelter’s online presence paint a portrait of a man who bounced from jobs at funeral homes to a nascent attempt to launch his own security firm in Africa. He was avid about his Christian faith and sometimes complained about Democratic politicians, his friend and roommate David Carlson told reporters.

During his federal court hearing Monday, Boelter told U.S. Magistrate Judge John F. Dockerty that he could not afford his own attorney as he was making roughly $540 a week from a job he held part-time. He said he had between $20,000 and $30,000 in savings and owned seven cars registered in his name — though some, he added, were being used by “a couple of my kids.”

Although state and federal law enforcement officials were united as they announced Boelter’s apprehension Sunday night, a legal tug-of-war appeared to emerge Monday over who would be the first to take him to trial.

Originally booked into the Hennepin County jail, Boelter had been scheduled to make his first court appearance on the state murder charges Monday afternoon. Before that hearing could happen, federal authorities arrived to take him into custody and transport him to his federal court hearing in St. Paul.

Moriarty, the county attorney, told reporters her office had been abruptly informed of the transfer that morning and said that typically he would have made his scheduled state court appearance first. When a reporter pressed her on whether he was going to appear in court in Minneapolis, Moriarty left the lectern.

Ultimately, Boelter did not appear at his state court hearing later that afternoon and was not represented by an attorney.

Tensions have been high in recent months between the Justice Department and Minnesota officials, including Moriarty, who have been publicly critical of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration and other measures. Last month, the Justice Department announced it had opened a racial discrimination investigation into Moriarty, a Democrat, and the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office over a new policy that would take an individual’s race into consideration during plea negotiations.

Speaking Monday at a news conference Monday on the Boelter case, she urged an end to the type of divisive political rhetoric she blamed for this weekend’s attacks.

“It is a frightening time we are living in,” Moriarty said. “Political violence is prevalent, and the way that we talk to and about each other has raised the tension to unfathomable levels. We cannot continue on in this way.”

The Hortmans’ children, Sophie and Colin, echoed that call for unity in a statement Monday — their first since the death of their parents.

“Hope and resilience are the enemy of fear,” it read. “Our parents lived their lives with immense dedication to their fellow humans. This tragedy must become a moment for us to come together. … The best way to honor our parents’ memory is to do something, whether big or small, to make our community just a little better for someone else.”

Marley reported from Minneapolis and Roebuck reported from Washington. Annie Gowen contributed to this report.