Lengthy grudge motivated Brown mass shooting, MIT professor killing: Sources
A lengthy grudge was at the heart of the deadly mass shooting at Brown University and subsequent murder of an MIT nuclear physics professor, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
According to the sources, the alleged killer, Claudio Valente, recorded a video in his native Portuguese explaining his actions in opening fire on a study group at Brown's engineering and physics building on Dec. 13, killing two students and injuring nine others, before fatally shooting MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts.
On the video, Valente, a former Brown graduate student, said he was planning the shooting for a long time, according to sources. The violence stunned the nation and launched a six-day manhunt across New England just before Christmas.
Valente died by suicide before investigators found his body in a New Hampshire storage facility.
Federal agents spent the holidays poring over electronic devices found with the body and in an adjacent storage unit. The sources said there are additional devices to access and additional information to be learned about the twin shootings that cast a pall over two of the nation's elite universities.
Neves Valente "admitted that he had been planning the Brown University shooting for a long time" in the videos and stated that Brown was his "intended target," the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts said in a statement on Tuesday while releasing transcripts of the videos.
"Neves Valente showed no remorse during the recordings; on the contrary, he exposed his true nature when he blamed innocent, unarmed children for their deaths at his hand and grumbled about a self-inflicted injury he suffered when he shot the MIT professor at close range," the office said.
The Massachusetts U.S. attorney's office said in its statement that its investigation into the motive in the shootings continues and that, based on an initial review of the evidence, Neves Valente did not provide one. Though according to law enforcement sources, he did describe 20-year grudges that propelled him to buy guns, bring them to New England and carry out the shootings.
