Vance Boelter\u2019s letter to the FBI about his alleged shootings of Minnesota lawmakers reveals grandiose beliefs about his importance in the world and suggests a delusional disorder, according to a former clinical director of the Minnesota Security Hospital.<\/p>\n
Dr. Michael Farnsworth stressed that he didn\u2019t know enough about Boelter from one letter<\/a> to make a clinical diagnosis, but that the writing reminded him \u201cof many letters of patients that I\u2019ve evaluated over the years that were at the security hospital\u201d in St. Peter. Farnsworth suspects attorneys will seek a psychiatric evaluation and try to use its conclusions in their criminal defense of Boelter, who is accused of killing Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and shooting Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. Boelter reportedly plans to plead not guilty<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole letter smacks to me of a guy that\u2019s got mixed delusions with grandiose and persecutory beliefs,\u201d said Farnsworth, a forensic psychiatrist who consults with several mental health agencies in south-central Minnesota.<\/p>\n A copy of Boelter\u2019s handwritten letter was contained in a federal search warrant unsealed Tuesday and made publicly available. The letter appears to claim that he was targeting two unnamed state lawmakers because they were part of a conspiracy by Gov. Tim Walz to pressure Boelter into murdering Minnesota\u2019s two U.S. senators to advance the governor\u2019s political career. Boelter also wrote that the shootings were a \u201cone person job\u201d and tried to shield his family from blame.<\/p>\n Grandiosity is an outsized sense of importance, apparent in Boelter\u2019s claims that he was pressured into murders to further the political careers of high-level Minnesota officials, the doctor said: \u201cI\u2019m an important person. I\u2019ve been specially trained, I have a special relationship to important people and I\u2019ve been tasked with important things to do, right?\u201d<\/p>\n Persecutory symptoms include a sense of being targeted by specific people and obstructed from long-term goals, according to a summary published<\/a> by the National Library of Medicine. They differ slightly from paranoid symptoms that involve a much broader range of mistrust and suspicion.<\/p>\n