'Going to be rewarded': How religion played a part in the Minnesota political assassination

Madison McVan Minnesota Reformer
16 June
Vance Boelter, 57, was captured by law enforcement Sunday, June 15, 2025 in Sibley County. (Photo courtesy of Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Law enforcement officers on Sunday night arrested Vance Boelter, who is accused of assassinating Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband at their home in Brooklyn Park as part of a larger plot to kill Democratic elected officials and other advocates of abortion rights.

Boelter is also accused of shooting Democratic-Farmer-Labor state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their home in Champlin. Both Hoffmans survived the shooting, but received surgeries for their injuries and remain hospitalized.

The arrest comes after a 43-hour manhunt — the largest in state history, according to Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley. Law enforcement officers had been searching all day after locating Boelter’s abandoned vehicle near Green Isle, where Boelter has a home.

At the time of his arrest, Boelter was armed, but ultimately surrendered. Officers did not use any force, said Lt. Col. Jeremy Geiger of the Minnesota State Patrol.

In the state’s new Emergency Operations Center in Blaine — which was paid for by legislation passed by Hortman’s DFL-controlled House in 2020 — Gov. Tim Walz thanked law enforcement and decried political violence and hateful rhetoric.

“This cannot be the norm. It cannot be the way that we deal with our political differences,” Walz said. “Now is the time for us to recommit to the core values of this country, and each and every one of us can do it. Talk to a neighbor rather than argue, debate an issue, shake hands, find common ground.”

Boelter is a Christian who voted for President Donald Trump and opposes abortion and LGBTQ rights, according to interviews with his childhood friend and videos of his sermons posted online. A list of potential targets — including Hoffman and Hortman — included abortion providers and other Democratic elected officials from Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The attack, which has shocked Minnesotans and the nation, comes amid rising political violence since the emergence of President Donald Trump, who has made repeated threats of violence against his political enemies and praised his supporters who, for instance, attacked officers while storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He later pardoned all of them. He survived two assassination attempts in 2024.

Authorities say Boelter attacked the Hoffmans at their home in Champlin at approximately 2 a.m. on Saturday morning. An unsealed criminal complaint indicates that the Hoffmans’ daughter called the police to report the shooting of her parents, the Associated Press reports.

At around 3:30 a.m., Brooklyn Park police headed to the Hortmans’ home to proactively check on them following the attack on the Hoffmans, said Drew Evans, superintendent at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension at a press conference Saturday morning.

When they arrived, the officers saw the attacker in a fake law enforcement uniform shoot Mark Hortman through the open front door, according to the complaint. Out front, emergency vehicle lights flashed from a Ford Explorer outfitted to look like a cop car. When the officers confronted the shooter, a gunfight ensued, and the killer escaped, abandoning the vehicle.

Inside, Hortman and her husband, Mark, were dead from gunshot wounds.

In the SUV, police found a document with a list of lawmakers and other officials on it. Hortman and Hoffman were on the list.

Evans said Sunday that the document is not a “traditional manifesto that’s a treatise on all kinds of ideology and writings.” Instead, it contains a list of names and “other thoughts” throughout.

On Saturday afternoon, police raided a home in north Minneapolis where Boelter lived part time. In an interview with the Star Tribune and other media outlets, Boelter’s roommate and childhood friend David Carlson shared a text message Boelter sent him at 6:03 a.m. saying that he would be “gone for a while” and “may be dead shortly.”

Federal and state warrants were out for Boelter’s arrest, and the FBI was offering a $50,000 award for information that led to Boelter’s capture.

On Sunday morning, law enforcement officers detained and questioned Boelter’s wife as she was driving through Mille Lacs County with other family members. Evans said Sunday none of Boelter’s family members are in custody.

Sunday afternoon, law enforcement officers located a car linked to Boelter in Sibley County within a few miles of his home address in Green Isle. From there, teams from dozens of law enforcement agencies fanned out in search of Boelter.

Boelter was spotted in the area, and officers converged around him, Evans said. He declined to provide some details of the tactics used by law enforcement to capture Boelter.

Law enforcement officials continue to investigate Boelter’s motives, Evans said, and urged the public not to jump to conclusions.

“We often want easy answers for complex problems, and this is a complex situation…those answers will come as we complete the full picture of our investigation,” he said.

Fragments of Boelter’s life available online, and interviews with those who know him, shed light on his religious and political beliefs.

Boelter’s LinkedIn page indicates that he spent many years working in food production before becoming the general manager of a 7-Eleven. More recently, he worked at funeral homes, the New York Times reported.

Boelter was facing financial stress after quitting his job to embark on business ventures in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Carlson, the Star Tribune reported.

The website for a private security firm lists Boelter as the “director of security patrols,” and his wife as the CEO. He purchased some cars and uniforms but “it was never a real company,” Carlson told the Strib.

Carlson said Boelter is a Christian who strongly opposes abortion, the New York Times reported.

In recordings of sermons Boelter delivered in Matadi, a city in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he railed against abortion and LGBTQ people.

The reporting on Boelter’s religious life suggests that his beliefs were rooted in fundamentalism, though he doesn’t appear to have been ordained in any particular denomination, said Rev. Angela Denker, a Minnesota-based Lutheran minister, journalist and author of books on Christianity, right-wing politics and masculinity.

“What this kind of theology says is that if you commit violence in the name of whatever movement you’re a part of, then you’re going to be rewarded,” Denker said.

The gunman shot John Hoffman nine times, and Yvette Hoffman eight times, according to a statement from Yvette.

The Hoffmans’ nephew, Mat Ollig, wrote on Facebook that Yvette used her body to shield her daughter. John Hoffman is “enduring many surgeries right now and is closer every hour to being out of the woods,” Yvette Hoffman said in a statement.

On Sunday night as leaders spoke to the press, Boelter was being questioned by law enforcement, but officials declined to say where he was detained and which agency was questioning him.

On the steps of the State Capitol Sunday, mourners created an extemporaneous memorial for Hortman, who will be known as one of the most consequential progressive leaders in recent state history.

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