There are going to be a lot of what-ifs surrounding the mass shooting at Brown University, and the slaying of an MIT professor, for a long time.

However, authorities have now confirmed what was suspected – that the same man committed both crimes. Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente was identified on Thursday as the suspect in the Brown University mass shooting that killed two students at a study hall, and wounded nine others. At the same time that he was formally identified, it was also announced that Neves-Valente was dead. On Friday, authorities confirmed that he committed suicide at a storage unit in New Hampshire.

New Hampshire Attorney General John M. Formella said Friday that the New Hampshire Department of Justice Office of the Chief Medical Examiner performed an autopsy on the body of Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente, 48, who was identified as the suspect in the Brown University mass shooting and the subsequent killing of an MIT professor.

The examination confirmed Neves-Valente died from a gunshot wound to the head, and the manner of death was ruled a suicide.

Based on forensic findings and investigative information available to date, authorities estimate he died on Tuesday, Dec. 16. Neves-Valente was found dead in a storage facility in New Hampshire two days later, on Thursday evening.

The shooting at Brown University happened last Saturday, and MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro was murdered at his home in Massachusetts on Monday. His family will now be haunted by the fact that if Rhode Island police had moved more aggressively to track the shooter down, Loureiro might not have been assassinated. And the forensic evidence found with the body of Neves-Valente connected him to the killings.

Two 9mm pistols were recovered in New Hampshire with the body of Claudio Neves Valente. The ATF and FBI, through the CSP lab, have positively correlated one firearm with the gun used in the Brown University mass shooting. The other matches to the murder of Nuno Loureiro. pic.twitter.com/OZBNC6cmjb

— ATF Boston (@ATFBoston) December 19, 2025

The police did not exactly convince anyone that they did a stellar job tracking down the murderer – especially considering that it took a homeless man living at Brown University and a Reddit post to crack this case.

Then on Tuesday, a tip pointed the police to a Reddit post that grabbed their attention: “I’m being dead serious,” an anonymous poster had written about the Brown shooting. “The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental.”

The Nissan, the poster said, had been parked on a street corner in a residential neighborhood near Brown, sheltered by trees and bushes. A day after the Reddit post was made, a man the authorities confirmed was the writer approached law enforcement officials and told them about the car and an odd encounter he had with a suspicious man in Brown’s Barus and Holley building.

The tipster, whom the police referred to only as John, told them that he encountered the man in a bathroom on the ground floor of the building between 1:45 p.m. and 2 p.m. on Saturday, about two hours before the shooting. John said that the man’s clothing seemed out of place, too flimsy for the cold weather. They had made eye contact, he later told officers.

John followed the man after he left the building to the parked Nissan, and watched as the man unlocked it. But instead of getting in the car, the man started walking around the block, with John trailing like “a game of cat and mouse,” he told the police.

At one point, the two men spoke. According to the police affidavit, John asked the unidentified man, “Your car is back there, why are you circling the block?” To which the suspect responded, “Why are you harassing me?”

Once they knew about the car, law enforcement agencies could home in on traffic, door and garage cameras all over the upscale neighborhood, which the authorities had become convinced was where the gunman was both before and after the shootings. And when they located the car on video and identified it, the registration led to a rental business in Boston, and then to the name of the person who had rented the Nissan.

Now, the killer was trying to cover his tracks, which included swapping out license plates on his rental car and using a European SIM card in his phone. But the fact remains that the killer had 48 hours between the shooting at Brown University and the murder of Nuno Loureiro – and Brown University has some explaining to do regarding surveillance cameras on campus, and an emergency siren alert system that was never used.

Rodney Chatman, the university’s director of public safety and emergency management, blamed the lack of sirens on the hectic nature of the crisis. He said police became aware of the incident when an officer saw students fleeing the scene.

Fire officials learned of the shooting at 4:05 p.m., according to Providence fire chief Derek Silva. Students didn’t receive an alert until 4:22—17 minutes later, according to the Rhode Island Current. They were then warned to lock their doors, run, hide, and “FIGHT as a last resort.”

From there, Brown issued and retracted a series of alerts. It sent one at 4:51 saying a suspect was in custody, then another 20 minutes later walking back that claim. A 5:27 alert warned that there was another shooting, but a 6:10 message said that was actually “unfounded.”

Some of the misinformation that was sent out can be attributed to the heat of the moment – but could someone please tell Brown University president Christina Paxson that she should STOP SMILING??? Two of her students are DEAD, and this woman keeps plastering a Joker smile on her face like she can’t help thinking this is all so amusing.

🚨 DISGRACEFUL: Brown University President Christina Paxson, smiling: “I don’t think a lack of cameras in that building had anything to do with what happened.”

Just days later, the same shooter — Manuel Neves-Valente — murdered MIT Professor Nuno Loureiro. pic.twitter.com/cpshPXWwgW

— Alec Lace (@AlecLace) December 19, 2025

As for motive for the killings, there will probably never be complete answers. Neves-Valente, who was from Portugal and a legal resident in the United States, apparently cut his family off decades ago. He had studied physics and had apparently been a classmate of Nuno Loureiro at Instituto Superior Técnico in Portugal. He then studied at Brown University, but dropped out around 2003 before completing a degree, and reportedly hated his time at the university. Was it personal or professional jealousy that made Loureiro his second target? And was it just anger at Brown that drove him to target innocent students with no connection to him – and did he think he was targeting the physics department?
https://twitter.com/Nerdy_Addict/status/2001895852659421695
We will never know for certain what the motive behind the murders were, and the killer was too much of a coward to face justice on this earth. The fact that he has gone to a final Judgement may be of some comfort to the victims’ families, especially the two Brown University students who may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, students and families at Brown University have to be asking a lot of questions right now about campus safety, police response, and why the university allows a homeless man – even a self-aware one whose sharp instincts tracked a killer – to live in a basement on campus.

Featured image: Brown University’s Barus and Holly Building, where the shooting took place, via Kenneth C. Zirkel on Wikimedia Commons, cropped, CC BY-SA 4.0