Police were made aware of the shooting at the Hoffmans’ home and conducted a safety check at the residence of Minnesota House of Representatives speaker emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark. When they arrived, a black SUV with “police-style” lights and a “POLICE” license plate was outside the house.
A man standing near the Hortmans’ front door began firing, fatally shooting the couple and their dog, Gilbert. He fled the scene, leaving his car behind, in which officers found five firearms, large quantities of ammunition, a medical kit, a GPS with his trip history and notebooks with the hand-written names of over 45 Minnesota state and federal officials. Authorities learned that the shooter had tried two other public officials’ homes before reaching the Hortmans’ house.
The SUV they searched was registered to Boelter and his wife.
Boelter had texted a family group chat, saying, “Dad went to war last night…I don’t wanna say more because I don't wanna implicate anybody.” He also messaged his wife that he was sorry about the situation, adding, “there's gonna be some people coming to the house armed and trigger-happy and I don't want you guys around.” Authorities found two guns, about $10,000 in cash and passports for his wife and children in his wife’s car.
In a separate search, authorities found a receipt, linked to Boelter, for a flashlight, tactical rifle case, ammunition and material possibly used to create the fake “POLICE” license plate seen on his SUV. They also obtained a notebook listing three websites that sell the kind of mask Boelter wore the morning of the shooting.
Vance Boelter Is Found
After fleeing the Hortmans’, Boelter emptied his bank account and asked an individual at a bus stop to buy him an e-bike and sedan with money he provided.
The next day, law enforcement received a call about an individual riding an e-bike located two miles from the Boelter family home. Later, the sedan Boelter bought was spotted, abandoned in an area close to the e-bike. On searching the car, authorities found a cowboy hat Boelter was seen wearing at the bank in security footage and a letter addressed to the FBI saying he, “Dr. Vance Luther Boelter,” was “the shooter at large.”
At 9 p.m., on June 15, 2025, Boelter was taken into custody, a mile from his home.
In the Court of Law
He was charged by federal authorities on two counts of stalking, two counts of murder and two counts of firearms violations.
Initially, Boelter pleaded not guilty, but he changed his plea to guilty on all counts on June 11, 2026. The Justice Department said it would not seek the death penalty in his case and will, instead, recommend two consecutive life terms followed by 40 years in prison as part of a plea deal.
“I think [seeking the death penalty] would have just been an enormous amount of expenditure of resources in the sentencing phase, and they might not have ultimately gotten the sentence they want,” Rachel Moran, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “The thing that made them able to even seek the death penalty was the stalking to commit murder charge, and there's some question about whether that's even a legitimate basis for a death penalty sentence.”
Then, there’s the question of a jury’s willingness to sentence a defendant to death. Capital punishment was abolished by the Minnesota legislature in 1911. A federal trial takes place where the crime is committed, unless the defendant wants to move it, Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “A state's lack of a death penalty usually suggests a jury from that state's unreadiness, as a general matter, to agree that a defendant should be sentenced to death,” he explains.
The judge on Boelter’s case, who approved the plea deal, ordered an expedited sentencing. “After a plea in federal court, the judge would have ordered something called a pre-sentence investigation,” Amy Sweasy, professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “Whoever does that on behalf of the court will also contact the victims to get their input on the sentencing process.”
Boelter still faces charges at the state level, which will continue despite his guilty plea. He has been indicted by a grand jury on two counts of first-degree premeditated murder, four counts of attempted first-degree murder, felony cruelty to an animal and impersonating a police officer.
The likelihood of the case going to trial seems low given that Boelter has essentially admitted to the facts that satisfy the state offenses as well, Moran says. It is more likely that the case will end in guilty pleas.
If the case went to trial, it would be very hard to find jurors who don't know about the incident or Boelter’s guilty plea, she says. When there are trials in two jurisdictions and potential jurors in the second are aware of what happened in the first, a judge may be satisfied with the impartiality of a potential juror who says they can set their knowledge of the case to the side, the legal experts say.
If convicted in the state trial, Boelter would face another life sentence. “The norm would be for him to serve as much as he can in the custody of the first jurisdiction, which in this case is the federal one,” Richman says. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty noted that federal pardons do not apply to state convictions.
