The sudden change in the teenager was dramatic and unsettling, as if some internal switch had been thrown. Those who knew him could only wonder: What’s come over Vance Boelter?
One moment he was an affable college freshman, pursuing a family passion by trying out for the baseball team. The next, he was giving up the game and shedding his belongings — even his cherished baseball bat — as if to put away childish things.
Suddenly, he was telling dorm mates they were going to hell, denouncing a guest speaker on campus as “Satan’s worker” and announcing he was now “all in for Jesus.” It was a lifelong commitment he would just as suddenly violate 40 years later, prosecutors say, with an act of political assassination that would stun the nation and send his home state of Minnesota into communal mourning.
