How eyewitnesses, trail cams helped police close the net around Vance Boelter

MINNEAPOLIS — Wendy Thomas was driving her old Chevy pickup truck home from a friend’s house shortly before 8 p.m. Sunday. The sun was low over rural Sibley County, a place of woods, streams, fields and crops an hour’s drive southwest of Minneapolis.

Then the 43-year-old looked to her left.

She saw a man in the grass, dressed in black and covered in mud. He must have noticed her gaze, Thomas later told the Minnesota Star Tribune, because he walked toward a culvert and squatted low to the ground as if trying to hide.

She knew it was him: Vance Boelter, Thomas’ 57-year-old neighbor from just east of the hamlet of Green Isle, the quiet husband and father who’d once visited Thomas’ home for a hog roast, the fugitive who now stands accused of two politically motivated murders and two more attempted murders.

Drones and a helicopter buzzed the skies above, using infrared imaging to search for Boelter. Hundreds of law enforcement officers searched on foot, in squad cars and in armored vehicles, looking for the man suspected of shooting two state legislators and their spouses in their suburban Twin Cities homes the morning before.

Thomas soon came upon police officers. She threw her arms outside the truck and pointed.

“He’s right there!” she shouted.

Moments later, a heavy-duty truck and other law enforcement vehicles sped down the road and into the dusk. Bright lights shone on farm fields and timber.

The net was tightening.

For the past 42 hours, the largest manhunt in Minnesota’s history had played out like a horror movie.

It began with a 911 call at 2:06 a.m. Saturday. The daughter of Minnesota Sen. John Hoffman told the dispatcher her parents had been shot at their suburban Champlin home.

According to the federal criminal complaint, Boelter had driven to the home in a black Ford Explorer kitted out like a police vehicle. Wearing a tactical vest and shining a flashlight to impersonate a police officer, Boelter shot Hoffman and his wife 17 times, prosecutors said.

And then, they alleged, he kept going. At one Democratic politician’s home in Maple Grove, no one was home. At another’s home in New Hope, a local cop coming by for a welfare check appeared to spook Boelter.

At Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman’s home in Brooklyn Park, Boelter stood in the doorway as local cops showed up in the golf course subdivision to check on Hortman, according to the complaint. Officers witnessed Boelter fire several shots into the house, allegedly killing Hortman and her husband before escaping on foot into the night.

As the sun rose a couple hours later, the hunt was underway.

Police agencies set up a command center in Edinbrook Park near Hortman’s home: several RVs, armored vehicles, hundreds of officers. Hundreds of detectives worked out of Brooklyn Park Police Department. SWAT teams with dogs swept the streets around Edinburgh Golf Course, checking houses and blocking streets as the suburb remained locked down.

“We’re looking for a bad guy,” officers told residents.

The SUV left behind at Hortman’s house provided evidence pointing to Boelter: a storage unit bill in his name, license plates revealing the vehicle was registered to him and his wife. There were five firearms in the SUV, including semi-automatic rifles, as well as a medical kit containing wound treatment and a Garmin GPS navigation device. The Garmin included addresses for at least two more elected officials.

Cellphone location information led police to a residence in north Minneapolis where Boelter sometimes stayed. Prosecutors say, after breaking down the front door and windows, police found more notebooks with names of Minnesota elected officials, including this about Hortman: “married Mark 2 children 11th term... Big house off golf course 2 ways in to watch from one spot.”

Police reconstructed Boelter’s movements throughout the metro area Saturday: To a bank in Robbinsdale, where he emptied a U.S. Bank account. To a bus stop in north Minneapolis, where he convinced a man to sell him an e-bike and a black Buick sedan.

Then around 2:30 a.m. Sunday came a valuable tip: A man was spotted riding an e-bike two miles north of the Boelter home in rural Green Isle.

Police didn’t immediately find Boelter. But they found the Buick abandoned along a gravel road. They used a drone to inspect it for explosives. There were none, but there was a handwritten confession to the crimes.

By Sunday, the manhunt narrowed to rural Sibley County.

Officers and canines combed farmland and woods near the Buick. A mile-wide perimeter blocked off the public from the search area. SWAT teams and a Minnesota State Patrol helicopter converged.

On Sunday evening, 83-year-old Gordon Bates arrived home to three squad cars at the end of his drive.

“Can we go through your woods?” police asked Bates, who recounted the moment in an interview with the Star Tribune. “Someone picked up a picture of [Boelter] on a trail cam.”

They showed him the trail cam video.

“It showed him walking by,” Bates said. “It was really clear.”

But Bates told them: Those weren’t his woods. Those woods had more grass than Bates’ woods. Go across the road, he advised, lending officers his side-by-side off-road vehicle for their search.

“Lock your doors,” they told Bates as they sped off.

Shortly after, with the area swarming with police, Wendy Thomas spotted her neighbor, Boelter, in the grass. She alerted police.

For about an hour, Boelter attempted to evade arrest, said Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher, who had SWAT officers and deputies deployed to the area of the arrest.

Eight teams crawled in ditches to corral Boelter.

Finally, some 43 hours after allegedly banging on the Hoffmans’ door in Champlin, Boelter gave himself up. He crawled toward police through a field about a mile from his family’s Green Isle home. At 9:10 p.m., police put him under arrest.

In a law enforcement photo taken moments after the arrest, Boelter peered up and to the left. The sun had disappeared. Boelter’s face betrayed no emotion.

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