What we know about shooting suspects Teresa Youngblut, Felix Bauckholt

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Security video of the mysterious couple linked to the highway shooting death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Vermont, one of whom was a former student at an Ontario university, shows them dressed in black, hiding their faces, and moving suspiciously.

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The scenes from the couple’s stay at the Newport City Inn & Suites in Newport, Vt., obtained by National Post, are from Jan. 15, five days before a highway shootout near the Canada-U.S. border that killed both Border Patrol Agent David Chris Maland and one of the suspects, Felix Bauckholt, a German citizen who graduated from the University of Waterloo.

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The FBI misspelled the man’s last name in its court documents last week. They spelled it “Baukholt.” An FBI official confirmed the mistake.

The woman seen in the hotel video, identified as Teresa Youngblut, 21, from Seattle, was injured in the shooting but survived and is facing federal charges of using a deadly weapon to assault, resist or impede federal law enforcement, and another charge of assault with a deadly weapon in the fatal shooting.

In a motion seeking to have Youngblut detained prior to trial, U.S. Attorney Michael Drescher alleged that she and Bauckholt might be linked to other people suspected in violent acts.

The guns that were found with them after the shooting had been purchased by someone purporting to be a resident of Orleans, Vt., from a licensed firearms dealer in Mount Tabor, Vt., last February.

That person, the prosecution memo says, is a person of interest in a dual homicide investigation in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

“Bauckholt flew into the United States in the hours preceding that Pennsylvania homicide. Both the defendant and the person who purchased the firearms in Vermont … are acquainted with and have been in frequent contact with an individual who was detained by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania during that homicide investigation; that individual is also a person of interest in a homicide investigation in Vallejo, California,” the prosecutor’s memo says.

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The government motion says Youngblut had travelled internationally in each of the previous three years, although no information on which country or countries is provided.

“The Court should detain the defendant because there is no condition or combination of conditions of release that would reasonably assure the safety of any other person and the community and reasonably assure the defendant’s appearance as required,” the government’s motion says.

The FBI also seized a journal that allegedly belonged to Youngblut. It contains sections written in cypher text, which is encoded messages that need an algorithmic key to decode.

Some portions that agents can read, include phrases suggesting hallucinogenic drug use, prosecutors say, including “coming up on acid”, “not really sure what to spend this trip on”, “this lsd trip seems pretty mellow” and “i fell kinda high vibrationy maybe more so than other lsd trips.”

While the motion says the facts of the investigation are not all known and still under active investigation — “investigators are presently reviewing evidence, searching property, and conducting relevant interviews” — it suggests Youngblut might be aggressive, unstable, and dangerous.

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“An originally peaceful interaction between the United States Border Patrol and the occupants of a vehicle became confrontational based on the defendant’s conduct, and she then unnecessarily and inexplicably escalated to deadly violence.

“Her demonstrated willingness to use deadly force in an otherwise non-violent scenario shows that she presents a danger to law enforcement officers and the community.”

Youngblut faces a potential life sentence if found guilty of the charges.

She has not yet had an opportunity to address the allegations in court. She had a court appearance scheduled for Monday afternoon.

The couple raised alarm when seen skulking about smalltown Vermont dressed in black tactical gear. Youngblut was also wearing an exposed pistol in a holster, according to an FBI criminal complaint. Open carry of a firearm is legal in Vermont, but it added to concern and a hotel clerk in Lyndonville, Vt., a village 45 kilometres south of the shooting, called police.

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The couple didn’t talk much with officers who came to speak to them, and they checked out of that hotel soon after their contact with officers, according to a criminal complaint by an FBI special agent filed in court.

The pair travelled north and instead spent the night — and the next five days — in Newport.

Police watched them off and on for days. They saw Bauckholt buy rolls of aluminum foil at Walmart and then sit in the couple’s car wrapping unidentified items in foil sheets. The FBI later found foil-wrapped cellphones at the scene of the shooting.

On Jan. 20, at about 3 p.m., southbound on Interstate 91, about 15 kilometres south of the Quebec border, on-duty, uniformed U.S. Border Patrol agents in three vehicles stopped a blue 2015 Toyota Prius hatchback with a North Carolina licence plate to conduct an immigration inspection, the FBI said.

The car was registered to Bauckholt but Youngblut was driving, the affidavit alleges.

About 15 minutes into the highway interaction, Youngblut allegedly “drew and fired a handgun toward at least one of the uniformed Border Patrol Agents without warning when outside the driver’s side of the Prius,” according to the affidavit.

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“Baukholt then attempted to draw a firearm. At least one Border Patrol Agent fired at Youngblut and Baukholt with his service weapon.”

Maland and Bauckholt died. Youngblut was taken to hospital.

Court documents say the FBI found guns and ammunition as well as an odd assortment of tactical and computer gear with the couple: full-face respirators, night-vision goggles, ballistic helmet, shooting range targets, several computers and electronic devices, and a journal.

Bauckholt is an unlikely character in the bizarre drama.

He grew up in Germany where he was a mathematics whiz kid, winning awards and accolades in scholastics for both math and computer science at the national level.

At some stage he appears to have moved to Canada and enrolled in a Bachelor of Mathematics degree program at the University of Waterloo.

David George-Cosh, senior manager of media relations for Waterloo, confirmed a student with the same name as the suspect attended the school from 2015 to 2018.

Bauckholt’s LinkedIn entry said he studied pure mathematics.

Online records show he was involved in the university’s Computer Science Club as an executive member, although a fellow executive member of the club at the time said Bauckholt was not well known to him or others he knew there.

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A university media release from 2019 said Bauckholt was a member of the school’s team that competed at the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, an annual contest for universities in Canada and the United States that is considered one of the world’s most prestigious math contests.

He did not rank in the top 400 competitors.

After university he used his math skills to work in finance, according to his LinkedIn profile, which has since been deleted.

His current job at the time of the shooting on his profile was as a quantitative trader at Tower Research Capital, in New York City. Calls and emails from National Post to Tower asking for information about Bauckholt and to confirm his position have gone unanswered for several days.

Youngblut had been the subject of a parental report as a missing person in May, according to Seattle Police Department. Her parents said they feared she was in a controlling relationship and being forced to cut off contact with family.

In November, Youngblut applied for a marriage licence in a Seattle suburb, according to King County municipal records — but it was not to marry Bauckholt. A different name was listed as her intended partner, who appears to be another computer and math enthusiast. Requests for comment from the person believed to be on her application have not been returned.

A request for comment and information from Youngblut’s public defender have gone unanswered.

• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | X: AD_Humphreys

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