The man charged with killing the top Democrat in the Minnesota house and her husband, and wounding a state senator and his wife, is expected to plead not guilty when he’s arraigned in federal court on Thursday, his attorney said.
Vance Boelter, 58, of Green Isle, Minnesota, was indicted on 15 July on six counts of murder, stalking and firearms violations. The murder charges could carry the federal death penalty, though prosecutors say that decision is several months away.
As they announced the indictment, prosecutors released a rambling handwritten letter they say Boelter wrote to the FBI director, Kash Patel, in which he confessed to the 14 June shootings of Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark.
However, the letter doesn’t make clear why he targeted the Hortmans or state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, who survived.
The hearing before US magistrate judge Dulce Foster will also serve as a case management conference. She plans to issue a revised schedule with deadlines afterward, potentially including a trial date.
Prosecutors have moved to designate the proceedings as a “complex case” so that standard speedy trial requirements won’t apply, saying both sides will need plenty of time to review the voluminous evidence.
Boelter’s motivations remain murky. Friends have described him as an evangelical Christian with politically conservative views who had been struggling to find work. Authorities said Boelter made long lists of politicians in Minnesota and other states – all or mostly Democrats.
In a series of cryptic notes to the New York Times through his jail’s electronic messaging service, Boelter suggested his actions were partly rooted in the Christian commandment to love one’s neighbor. “Because I love my neighbors prior to June 14th I conducted a 2 year long undercover investigation,” he wrote.
In messages published earlier by the New York Post, Boelter insisted the shootings had nothing to do with his opposition to abortion or his support for Donald Trump, but he declined to elaborate.
“There is little evidence showing why he turned to political violence and extremism,” the acting US attorney for Minnesota, Joe Thompson, told reporters last month. He also reiterated that prosecutors consider Hortman’s killing a “political assassination”.
Prosecutors say Boelter was disguised as a police officer and driving a fake squad car early on 14 June when he went to the Hoffmans’ home in the Minneapolis suburb of Champlin. He shot the senator nine times and his wife eight times, officials said.
Boelter later went to the Hortmans’ home in nearby Brooklyn Park and killed both of them, authorities said.
