Vance Boelter indicted; search warrant includes full FBI letter, stalking details and murky motive

Federal prosecutors Tuesday revealed troubling new details in the case against the man accused of assassinating a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband, including a rambling letter addressed to the FBI claiming the violence was part of a conspiracy.

The letter was released along with an unsealed search warrant and six-count indictment charging Vance Boelter with stalking and fatally shooting DFL lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at their home June 14.

The indictment also brings firearm charges against Boelter for the shootings of state Sen. John Hoffman, his wife, Yvette, and now includes a charge for the attempted shooting of their daughter, Hope Hoffman, in their Champlin home. John and Yvette survived their injuries.

“Vance Boelter committed a terrible act of political violence and extremism, a targeted political assassination that was unprecedented in the state of Minnesota,” said acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Joe Thompson. “It has been a terrible personal tragedy for the Hoffman and Hortman families.”

Two of the federal charges carry the possibility of the death penalty. Thompson said any decision about a death sentence will come later and requires approval from Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has been vocal in her support of capital punishment.

Boelter, 57, surrendered to law enforcement June 15 in a Green Isle field roughly 1 mile from his residence following a 43-hour manhunt.

Thompson said further investigation has made investigators “confident” Boelter acted alone. A motive, however, remains unclear.

“That leaves us with the why? Why did Vance Boelter do this? Why did he carry out this political assassination?” Thompson said. “That’s a harder question.”

Thompson said investigators have confirmed Boelter set out to commit a targeted assassination as an act of “political extremism.” He carried lists of DFL politicians’ home addresses and conducted surveillance outside the lawmakers’ homes. The lists included names of attorneys at national law firms, Thompson revealed Tuesday.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office unsealed a 47-page search warrant written by FBI Special Agent Andrew Bilbrey which reveals that Boelter cased the Hortmans’ house several hours before they were killed.

It also gives an indication of Boelter’s motivations and details that his closest friends and associates were shocked by the allegations against him. Until 2020, the indictment notes, Boelter’s career centered on food companies and larger agribusinesses.

That career path then pivoted to “a series of positions relating to death,” including funeral homes, retrieving human remains from homicide scenes and car crashes and, up until the shootings, work for a medical facility that recovers eyes from organ donors. About the same time, Boelter unsuccessfully attempted to start two businesses, including a private security company and entrepreneurial efforts in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Following the shootings at the Hoffman home, including narrowly missing Hope Hoffman after shooting her parents, Boelter traveled to the homes of Rep. Kristin Bahner in Maple Grove and Sen. Ann Rest in New Hope. He then arrived at the Hortmans about 3:30 a.m.

Boelter knocked on the door wearing a silicone face mask and a brown wig. He said he was performing a welfare check after a report of shots inside the home. Mark Hortman answered the door and Boelter shined a flashlight in his eyes.

Hortman denied knowing about a shooting and said, “Good God, I was asleep.” Hortman told Boelter he couldn’t see him because of the flashlight and asked Boelter for a name and badge number, according to the warrant.

Boelter responded, “Nelson, 286.”

Prosecutors say that Brooklyn Park police arrived soon after and Boelter shot Hortman in the doorway. “One or more of the Brooklyn Park officers fired at Boelter as he charged forward into the home,” the search warrant says.

Prosecutors said security footage at the Hortmans caught more gunfire inside the home as Boelter shot Melissa Hortman “several times at close range, killing her as she attempted to flee up the stairs.”

It also notes that at the same time “sounds of extreme distress” were heard coming from the Hortmans’ golden retriever, Gilbert. The dog was found injured outside the back door of the home, taken by FBI agents to a vet and later euthanized.

The back door was left propped open, leading investigators to believe Boelter fled out the back of the house toward Edinburgh Golf Course. It would take 40 hours for Boelter to be apprehended near his home in Green Isle.

Details of security footage from the Hortmans’ home released in the warrant show a man casing the home several hours before the shootings “wearing a rain jacket with the hood up.” Security footage from a home in northeast Minneapolis where Boelter was staying shows him leaving the residence hours before the shooting “wearing a rain jacket with the hood up, carrying what appears to be body armor and a duffle bag.”

In her first public statement since the night of the shootings, Hope Hoffman expressed gratitude over the indictment. She said her parents pushed her out of the way that night, but described being spared in the gunfire as “dumb luck.”

“Though I was not shot physically, I will now forever coexist with the PTSD of watching my parents be nearly shot dead in front of me and seeing my life flash before my eyes with a gun in my face,” Hope Hoffman said.

The full contents of Boelter’s letter to the FBI were released with the search warrant. Addressed to FBI Director Kash Patel, Boelter wrote, “I am the shooter at large in Minnesota.”

It contains allegations against Gov. Tim Walz and political leaders in the state that prosecutors have denounced as lacking any foundation in reality.

Thompson said that the letter was delusional but its intent was not clear.

“Was it a delusion that he believes, or was it a delusion that is designed as an effort to discredit our investigation, or, to frankly, excuse his crimes? Well, that’s a good question,” Thompson said. “It certainly seems designed to excuse his crimes.”

Boelter wrote that he was recently approached about a project by Walz to kill U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith.

Boelter said Walz wants to be a senator and doesn’t trust that Smith will “retire as planned” but that if Boelter were to kill both senators Walz would “get one of the ... senate seats” allowing someone else to become governor – Boelter does not clarify who, leaving the space for a name blank as he does in several other parts of the letter.

He also claimed that Attorney General Keith Ellison would then become lieutenant governor.

Boelter wrote that he told Walz he wanted nothing to do with the plan and would go public.

At that point, Boelter wrote, Walz threatened his family and called a meeting with Boelter and “Mel” with another blank space where he doesn’t list a name. He writes that they were waiting to kill him and he got away with “God’s mercy.”

“He leaves blanks for the names, and so he doesn’t name the people that he claims were involved,” Thompson said. “The idea that the Hortmans or Hoffmans were involved is offensive.”

Boelter told Patel to reach out to Walz and ask if he knows Boelter. He points out that he was appointed to the “Governors workforce Board” as a business representative and that Walz is probably trying to destroy that information.

It’s true that Walz reappointed Boelter in 2019 to a workforce development advisory board, one that Hoffman also served on at the time. But the governor did not know Boelter, who was first appointed to the board in 2016 by then-Gov. Mark Dayton.

“Tim is probably crapping bricks right now because I’m still at large and he knows what I can do,” Boelter wrote.

Boelter said that he would likely be dead by the time Patel read the letter. He also claimed that he was trained by “U.S. Military people off the books starting in college” and worked on projects in Eastern Europe, North America, the Middle East and Africa, “All in the line of what I thought was right and in the best interest of the United States.”

Thompson confirmed that Boelter does not have any military experience.

He also seemingly alludes to his interaction with a New Hope police officer who pulled alongside him the night of the shooting while performing a wellness check on Rest.

“Cops were pulling up right next to me in their vehicles and I had an AK pistol aimed right at her head,” Boelter wrote.

He wrote that he supports the police and didn’t fire a shot at them. “I could have left a pile of cops dead” but did not, he claimed, saying he respects police.

Boelter ends the letter by asking Patel to transfer him to a military prison in Asia or the Middle East or to a military ship.

The warrant says the notebooks seized from Boelter’s SUV and residence in Minneapolis contain “all manner of notations, scribbles, stray phone numbers or emails and lists, but few cohesively written thoughts.”

Messages left Tuesday for Boelter’s federal public defender, Manny Atwal, were not returned.

”The notebooks contain some veiled references that suggest Boelter may have acted in a twisted and misguided sense of doing good," the warrant said.

In Boelter’s handwriting, they read: “Doing what most people know needs to be done but are not willing to do it themselves.

“If you want to save the country you have to get your hands dirty,” he added.

Sofia Barnett of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.