A five-day manhunt across New England ended Thursday night when law enforcement found the body of the primary suspect in the Brown University shooting inside a New Hampshire storage unit.
Authorities identified the deceased as 48-year-old Claudio Neves Valente. Officials confirmed late Thursday that Valente is the sole suspect in Saturday’s attack at the Ivy League campus in Providence, Rhode Island, as well as the killing of an MIT professor at his Massachusetts home two days later.
While the two shootings initially appeared unrelated—separated by nearly 50 miles—investigators eventually uncovered a specific link between Valente and the second victim, Nuno Loureiro. Both men were Portuguese nationals who attended the same academic program at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon between 1995 and 2000.
Connecting the Dots
Early in the week, the FBI stated there was no known connection between the campus attack and the shooting in Brookline, Massachusetts. That assessment changed as evidence from rental car records and digital surveillance began to mount.
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According to Leah Foley, US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Valente likely targeted Loureiro specifically due to their past association. However, investigators do not currently believe the two victims at Brown University—where Valente was a student in the early 2000s—were intended targets.
The suspect went to great lengths to remain off the grid, reportedly using European SIM cards to bypass domestic cellular tracking and avoiding credit cards in his own name.
The Reddit Tip and the Rental Car
A breakthrough in the investigation came from a combination of public vigilance and surveillance footage. An affidavit released Thursday detailed how a tip from a Reddit user helped place Valente at the scene in Providence.
The user, identified in documents only as “John,” posted online about seeing a suspicious grey Nissan with Florida plates near the Barus & Holley building. John later told police he had encountered a man inside the building shortly before the shooting who appeared underdressed for the weather.
When John observed the man outside later, the suspect appeared to be circling the area. According to the affidavit, when John asked the man what he was doing, the suspect replied, “Why are you harassing me?”
Investigators traced the vehicle described by John to a rental agency in Boston. Footage from the rental counter showed a man matching Valente’s description and distinctive gait renting the car.
Closing the Net
Police say that within 24 hours of the Rhode Island attack, Valente returned to Massachusetts and swapped the rental’s Florida plates for unregistered tags from Maine. He then allegedly drove to Brookline to kill Loureiro.
Security cameras captured Valente near the professor’s home and, roughly an hour later, entering a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, wearing the same clothes.
On Thursday, a license plate reader flagged the vehicle near the facility, located about 30 miles north of Boston. When tactical teams located Valente inside a unit later that evening, he was deceased. Officers recovered a satchel and two firearms at the scene.
“Tonight, our Providence neighbors can finally breathe a little easier,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said following the confirmation of Valente’s death.
While the immediate threat has passed, police say the investigation is ongoing as they try to determine the motive behind the violence that erupted nearly 30 years after the men first met in Lisbon.
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