What we know about Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, suspect in Brown University, MIT professor shootings
UPDATE: Suspect in Brown University, MIT professor shootings died days before he was found
Roughly 18 hours after authorities announced the identification of a suspect in the mass shooting at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor in Brookline , many questions remain about the man responsible for the violence.
The suspect, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside a Salem, New Hampshire, storage facility around 9 p.m. Thursday. Authorities announced Friday, he had been dead for two days.
Across a pair of press conferences, first in Providence, Rhode Island, then Boston, authorities revealed some of what they had learned about Neves Valente since he was first identified as a suspect on Wednesday.
Who was Claudio Manuel Neves Valente?
A 48-year-old native of Portugal, Neves Valente is believed to have been living in Miami before the shootings at Brown and in Brookline.
Authorities confirmed that Neves Valente knew MIT professor Nuno F. G. Loureiro, and that the pair attended the same program from 1995 to 2000. Loureiro graduated from Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon in 2000 after majoring in physics there, according to a profile on MIT's website .
In the fall of 2000, Neves Valente began attending Brown as a graduate student in a master's of science PhD program in physics. He took a leave from the university in April 2001 before formally withdrawing in 2003, Brown President Christina Paxson said Thursday night.
At Brown, Neves Valente was enrolled only in physics classes, most of which have historically been held in the Barus and Holley classrooms and labs, the building where the shooting took place.
"I think it's safe to assume that this man, when he was a student, spent a great deal of time in that building for classes and other activities as a PhD student in physics," Paxson said.
What became of Neves Valente after that is not entirely clear. In 2017, he applied for and obtained legal permanent resident status.
The manhunt for Neves Valente stretched across six days. It lasted so long, in part, because Neves Valente "was sophisticated in hiding his tracks," Foley said.
Neves Valente was using a phone that made it difficult for investigators to track him, she said. At the time, he was using a Google phone that investigators couldn't ping in real time and possibly European SIM cards through a U.S. provider that also couldn't be traced. He also had several credit cards not in his name.
"There was financial investigations that were going on in the background that linked him, not only to that car, but also to the hotels that he had rented and ... the car that he had used to not only drive to Rhode Island, but then back to Boston," Foley said.
Lead-up to the shooting at Brown
Neves Valente was captured on surveillance footage in Boston on Nov. 17, 2025 at an Alamo car rental on Atlantic Avenue picking up a vehicle. In that video, he is wearing the same jacket seen on the man who carried out the shooting at Brown, with the same or similar shoes.
From Nov. 26 to Nov. 30, Neves Valente rented a hotel room in Boston
He returned to the rental car facility on Dec. 1, where he is captured on surveillance with a suitcase. That day, he picked up the gray Nissan Sentra with Florida plates, which he would drive to Providence to carry out the shooting.
Neves Valente then spends the better part of two weeks in Providence, appearing to case the area surrounding the building where the shooting would take place. His car is captured on surveillance between Dec. 1 and Dec. 12.
Then, on Dec. 13, around 4 p.m., Neves Valente burst into an auditorium in the Barus and Holley building and opened fire.
Shooting in Brookline
After the shooting at Brown, Neves Valente drove back to Boston. While in Massachusetts, he changed the plate on the Nissan, putting an unregistered plate out of Maine over the Florida, according to Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha.
On Dec. 14, the day after the Brown shooting, Google email and voice accounts tied to Neves Valente logged in from an IP address near Boston University. The email account was the same one Neves Valente gave to the hotel he was staying at in late November.
Loureiro was killed the next day when Neves Valente shot him in the foyer of his apartment building on Gibbs Street in Brookline, around 8 p.m. The professor's home is about half a mile from the IP address Neves Valente's accounts logged in from.
At around 8:42 p.m., the Nissan Sentra Neves Valente was driving is seen on surveillance about a mile from Loureiro's apartment. The car is seen again at 9:03 p.m. in Waltham.
Immediately after killing Loureiro, Neves Valente drove to the Salem, New Hampshire, storage unit where he would ultimately be found dead .
He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, an autopsy confirmed on Friday, according to New Hampshire Attorney General John M. Formella.
The autopsy revealed that Neves Valente took his own life on Dec. 16, the day after he shot and killed Nuno Loureiro in Brookline. Investigators had not yet identified Neves Valente as the suspect in either killing when he committed suicide.
Motive for the shootings
As of Friday afternoon, there was still no clear indication of what led him to carry out the violence.
At a press conference on Thursday night, U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said there was no indication of a motive.
"He was very careful in his communications, and we just don't have any information right now to answer that question [of motive]," she said.
Brown University Shooting, Dec. 13, 2025
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