Vance Boelter indicted federally — death penalty decision pending
The Acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota, Joseph Thompson, flanked by state and federal law enforcement officials, held a press conference this afternoon to announce a six-count criminal indictment against Vance Boelter, 57. The indictment had been issued by a federal grand jury and filed earlier in the day.
The indictment was similar to the federal charges that had been filed following Boelter’s arrest on June 15. It included two counts of stalking both Representative Melissa Hortman and Senator John Hoffman, two counts of murder for the killing of Hortman and her husband Mark, and two counts of firearms offenses involving the shooting of the Hortmans, Hoffman and Hoffman’s wife Yvette, and the attempted shooting of Hoffman’s daughter Hope.
The two counts of murder are capital offenses and carry the possibility of death sentences, while the other counts carry the possibility of life sentences. The indictment included a section called the “Notice of Special Findings.” That section, according to Thompson, was the first step in securing a death penalty against Boelter. The final decision on whether to seek the death penalty will be made by Attorney General Pam Bondi in consultation with the Capital Case Unit, the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the surviving victims in the case. A decision is still months away, according to Thompson.
Additional information was supplied in the form of a search warrant and affidavit that had been filed earlier in the day. That 37-page document laid out many of the details already known in the case, but also included a complete copy of the two-page, handwritten confession letter written by Boelter to FBI Director Kash Patel.
The letter, written on the back of two calendar pages and left in an abandoned car near Boelter’s arrest location in Green Isle, makes a number of claims. First, Boelter claimed to have been “trained by U.S. Military people off the books” and then subsequently sent on “projects” in Eastern Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Africa. According to Boelter, Governor Walz asked Boelter to kill Senators Klobuchar and Smith because Walz wanted to be able to run for one of their Senate seats. Boelter claimed he “told Tim I wanted nothing to do with it and if he didn’t call it off that plan I would go public.” According to Boelter, Governor Walz then had Boelter meet with “Mel_____ and ________” to “talk about options,” but when Boelter went to meet with them, there were people waiting to kill him. Boelter claims he “got away by God’s mercy,” but then “went back a short time later and shot at both _______ and ______. While it’s not completely clear, it appears “Mel____ and _____” are possible references to the Hortmans, a reference U.S. Attorney Thompson called “offensive.”
As U.S. Attorney Thompson described it, the letter “certainly seems designed to excuse his crimes.”
The affidavit also included information contained in notebooks seized from Boelter. Some of these notes included “veiled references that suggest Boelter may have acted in a twisted and misguided sense of doing good,” as depicted in these excerpts:
“Doing what most people know needs to be done, but are not willing to do it themselves.”
“If you want to save the country you have to get your hands dirty.”
Excerpts from Vance Boelter’s notebooks
Boelter’s next federal court appearance has yet to be scheduled.