A year ago this weekend, Minnesota awoke to a terrifying situation.
State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, had been fatally shot at their suburban Minneapolis home.
A few miles away, State Senator John A. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were found with gunshot wounds at their house.
And the gunman, who fired at police officers before disappearing into the night, was nowhere to be found. More than a day would pass, as residents hunkered down and officers fanned out for miles, before there was an arrest.
On Thursday, the accused gunman, Vance Boelter, pleaded guilty in federal court to murder and stalking in the attack, which the authorities have said was politically motivated. Prosecutors recommended that he be sentenced to life in prison, and they agreed not to seek the death penalty.
The attack on the legislators, both Democrats, raised fears about increasing political violence in the United States. And the violence shattered the culture that had long defined politics in Minnesota, where lawmakers listed their home addresses online and made it easy for residents to contact them.
In the year since, Minnesota has changed. Politicians have scrubbed personal information from their websites. Security checkpoints have been installed at the State Capitol.
The state reeled, too, in the months that followed. An August attack at a Catholic church and school in Minneapolis left two students dead and more than 20 people wounded. The deployment of thousands of immigration agents to Minnesota this winter led to three shootings, combustive protests and a collapse in state-federal relations.
Through it all, Minnesota officials often invoked the attacks on the Hortmans and Hoffmans as an example of all the trauma that they and their constituents had endured.
Last June, as the manhunt for Mr. Boelter was underway, law enforcement officials urgently contacted a long list of public figures, many of them Democratic politicians, whose names had been found inside an SUV that he abandoned at one of the shooting scenes. The state’s leaders told people who had planned to attend “No Kings” protests that weekend to stay home after investigators found papers in the vehicle suggesting he might have been planning to attack demonstrators.
Prosecutors would later say that Mr. Boelter, who they said had disguised himself as a police officer and worn a mask, had gone near the homes of two additional Democratic legislators that night. At one house, they said, he went to the door but found that nobody was home. At another, they said, he left after a police officer noticed him and tried to talk to him.
Daniel N. Rosen, the top federal prosecutor in Minnesota, told a judge on Wednesday that his office had reached an agreement with Mr. Boelter and asked for a change of plea hearing, which was scheduled almost immediately.
Earlier in the week, the Justice Department said it had decided not to seek the death penalty after determining that underlying stalking charges against Mr. Boelter most likely did not make him eligible for capital punishment.
Federal prosecutors can seek the death penalty when a violent crime leads to a murder involving a firearm. There is doubt about whether stalking qualifies as a violent crime under court precedent.
“Prosecutors worked hard on this case to make sure he was held accountable to the fullest extent possible,” Emily Covington, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Mr. Boelter was charged in connection with the shootings in both state and federal court. Minnesota has no death penalty for state crimes, but federal prosecutors initially left open the possibility that they might pursue capital punishment.
A spokesman for the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting the state charges against Mr. Boelter, said the plea agreement in federal court would not affect the state case. A state official who has previously provided statements on the behalf of the Hortmans’ adult children said after the plea deal was announced that they did not wish to comment.
Ms. Hortman, a former speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, was a lawyer by training and a legislator for about 20 years. She played a key role in passing a wide array of bills during the 2023 session, when Democrats held a slim majority, including legislation that expanded abortion rights, legalized recreational marijuana and required employers to offer paid family and medical leave.
Mr. Hortman, who worked for an electrical manufacturing company, was recalled by friends as a supportive political spouse with a sense of humor and an interest in sports.
The killings, which took place on June 14, 2025, drew bipartisan condemnation. Mourners lined up around the block outside the State Capitol as the couple lay in state. Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and former Vice President Kamala Harris were among those who attended their funeral.
In the months that followed, the attacks became entangled in conspiracy theories. In January, the Hortmans’ children asked President Trump to remove a video that he reposted on social media that made false insinuations about the case.
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