Vance Boelter's Life Before the Minnesota Shootings
One moment he was an affable college freshman, pursuing a family passion by trying out for the baseball team. The next, he was giving up the game and shedding his belongings — even his cherished baseball bat — as if to put away childish things.
Suddenly, he was telling dorm mates they were going to hell, denouncing a guest speaker on campus as 'Satan's worker' and announcing he was now 'all in for Jesus.' It was a lifelong commitment he would just as suddenly violate 40 years later, prosecutors say, with an act of political assassination that would stun the nation and send his home state of Minnesota into communal mourning.
Throughout his life, Mr. Boelter's Christian belief in the sanctity of life seemed unwavering. He told a church congregation in 2021 that all the world's wealth was 'not worth the value of the person on your left, or the person on your right, or the person you see going home today.'
But his worldview darkened as his fortunes declined. He moved from state to state, job to job. He went from overseeing large food-service operations to collecting bodies for funeral homes, struggling at the same time to pair his spiritual and business interests while his wife home-schooled their five children. He began following a far-right website that trafficked in conspiracy theories about stolen elections and evil Democrats. He became distant.
In the first dark hours of June 14, prosecutors say, the pious Mr. Boelter, 57, set out to commit a crime that would break a commandment. He drove off in a black S.U.V. outfitted to resemble a police cruiser with several firearms and the names and addresses of intended targets. Less than two hours later, a Democratic legislator and her husband were dead, and another Democratic lawmaker and his wife had been critically wounded.
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