Vance Boelter gets 2 life terms, no parole for Minnesota lawmaker shootings
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A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Vance Boelter to two life sentences plus 40 years with no parole in the killings of former Minnesota DFL House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and the attacks on DFL state Sen. John Hoffman, his wife Yvette and their daughter Hope.
“This is truly a life sentence,” Judge John Tunheim told Boelter during the hearing at the federal courthouse in Minneapolis. “I would say also that the people of Minnesota are victims of your crimes as well. Violence will never triumph over justice.”
Boelter pleaded guilty in June to the attacks. In sentencing memos filed earlier this week, prosecutors and Boelter’s attorneys agreed to a recommendation of two life sentences plus 40 years. As part of a plea agreement, prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty.
Federal prosecutors called Boelter’s crimes “among the most serious ever committed in the District of Minnesota,” adding: “Justice requires that Boelter never be free ever again.”
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The anguish in the courtroom was palpable. Attorneys, media members and the friends and family of the victims could be seen with tears in their eyes. Boxes of tissues were spread around the courtroom.
“My entire life had been shattered in 30 seconds,” the Hortmans’ daughter Sophie told the court prior to the sentence being handed down. She noted having to go to the vet to see the Hortmans’ beloved dog Gilbert, also a Boelter shooting victim, before he died.
The moment “was the beginning of countless others when I had to shove my pain down inside me … and go on like my world wasn’t falling apart,” she said. “I miss believing in the goodness of humanity.”
The Hortmans’ son Colin struggled through tears as he said Melissa had planned to bake the cake for his December wedding. “My parents were not at my wedding. I did not get to dance with my mom.”
He spoke of a loving future lost. “My parents would have taken my kids to Disney. … My dad would have taught our kids math,” he said. “They would have traveled more, they would have mentored more leaders, they would have been wonderful. They were wonderful and now they are dead.”
He said he suffers panic attacks and exhaustion but that this was his “last time to feel angry.”
He also said, “My parents’ names are carved into this state with love” and recalled that Melissa always carried a prayer in her wallet, the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, that begins, “Lord make me an instrument of your peace.”
‘Justice, not vengeance’
The Hortmans’ children were among more than a dozen friends and loved ones of the Hortmans and Hoffmans who told the court of the wrenching and lasting pain Boelter had caused.
“Nothing could prepare me for an assassin at my door,” said Rep. Kristin Bahner, who was also targeted by Boelter but was not at home the night he came to her home. “What you did changed me. It’s changed us all,” she told Boelter.
“Your mission failed,” she added. “My colleagues and I are stronger, more united and more firm in our belief that love will triumph over hate.”
John Hoffman told the court he and his wife “now live with injuries. We live with trauma that affects our sleep. The defendant permanently changed my life.”
He said the family felt compelled to reinforce their home’s security. “The court will pronounce the defendant’s sentence; mine continues every time I wake up,” he added. “I ask this court for justice, not vengeance … justice that reflects the seriousness of deliberate evil.”
Yvette Hoffman spoke of the “emotional wreckage” of fighting with Boelter after he shot her husband. “I fought him with everything I had, and I finally got him out of our home, and I collapsed near our entryway. I genuinely believed I was dying.”
She spoke of still being haunted by hearing her daughter, Hope, screaming that night, “‘Dad, don’t die, stay with me Dad.’”
‘Primal wound’
J.C. Hortman, Mark Hortman’s 86-year-old father, spoke proudly of his son as someone smart and fun who could “solve problems that seemingly were unsolvable.”
Melissa was “my cherished friend. She was a loving, brainy, witty mother of my precious grandchildren. Her wisdom was way beyond her age,” he said adding that he believed she could have been the state’s next governor.
“This killer left a primal wound on every member of our family.”
J.C. Hortman, along with Mark’s older brother Lee Hortman, criticized the U.S. Justice Department and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche for accepting a plea deal in the case rather than go to trial.
A trial would have answered questions around why first responders weren’t dispatched sooner to the Hortmans’ home and why police who did arrive didn’t immediately try to stop Boelter, he said, adding that he wanted a trial so that the death penalty would be pursued.
J.C. Hortman criticized Blanche’s decision, suggesting that the Justice Department’s work was influenced by the fact that Boelter “only killed Democrats, so Todd didn’t care.”
Blanche “took the easy way out. He’s going to reward this piece of garbage,” said Lee Hortman.
“This cowardly piece of garbage has killed two of the best people in the world,” he said of Boelter. “I’d like to ask you to hang him by the end of a rope,” he told Tunheim.
‘Not the American way’
Prior to the sentencing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Forbes described Boelter’s actions as political violence.
“He was consumed with those he disagreed with. In his case, it was Democrats,” he told the court. He was “laser focused” on the protests scheduled at the Capitol that day and “moved up his attacks two months” to “take the wind out of the protests’ sails.”
Boelter sought “to kill even more legislators,” he said. ”This isn’t about Boelter’s political views” but about “Boelter’s decision to use violence,” he added. “That is not the American way.”
Manny Atwal, Boelter’s lawyer, said her client hoped that “by admitting to his actions, requesting a complete, maximum sentence on every single count, shows his remorse.”
Boelter addressed the court just before the sentence, saying: “To every person I have caused loss, pain, heartache, confusion, sadness, shame or loneliness, I am truly sorry.”
Boelter is asking to serve his sentence at the U.S. Penitentiary Coleman II near Orlando, Fla. Prosecutors did not specify in their sentencing memo where they want him imprisoned; it wasn’t clear at Thursday’s sentencing.
According to court documents, Boelter disguised himself as a police officer and killed the Hortmans at their Brooklyn Park home early in the morning on June 14, 2025, about 90 minutes after attacking the Hoffmans at their home in Champlin.
Boelter, who turned 59 on the same day he was sentenced, also faces state charges of first-degree premeditated murder, which carry a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of release. The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office said Thursday it was moving forward with its case.
