Investigators believe Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, who allegedly killed two Brown University students and an MIT physicist in a multi-day shooting spree, harbored a grudge stemming from his own failed scientific career. Valente, a Portuguese national, was known in his youth as a brilliant physicist who won national science competitions but struggled after moving to the US in 2000.
Valente studied at Brown University but dropped out after several months, reportedly believing the Ivy League college was beneath him. Friends described him as an ego-maniac who found the classes too easy. Scott Watson, a physics professor at Syracuse University who befriended Valente at Brown, recalled him as a complicated, unhappy student who could be kind but often became frustrated and angry.
Valente is believed to have crossed paths with one of his alleged victims, acclaimed MIT physicist Nuno F.G. Loureiro, while studying at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) in Portugal over 20 years ago. While Loureiro went on to a successful career, Valente was barely remembered by peers. Authorities say Valente attended university in Lisbon with Loureiro in the late 1990s.
Valente is accused of opening fire on a classroom at Brown University on Monday, killing two students and injuring nine others, and then shooting Loureiro in his Boston home two days later. He was found dead by self-inflicted gunshot wound on Thursday night inside a storage container in New Hampshire.
