The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Claudio Neves-Valente Identified as Brown University Gunman, Found Dead

Posted on | December 19, 2025 | No Comments

Claudio Neves-Valente, seen on surveillance camera

It was a wild and sudden finish to a mysterious case Thursday night. A press conference had been scheduled in Providence, Rhode Island, after it was reported that police had finally identified a “person of interest” wanted in connection with last Saturday’s deadly shooting at Brown University. However, the press conference was then cancelled, as new developments in the case unfolded. Eventually, police descended on a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, where they found 48-year-old Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

It turns out that Neves-Valente, a native of Portugal, had formerly been a Ph.D. physics student at Brown, but withdrew in 2003 before completing his doctorate. Also, not coincidentally, Neves-Valente had previously attended the same physics program at a university Portugal as MIT physics Professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro, who was shot to death Monday at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts. Neves-Valente had apparently planned these crimes for a while. He had been living in Miami, Florida, but arrived in Providence about two weeks ago and had been “casing” the campus. The motive of the Brown shooting is unclear, but he killed two students and wounded nine others on Saturday, before escaping to the Boston area, where police say he murdered Loureiro.

Somewhere along the way, Neves-Valente left behind an unfired bullet, and police got a DNA sample from that bullet that they were able to match to the gunman. Also, on the day of the Brown shooting, Neves-Valente had been encountered by a man who saw him behaving suspiciously and was able to give police a description of the vehicle with Florida plates that he was driving. Neves-Valente then apparently parked that vehicle at the storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, which is just over the state line from Massachusetts, about 35 miles north of Boston. Meanwhile, after police had focused on Neves-Valente as a suspect, they showed his photo to one of the surviving victims of the Brown shooting, who “quickly froze, physically pushed back, and became emotional . . . tearing up and shaking.” Then information from Flock license plate reader cameras was able to lead them to the Salem storage facility, where Neves-Valente was found. And thus the mystery is solved.

Whatever the motive turns out to be, it apparently had nothing to do with radicalism on the Brown University campus, which means that apologies are owed to the chubby Palestinian student whom many Internet sleuths had suspected as the gunman. Jew-hating douchebag? Yes. Killer? No.



 

Shop Electronics at Amazon

Save on Groceries and Everyday Essentials

Shop Amazon Basics

Office & School Supplies

Category: Crime, Rhode Island

Comments