MINNEAPOLIS (Court TV) — A Minnesota man pleaded guilty in federal court on Thursday to avoid a potential death sentence after a shooting rampage targeting Democratic lawmakers.
FILE – This booking photo provided by the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office shows Vance Boelter in Green Isle, Minn., on June 16, 2025. (Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office via AP)
Vance Boelter pleaded guilty to six charges in federal court, including multiple counts of stalking, murder and firearms offenses. No set sentence was outlined in the plea agreement document reviewed by Court TV, but a letter written from prosecutors to Judges John Tunheim and Dulce Foster says that the attorney general authorized the government not to seek the death penalty in exchange for the guilty plea. In a news release announcing the agreement, prosecutors said Boelter will be sentenced to the “longest possible prison term allowable under law.”
On June 14, 2025, Boelter carried out a plan to attack Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota. Prosecutors said they found notebooks full of plans that appeared to be months in the making, complete with names and notes that indicate he had been stalking his victims, all of whom were public officials in the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
Vance Boelter appears in a silicone mask outside the victims’ home. (Complaint)
Investigators said Boelter started his morning on June 14 targeting John Hoffman, who at the time served in the Minnesota State Senate. In the early morning hours, Boelter arrived at the family’s door, where John Hoffman was home with his wife, Yvette, and their daughter, Hope.
Prosecutors said Boelter was disguised as a police officer, wearing a tactical vest and wearing a lifelike silicone mask when he knocked on the family’s door; photos from the federal complaint filed against Boelter showed the defendant, masked, approaching the home. Investigators say a fake license plate on Boelter’s car read “POLICE.”
When the Hoffmans tried to prevent Boelter from coming into the house, he opened fire. John Hoffman was hit by nine bullets and Yvette Hoffman was struck by eight. Hope escaped the gunfire after her parents pushed her to safety. While the Hoffmans survived, they suffered severe ongoing injuries, as they reported in a lawsuit filed in April against Boelter.
Boelter then left the Hoffmans’ home. Investigators said he then traveled to two more public officials’ homes where he rang the doorbell, but nobody answered the door.
Weapons were found in Vance Boelter’s abandoned car. (complaint)
Meanwhile, officers who heard about the shooting at the Hoffmans’ home were dispatched to the home of State Rep. Melissa Hortman, who lived nearby, to conduct a safety check. Officers arriving at the scene saw a black SUV that resembled a law enforcement squad car; its license plate had been replaced with a fake one reading “POLICE.”
Officers said they saw Boelter at the doorway of the home. He fired several gunshots into the property before fleeing the scene, abandoning the vehicle parked outside. When police approached the home, they found both Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, shot to death; their dog was also shot. When officers searched Boelter’s vehicle outside, they found weapons and notebooks filled with handwritten notes with the names of more than 45 Minnesota state and federal public officials.
“Political violence is a scourge in our nation,” United States Attorney Daniel Rosen said in a statement after Boelter’s guilty plea. “We now expect Vance Boelter will spend the rest of his natural life in prison without parole.”
“A guilty plea brings a legal resolution, but our focus today remains on the memory of Melissa and Mark Hortman, and the ongoing recovery of Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette,” Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley said. “No courtroom outcome can undo the devastation of that morning, but we hope this accountability offers a step toward closure.”
The civil suit against Boelter is scheduled to head to trial in April 2027.
