New police reports detail investigation into death of MIT professor in Brookline
The evening of Dec. 15 began like any other Monday night for Nuno Loureiro and his family.
Loureiro, the director of MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, and his wife were making dinner while two of his daughters played cards in the living room of the Brookline apartment they shared.
Then, around 8:30 p.m., the doorbell rang.
One of Loureiro's daughters got up to answer the door and saw a man standing outside holding what looked to be a cardboard box with a barcode on it. Loureiro told her to stay inside and opened the door, stepping out into the apartment building's entryway.
Soon after, his family heard what sounded like gunshots. One of Loureiro's daughters raced outside and found her father lying on the ground in the foyer. She saw the man who rang the doorbell get into the driver's side of a sedan and drive away from the apartment building.
Loureiro, who was still conscious, was rushed to a hospital suffering from three gunshot wounds — to his upper left chest, upper abdomen and right thigh. He died there the following morning.
The same day, the man responsible for killing Loureiro — Claudio Manuel Neves Valente , 48 — took his own life in a Salem, New Hampshire storage facility. He had targeted Loureiro, his former classmate at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal.
Newly released reports from Brookline Police detail how investigators scrambled to understand what happened to the well-liked MIT professor, interviewing current and former colleagues and canvassing the neighborhood for surveillance footage.
The reports, obtained by MassLive on Tuesday, were first published by The Boston Herald .
Timeline of the shooting
The gray Nissan investigators eventually linked to Neves Valente is first captured on surveillance cameras in Brookline around 8 a.m. on the day of the shooting, when it is seen backing into a parking spot on Babcock Street. Neves Valente stayed in the car for hours before making his way to Commonwealth Avenue to buy food. He returned to the car just after 1:30 that afternoon and stayed until about 3 p.m.
Surveillance shows the Nissan arriving on Gibbs Street just before 7 p.m., pausing in front of 11 Gibbs St., then accelerating away. Loureiro lived in an adjoining building at 9 Gibbs St.
The sedan is captured driving on Gibbs Street several more times before the shooting — at 7:45 p.m., 7:48 p.m., 8:13 p.m., 8:16 p.m. and 8:17 p.m.
"Investigators believed that the operator was conducting preoperational surveillance prior to committing the crime," the report reads. "The security surveillance video ... illustrates that the operator of the newer gray or blue Nissan was gathering information of the neighborhood layout by his repeated presence and probable mapping of routes, including entry and exit points."
What Loureiro's family saw
Only Loureiro's daughter got a look at the shooter before he sped off.
She described him to police as a man in his mid-30s wearing a dark blue undershirt with a yellow vest over it, blue pants and possibly black sneakers. The shooter appeared to be of Indian descent, with short facial hair and a medium build, she said.
She didn't hear any communication between the shooter and her father before the gunshots rang out.
The 12-year-old was home with her mother, grandmother and oldest sister. After hearing the gunshots, her grandmother, a former nurse visiting from Portugal, attempted to treat Loureiro before first responders arrived.
Police applied gauze to Loureiro's wounds before he was taken away on a stretcher. Investigators found six shell casings in the apartment building's entryway and blood stains covering the floor.
Interviews at MIT
In the days following the shooting, investigators spoke to several of Loureiro's current and former colleagues at the Cambridge school where he had worked since 2016. As the director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Loureiro had cut back on his teaching duties to handle more administrative tasks.
The colleagues struggled to think of anyone who might have a vendetta against Loureiro, whom they described as "magnetic and larger than life" and "a warm and pleasant individual."
Another said Loureiro "never really appeared stressed or nervous and was always pleasant to work with."
What isn't in the reports
Federal investigators would later connect the Nissan seen outside Loureiro's home to a car seen circling Brown University just before a mass shooting there left two students dead and nine injured.
Neves Valente is believed to have carried out the shooting at Brown, where he was briefly a student, before driving to Brookline and killing Loureiro. It's still not clear what motivated him to carry out the attacks. U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah Foley said last week that investigators may never be able to determine a motive.
"When we know something, we will release it to the public. I believe that not only does the public need to know, but the victims need to know," she said.
Neves Valente and Loureiro went to school together in Portugal — both men studied physics at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon. But after they left the university in 2000, it is not clear if their paths ever crossed again.
Both men excelled at the school, according to the Washington Post .
Neves Valente left with near-perfect grades, either near or at the top of his class, the university said, according to the newspaper.
A fellow student, 48-year-old Nuno Morais, told the paper that both men were friendly, but Loureiro had a more relaxed attitude than the highly competitive Neves Valente.
"In some elite schools, there's a culture where individual success is measured by academic performance, and in that sense, students usually feel they can only succeed if they are the best of the best," Morais said.
Neves Valente sought a career like what Loureiro achieved, Morais told the Post. But his time at Brown was a disappointment, according to the former classmate.
Loureiro studied plasma behavior and worked to explain the physics behind astronomical phenomena such as solar flares. His research, according to his obituary on MIT's news site, "involved the design of fusion devices that could harness the energy of fusing plasmas, bringing the dream of clean, near-limitless fusion power closer to reality."
The office of Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa also put out a condolence statement calling Loureiro's death "an irreparable loss for science and for all those with whom he worked and lived."
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report .
Brown University Shooting, Dec. 13, 2025
Read the original article on MassLive . Add MassLive as a Preferred Source by clicking here .
