11 data broker sites — the entire methodology behind the Hortman assassination (June 2025)

What happened

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

Boelter was captured after a two-day manhunt. The US Attorney for the District of Minnesota indicted him on six federal counts on July 15, 2025, including stalking resulting in death.

How it started

Investigators searching Boelter's SUV recovered handwritten notebooks listing dozens of Minnesota state and federal elected officials and their home addresses. Alongside the notebooks was a written list of 11 data broker websites. The Record and Wired reported the list directly from court filings.

The list had notations on which sites were free and which charged a fee, and how much information each one required. That is not the work of an investigator. That is the work of a customer. The broker sites were the lookup tool. The notebook was the result of running the lookup.

Why this case matters

Most reporting on data broker harms relies on inferred chains. An address was somehow found. The most likely source was a broker page. The page is still up. In the Hortman case, the chain is documented, not inferred. The FBI recovered the list. The 11 broker sites are named in court filings as the operational mechanism that produced the home addresses.

That makes this the clearest publicly documented example of the broker chain ending in a fatal home attack on a US elected official. Every cop, judge, prosecutor, and federal agent reading this should hold the same fact in mind: 11 sites was the entire methodology. No special access. No technical skill. Just the consumer-facing broker stack.

What this means for you

If you're a first responder, judge, prosecutor, federal agent, or elected official, the lookup mechanism Boelter used is on you right now. The same sites that returned the Hortmans' address will return yours. State analogs to Daniel's Law give covered persons grounds to demand removal. The federal Lieu Act covers federal judges. Both require someone — or some service — to actually file the removal demands and keep filing them when the listings come back.

We file opt-outs across 200+ broker sites and re-check every two weeks. Closing those channels in advance is what stops the lookup from returning an answer the next time someone like Boelter starts building a list.

For the broker chain in detail and which sites matter most, see /data-brokers and /laws/daniels-law.

Editorial rules: Only public, already-reported incidents. Never name a non-public victim. Always end with the prevention takeaway tied to our service. Cite at minimum one public source per claim.