Brown University Shooting Suspect Also Linked To MIT Professor's Murder In New Hampshire: Reports

Last Updated:December 19, 2025, 11:51 IST

Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, was identified as the suspect behind the shooting at Brown University that left two students dead, and the murder of an MIT professor.

Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, the suspect of the Brown University shooting, was also linked to the murder of an MIT professor. (Photo: New Hampshire AG/AP)

The man suspected in the Brown University mass shooting was found dead in a storage unit in New Hampshire, reportedly from a self-inflicted gunshot. Authorities have reportedly discovered that the suspect was behind the murder of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor in New Hampshire.

Authorities identified the dead suspect as the 48-year-old Claudio Manuel Neves Valente. “We got him," FBI Boston special agent in charge Ted Docks said during a news conference at the Providence Public Safety Complex. Officials said he took his own life.

Authorities in Massachusetts confirmed Valenta is also the suspected gunman in the death of MIT professor Nuno FG Loureiro in Brookline, who was fatally shot on Monday night in his building. Both men were natives of Portugal, according to ABC News.

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MIT Professor’s Death

US Attorney for Massachusetts Leah Foley told reporters at a news conference late Thursday night that it’s believed Valente and Loureiro studied in the same academic programme in Portugal in the 1990s. It was only the past day or two that the “link began to be established" between the two puzzling crimes, she said.

Loureiro was a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist at MIT. Dozens of people gathered outside Louriero’s building Tuesday night, many with candles in hand, to honour the professor’s life and support his family, according to The Associated Press.

Loureiro, who was married, joined MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Centre, where he worked to advance clean energy technology and other research. The centre, one of the school’s largest labs, had more than 250 people working across seven buildings when he took the helm.

The president of MIT, Sally Kornbluth, said in a statement that the killing was a “shocking loss." 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."

How Was Suspect Tracked Down?

Neves Valente, whose most recent known address was in Miami, had a prior connection to Brown. He began attending the school in 2000, seeking a PhD in physics. He took a leave of absence the next year and officially withdrew from Brown in 2003, according to an affidavit filed in the case, as per WPRI.

Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said local police helped tracked down Valente thanks, in part, to surveillance video and a detailed tip about a vehicle being driven by a person who noted odd behaviour by the suspect.

Authorities said that the discovery ultimately led them to a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, on the border with Massachusetts, where Valente had rented a unit. His body was found in a storage unit next to the one he had rented, with a satchel containing two firearms.

The shooting at Brown University claimed the lives of two students, Ella Cook, 19, a sophomore from Alabama, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, a freshman of Uzbek American heritage, and left nine others injured. In all the videos made public, the suspect’s face was masked or turned away, and authorities have only been able to give a vague description of him, leaving residents eager for an arrest.

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