Who is Vance Boelter? Man suspected of assassinating Democratic state lawmaker in Minnesota

The man suspected of assassinating a Democratic state lawmaker in Minnesota and wounding another was taken into custody late Sunday, according to three officials who were briefed on the situation, ending a two-day search that put the state on edge.

State officials had pursued the suspect, identified as Vance Boelter, 57, throughout the weekend. On Sunday, tactical teams conducted a search in Sibley Country, about an hour’s drive away from the site of the attacks, where investigators found a car and hat belonging to Boelter on a remote stretch of road.

As investigators tried to piece together what led to the shootings, new details emerged about Boelter, a father of five who had worked for decades in the food industry. In a video he posted online, he described quitting that industry to work on agricultural projects in central Africa. More recently, colleagues said, he had picked up jobs at funeral service companies — including removing dead bodies from houses and nursing homes — to pay the bills.

Here’s what we know about the suspect.

Does he have a connection to the victims?

Boelter had served on a state economic board with one of the victims, state Senator John Hoffman, who survived the shooting, though it is unclear if they actually knew each other.

Boelter was appointed to the panel, the Minnesota Governor’s Workforce Development Board, in 2016 by a Democratic former governor, Mark Dayton. The board has 41 members appointed by the governor, and its members try to improve business development in the state. He was later reappointed by Gov. Tim Walz, also a Democrat.

Boelter and Hoffman attended a virtual meeting together in 2022 for a discussion about the job market in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, minutes from the meeting show, though officials said they did not know if the two had any kind of relationship.

Current and former members of the board said that there were a handful of meetings each year and that there was often no direct interaction with the governor. One said the governor had not attended any of the group’s meetings in her four years on the board. They said it would be easy for two members not to know each other.

What are his political affiliations?

Walz has said that the shooting “appears to be a politically motivated assassination,” though the exact motive for the attack is not yet clear.

Voters do not declare political affiliation when they register in Minnesota, and a state report connected to the workforce board listed Boelter’s affiliation as “none or other” in 2016. A similar report in 2020 listed him as having “no party preference.”

But David Carlson, a roommate and close friend of Boelter’s, said Boelter voted for Donald Trump last year and was particularly passionate about opposing abortion.

Carlson said he had known Boelter since fourth grade. He said that he knew that Boelter owned guns but that he had never heard him speak about either of the two lawmakers who were shot. Recently, he said, Boelter had been experiencing financial and mental health challenges. He “just gave up on life for some reason,” he said.

Carlson read aloud a text message from Boelter that he received Saturday morning in which Boelter wrote that he might “be dead shortly.” The message did not describe any details of the attacks, Carlson said. It went on: “I don’t want to say anything more and implicate you in any way because you guys don’t know anything about this. But I love you guys and I’m sorry for all the trouble this has caused.”

Carlson said that Friday, Boelter gave him four months’ worth of advance rent payments — about $220 a month — for a small room in the shared house. Boelter also thanked his roommates for their friendship and then said that he needed some rest, Carlson said, so he left him alone.

Boelter’s lack of a party affiliation on public documents does not necessarily mean that he is not interested in the country’s political affairs.

In November 2018, Boelter urged his followers on LinkedIn to vote in that year’s election, saying he had been to countries where people could not elect their leaders and that they were “not places that anyone of us would want to live in.”

“I think the election is going to have more of an impact on the direction of our country than probably any election we have been apart of, or will be apart of for years to come,” he wrote.

The lawmaker who was killed Saturday, state Rep. Melissa Hortman, ran successfully for reelection that year.

He worked in the funeral industry and preached in central Africa.

Boelter’s professional history is varied.

In one video he posted online, seemingly for an educational course, Boelter said he worked six days a week for two funeral service companies in the Minneapolis area. At one of the companies, he said, he sometimes helped to remove bodies from crime scenes and would work with police officers and death investigators.

A spokesperson for Des Moines Area Community College in Iowa said Boelter took classes in the school’s mortuary science program, which is primarily an online program, in 2023 and 2024.

State reports and his LinkedIn profile indicate that he had also been the general manager of a 7-Eleven in Minneapolis and, before that, general manager of a gas station in St. Paul. A report in 2017 listed him as an executive at an energy company.

More recently, he said on LinkedIn that he was CEO of a company called Red Lion Group, which is in Congo and whose website lists a vague mission of creating “good jobs for local people.”

Boelter has delivered several sermons at a church in that country.

In the sermons, which were posted online, he said he gave his life to Jesus as a teenager and had been blessed with five children. In one, he said he had been friends with David Emerson, a missionary who was murdered in Zimbabwe in 1987 along with 10 others.

In another sermon, he appeared to criticise gay and transgender people.

“There’s people, especially in America, they don’t know what sex they are,” he said. “They don’t know their sexual orientation, they’re confused. The enemy has gotten so far into their mind and their soul.”

Boelter and his wife, Jenny, were listed on a website as running a private security company, though it was not clear whether it had any clients. The company, Praetorian Guard Security Services, lists Boelter as the director of security patrols and his wife as president.

Jenny Boelter was stopped Saturday morning by police officers near a convenience store in Onamia, Minnesota, roughly 70 miles north of the area of the shootings, according to Sheriff Kyle Burton of Mille Lacs County. The sheriff said other relatives were in the car, and a witness said he saw three children get out of the car during the stop. All were cooperative, and none was taken into custody, officials said.

The firm’s website describes using Ford Explorer SUVs, “the same make and model of vehicles that many police departments use.”

On Saturday afternoon, police towed a Ford Explorer from outside Hortman’s home.

The website for Boelter’s security company makes expansive claims about his work experience that could not immediately be verified, including that he had been “involved with security situations” in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Federal tax forms show that Boelter and his wife once led a Christian nonprofit called Revoformation Ministries. An archived version of the group’s website described Boelter as becoming an ordained minister in 1993.

Boelter, the site said, had traveled to violent areas and had “sought out militant Islamists in order to share the Gospel and tell them that violence wasn’t the answer.”

Boelter made similar claims during one of his sermons in Congo, saying he had been confronted by armed militants while distributing pamphlets in places like the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon.

How was the attack carried out?

Authorities say the assassin disguised himself as a police officer — wearing a ballistic vest, gloves and a mask — before going to the lawmakers’ homes in two Minneapolis suburbs early Saturday.

After police responded to Hoffman’s home, finding that he and his wife, Yvette, had both been shot, they decided to check on Hortman at home. There, they encountered the assailant, who they said fled on foot after an exchange of gunfire with officers around 3:30 a.m. Inside, police found Hortman and her husband, Mark, dead.

US Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., said in an interview that the gunman had a notebook with a list of names that included hers and those of other lawmakers, all of whom were Democrats.

The list included about 70 potential targets, a federal law enforcement official said, including doctors, community and business leaders, and locations for Planned Parenthood and other health care centers. Some of the targets were in neighboring states.

A search led police Sunday afternoon to Sibley County, a rural community southwest of Minneapolis, where they found what they believed was Boelter’s vehicle near Green Isle — roughly 10 minutes from his listed address.

Officials said late Sunday that Boelter had been taken into custody.