Acting U.S. attorney Joe Thompson announced during a Monday morning news conference that Vance Boelter now faces six federal charges, including stalking lawmakers John Hoffman and Melissa Hortman, and murdering Hortman and her husband, Mark. The federal charges make him eligible for the death penalty, but Thompson didn’t say whether prosecutors would seek that punishment. “It’s too early to tell,” he said.
A federal affidavit alleges that the suspect “embarked on a planned campaign of stalking and violence, designed to inflict fear, injure, and kill members of the Minnesota state legislature and their families.”
“This was a political assassination, which is not a word we use very often in the United States,” Thompson said. He alleged that the suspect carefully planned his attacks and conducted extensive research on his victims, including surveillance of their homes. Prior to the attacks, he disguised himself as a police officer and even added a fake “POLICE” insignia to the license plate of his vehicle. Inside, police found notebooks listing the names of more than 45 elected officials.
Noting that Boelter wore a “hyperrealistic silicone mask” and “stalked his victims like prey,” Thompson commented that “there’s no exaggeration that this is the stuff of nightmares.”
Federal prosecutors allege that on the night of the attack, Boelter went to the homes of four lawmakers.
He arrived at the Hoffman’s house in Champlin, Minnesota, at 2:06 a.m., where he pounded on the door and shouted “This is the police! Open the door!” When Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, opened the door and realized Boelter was not a cop, the suspect said it was a robbery and tried to enter the home. Hoffman attempted to push him out and Boelter opened fire on him and his wife. Their daughter, who was unharmed, called 911.
At 2:27 a.m., Boelter rang the doorbell of another lawmaker’s residence in Maple Grove, but no one was home. He then moved on to to another lawmaker’s home in New Hope, where he encountered a local police officer who was doing a wellness check prompted by the attack on Hoffman. Per the Star Tribune:
Thompson said the officer pulled up on Boelter in his police-style SUV and assumed he had been dispatched to the scene to perform a wellness check. When the officer asked Boelter what he was doing, he simply stared straight ahead, Thompson said. The New Hope police officer then left Boelter to continue on with the wellness check.
Boelter then allegedly went to the home of Melissa and Paul Hortman in Brooklyn Park, arriving right before local police officers showed up to conduct a proactive wellness check. After they confronted him and opened fire, Boelter was able to flee on foot during the resulting chaos.
Afterward, according to federal prosecutors, Boelter paid a stranger cash for their car and an e-bike, then drove the vehicle to near his home in Green Isle, where he abandoned it, leaving a handwritten confession inside. Police say that Boelter was captured by a neighbor’s trail camera on Sunday night, and authorities soon found him crawling in a nearby field and arrested him.
Federal prosecutors say that hours after the attack, Boelter texted his wife that “Dad went to war last night” but said “I don’t wanna say more because I don’t wanna implicate anybody.” He also apologized to her “for this situation” and warned her that “there’s gonna be some people coming to the house armed and trigger-happy and I don’t want you guys around.”
She apparently fled the house. On Saturday morning, police stopped Boelter’s wife in her car nearly an hour from their home. She was traveling with their two children and had two handguns, $10,000 in cash, and the family’s passports in the vehicle. No charges have been announced against her.
Source link
