Vance Boelter was sentenced in federal court on Thursday to two consecutive life sentences plus 40 years for the killings of Melissa Hortman and Mark Hortman and the shootings of John Hoffman and Yvette Hoffman. The punishment matched the deal he reached in June, when he pleaded guilty to six counts to keep prosecutors from seeking the death penalty.
Judge imposed the term as a single package: two life sentences, served one after the other, plus 480 months more. Prosecutors and federal defenders said it was the maximum sentence short of death, and Boelter also faces state charges.
John Hoffman’s statement
John Hoffman spoke in court and described what the attacks took from him. “These were acts of calculated violence,” he said. “The defendant permanently changed my life...Every ordinary, boring moment forever altered by extraordinary violence.”
Jon and Yvette Hoffman also appeared in court, along with members of both the Hortman and Hoffman families, including Sophie and Colin. Their statements came after the federal court had already accepted the guilty plea that resolved the case at the federal level.
June 14, 2025 attacks
Boelter admitted in court that he spent months identifying and stalking his targets before driving to their homes in the middle of the night disguised as a police officer with the intention of killing them. On June 14, 2025, he went to Melissa Hortman’s home about 3:30 a.m., rang the doorbell while shouting that he was a police officer doing a welfare check, shot Mark Hortman multiple times, and then shot Melissa Hortman as she fled upstairs.
He had already visited the Hoffmans’ home that night and shot and critically injured John Hoffman and Yvette Hoffman. Court documents said he also went to two other lawmakers’ houses that night, where no one answered the door in one instance and a police officer approached him in his car in the other.
Prosecutors and Vance Boelter
Boelter told the court, “To every person I have caused loss, pain, heartache, confusion, sadness, shame, or loneliness, I am truly sorry.” Prosecutors took the opposite view, writing that “Vance Boelter committed an assault on democracy” and saying he “shattered the lives of his victims,” “terrified Minnesota’s public servants,” “threatened police and pointed a gun at an officer,” and “viciously attacked the organs of Minnesota’s representative government.”
The sentence closes the federal case with the terms Boelter agreed to in June. What remains is the state case, which still keeps the June 14, 2025 attacks in the court system after the federal court has already imposed the longest punishment it could short of death.
