An autopsy has confirmed that the suspect tied to the mass shooting at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor died by suicide two days before his body was discovered in a New Hampshire storage unit, authorities said.
According to a report from the New Hampshire attorney general’s office, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, died on December 16 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Valente, a Portuguese national who had been living in the United States, was found dead Thursday inside a storage locker in Salem, New Hampshire.
Investigators say Valente died the same day MIT nuclear physics professor Nuno Loureiro, also Portuguese, succumbed to gunshot wounds at a Massachusetts hospital.
Three days earlier, authorities believe Valente carried out a mass shooting at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, killing two students — Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov — and injuring nine others inside the Barus & Holley engineering building.
At first, law enforcement did not publicly link the two crimes. That changed as investigators reconstructed Valente’s movements across Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. A key break in the case came from a Reddit post written by a homeless former Brown student using the name “John,” who described seeing a suspicious man leaving campus shortly after the shooting.
“That person led us to the car, which led us to the name, which led us to photographs that matched the clothing,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. “He was ultimately found dead with a satchel containing two firearms, and evidence in the vehicle that directly matched what we recovered at the Providence crime scene.”
Witnesses in Rhode Island had reported seeing a gray Nissan with Florida license plates leaving the area of the Brown shooting. Around the same time, Massachusetts authorities received reports of a similar vehicle near the scene of Loureiro’s shooting, though it was seen with Maine plates.
Investigators traced the Florida plates to a Boston-area car rental agency, which led them to Valente’s identity. The vehicle was later located outside a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, where Valente’s body was found inside a rented unit.
Authorities have since confirmed that Valente had academic ties to both institutions. He was once a doctoral student at Brown University and had previously studied alongside Loureiro in Portugal. Both men attended Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal’s leading engineering university, between 1995 and 2000.
Officials have not formally identified a motive for the attacks. However, a former classmate told Boston television station WCVB that Valente harbored deep resentment toward Brown University. Scott Watson, now a professor at Syracuse University, said Valente often complained that Brown’s coursework was beneath him.
“He was bored because he knew more than any of us,” Watson said. “He felt he should already have had a PhD. He hated Brown and he hated Providence.”
Portugal’s foreign minister, Paulo Rangel, said his government was shocked to learn that a Portuguese citizen was responsible for the violence. He said Portugal is cooperating fully with U.S. authorities and stressed that the investigation remains ongoing.
In the aftermath of the attacks, the Trump administration announced the suspension of the green card lottery program, claiming Valente had used it to enter the U.S. in 2000. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the suspect “should never have been allowed in our country.”
Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez disputed that claim, stating Valente originally entered the U.S. on a student visa and later became a permanent resident in 2017.
An earlier version of this report incorrectly identified the storage facility as being in Salem, Massachusetts. It was located in Salem, New Hampshire.