It was about 3:35 a.m. Saturday when Brooklyn Park police approached the home of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman.
Instinct had led them there, spurred by a 911 call 90 minutes earlier from the daughter of state Sen. John Hoffman. A masked man had come to the door of their home in nearby Champlin, she said, and shot the senator and his wife – the first violent act in a string of them that would set in motion the largest manhunt in state history.
Brooklyn Park officers went to “proactively” check on Hortman. But when they reached the home of the speaker emeritus, someone had beaten them there: A police SUV, it appeared, was parked in the driveway with its emergency lights flashing, and a man dressed like a police officer was at the open door.
But it wasn’t a police officer. He was an imposter who had used “the trust of this badge and this uniform” to gain entry to the home, Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley would say later that morning.
He shot another man just inside. Then, he turned the gun on Brooklyn Park police before vanishing in the ensuing gunfight, leaving in his wake four people shot, two of them fatally – the latest apparent victims of a rising tide of political violence afflicting the United States.
Amid the exchange of gunfire, the impersonator retreated into the home, past Mark Hortman, the speaker’s husband, who had been shot multiple times and was just inside the threshold.
The officers pulled Mark Hortman outside and attempted first aid. Despite their efforts, he was pronounced dead soon after.
With the suspect still seemingly inside, officers surrounded the home and called for help. When the SWAT team arrived, police sent a drone into the Hortman home, which is tucked near the end of a suburban street, its back facing the Edinburgh Golf Course.
Video footage from the drone revealed Melissa Hortman – the top Democrat in the state House of Representatives and a mother of two – dead inside.
The suspect was gone, sparking a search that would conclude 43 hours later with his arrest in the woods of Sibley County.
It was the same individual – with his sham police vehicle and badge, a tactical vest, a stun gun – who had come to Hoffman’s door around 2 a.m. and shot the four-term state lawmaker, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, police said. She had thrown herself on their grown daughter, shielding her from the assassin’s bullets, CNN affiliate KARE reported, citing her nephew. The senator and his wife survived.
Brooklyn Park officers had responded to help Champlin police at the Hoffmans’ home. Among them was a “very intuitive sergeant” who asked officers to check on Hortman as part of their “due diligence,” Bruley said – unknowingly sending them to a face-to-face confrontation with the suspect and, in a stroke of luck, the investigation’s earliest leads.
Outside the Hortmans’ home was the suspect’s vehicle containing an apparent hit list with nearly 70 names, most of them Democrats or figures with ties to the abortion rights movement, including Planned Parenthood. Authorities also found three AK-47 assault-style rifles and a 9 mm handgun.
Police found what they believe was another possible hit list with more than a dozen additional potential targets following a Saturday search of a home associated with the suspect, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.
Authorities were working quickly to investigate a possible motive. But by the time Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz stepped behind a lectern to address reporters at the State Emergency Operations Center around 10:45 a.m. Saturday, there seemed to be consensus about what had happened overnight in the suburbs north of Minneapolis.
“This was an act of targeted political violence,” the governor said.
Indeed, the attacks on two members of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party appear to be the latest in a string of high-profile attacks and plots document in recent years – targeting Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals.
They include two attempts to assassinate President Donald Trump and a kidnapping plot targeting Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Hortman’s killing “appears to be a politically motivated assassination,” Walz said Saturday, urging the country to reject such violence.
“Peaceful discourse is the foundation of our democracy. We don’t settle our differences with violence or at gunpoint,” he said.
Saturday, as leaders across the country echoed Walz, hundreds of officers – from Brooklyn Park, the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, the Minnesota State Patrol, the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the FBI – were engaged in a sweeping manhunt for the suspect.
Near the Hortman home, they found more clues: a ballistic vest, a disassembled 9mm firearm, a mask and a “gold police-style badge,” the complaint says.
Thousands of residents were ordered to shelter in place, Bruley said. But the suspect’s decision to impersonate law enforcement would undermine legitimate officers: The Brooklyn Park chief ordered them to operate in pairs in an attempt to telegraph their lawful authority.
“If there’s only one officer outside the door, do not answer the door, and call 911,” Bruley told residents.
Meanwhile, Col. Christina Bogojevic of the Minnesota State Patrol asked that people not attend demonstrations planned Saturday across the state: Inside the suspect’s vehicle, she said, they had also found fliers reading “No Kings,” the same message demonstrators across the country were gathering under Saturday to protest the actions of Trump and his administration – evidently raising concerns those rallies may also be targeted.
Around midday, organizers behind the “No Kings” rally planned in Northeast Minneapolis had canceled the event – though they planned to move ahead with a gathering outside the state Capitol building in St. Paul.
By Saturday afternoon, news outlets including CNN began reporting the suspect’s identity, which was confirmed soon afterward by Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans.
“Today, we are asking for the public’s help at this point in time in locating Vance Luther Boelter, who is a 57-year-old White male, who’s 6-foot-1 inches tall, 220 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes,” Evans said at an afternoon news conference.
“Do not approach him,” Evans warned. “You should consider him armed and dangerous, and you should call 911 immediately with the information.”
Over the superintendent’s shoulder, a mounted television showed a photograph of Boelter taken that morning, wearing a tan cowboy hat and carrying what authorities described as a dark-colored bag. The image, Evans said, had been captured at a business in the Twin Cities area.
“We believe he’s working to potentially flee the area,” Evans said.
Investigators issued a “lookout” to border patrol officials at the US-Canadian border, a source familiar with the investigation told CNN Saturday. Photos of the suspect were shared in case Boelter attempted to flee the country.
In the coming hours, even more information emerged about Boelter, who CNN learned had worked as director of patrols for a company called Praetorian Guard Security Services, which offers armed residential security. That suggests Boelter could have had access to uniforms and equipment that would help him impersonate a police officer.
CNN’s reporting showed Boelter was a conservative and evangelical Christian, and a longtime friend named David Carlson told CNN on Saturday that the suspect was strongly against abortion rights. But those beliefs didn’t define him, said Carlson, insisting: “He wasn’t a hateful person. But he needed help.”
Though Boelter lived in the small town of Green Isle, he often stayed with Carlson, who rented a home in Minneapolis. Carlson last heard from Boelter on Friday evening, when he knocked on the suspect’s door. Boelter said he was tired, Carlson said.
Shortly after he woke around 6:30 a.m. Saturday, Carlson said, he saw a text from Boelter. After seeing it, Carlson called police.
“I thought he would do self-harm; I didn’t think he was … ” Carlson said, his voice trailing off.
Late Sunday morning, law enforcement began to converge in the farmlands of Sibley County, after a second vehicle believed to have been abandoned by Boelter was found. Authorities also found a hat, Evans would say later, leading investigators to believe the suspect was close.
The sheriff’s office asked residents to stay vigilant as officers searched the area. There was no shelter-in-place order issued as of early Sunday afternoon, but an emergency alert was sent to phones in the area announcing the suspect’s vehicle had been found and that law enforcement would be searching properties nearby.
“Suspect not located. Keep your doors locked and vehicles secured. Report suspicious activity to 911.”
Authorities had received more than 400 tips before Evans provided reporters with an update late Sunday afternoon. Boelter had yet to be found, but the discovery of the second vehicle had focused the search: Police set up a “large-scale perimeter” and deployed SWAT teams, Bruley said, noting an officer thought he saw Boelter “running into the woods.”
At some point, a Sibley County resident’s trail camera captured an image of a man consistent with Boelter, the Star Tribune reported. That clip, Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said, “alerted SWAT teams to go to that area, secure a perimeter, and with the help of drones, identify his location.”
For hours, law enforcement scoured the area. A helicopter circling overhead and surveillance drones added to the manpower on the ground. Infrared technology became key as the sun set.
Soon, police had closed in.
“Ultimately we were able to locate him in the woods, and in approximately an hour and a half or so, we were able to close the distance with the technology and the State Patrol helicopter,” Bruley told reporters at a news conference Sunday evening, “and we were able to call him out to us.”
Once found, Boelter “crawled” out to law enforcement, and he was “placed under arrest at that point in time,” Minnesota State Patrol Lt. Col. Jeremy Geiger said.
A photo of the suspect released soon afterward showed him flanked by officers, his hands behind his back as he peered upward into a light.
Walz returned to the lectern Sunday evening to announce Boelter’s capture and praise the work of police, some of whom spent Father’s Day away from their families “to deliver justice for Melissa and Mark Hortman and their children – who spent Father’s Day alone.”
“One man’s unthinkable actions have altered the state of Minnesota,” Walz said.
Hoffman, the governor told reporters, had come out of his final surgery “and is moving towards recovery.” Yvette Hoffman was also “healing.”
“I’d like to say on behalf of the state of Minnesota, the heroic actions by the Hoffman family and their daughter Hope saved countless lives,” the governor said. “And we are grateful.”
Walz, who nearly ascended to the vice presidency of the United States mere months ago, implored Minnesotans and Americans to follow Hortman’s example, to “talk to a neighbor rather than arguing – debate an issue, shake hands, find common ground.” She led, he said, with “grace and compassion and vision and compromise and decency.”
“That was taken from us in Minnesota with the murder of Speaker Hortman,” he said.
By Sunday morning, a small memorial to Hortman had started to materialize at the base of the steps leading to the Minnesota state Capitol, with a photo of Melissa and Mark Hortman surrounded by flowers and messages from mourners reflecting the impact of a woman who climbed to the heights of political power in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
“Rest in peace & rest in power, Speaker,” one note read. “You changed countless lives. You will always be beloved.”
