A Minnesota Assassin With a Big Ego, an Inflated Resume, and Unclear Motives
Police arrested a 57-year-old man named Vance Boelter in rural southern Minnesota Sunday after he allegedly murdered a prominent Democratic state politician and her husband and attempted to kill three other state Democrats. Police said Boelter, armed with a 9mm pistol, showed up on the doorsteps of the suburban Minneapolis homes of his targets early Saturday morning wearing a police uniform and a lifelike rubber mask, shooting four people and killing two.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz characterized the murder of state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband as a “politically motivated assassination” at a press conference early Saturday morning, when Boelter was still at large. As the story made national news, some Democrats and Republicans assigned blame for Boelter’s actions to the opposing party. Democrats pointed to a “manifesto” Boelter had left in his SUV when he fled on foot from the Hortmans’ house. It turned out to be less a coherent statement of purpose than a list of names of politicians, mostly of Democratic state officials, as well as abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood.
Republicans saw signs that Boelter could be affiliated with the Democrats. Along with the list of names, his vehicle contained flyers for the “No Kings” anti-Trump protest that took place later Saturday. Documents emerged showing that Boelter had been appointed by Walz and the previous Minnesota Democratic government to a nonpartisan state workforce commission, which dealt with issues such as racial and gender equity in workplaces. Another document showed that a woman named Jennifer Boelter had been an intern for Walz in 2010, when he was a state representative—Vance’s wife is named Jenny, but a spokesperson for Walz denied they are the same person.
Boelter was also listed as an advisory board member on the website of a nonprofit group called Minnesota Africans United, which says it “creates opportunities for African immigrants.” The woman Boelter allegedly murdered, Rep. Hortman, was a Democratic state caucus leader who, just days before her murder, had cast a controversial vote siding with Republicans to pass a budget bill. The bill included a concession to Republicans to end free healthcare for illegal immigrants. Hortman came under intense criticism from members of her own party because of that part of the bill, which she tearfully acknowledged in an interview with local media.
“I know that people will be hurt by that vote. We worked very hard to try to get a budget deal that wouldn’t include that provision,” Hortman said. She said members of her party “are right to be mad at me. I think some of them are pretty angry. I think that their job was to make folks who voted for that bill feel like crap. And I think that they succeeded.”
At a press conference Monday following Boelter’s apprehension, FBI officials and federal prosecutors told reporters that Boelter had been planning the attacks for months, but that his motivation was unclear. “It’s pretty clear from the evidence that he’s been planning these attacks for quite some time,” U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson said. “There’s voluminous writing, as you’ve seen from the reporting, that were found both in his car and his house, about his planning, lists of names and individuals. In terms of the ‘why,’ it’s unclear.”
Thompson, who said Boelter will be charged with, among other crimes, murder and stalking, elaborated on the difficulty of finding a clear political ideology in Boelter’s writings:
I’ve seen nothing like a Unabomber-style manifesto in his writings. He had many, many, many notebooks full of plans, lists of names, surveillance, efforts that he took to surveil and locate the home addresses of family members and relationships of these elected officials. But I did not see anything involving some sort of political manifesto or screed that would clearly identify what motivated him. Obviously, his primary motive was to go out and murder people. They were all elected officials. They were all Democrats. Beyond that, I think it’s just way too speculative for anyone who’s reviewed these materials to know and to say what was motivating him in terms of ideology or specific issues. There were some abortion rights supporters, I believe, on the list, but again, there were dozens and dozens and dozens of names on hundreds of pages of documents that were recovered with his writings on them.
Boelter tried, and failed, at a striking number of careers and business ventures. In his profile on LinkedIn as well as in videos, pictures, and other documents, Boelter claimed to have worked as a gas station manager, a food service executive, an oil refining industry executive, and in volunteer positions in the Minnesota state government. He also claimed to have held important positions in major industries across the world and to be a security expert with experience in conflict zones across the world, including in Africa and the Gaza Strip. In the months before the shootings, Boelter had embarked on three failed international business ventures in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: a food service company called Red Lion Group, an Evangelical ministry called Revoformation Ministries, and an armed security company called Praetorian Guard Security Services. Police said Boelter committed the crimes using a Praetorian SUV modified to look like a police vehicle, including a fake police license plate.
Police had been dispatched to legislators’ homes across the metro area after Boelter’s first victims, Sen. Hoffman and his wife, were shot at about 2 a.m. Saturday morning. A patrol car arrived at the Hortmans’ residence about 3:30 a.m. Saturday morning, catching Boelter at the Hortmans’ front door. After shooting at police, Boelter retreated into the Hortmans’ home and then exited from the back door. He fled on foot to a house in north Minneapolis where he had been renting a room. He then purchased an electric bicycle and then a used car to escape the city. He was eventually caught in the woods outside his rural home in Green Isle, Minnesota, by a police drone late Sunday evening, after what officials called “the largest manhunt in state history.”
While Boelter was evading police, he sent apologetic text messages to his family members, saying “Dad went to war last night… I don’t wanna say more because I don’t wanna implicate anybody.”
One of Boelter’s roommates, David Carlson, said that Boelter had rented a room in the north Minneapolis house a couple days a week while he worked at funeral homes in the city (in an online video, Boelter had described doing “corpse removal” for these businesses). According to Carlson, Boelter seemed to be in low spirits earlier this year after he’d returned from his business ventures in Africa, but that there was no indication he was plotting any violence. Carlson said Boelter’s work involved “extracting eyeballs” from corpses, presumably for organ transplants, which he did for funeral homes. Carlson, who had known Boelter since childhood, said his friend was not particularly interested in politics, but that he was a conservative who had voted for Trump in 2024 and had strong feelings against abortion. Voters do not declare party affiliation when they vote in Minnesota, but Boelter had registered as a Republican in 2004 when he lived in Oklahoma.
Dr. Todd Grande, a mental health counsellor and professor who operates a YouTube channel where he analyzes criminal suspects, reviewed the online details of Boelter’s life and career. Grande speculated that Boelter’s violent actions stemmed from a personality disorder, which also led him to inflate his resume and exaggerate his achievements. Grande said his theory was that:
Vance Boelter appeared to have many characteristics of both vulnerable and grandiose narcissism. He was unsatisfied with his life, did not want to be thought of as ordinary, and, in his mind, was destined for greatness. Everything that Vance did was focused on making himself important, or at least making other people believe he was important. In order to establish his claim of superiority, Vance invested in his religious beliefs. This was his avenue to becoming great. He claimed to becoming ordained and wanted to spread his religious message to people everywhere. In one speech, Vance talked about his great reward in the afterlife. He did not want to go to heaven and just listen to other people tell stories. He said, ‘I want to have my own story to tell.’ Religion gave him a direction to focus his energy. In his mind, his special status came from a deity. He was appointed to wage a massive war against people who maintained opposing views on various issues, like abortion.
The grandiose narcissism possessed by Vance was not concealed by any measure. For example, Vance claimed that he worked for the largest food company, based in Switzerland, the largest oil refining company in the U.S., and the largest convenience retailer in Japan. Everything with Vance was massive. It was huge.
According to Grande, Boelter was probably not truly motivated by politics. “In reality, Vance was working for himself. He was inspired by religion and grandiosity, as opposed to Donald Trump.”
State and federal prosecutors have said they will seek to upgrade the second-degree murder charges faced by Boelter to first-degree murder. The maximum penalties he could face if convicted are life in prison without parole; the death penalty is also on the table.
Mourners left flowers and messages at a memorial for Melissa Hortman and her husband on the Minnesota State Capitol steps on Sunday. She was remembered by legislators in both parties as being a skilled Democratic legislator and a reasonable negotiator who was courteous and fair even to members of the opposing party.
State senator John Hoffman, who was shot nine times, and his wife Yvette, who was shot eight times, are in the hospital in stable condition and are expected to recover.