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Minnesota Assassin Captured: Exactly Why Did Vance Boelter Go Crazy?

Posted on | June 16, 2025 | Comments Off on Minnesota Assassin Captured: Exactly Why Did Vance Boelter Go Crazy?

This story broke late Sunday:

Suspected political assassin Vance Luther Boelter was captured Sunday following an intense manhunt for the gunman accused of murdering a Minnesota state lawmaker and wounding another, state officials announced.
Boelter, a 57-year-old former appointee of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was sought by police for allegedly wounding Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, and killing former Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband.
“After a two-day manhunt and two sleepless nights, law enforcement have apprehended Vance Boelter,” Walz said during a press briefing.
The armed accused killer was taken into custody without incident in a rural, wooded area in Sibley County, southwest of Minneapolis, after authorities received a tip about a possible sighting hours earlier, state officials announced Sunday night.
Officers from multiple agencies, including SWAT teams, combed the area for hours and were assisted by helicopters using infrared cameras and drones, officials said.
It was a resident’s trail camera he passed in a rural town that tripped him up, according to the Star Tribune.
“Most of the search had concluded then,” Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said. “But the trail cam picture alerted SWAT teams to go to the area, search a perimeter and with the help of drones, identify his location.”
Boelter’s capture ended the “largest manhunt in the state’s history,” which lasted around 43 hours, involved at least 200 officers and utilized a federal, state and local partnership, Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley told reporters.

Boelter is “in the custody of U.S. Marshals as he awaits his first court appearance in federal court Monday afternoon”:

Boelter will now appear in federal court at 1:30 p.m. [Central time, 2:30 p.m. ET] after initially slated for a first hearing at the Hennepin County Public Safety Facility. The U.S. Attorney’s Office is scheduled to share statements about the federal case at 11 a.m.

There are many mysteries surrounding Boelter’s motive, and we’ll get to that, but first notice what Hennepin County prosecutor Mary Moriarty said in a press conference this morning:

“Political violence is prevalent, and the way we talk to and about each other has raised the temperature to unfathomable levels,” Moriarty said. “We cannot continue on this way in times of tragedy.” . . .
“As our community grieves, I encourage those out there seeking to create additional chaos to stop spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories” . . .

What evidence is there that “the way we talk” about politics had any influence on Vance Boelter? And exactly what kind of “misinformation and conspiracy theories” was the prosecutor referring to?

Having spent most of the day Saturday trying to figure out what motivated Vance Boelter, I am perplexed by Moriary’s seeming certainty that political rhetoric was to blame for his crimes. As someone who is constantly monitoring political discourse, I’ve been exposed to almost every form of “misinformation and conspiracy theories” out there, and yet have never gone on a murder spree. Just now, the acting U.S. Attorney in Minnesota gave a press conference in which he said the “why” of Boelter’s crimes is “not clear.” He said that Boelter had apparently been planning these assassinations for months, and had a list of targets — all of them Democrats. So there’s that. Meanwhile . . .

Boelter’s wife, Jennifer, reportedly worked as an intern for Gov. Tim Walz back when he was still in Congress. On Saturday morning, she was detained during a traffic stop near Onamia, which also involved several of Boelter’s relatives. According to Tom Hauser of ABC 5 Eyewitness News, nearly a dozen police vehicles swarmed the car and held the scene for up to three hours. Hauser’s sources say officers discovered a weapon, ammunition, cash, and passports inside the vehicle.

That’s kind of weird, isn’t it? The weirdest thing, however, is that while Boelter was married and owned a half-million-dollar home, he was spending several nights a month staying at home shared by several roommates, including his childhood friend David Carlson:

[There were] hints of a growing trouble within, which began after a three-year stint in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where [Boelter] claimed to have multiple business interests tied to his security company, Red Lion Group.
“I thought his demeanor [changed], he wasn’t as cheerful as he used to be. Since he got back from Africa, I guess,” Boelter’s roommate and self-described best friend David Carlson told The Post, adding he got back four months ago and quit his job to go there.
“He came back and he was struggling a little bit. I thought it was normal struggles.”
Boelter calls himself the CEO of Red Lion Group on his LinkedIn page, where he lists the company’s home base as the Democratic Republic of Congo. But besides the passing reference, virtually no information is available about the company.
“His dream was to have a security company,” Carlson said, hinting that his dream was more rooted in delusion than reality.
“He never was or never had a security company. He wasn’t doing security for anybody — it wasn’t his job.”
Carlson noted that Boelter even had two official cars for the alleged company despite having “no clients [and] no employees.” . . .
Carlson said his friend had a tough time landing a job after returning from his most recent overseas trip, sharing, “I thought his thing in Africa was bringing him down.” . . .
Boelter’s apparent obsession with play-acting as a security operations expert extended to another dubious business venture called Praetorian Guard Security Services, ostensibly helmed by his wife, Jenny.
The company website lists Boelter as “Director of Security Patrols,” boasting he’s been “involved” with “security situations in Eastern Europe, Africa, North America and the Middle East, including the West Bank, Southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.”

Boelter’s “obsession with play-acting as a security operations expert,” and his inexplicable fascination with Africa are obviously part of the psychological profile here. There was some kind of delusional thinking pattern involved, but what’s with him doing the part-time roommate thing with his childhood buddy? It doesn’t make sense, and law enforcement isn’t giving us much to work with, in terms of figuring out when, why and how Boelter went off the rails.



 

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Category: Crime, Minnesota, Terrorism

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