Federal grand jury indicts man accused of killing Minnesota lawmaker

A man has been indicted on charges of murdering a prominent Minnesota state representative and her husband and seriously wounding a state senator and his wife.

Vance Boelter, who is accused of shooting dead Democrat Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, while disguised as a police officer, was indicted by a federal grand jury. He could face the death penalty if convicted.

Boelter, 57, is also accused of shooting and seriously wounding the Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, about 90 minutes earlier.

“This political assassination, the likes of which have never occurred here in the state of Minnesota, has shook our state at a foundational level,” acting US attorney Joseph Thompson said.

He said a decision on whether to seek the death penalty “will not come for several months” and will be up to the US attorney general, Pam Bondi. Minnesota abolished its state death penalty in 1911, but Donald Trump’s administration says it intends to be aggressive in seeking capital punishment for eligible federal crimes.

Thompson said investigators had also found a handwritten letter addressed to the FBI director, Kash Patel, in which Boelter confessed to the shootings and made bizarre claims.

“In the letter, Vance Boelter claims that he had been trained by the US military off the books and he had conducted missions on behalf of the US military in Asia, the Middle East and Africa,” Thompson said.

Boelter also said Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, had approached him about killing the state’s two US senators, fellow Democrats Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith.

Asked by a reporter if all that was a fantasy, Thompson replied: “Yes, I agree.”

“There is little evidence showing why he turned to political violence and extremism,” Thompson said. “What he left were lists: politicians in Minnesota, lists of politicians in other states, lists of names of attorneys at national law firms.”

Friends have described Boelter as an evangelical Christian with politically conservative views who had been struggling to find work. In an interview published by the New York Post on Saturday, Boelter insisted the shootings had nothing to do with his opposition to abortion or his support for Trump, but he declined to discuss why he allegedly killed the Hortmans and wounded the Hoffmans.

Boelter also faces state murder and attempted murder charges in Hennepin county, but the federal case will happen first.

Senator Hoffman is out of hospital and in recovery, his family announced last week. Yvette Hoffman was released a few days after the attack.