The manhunt for a gunman accused of terrorizing two New England university campuses ended Thursday when authorities found the suspect dead of an apparent suicide in a New Hampshire storage unit.
Law enforcement officials identified the suspect as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, a Portuguese national and former physics student at Brown University. Investigators said forensics and surveillance evidence have linked Valente to the mass shooting at Brown last weekend that left two students dead and the targeted killing of a prominent Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor days later.
The discovery of Valente’s body in Salem, New Hampshire, about 80 miles north of Providence, brought a grim conclusion to a week of violence that paralyzed two of the nation's most prestigious academic communities.
“We are 100% confident that this is our target, and that this case is closed from a perspective of pursuing people involved,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said at a news conference Thursday night.
The break in the case came after a witness recognized Valente from widely circulated surveillance images and contacted authorities, helping “blow the lid” off the investigation, Neronha said.
That tip led police to a rental vehicle Valente had been using. U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah B. Foley said Valente had attempted to conceal his movements by affixing a stolen Maine license plate over the rental car’s original plate.
Tracking the vehicle's movements, investigators traced Valente to a self-storage facility in Salem. Video footage recovered by the FBI showed Valente entering the facility about an hour after he was seen on surveillance cameras entering an apartment building in Brookline, Massachusetts—the site of the second attack.
Inside the storage unit, police found Valente deceased, along with a satchel and two firearms. He was wearing the same clothing observed in surveillance footage from the Brookline shooting, Foley said.
There are still a lot of unknowns. We don’t know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this classroom.Peter Neronha, Attorney General of Rhode Island
While the motive remains under investigation, authorities laid out a clear connection between the suspect and his third victim, 47-year-old Nuno F.G. Loureiro.
Both men were Portuguese nationals who attended the same physics program at a university in Lisbon between 1995 and 2000. Valente later moved to the U.S., enrolling as a graduate student in physics at Brown University from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001.
Brown University President Christina Paxson confirmed that Valente had been admitted to study physics but withdrew in 2003. “He has no current affiliation with the university,” Paxson said.
Valente eventually obtained legal permanent residence status in the U.S. in September 2017. His last known residence was in Miami.
Despite the personal link to Loureiro, the motive for the attack on the Brown campus remains unclear.
The violence began last Saturday at Brown’s Engineering Research Center in Providence. The shooter entered a study area in the Barus and Holley building, opening fire on students.
Two students, identified as MukhammadAziz Umurzakov and Ella Cook, were killed. Nine others were wounded. The attack occurred in an older section of the building with limited surveillance coverage, complicating the early stages of the manhunt.
Two days later, on Monday, Professor Loureiro was fatally shot inside his home in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Loureiro was a towering figure in the field of plasma physics. He served as the director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) and held the title of Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics. He had joined MIT in 2016 and was spearheading research into clean energy technology.
“He shone a bright light as a mentor, friend, teacher, colleague and leader,” Dennis Whyte, a former director of the PSFC, said in a statement. "Fusion energy will change the course of human history," Loureiro had said upon his appointment last year.
Brown University officials announced that the "immediate threat" to the campus had passed following the discovery of Valente’s body. However, the university has cancelled all remaining in-person exams and classes for the semester.
The attacks have drawn comparisons to high-profile manhunts of recent years, including the search for Luigi Mangione following the killing of United-Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York last year, and the search for the gunman who killed Army reservists in Lewiston, Maine, in 2023.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, the attack at Brown marks the 389th mass shooting in the United States this year. The archive defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are killed or injured, excluding the attacker.