Jan. 7, 2026:
BOSTON (AP) — The man identified as the shooter who killed two Brown University students and an MIT professor planned the attack for years and left behind videos in which he confessed to the murders but gave no motive, according to information released Tuesday (Jan. 6, 2026) by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, was found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility after he killed two students and wounded nine others in an engineering building on Dec. 13. Two days later he killed MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro in his home in the Boston suburb of Brookline.
Justice Department officials said Tuesday that during the search of the storage facility where Neves Valente’s body was found on Dec. 18, the FBI recovered an electronic device containing a series of short videos made by Neves Valente after the shootings.
In the recordings, the shooter admitted in Portuguese that he had been working out details for at least six semesters. He did not give a motive for targeting Brown or the professor, with whom he attended school in Portugal decades ago.
Videos don’t provide motive, but do address misinformation
In an English-translated transcript provided by the Justice Department, Neves Valente said he felt he had nothing to apologize for. He also complained in the videos about injuring his eye in the shootings.
“I’m not going to apologize because during my lifetime no one sincerely apologized to me,” he said.
He explicitly addressed baseless claims spread by conservative influencer Laura Loomer after the attack that the Brown shooter had spoken in Arabic, saying something like “Allahu akbar” upon entering the auditorium.
Neves Valente said he did not speak a word of Arabic or intend to make any kind of statement. If he said anything, he “must have made an exclamation like, ‘Oh no!’ or something like that,” to express disappointment that the auditorium appeared to be empty when he entered, he said. Students were hiding under desks, but Neves Valente thought they’d already escaped through an emergency exit.
“I never wanted to do it in an auditorium. I wanted to do it in a regular room,” he said. “I had plenty of opportunities. Especially this semester, I had plenty of opportunities, but I always chickened out.”
Students were shot at random
He insisted he was not mentally ill. He said he did not want to be famous and the video was not a manifesto.
Neves Valente said his “only objective was to leave more or less” on his “own terms” and to ensure he “wouldn’t be the one who ended up suffering the most from all this.”
“No, that cannot happen. So if you don’t like it, tough luck,” he said. Neves Valente called his execution of the murders “a little incompetent.”
“But at least something was done,” he said.
Neves Valente wounded nine people and killed two students: Sophomore Ella Cook, 19, and 18-year-old freshman MukhammadAziz Umurzokov.
Two days later, authorities say, Neves Valente fatally shot Loureiro. Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000. Loureiro graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior Técnico, that country’s premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page. The same year Neves Valente was let go from a position at the Lisbon university, according to an archive of a termination notice from the school’s then-president in February 2000.
In the recording he said he had the storage space where his body was found for about three years.
Brown University said in a statement Tuesday that “the gravity of this tragedy continues to weigh heavily on the full Brown University community” and that they continue to mourn the deaths of the two students and pray for the full recovery of those who were injured.
Shooter describes witness encounter
Neves Valente mentioned his confrontation with a witness at Brown that ultimately led to his identification days later.
According to police, the witness had several encounters with Neves Valente before the attack. As police posted images of the person of interest, the witness began posting on the social media forum Reddit that he recognized the person and theorized that police should look into “possibly a rental” gray Nissan. Reddit users urged him to inform the FBI, and the witness said he did.
Until that point, the police affidavit says, officials had not connected a vehicle to the possible shooter.
“I actually was confronted,” Neves Valente said about the Brown shooting, adding that the witness saw his license plate.
“I honestly never thought it would take them so long to find me,” he said.
He said he had no hatred or love for the United States, where he first arrived around 25 years ago to study physics at Brown’s graduate program before leaving in the spring of 2001.
Neves Valente studied at Brown on a student visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent residence in September 2017. His last known residence was in Miami.
“It’s the same thing with Portugal, and most of the places where I have been,” he said, adding later that “I’ve been here without caring for a very long time now.”
Dec. 19, 2025:
UNDATED-AP- A frantic search for the suspect in last weekend’s mass shooting at Brown University ended at a New Hampshire storage facility where authorities discovered the man dead inside and then revealed he also was suspected of killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor.
Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, was found dead Thursday night (Dec. 18, 2025) from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said Col. Oscar Perez, the Providence police chief.
Investigators believe he is responsible for fatally shooting two students and wounding nine other people in a Brown lecture hall last Saturday, then killing MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro two days later at his home in the Boston suburbs, nearly 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Providence. Perez said as far as investigators know, Neves Valente acted alone.
Portugal’s top diplomat said Friday that the government was taken aback by revelations that a Portuguese man is the main suspect in the mass shooting at Brown and the killing of an MIT professor who was of the same nationality. Police said they were contacted by U.S. authorities Thursday once Neves Valente was named.
Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel said Portugal has provided “very broad cooperation” in the case. He said in comments to the national news agency Lusa that “the investigation is far from over.”
Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente was enrolled there as a graduate student studying physics from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001.
“He has no current affiliation with the university,” she said.
Neves Valente and Loureiro previously attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, U.S. attorney for Massachusetts Leah B. Foley said. Loureiro graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal’s premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page. The same year, Neves Valente was let go from a position at the Lisbon university, according to an archive of a termination notice from the school’s then-president in February 2000.
Neves Valente, who was born in Torres Novas, Portugal, about 75 miles (121 kilometers) north of Lisbon, had come to Brown on a student visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent residence status in September 2017, Foley said. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017. His last known residence was in Miami.
After officials revealed the suspect’s identity, President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program that allowed Neves Valente to stay in the United States.
There are still “a lot of unknowns” in regard to motive, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. “We don’t know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this classroom,” he said.
Tip helps investigators connect the dots
The FBI previously said it knew of no links between the Rhode Island and Massachusetts shootings.
Police credited a person who had several encounters with Neves Valente for providing a crucial tip that led authorities to him.
After police shared security video of a person of interest, the witness — known only as “John” in a Providence police affidavit — recognized him and posted his suspicions on the social media forum Reddit. Reddit users urged him to tell the FBI, and John said he did.
John said he had encountered Neves Valente hours earlier in the bathroom of the engineering building where the shooting occurred and noticed he was wearing inappropriate clothing for the weather, according to the affidavit. He again bumped into Neves Valente a couple blocks away and saw him suddenly turn away from a Nissan sedan when he saw John.
“When you do crack it, you crack it. And that person led us to the car, which led us to the name,” Neronha said.
His tip pointed investigators to a Nissan Sentra with Florida plates. That enabled Providence police to tap into a network of more than 70 street cameras operated around the city by surveillance company Flock Safety. Those cameras track license plates and other vehicle details.
After leaving Rhode Island, Providence officials said Neves Valente stuck a Maine license plate over his rental car’s plate to help conceal his identity.
Investigators found footage of Neves Valente entering an apartment building near Loureiro’s in a Boston suburb. About an hour later, Neves Valente was seen entering the Salem, New Hampshire, storage facility where he was found dead, Foley said. He had with him a satchel and two firearms, Neronha said.
Victims include renowned physicist, political organizer and aspiring doctor
Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, had joined MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead the school’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, one of its largest laboratories. The scientist from Viseu, Portugal, had been working to explain the physics behind astronomical phenomena such as solar flares.
In Lisbon, he was remembered as a highly regarded researcher and instructor for “all the contributions he gave and what he could still have given, all the equations left unwritten,” said Professor Bruno Gonçalves, head of the Institute for Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion at Instituto Superior Tecnico.
Gonçalves added, “It is difficult to imagine in what context someone would want to harm someone that works in this field.”
The two Brown students killed during a study session for final exams were 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook and 18-year-old freshman MukhammadAziz Umurzokov. Cook was active in her Alabama church and served as vice president of the Brown College Republicans. Umurzokov’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan when he was a child, and he aspired to be a doctor.
As for the wounded, three had been discharged and six were in stable condition Thursday, officials said.
Although Brown officials say there are 1,200 cameras on campus, the attack happened in an older part of the engineering building that has few, if any, cameras. And investigators believe the shooter entered and left through a door that faces a residential street bordering campus, which might explain why the cameras Brown does have didn’t capture footage of the person.
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