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How the Hortman gunman used 11 data broker sites to find home addresses (2025)

FILE 408Brooklyn Park, Minnesota2025-06-14
CLOSED

On June 14, 2025, Vance Boelter killed Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark and shot State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette. Investigators recovered a handwritten list of 11 data broker websites from his vehicle. Court filings describe those people-search sites as how he found the home addresses, with no insider source or technical skill involved.

What happened

Early on June 14, 2025, Vance Boelter, 57, dressed as a police officer and drove to two Minnesota lawmakers' homes. In Champlin, he shot State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette. Both survived. In Brooklyn Park, he shot State Representative Melissa Hortman, the former Speaker of the Minnesota House, and her husband Mark. Both were killed.

Boelter was caught after a two-day manhunt. A federal grand jury indicted him on six counts on July 15, 2025, including stalking resulting in death. He pleaded guilty to all six counts on June 11, 2026 and agreed to consecutive life terms without release. Sentencing is set for July 23, 2026.

How he found the addresses

Investigators searching Boelter's SUV found handwritten notebooks naming more than 45 Minnesota state and federal officials, many listed with their home addresses. Next to the notebooks was a written list of 11 data broker websites. The Record and Wired reported the list from court filings.

The list noted which sites were free, which charged a fee, and how much information each one needed to run a search. According to the FBI affidavit, Boelter used these people-search sites to find the home addresses. He did not need special access. He needed a name and a way to pay.

Why this case matters

Reporting on data broker harm often relies on inferred chains: an address was found somehow, a broker page was the likely source, and the page is still up. Here the chain is documented. The FBI recovered the list. Court filings name the 11 sites as how the home addresses were found.

That makes this one of the clearest public examples of data broker pages leading to a fatal home attack on a US elected official. The sites Boelter used are consumer people-search services. Anyone with a name and a credit card can run the same search.

What this means for your own exposure

If you are a police officer, judge, prosecutor, federal agent, or other public-safety worker, the same people-search sites that returned the Hortmans' address can return yours. State analogs to Daniel's Law let covered people and their families require data brokers to stop posting their home address and phone number. The federal Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act does the same for federal judges. Both laws only work if someone files the removal requests and files again when a listing comes back.

Frontline Privacy files these removals across a wide list of broker sites and keeps checking, because listings often reappear.

For the broker chain in detail and how the law applies, see /data-brokers and /laws/daniels-law.

What reduces this risk

This is one of the clearest publicly documented cases where data broker pages were the tool used to turn a public official's name into a home address. Investigators did not have to infer the broker step; they recovered the written list. The same people-search sites that carry a legislator's address also carry addresses for police, judges, and other public-safety workers. State analogs to Daniel's Law give covered people grounds to demand removal from these sites. The records often reappear, so the demands have to be repeated.

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