Boelter claims justification for Hortman killings
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The man who killed former DFL House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark claims that his actions were legally justified.
Vance Boelter is serving life in prison after pleading guilty to federal murder, stalking and firearms charges, but he still faces separate state charges.
In a Friday filing in the state case, Boelter notified the court that he plans to mount a “justifiable taking of life” defense to charges of first-degree premeditated murder.
Boelter, through his attorneys, argues that he was "effecting a lawful arrest" under Minnesota's citizen's arrest statute, and believed he was in danger of great bodily harm or death. Boelter did not provide any additional details.
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The Hortmans were unarmed when Boelter appeared at their Brooklyn Park home at around 3:30 a.m. on June 14, 2025.
Boelter tricked them into answering their front door by dressing as a police officer and parking a phony squad car with flashing lights in their driveway.
Boelter fatally shot Mark Hortman as Brooklyn Park police arrived and exchanged gunfire with the officers. Boelter ran inside the home, where he shot Melissa Hortman at point-blank range.
In June, Boelter, 59, admitted in federal court that he killed the Hortmans after shooting and wounding DFL State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette earlier the same morning and attempting to kill their daughter Hope.
U.S. District Judge John Tunheim sentenced Boelter to two consecutive life terms plus 40 years in line with a plea agreement with the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office. He faces a mandatory sentence of life without parole if convicted of first-degree premeditated murder in the state case.
In additional filings Friday, Boelter asked a judge to move the trial outside of Hennepin County because of “excessive pretrial publicity,” and petitioned the court to lower his $5 million bond.
Boelter argues that the charges and high bail are “politically motivated to shield the Democrats and keep the public from hearing what has been going on in Minnesota. I was in the process of exposing fraud and other crimes taking place that the public still has not been made aware of.”
Boelter also notes that he volunteered his time to “worthy civic causes,” and that DFL Governors Tim Walz and Mark Dayton appointed him to a state workforce development board. In the filing, Boelter also included an undated photo of himself and other members of the Dakota-Scott Workforce Development Board with DFL U.S. Rep. Angie Craig that appears to have been taken at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington.
In a court memo filed ahead of Boelter’s July 23 federal sentencing, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Bradley Endicott and Matthew Forbes write that Boelter “committed his murders with full knowledge that the inevitable result of his killings would be a shift in the balance of power in the Minnesota Legislature.”
The federal prosecutors pointed to text messages that Boelter sent to friends and family members in which he expressed concern about Republicans losing power in Minnesota and other places where power was closely divided.
“He was aware of the party breakdown. And he knew that if he had been successful in all of his attempted murders that night, he would have killed at least two Minnesota senators ([John] Hoffman and [Ann] Rest) and at least two Minnesota House members ([Melissa] Hortman and [Kristin] Bahner), and the balance of power would have shifted in both houses of the Minnesota Legislature.”
