State-level murder prosecution for Vance Boelter in lawmaker attacks moves forward
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Convicted killer Vance Boelter appeared in a Hennepin County courtroom Monday to face state charges for the murder of former DFL House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark. Boelter, 59, is already serving life in prison after pleading guilty in July to related federal charges.
Last year, a Hennepin County grand jury indicted Boelter on two counts of first-degree murder and the attempted murders of DFL State Sen. John Hoffman, his wife Yvette, their daughter Hope and DFL State Rep. Kristin Bahner.
Boelter is also charged with impersonating a police officer and felony animal cruelty for shooting the Hortmans’ dog Gilbert, who was later euthanized.
“We feel it’s important to hold Boelter accountable for what he did in this county,” County Attorney Mary Moriarty said at an August 2025 news conference to announce the charges. “I will also say that there’s no possibility of anyone — at least in the federal government — pardoning Boelter on anything we do here in state court.”
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There has been no indication that President Donald Trump plans to pardon Boelter on the federal charges.
At a 13-minute hearing on Monday in a courtroom at the Hennepin County Jail, defense attorney Geoffrey Isaacman asked Judge Juan Hoyos that his client remain in custody at the Sherburne County Jail, where he’s been in federal custody since his arrest.
Isaacman said that Boelter suffered health problems during his months in isolation, but jail staff were able to move him to general population. The defense attorney said that the Hennepin County Jail does not have the space to accommodate Boelter as the case progresses.
Hoyos kept Boelter’s bail set at $5 million and did not make a decision on where he would be held in pretrial detention.
After conferring privately with Isaacman, Boelter said that he had some questions for the judge about the process and his rights.
Boelter said that he had traveled to Washington, D.C. five times at “taxpayers’ expense” to represent several Minnesota counties, and that he met with elected officials including DFL U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
“Does the court have the ability to bring Klobuchar in to testify?” Boelter asked, without providing additional context.
“We have found no record of my ever meeting or speaking with this murderer who will be spending the rest of his life in prison,” Klobuchar said in a statement Monday. “This is the second time he has falsely brought me into his tormented web and no one should be giving him more attention.”
Boelter also said that Sherburne County Jail staff were violating his rights to religious freedom because he hasn’t “been allowed to physically meet with a pastor or priest” and that the FBI violated his free speech rights by refusing to take his statements upon his arrest. Boelter added that he lost 36 pounds during his initial time in jail.
In a filing ahead of his federal sentencing last month, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Matthew Forbes and Bradley Endicott noted that in messages to friends and internet searches, Boelter appeared fixated “on the balance of power between the political parties in Minnesota and elsewhere power was closely divided.”
“He knew that the Minnesota Legislature was so closely divided that by killing four state legislators, the inevitable result would be a shift in the balance of power in both legislative houses,” the prosecutors wrote.
