(16 Jun 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY: MUST CREDIT CEDRIC HOHNSTADT
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Saint Paul, Minnesota – 16 June 2025
1. Various STILLS, courtroom sketches, Vance Boelter, who is charged with killing one Minnesota lawmaker and wounding another, is seen at a federal court hearing Monday
2. STILL, close courtroom sketch of the judge
STORYLINE:
The man suspected of killing a Minnesota lawmaker and wounding another faces murder charges after police arrested him Sunday near his home following a nearly two-day search.
Vance Boelter is accused of posing as a police officer and fatally shooting former Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their home early Saturday in the northern Minneapolis suburbs.
Authorities say he also shot and wounded Sen. John Hoffman, a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, at their home in a nearby neighborhood. They also said he visited the homes of two other state legislators but did not encounter them, and officials in other states reported Monday that they were on his list of targets.
Federal authorities were holding the 57-year-old Boelter without bail after his first appearance Monday in federal court on murder and stalking charges. He also faces state murder charges.
Minnesota does not have the death penalty. Federal law allows it to be imposed, but acting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said during a news conference Monday that it’s too early to say whether his office with seek the death penalty.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said during a news conference that she plans to file first-degree murder charges against Boelter. First-degree murder covers premeditated killings, and the punishment for a conviction is life in prison without parole.
Thompson said Boelter planned his attacks carefully, researching intended victims and their families and conducting surveillance of their homes. Authorities have not given a motive for the shootings.
Boelter went to four Democratic lawmakers’ homes in the northern Minneapolis suburbs in about 90 minutes early Saturday, starting with Hoffman’s and ending with Hortman’s, according to authorities.
In between, they said, he stopped at the home of a lawmaker they didn’t name, but the legislator was not home.
Democratic state Sen. Ann Rest said he parked near her home in New Hope. Authorities said police there had sent an officer to check on Rest, and the officer drove up beside Boelter’s black SUV, believing him to be an officer as well. When he wouldn’t talk to her, she went on to Rest’s house to wait for other officers, and Boelter left to go to Hortman’s home, they said.
Rest, 83, has served in the Legislature for 40 years and in the Senate since 2001. She is chair of the Senate tax committee. Although some fellow Democrats wanted to raise taxes this year to help with budget challenges, Rest opposed general tax increases.
Thompson said a list of about 45 names of Minnesota state and federal elected officials were found in writings recovered from a fake police vehicle left at the crime scene — some names appearing more than once. Authorities also have said the list included community leaders, along with abortion-rights advocates and information about health care facilities, according to the officials.
The search for Boelter was the “largest manhunt in the state’s history,” Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley said. It ended Sunday in rural Sibley County, southwest of Minneapolis, where he lived.
"We had no problems with him,” Nienaber said in a brief phone interview with AP.
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