Reddit Tip Helped Police Identify Suspect in Brown and MIT Killings

A Reddit post by an anonymous witness helped investigators identify the man authorities say killed two Brown University students in Providence and an MIT physics professor in Brookline, according to a newly released affidavit from the Providence, R.I., Police Department.

Police say the suspect, 48-year-old Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, was responsible for the shooting at Brown University on Saturday that left two students dead and nine others injured, as well as the fatal shooting of MIT physics professor Nuno F. G. Loureiro at his home in Brookline, Mass., two days later.

Brown students Ella Cook, 19, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, were killed in the campus attack. Loureiro was killed at his home in Brookline, about 50 miles from Providence, on Monday.

Earlier this week, law enforcement officers tracked Valente to a storage unit in Salem, N.H., where he was found dead. Officials have not provided additional details about the circumstances of his death in the materials summarized here.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said that while prosecutors will never be able to bring Valente to trial, he hopes the outcome offers some measure of closure for the victims and their families.

According to the affidavit, Valente had ties to both Brown University and the slain MIT professor. Authorities say Valente was born in Torres Novas, Santarem, Portugal, and entered the United States in August 2000 as a graduate student at Brown University under an F-1 visa, which is reserved for international students studying full time at U.S. colleges and universities.

The document states that Valente was enrolled in Brown’s Ph.D. physics program from the fall of 2000 through the spring 2001 semester. He then took a leave of absence and officially withdrew from the program in the fall of 2003.

At a news conference, Leah Foley, the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program between 1995 and 2000 at a university in Portugal. The affidavit does not describe the nature of any relationship between them beyond that shared academic background.

Valente later reentered the U.S. on a different immigration track. The affidavit says F-1 visa recipients are required to return to their home countries after their studies. In May 2017, Valente received a diversity immigrant visa from the United States. That September, he was admitted at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as a legal permanent resident.

The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program typically makes about 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries with historically low rates of immigration to the U.S., according to the reporting. The program has since been suspended by the Trump administration in the wake of the Brown and MIT shootings, the report states.

Police said Valente’s last known address was in Miami. According to the affidavit, it is unclear what he was doing from 2017 until the days leading up to the shootings, and the document does not fill in that gap in his history.

On the Brown campus, a poster seeking information about the suspect went up shortly after the shooting, and flags flew at half-staff on the university’s main green. The shootings and subsequent manhunt drew intense attention across New England and beyond.

The key investigative break came from a local Reddit community. The affidavit states that three days after the Brown shooting, on Dec. 16, investigators received information from an anonymous source who pointed them to a post in the Providence subreddit that mentioned details about the attack.

At that point, police had only released surveillance images of the suspect. According to Neronha, the Reddit post became a key breakthrough in the case.

The post, which investigators say was written by a witness, described seeing the suspect, later identified as Valente, walking in the area around Brown University before the shooting. The post also urged authorities to focus on a specific vehicle, stating: “The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental. That was the car he was driving.”

The witness described the car as parked behind the Rhode Island Historical Society on Cooke Street in Providence, near the Brown campus. That level of detail, investigators said in the affidavit, helped them narrow their search.

Police are referring to the Reddit user as “John.” On Dec. 17, John approached Providence police officers and gave a fuller account of what he had seen before the shooting, according to the affidavit.

John told investigators that he first encountered Valente in a bathroom inside Brown’s Barus Holley building about two hours before the gunfire. He described Valente’s clothing as flimsy and poor quality, and said it seemed inappropriate and inadequate for the weather at the time.

According to the affidavit, John also noted that Valente was wearing a face mask that covered the entire lower half of his face. The document does not state whether others in the area reported similar observations.

John said he saw Valente again near the Rhode Island Historical Society and watched him approach a gray Nissan with Florida plates parked by the building. That sighting matched the details he had already posted on Reddit.

At that point, the encounter escalated. John told police that what he described as a game of “cat and mouse” began as he continued to follow Valente. During one confrontation, John said Valente told him, “I don’t know you from nobody. Why are you harassing me?” according to the affidavit.

John eventually broke off and went on his way. The shootings occurred later that day. The affidavit does not indicate that John witnessed the attack itself.

After the Reddit tip and John’s in-person statement, investigators connected the vehicle description and surveillance images to Valente, which helped them move toward identifying him as the suspect. Authorities then tracked him to the storage facility in Salem, N.H., where they say he was later found dead.

The affidavit and related statements by officials lay out a basic timeline connecting Valente’s academic ties, immigration history, presence on the Brown campus, and later appearance in New Hampshire. They do not address a possible motive or provide a detailed account of how investigators believe the events at Brown and in Brookline unfolded minute by minute.

Officials have emphasized that the case illustrates how tips from the public, including on social media platforms like Reddit, can play a critical role in major investigations. At the same time, they have stressed that many questions remain about Valente’s activities and state of mind in the years and days before the killings.

Authorities say their work is now focused on reconstructing Valente’s movements, examining his connections in the United States and Portugal, and trying to understand what led to the killings of Cook, Umurzokov and Loureiro. They have not publicly outlined a timeline for releasing additional findings.

As of the latest information in the affidavit and public statements cited here, the investigation into the shootings at Brown University and the fatal attack on the MIT professor remains active, even though the suspect is dead and there will be no criminal trial.