Authorities are claiming 48-year-old Claudio Manuel Neves Valente committed both the Brown University mass shooting and the murder of MIT physics prof Nuno Loureiro, 47.
Neves Valente was found dead by his own hand in a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire. He was a citizen of Portugal who got legal permanent residency in the US in 2017.
Neves Valente appears to have known Louriero in Portugal when both were students there. He was a physics grad student at Brown some 20 years ago, on a student visa. So he was apparently familiar with both the Brown campus and with the murdered MIT physics prof.
His motive is unknown. I will spin a scenario which, if true, would give him a motive for both.
Imagine Neves Valente and Loureiro were bright, math-savvy students close enough equals in age and specialty to have known each other back home in Portugal. Later Neves Valente dropped out of physics grad school at Brown without getting a degree.
Loureiro obviously earned a PhD in Physics, a research position at world-famous MIT, and was considered one of the science's stars. Resenting and envying a former study partner's success when one has not achieved a desired career creates resentment.
Not "making it" in grad school creates resentment toward the school. Pehaps Neves Valente had become despondent and was considering suicide anyway. Getting revenge on two major sources of his anger and self-loathing before ending his life could be a way to feel his death meant something, to cause two sources of his resentment to also suffer.
I don't claim this is what happened, but as a scenario it offers a possible explanation for two seemingly unconnected acts. And it can make one wary about simmering anger and resentment in those left behind decades ago.
