Brown/MIT Shooter Reportedly ‘Vanished’ 12 Years before His Attack | Headline USA
(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The man who allegedly killed two Brown University students and an MIT professor last month had “vanished” from his friends and family some 12 years earlier, according to a profile in the New York Times.
The alleged shooter, 48-year-old Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente, was once a promising physics student. He was briefly in Brown University’s doctoral program in 2000, but dropped out after only a year.
Upon returning to Portugal, he reportedly “grew remote and avoided conversations with her altogether,” the New York Times reported Thursday. And after his cousin tragically died in 2013, he reportedly “vanished” altogether.
“From 2013 on, Mr. Neves Valente left almost no signs of where he lived or worked, in Portugal or the United States. He stopped responding to former colleagues, or attending the dinners held by his college classmates. And he never saw his family again,” the Times reported.
“His mother told friends and neighbors that Mr. Neves Valente had mental health issues but refused to seek treatment. Recently, she confided to a relative her fear that the next time she got word of Claudio, he would be dead.”
Neves Valente eventually obtained legal permanent residence status in September 2017. His last known residence was in Miami.
The New York Times profiled the Brown/MIT shooter today. According to his friends and family, he “vanished” in 2013, never to be seen again by them. pic.twitter.com/ZphxvKSiDF
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) January 8, 2026
Neves Valente emerged last month at Brown University, where 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 admits in Portuguese that he had been “planning the Brown University shooting for a long time,” according to a press release. In a transcript provided by the Justice Department, he said he had been working out details for at least six semesters. He did not provide a motive for targeting Brown or the MIT professor, with whom he attended school in Portugal decades ago.
He 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.
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.”
According to police, a witness had several encounters with Neves Valente before the attack at Brown. 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.
Up until that point, the police affidavit says officials had not connected a vehicle to the possible shooter.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.