The man suspected of assassinating a Democratic state lawmaker in Minnesota and wounding another remained on the loose on Sunday as investigators tried to piece together what led to the shootings and where the perpetrator might now be hiding.
As the search continued, new details emerged about the suspect, Vance Boelter, 57, a father of five who had worked for decades in the food industry. In a video he posted online, he described quitting that industry to work on agricultural projects in central Africa. More recently, colleagues said, he had picked up jobs at funeral service companies — including removing dead bodies from houses and nursing homes — to pay the bills.
On Sunday, police officers found a car belonging to Mr. Boelter on a remote stretch of road near where he lives with his wife and children.
Here’s what we know about the suspect.
Does he have a connection to the victims?
Mr. Boelter had served on a state economic board with one of the victims, State Senator John A. Hoffman, who survived the shooting, though it is unclear if they actually knew each other.
Mr. Boelter was appointed to the panel, the Minnesota Governor’s Workforce Development Board, in 2016 by a Democratic former governor, Mark Dayton. The board has 41 members appointed by the governor, and its members try to improve business development in the state. He was later reappointed by Gov. Tim Walz, also a Democrat.
Mr. Boelter and Mr. Hoffman attended a virtual meeting together in 2022 for a discussion about the job market in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, minutes from the meeting show, though officials said they did not know if the two had any kind of relationship.
Current and former members of the board said that there were a handful of meetings each year and that there was often no direct interaction with the governor. One said the governor had not attended any of the group’s meetings in her four years on the board. They said it would be easy for two members not to know each other.
What are his political affiliations?
Governor Walz has said that the shooting “appears to be a politically motivated assassination,” though the exact motive for the attack is not yet clear.
Voters do not declare political affiliation when they register in Minnesota, and a state report connected to the work force board listed Mr. Boelter’s affiliation as “none or other” in 2016. A similar report in 2020 listed him as having “no party preference.”
But David Carlson, a roommate and close friend of Mr. Boelter’s, said Mr. Boelter voted for Donald J. Trump last year and was particularly passionate about opposing abortion.
Mr. Carlson said he had known Mr. Boelter since fourth grade. He said that he knew that Mr. Boelter owned guns but that he had never heard him speak about either of the two lawmakers who were shot. Recently, he said, Mr. Boelter had been experiencing financial and mental health challenges. He “just gave up on life for some reason,” he said.
Mr. Carlson read aloud a text message from Mr. Boelter that he received on Saturday morning in which Mr. Boelter wrote that he might “be dead shortly.” The message did not describe any details of the attacks, Mr. Carlson said. It went on: “I don’t want to say anything more and implicate you in any way because you guys don’t know anything about this. But I love you guys and I’m sorry for all the trouble this has caused.”
Mr. Carlson said that on Friday Mr. Boelter gave him four months’ worth of advance rent payments — about $220 a month — for a small room in the shared house. Mr. Boelter also thanked his roommates for their friendship and then said that he needed some rest, Mr. Carlson said, so he left him alone.
Mr. Boelter’s lack of a party affiliation on public documents does not necessarily mean that he is not interested in the country’s political affairs.
In November 2018, Mr. Boelter urged his followers on LinkedIn to vote in that year’s election, saying he had been to countries where people could not elect their leaders and that they were “not places that anyone of us would want to live in.”
“I think the election is going to have more of an impact on the direction of our country than probably any election we have been apart of, or will be apart of for years to come,” he wrote.
One lawmaker who was wounded on Saturday, State Representative Melissa Hortman, ran successfully for re-election that year.
He worked in the funeral industry and preached in central Africa.
Mr. Boelter’s professional history is varied.
In one video he posted online, seemingly for an educational course, Mr. Boelter said he worked six days a week for two funeral service companies in the Minneapolis area. At one of the companies, he said, he sometimes helped to remove bodies from crime scenes and would work with police officers and death investigators.
A spokesman for Des Moines Area Community College, in Iowa, said Mr. Boelter took classes in the school’s mortuary science program, which is primarily an online program, in 2023 and 2024.
State reports and his LinkedIn profile indicate that he had also been the general manager of a 7-Eleven in Minneapolis and, before that, the general manager of a gas station in St. Paul. A report in 2017 listed him as an executive at an energy company.
More recently, he said on LinkedIn that he was the chief executive of a company called Red Lion Group, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose website lists a vague mission of creating “good jobs for local people.”
Mr. Boelter has delivered several sermons at a church in that country.
In the sermons, which were posted online, he said he gave his life to Jesus as a teenager and had been blessed with five children. In one, he said he had been friends with David Emerson, a missionary who was murdered in Zimbabwe in 1987 along with 10 others.
In another sermon, he appeared to criticize gay and transgender people.
“There’s people, especially in America, they don’t know what sex they are,” he said. “They don’t know their sexual orientation, they’re confused. The enemy has gotten so far into their mind and their soul.”
Mr. Boelter and his wife, Jenny, were listed on a website as running a private security company, though it was not clear whether it had any clients. The company, Praetorian Guard Security Services, lists Mr. Boelter as the director of security patrols and his wife as the president.
Ms. Boelter was stopped on Saturday morning by police officers near a convenience store in Onamia, Minn., roughly 70 miles north of the area of the shootings, according to Sheriff Kyle Burton of Mille Lacs County. The sheriff said other relatives were in the car, and a witness said he saw three children get out of the car during the stop. All of them were cooperative, and none were taken into custody, officials said.
The firm’s website describes using Ford Explorer S.U.V.s, “the same make and model of vehicles that many police departments use.”
On Saturday afternoon, the police towed a Ford Explorer from outside the home of Representative Hortman.
The website for Mr. Boelter’s security company makes expansive claims about his work experience that could not immediately be verified, including that he had been “involved with security situations” in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Federal tax forms show that Mr. Boelter and his wife once led a Christian nonprofit called Revoformation Ministries. An archived version of the group’s website described Mr. Boelter as becoming an ordained minister in 1993.
Mr. Boelter, the site said, had traveled to violent areas and had “sought out militant Islamists in order to share the gospel and tell them that violence wasn’t the answer.”
Mr. Boelter made similar claims during one of his sermons in the Democratic Republic of Congo, saying he had been confronted by armed militants while distributing pamphlets in places like the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.
How was the attack carried out?
Authorities say the assassin disguised himself as a police officer — wearing a ballistic vest, gloves and a mask — before going to the lawmakers’ homes in two Minneapolis suburbs early on Saturday morning.
After the police responded to the home of Senator Hoffman, finding that he and his wife, Yvette, had both been shot, they decided to check on Representative Hortman at home. There, they encountered the assailant, who they said fled on foot after an exchange of gunfire with officers around 3:30 a.m. Inside, the police found Ms. Hortman and her husband, Mark, dead.
U.S. Senator Tina Smith, Democrat of Minnesota, said in an interview that the gunman had a list that included her name and the names of other lawmakers, all of whom were Democrats.
The list included about 70 potential targets, a federal law enforcement official said, including doctors, community and business leaders, and locations for Planned Parenthood and other health care centers. Some of the targets were in neighboring states.
A sweeping manhunt led the police on Sunday afternoon to Sibley County, a rural community southwest of Minneapolis, where they found what they believed was Mr. Boelter’s vehicle near Green Isle — roughly 10 minutes from his listed address.
Emergency cellphone alerts warned residents to remain indoors and to secure their vehicles. Officials have offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to Mr. Boelter’s capture and continue to emphasize the public danger, describing him as armed, dangerous and willing to kill.
Reporting was contributed by Julie Bosman, Kevin Draper, Adam Goldman, Dan Haugen, Ruth Maclean, Alyce McFadden, Bernard Mokam, Jay Senter and Mitch Smith. Jack Begg and Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs reports on national stories across the United States with a focus on criminal justice. He is from upstate New York.
Ernesto Londoño is a Times reporter based in Minnesota, covering news in the Midwest and drug use and counternarcotics policy.
Mike Baker is a national reporter for The Times, based in Seattle.
Mark Walker is an investigative reporter for The Times focused on transportation. He is based in Washington.
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